Impressions of 0.18

[Lazaroth]

I thought I'd compile a list of the impressions, observations and thoughts I've made while testing OpenMW 0.18.

1. The Launcher.
- It's looking better and better for each new version. I like that you've added widescreen and standard next to a resolution. It would be nice having all those in-game options in the launcher too tho.
- Ticking Bloodmoon and Tribunal.esm still crashes the game, so maybe disable the ability to tick them to avoid the crashing?
- The scrollbar of the resolutions have a weird box in it, see image below:

scrollbar.jpg (37.6 KiB) Viewed 5302 times

2. Performance.
- I reinstalled Windows last week and hadn't tried OpenMW since then. I noticed right away that the performance was horrible. Talking to anyone took 5 s for the window to pupup and coc vivec took almost a minute. It turned out it was due to me not running it as an administrator (which I didn't need before the re-installation). Once I did that, everything went smoothly.
- The FPS seems to have increased quite a bit with all effects on. Probably gained 30-50% FPS. I know I had some framerate issues previously outside, but now it stays good all the time.
- When entering a new area for the first time, especially outside, it lags for a couple of seconds. I'm not sure if it's due to new textures being loaded or what it is. This to me feels like it should happen during the loading screen and once it is gone, everything should be smooth sailing.
- Moving between cells are a lot more awkward than in the original Morrowind. Everytime it's a wait, and in some areas you have to literally wait 4-5 times when going a distance that normally only would have taken 5 s to walk. I think Morrowind preloaded all cells around the one you were in, to avoid excessive amount of loading screens.

3. Misc
- What is the reason for using F2 as the console key instead of the button used in almost every other game, including Morrowind?
- The menus turn weird when alt tabbing and then getting back into the game. Either invisible or with transparent background.
- I look forward to when you fix the flickering shadows.
- Entering a new location with collision activated makes you have a momentum in some direction, instead of standing still.
- Every animal is chatty. Except the bull and betty netch, they are rude and just ignores me.
- The loading screen moves backwards just before it goes away. E.g. 0->100->70->disappears.
- I know this isn't the standard Morrowind behaviour, but do mushrooms and flowers really need containers instead of just being picked automatically?

[WeirdSexy]

Well I'll just post a few things in this thread as well. These aren't really 0.18-specific things, but I'm not sure if these are known issues.

For one, if you look at the resolutions list in the launcher with direct3d renderer selected, you get duplicate resolutions.

The Birthsigns are not sorted correctly in the birthsign menu.

[Tarius]

- What is the reason for using F2 as the console key instead of the button used in almost every other game, including Morrowind?

I agree here. I use F2 as the quicksave key where permitted.

[WeirdSexy]

Additionally, there's this bit of business.

You can click "ok" without selecting a race or birthsign and those fields will end up blank. Morrowind has a "default" selection in both cases. Dunmer being the default selected race and The Apprentice being the default birthsign. OpenMW does not allow you to click "ok" without selecting a class. I did not check to see if it allows the empty string as a name.

Also, is it known why this error occurs around the Vivec cantons? Seems to hurt performance for me for printing out endless error messages.

[Zini]

- Ticking Bloodmoon and Tribunal.esm still crashes the game, so maybe disable the ability to tick them to avoid the crashing?

I can not reproduce this crash.

- When entering a new area for the first time, especially outside, it lags for a couple of seconds. I'm not sure if it's due to new textures being loaded or what it is. This to me feels like it should happen during the loading screen and once it is gone, everything should be smooth sailing.
- Moving between cells are a lot more awkward than in the original Morrowind. Everytime it's a wait, and in some areas you have to literally wait 4-5 times when going a distance that normally only would have taken 5 s to walk. I think Morrowind preloaded all cells around the one you were in, to avoid excessive amount of loading screens.

We are probably not going to get into that prior to OpenMW 1.0.

- What is the reason for using F2 as the console key instead of the button used in almost every other game, including Morrowind?

That original key is somewhat problematic on some keyboards. Anyway, you can remap keys as you like.

- Every animal is chatty. Except the bull and betty netch, they are rude and just ignores me.

Known bug.

The Birthsigns are not sorted correctly in the birthsign menu.

Are they in MW?

For one, if you look at the resolutions list in the launcher with direct3d renderer selected, you get duplicate resolutions.

New bug.

Also, is it known why this error occurs around the Vivec cantons? Seems to hurt performance for me for printing out endless error messages.

Never seen this before. New/unknown bug.

[WeirdSexy]

Are they in MW?

The first picture I posted of the birthsigns menu (during character creation) is the way they appear in OpenMW and the picture directly below it is how they appear in Morrowind.

[Zini]

Right. Well, feel free to add it to the tracker.

[WeirdSexy]

Alright, I added the duplicate resolutions thing and birthsigns sorting to the tracker. Any word on being able to create a character with no class or birthsign?

[jhooks1]

- When entering a new area for the first time, especially outside, it lags for a couple of seconds. I'm not sure if it's due to new textures being loaded or what it is. This to me feels like it should happen during the loading screen and once it is gone, everything should be smooth sailing.
- Moving between cells are a lot more awkward than in the original Morrowind. Everytime it's a wait, and in some areas you have to literally wait 4-5 times when going a distance that normally only would have taken 5 s to walk. I think Morrowind preloaded all cells around the one you were in, to avoid excessive amount of loading screens.

We are probably not going to get into that prior to OpenMW 1.0.

Why? This is a very frustrating issue for the users. Project Aedra is completely smooth in exteriors, it seems like everything loads instantly (even faster than the original game I think).

What is going wrong with our approach? Maybe we should borrow more code/design from aedra.

[Greendogo]

Zini, you know that if you choose the default Morrowind key as the console key it will add it to the console's input box when you close the window. Why don't you just make the key that the console window is set to not work as an input key when it is mapped that way?

I'd also like to vouch for the annoyingness of the exterior cell transitions. Moving to a new cell causes very violent shaking (as the loading bar works), going back and forth along your movement vector (like a foot or so, forward and backward very fast, it's giving me a headache).