When did we get sooo ... polished?

[Greendogo]

So for the first time, since this website was raised from the ashes of the previous forums and the OpenMW Google group, I decided to finally check out the Media and FAQ section of the website, and man did it really hit me that OpenMW - as a team, an institution and a project - is looking really professional.

When this project was first being kicked around by Nicolay Korslund, before he left to work on Tiggit, I figured that OpenMW, if it survived, would be something more akin to how Timeslip's Morrowind Graphics Extender evolved. Something trapped on Bethesda's forums, with a dedicated few developers and many users, but irrevocably bound to the Bethesda forums and the old way of doing Morrowind things.

Then Nico left, and the project was dead for how long? I thought it wasn't coming back. It was probably because he had originally decided to write the project entirely in D instead of C++; he wasn't able to interest any other developers in helping him out, and because OpenMW was bound to be a project too large for one man, he must have fizzled out during or after the process of rewriting much of what he had already done into C++ and decided to focus his energy on something new and exciting (Tiggit).

And then Zini came and turned the whole project around. Almost immediately he had breathed life back into this project, rescuing it from certain doom. This era most assuredly marked the demise of the OpenMW Google Group (thank the gods) as well as the short lived second home, a forum and wiki that looked remarkably like the ones we now enjoy, except they lacked a real front page, and any and all polish was sorely lacking. I think someone even lost the password to the wiki at least once. Then we relocated once more, to our current home.

If you haven't noticed by now, and being a long time resident, I almost didn't see the forest for the trees, this website now has all the makings of a great and professional project. We have a really good website now, and with the help of our brilliant site designers and maintainers and PR crew it continues to get better month after month. And soon, of course, it will get better, with the completion of the new forum theme by Jedd and Necrod, which will match the front page's style, including the menu bar at the top.

I'd just like to say thank you to all the wonderful volunteers who have given this project the life it very nearly didn't have. And more than that, this project is now run by such a fine team of developers and non-developers, it is more than I ever thought it would be, even now, before it is close to 1.0. I'm now certain that this project will be something greater than we can even imagine at this point. So thanks guys, you're awesome!

[Necrod]

And that's why we love zini..
Also hit a 300 milestone forum members. Would be great if more of theme were active.

I'm not the one making the theme btw, it's jedd. I'm just creating the icons and buttons.

[sirherrbatka]

And then Zini came and turned the whole project around.

It took some time, though.

It's safe to say that Zini is a backbone of the project, the man who organized the technical details, pointed out targets and maped directions to go. Without this the team would not emerge. The non-coders joined because they wanted to help they way they could (or thought they could).

[WeirdSexy]

I haven't been here as long as some others, but I've seen a steady increase in quality over time. We get some more people here and there, more people coding, more people doing PR. Thus the engine progresses and more activity is seen by the community, more interest and faith is generated in the project. I think Morrowind has a pretty amazing community and I think our team and the project itself are a testament to that.

[Tarius]

Yep, zini is indeed the reason for why this project is doing so well. Plus, I jokingly think that it probably looks good on his resume. haha

[Greendogo]

I think Morrowind has a pretty amazing community and I think our team and the project itself are a testament to that.

Yeah, agreed. I'm surprised though at the number of coders who came in from outside the Morrowind community. Sure, they've all played the vanilla game; but not everyone who is involved with it now heard about it on the Beth forums. Reading the thread about where you first heard about OpenMW, that much was clear. Pretty interesting.

[HiPhish]

I guess I'm one of those non-coders who thought they could help. I'm really blown away by this project. Not only the fact that something like this is even possible, but the fact that it is happening so fast right before my eyes. When I found out about openMW it looked like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y9HeQw9DUo

I was tryign to play Morrowind in Wine and looking for information online when i stumbled upon that video. My first reaction was "meh, another one of those projects that will never see the light of day", but you guys have proven me so wrong. I guess I was under the impression of all the other engine reverse engineering projects that get stuck in alpha forever. Unlike those projects OpenMW is very active, there is a new release alsmost every month, not once every two years! There are other reverse engineering projects like XLEngine, gemRB or Nuvie, but none of them are thriving with life nowhere near as much as OpenMW. Those projects are usually stuck in a small geek niche with a handful of developers in some corner of the internet. OpenMW has its own PR team that goes around recruiting other developers who don't hang out on Bethesda's forums and WeirdSexy's videos are so good. This shows that the project is very alive and it makes people want to help out because we believe that it has a chance of seeing 1.0 eventually.

Open Source engines are a great way of preserving PC games. For a console game an emulator is usually good enough and console manufactuers have their own services to keep the old games running on newer consoles. With PC games on the other hand old engines can become a real pain in the ass; sometimes they won't run on the new OS, sometimes they will lack features we take for granted (like widescreen resolutions) and sometimes they might not have been that good to begin with. Not to mention protability, being able to play the game on what you want, not what the developer decided. i couldn't get Arx Fatalis to run well in Wine, but thanks to the Arx Libertatis team it now works like a charm (BTW, I'm the one who made the Mac wrapper ^^).

Morrowind is kind of a mixed bag as a game. The content is very, very good, but then there are the little things that really drag it down for me, like framerate drops in towns, slow travel and the framerate-dependent mouse cursor. OpenMW is a great opportunity to make this game so much better. I whish I could be of more help, but I will just keep watchign you guys work for now. It's like my IQ is rising just from reading the forums.

[raevol]

Long live OpenMW! I cuncur with all the positive comments here, keep up the great work everyone!

[freem]

I discovered the name of this project... a long time ago, numbered in years, when it was on it's previous forums, without such an impressive structure. I do not remember how I felt there, but I thought it would be nice to see it rise, without really thinking it was possible.
Anyway I was taking news through the Internet from time to time (as I do for some other projects like keeperfx, which it means: rarely), just in case... and did not see it advance much.

But once, I felt on something pointing to the new website (this one). I followed the link, discovered the blog... and started to read news weekly, reading both English and French version of news, and sometimes spamming ap0 with typo reports (I am pretty sure sometimes he must curse me ).

Anyway, now, I am really confident in the fact you will make it reach a stable version, even better than original (I'm sad that my graphic cards are not able to make me enable water reflections... maybe I'll buy a new one just to play openmw with full graphics ).
So, just... thanks you, for making this software, and also for publishing weekly news and having started quasi-monthly releases.

Btw, I am often dreaming about the day when it will be possible to play openmw with tamriel rebuilt... with those both teams, this will be like an official expansion, but bigger than the original game with really official expansions

[Okulo]

I can't talk about the beginnings of this project since it's only been seven months since I ran into OpenMW and posted about it on reddit. Considering where the project was back then, I am very impressed. There was still that forum with a slightly rickety feel about it, the website wasn't quite up to snuff, the wiki was outdated and the project was far from being an actual game.

Now, however, our devs have been making some fantastic progress with the engine. Look at all the features that have gone in! Just to give a few examples, Zini has been cleaning up the code from time to time (including getting a tad cross with the team for leaving such a mess, teehee) and Scrawl has done some impressive stuff on the front end such as inventories and shaders. The people (person?) taking care of the website and the hosting have been delivering consistent high quality work as well. They deserve some praise too because the website is the gateway to the project; that which the people will see first of all when they find us.

Someone else joked that this will look good on a resume. In fact, I think this does. This is a beautiful and impressive project that any of you may be proud to be a part of. Together with OpenTTD, it's setting a new standard for open source projects such as these and that is something to boast about.