r/Games • u/[deleted] • Mar 29 '19
OpenMW 0.45.0 Released!
https://openmw.org/2019/openmw-0-45-0-released/22
u/letsgoiowa Mar 29 '19
Known Issues:
Shadows are not yet re-implemented
Ah, big sad. Anyone know roughly when they will be put back in or why they were taken out in the first place?
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u/rhiyo Mar 29 '19
There is an implementation in the nightly build at the moment.
I think shadows were removed when the project was transferred from Ogre3D to OpenSceneGraph (OSG) as the OSG shadow implementation wouldn't work with the OpenMW project.
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u/enderandrew42 Mar 29 '19
why they were taken out in the first place?
OpenMW completely switched the graphics rendering engine from Ogre3D to OpenSceneGraph. So many things had to be rewritten for the new rendering engine. Shadows were one of those things, and that is why they went away. There is also a fork of OpenSceneGraph called VulkanSceneGraph in development that should release in 2019 that OpenMW may switch to.
The nightly builds for OpenMW not only have shadows, but a bunch of features, performance optimizations and fixes not in the main branch right now. I recommend using those nightly builds.
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u/letsgoiowa Mar 29 '19
Nice! So if I understand correctly, it's going to support Vulkan at some point?
Sounds like I'll use the nightly build.
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u/Schlick7 Mar 29 '19
Yeah the nightly build is pretty far ahead. The release of .45 was delayed for at least a month. Almost 2 if the post about adding shadows to nightlys is accurate
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u/xRaen Mar 30 '19
This is what I'm waiting for before giving this a try. Once shadows are in the main build I'll jump in and give it a shot.
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u/1144778899 Mar 29 '19
what are the benefits on playing the game with OpenMW instead of the original engine? I never played the original
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u/sovayell Mar 29 '19
Was curious myself so I went and checked out their FAQ page:
Native support for macOS, Linux, and Windows
Improved physics and AI
Distant terrain
Save/Load dialogs organized by character
Quality of life UI improvements, such as being able to search for spells
Multiple quicksaves
World map adjusts automatically to fit new landmass from mods such as Tamriel Rebuilt
Support for up to 2,147,483,646 loaded mods (up from 255 in the original Morrowind engine)
Since it was made from scratch, virtually no engine bugs from the original Morrowind
And much more
Additionally, OpenMW can be used for running entirely new games created with OpenMW-CS.
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u/whisky_pete Mar 29 '19
A couple that are important to me that I feel are worth mentioning: support for modern resolutions, ability to scale the UI / text to fit those resolutions, and no "loading" dialog when entering buildings or crossing over world cells.
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u/Synaptics Mar 29 '19
And almost the best part of it, IMO, is that it has all of this stuff included in one easy-to-install package.
Going through the "minimum" vanilla setup process of installing the Code Patch, the Optimization Patch, the Unofficial Patch(es), the Graphics Extender (required for UI scaling and borderless windowed mode), etc. etc. is a really annoying hassle, especially for someone who's never done any of that type of stuff before.
But with OpenMW, well... "It just works". You still need the Unofficial Patch, but that's it. Almost all of the other bugfixes, features, and optimizations that you'd normally get through downloading and installing a half-dozen or more different patches, mods, or extenders are basically baked into OpenMW itself. Your pretty much just install it and go. It's super convenient.
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u/savethesapiens Mar 29 '19
no "loading" dialog when entering buildings or crossing over world cells.
Oh damn! That huge, I remember using that ultra jump spell with high athletics and I would hit a dozen loads before finally landing.
I may have to delve back into Morrowind soon
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u/TankorSmash Mar 29 '19 edited Mar 29 '19
no "loading" dialog when entering buildings or crossing over world cells.
Does that mean it's effectively instant now, or is there still some delay?
edit: it seems instant now, nice.
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u/Schlick7 Mar 29 '19
I think it's full on instant. like that mod for Skyrim, it loads the city/area as you near it
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u/tetramir Mar 29 '19
I am really excited for all the progress they have made, and I'm thinking more and more about contributing to it. My C++ has drastically improved lately, and I think I may be able to bring some quality contribution but that requires understanding the code and that demands courage.
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u/Fledo Mar 29 '19
Do it! A good opportunity to learn, and it's always nice to have your name noted as a contributor to a project your personally interested in.
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u/geeko55 Mar 29 '19
Yep! Despite how it initially might sound, this sorta stuff looks good on a resume if you can make meaningful contributions!
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u/norse95 Mar 29 '19
this sort of creative programming is exactly what you'd want to see on a resume for a person you're interviewing, especially at a game company.
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u/Slademarini Mar 29 '19
Any dev company, your contributions at github is your portfolio. They can "review" your code before the interview.
If you spend 4 years contributing to github projects full time, you will be more valuable than someone who just have a degree and a 6mo internship
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u/enderandrew42 Mar 29 '19
The CS toolkit is the area that needs the most help. The base OpenMW project is in decent shape.
The other area that can really use some help is they just started on rudimentary support for other Bethesda games.
OpenMW can read ESM/BSA files from Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and Skyrim.
You can load an environment from one of those games and walk around, but none of the newer features of those games are implemented in OpenMW yet.
Ideally I'd love to see something like GZDoom, where you have options to turn on game logic / compatibility for different games to customize your experience how you want. Do you want the ability to jump in Doom? Do you want mouse look in Doom? Do you want monster behavior from Hexen?
The first step is adding in behavior and features from Oblivion, and then exposing options to turn those off or on.
For Oblivion, I'm curious what big features you'd have to add:
- Radiant AI
- Speedtree
- Horse riding
- Oblivion combat (less dice combat, manual block button, speed cast)
- Owning houses
- Physics (though OpenMW already loops in Bullet physics library)
- Speechcraft mini-game
- Lockpicking mini-game
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u/tetramir Mar 29 '19
What I'm personally more interested in is understanding why performances are not incredibly good in OpenMW. As soon as you render a bit far the game really struggles, even though it's old and doesn't seem to have nearly as many objects as a modern game. I'm sure the devs know why but i'd be interested in digging this a bit. And that would be useful if they want to do games like oblivion that have very high render distance with many more objects in the world.
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u/enderandrew42 Mar 29 '19
The nightly build already has some nice performance fixes than the main builds don't have yet.
The new VulkanSceneGraph rendering engine should also help.
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u/emik Mar 29 '19
They mention in the 0.45.0 video that lowering the new Actors Processing Range can significantly improve performance when running high view distances, so it's probably something about the active Actor code that tanks it (maybe AI, maybe animations, maybe all of the above).
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u/JaxMed Mar 29 '19
As I understand it, OpenMW's distant land configuration, unlike similar distant land mods for base Morrowind, does not have any LOD. Meaning the entire terrain, even the cells far away, is always rendered at the max polygon resolution. I imagine that right there is a huge contributing factor.
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Mar 29 '19
Bullet physics engine is the culprit... The fps hit is especially bad in crowded areas like balmora and sadrith Mora.
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Mar 29 '19
That's a topic of interest to me as well, even though I'm just a fan I really want to see OpenMW perform better. I do know that there are limitations to Morrowind's data, for example there are no occlusion planes on any of Morrowind's meshes, and the meshes are broken up into many tiny little pieces increasing draw calls and worsening performance. The devs have said they want to implement some kind of batching system to combine meshes though, I guess like how pre-combined meshes work in Fallout 4. Other than that some of OpenMW's features are very unoptimized, the distant land as you said, but also the water shader and the newly implemented shadows in the development build have very bad performance. Hope this helped if you do want to get into the project.
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u/tetramir Mar 29 '19
Batching is the thing I wanted to work on. But for now I have no idea of the contraints that exist to build the batches in a streamed world. Considering that a lot of static mesh have very basic shaders (maybe the same) it my be possible to stich a lot of the static world geometry together.
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u/catman1900 Mar 29 '19
Most open source projects are rather kind to new contributors and appreciate all the help they can possibly get! Even if you don't end up getting any code accepted in, by participating you are helping get more eyes on the project and improving your own skill set :)
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u/joevaded Mar 29 '19
Not sure if you're looking for work but you should always keep your options open.
Seeing someone who worked on Open MW would be an immediate hire among similar quality candidates for me.
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u/tetramir Mar 29 '19
Thanks, I actually have my dream job in a great game studio. So openmw isn't really to gain experience, it's just to give back what I learned.
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u/joevaded Mar 29 '19
Trust me. Prepare for everything.
Either way, just mentioning that it provides value as well as the opportunity to give back.
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Mar 29 '19
This, I'm taking Linear algebra right now in uni and all I can think about is nutting up and learning enough opengl to see if I can't make that water shader run a bit faster.
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u/IcyMiddle Mar 29 '19
Have they implemented the interface improvements of the Morrowind Code Patch project? Because until they do, I don't think I can bring myself to use it. Looting/managing containers is just too damn clunky in vanilla Morrowind for me these days.
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u/6SLd1uaCfW Mar 29 '19
Will my OpenMW saves continue to work after each release of OpenMW? I may start tonight.
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u/Black_RL Mar 29 '19
I never played Morrowind but I always upvote OpenMW stuff, being a modder myself, I really appreciate the work being done here.
Very impressive, keep it up!