OpenMW: Porting Morrowind to an open source engine

[IDtenT]

Because coders don't understand that floats are inaccurate.

 

[DraQ]

Because coders don't understand that floats are inaccurate.

How the fuck do they call themselves coders then?

 

[Drax]

Why are they inaccurate?
I'm not a coder so I can ask without feeling like a moron.

 

[DraQ]

Why are they inaccurate?
I'm not a coder so I can ask without feeling like a moron.

Because computers have to represent floating point numbers in a finite manner.

A floating point number representation basically consists of two parts, one is an integer called mantissa, the other is the exponent (also integer). The whole number is the integer part multiplied by 2 to power given by exponent.
This makes the floating point numbers versatile, because they can easily cover ranges between truly minuscule fractions to staggeringly astronomical numbers.
It also makes them vary in precision because while subsequent integers always differ by 1, subsequent floats differ by 2 to the exponent. For very small numbers this 2^exponent may be some minuscule fraction, for large numbers it may be a few millions.

So if you use floats, objects in gameworld may have coordinates accurate to width of a molecule (which no one needs in a computer game) if they are close to <0,0,0> and ones that are far enough accurate to only a few km (which is a big problem if you try to place an object on, for example a particular shelf in a particular room of a particular building rather than in general geographical location).

Meanwhile integers are may not be able to represent such a wide range of scales, but even 32 bit ones let you map out any reasonably sized world (and most unreasonably sized ones as well) with more precision than any player will ever notice or your engine will ever need and it will be constant precision that's same in every place of the gameworld.

Additionally a float must share its allotted space between mantissa and exponent while an integer can just occupy it with a number so with float and int of the same width float will start losing precision faster than the int runs out of range.

tl;dr:
Friends don't let friends use floats for coords in vidyagames.

 

[Drax]

Cool, thanks.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Put this shit in the shit forum plox.

 

[Bubbles]

That's where it is right now.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Fair enough, though obviously I mean put it into the Bethesda Forum.

 

[theSavant]

Now I understand

 

[Bahamut]

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Seeing someone mess with Caius in the creation kit makes me wonder...a mod that relocates him to Arrile's store would probably be immensely successful. For extra endorsements you can also move the dwemer puzzle box to Fargoth's stump.

 

[hemtae]

OpenMW 0.37 Released

 

[Perkel]

Looks like full source code access (since it is MW redone as open source) can give you nice things:



Naturally it is basically just proof of concept but considering they have full access and they remade MW in new engine they can do anything with it really.

Can't wait for ARR of few 'dex people

 

[Bahamut]

And here we go again
https://openmw.org/2016/openmw-0-38-0-released/

Known Issues:

• Shadows are not re-implemented at this time, as well as distant land and object shaders
• Features are missing from OpenMW-CS as well: only basic camera controls are implemented, pathgrid and cell marker rendering is missing, as well as instance moving

Changelog:

• Implemented werewolf field of view
• Implemented movement of objects between cells, fixes several issues
• Implemented handling OSG native model format
• Implemented separate field of view settings for hands and game world
• Implemented isInCell checks on PlaceAt and PlaceItem
• Implemented handling NiLODNode and NiPointLight
• Implemented notification to indicate when a game is saved
• Fixed player object being deletable
• Fixed AiCombat distance check to take into account collision box
• Fixed saw in Dome of Kasia not hurting a stationary player
• Fixed rats floating when killed near a door
• Fixed kwama eggsacks pulsing too fast
• Fixed NPC voice sound source not being placed at their head
• Fixed crash with OpenMW install wizard
• Fixed reseting delete flag when loading a reference from a save game
• Fixed issues with clicking on unexpected inventory items on character doll
• Fixed spell absorption to apply once per effect
• Fixed enchantment merchant items reshuffling every time barter is clicked
• Fixed not being able to resurrect the player through the console if health is zero
• Fixed projectile weapon behavior when underwater
• Fixed not being able to use keywords in strings for message boxes
• Fixed items not sinking when dropped underwater
• Fixed crash when onPcEquip script removes the equipped item
• Fixed dialog not triggering correctly in Julan Ashlander Companion mod
• Fixed tooltips for Health, Magicka, and Fatigue showing in the Options menu when bars aren’t visible
• Fixed guards accepting gold for crimes even when you don’t have enough
• Fixed Show Owned option affecting tooltips that are not objects
• Fixed player sound source being at the feet
• Fixed not being able to replace interactive message boxes
• Fixed fatal error on OpGetTarget when the target has disappeared
• Fixed first person rendering glitches with high field of view
• Fixed crash on new game at character class selection
• Fixed RigGeometry bone references to be case-insensitive
• Fixed NPCs using wrong sound when landing
• Fixed missing journal textures without Tribunal and Bloodmoon installed
• Fixed multiple AiFollow packages causing the distance to stack
• Fixed creature dialogs not being handled correctly
• Fixed crash when entering Holamayan Monastery with mesh replacer installed
• Fixed dreamers spawning too soon
• Fixed Next/Previous Weapon/Spell and Ready Spell working as a werewolf
• Fixed being able to soultrap a creature more than once
• Fixed summoned creatures and objects disappearing at midnight
• Fixed gamecontrollerdb file being created as a txt instead of a cfg
• Fixed “same race” dialog functions never triggering
• Fixed dialog choice condition issue
• Fixed body part rendering when in a pose
• Fixed reversed sneak awareness check
• Fixed positional sound acceleration issue
• Fixed fatal error when LandTexture is missing
• OpenMW-CS: Implemented choosing colors for syntax highlighting
• OpenMW-CS: Implemented hiding script error list when there are no errors
• OpenMW-CS: Implemented ability to create omwaddons with periods in the filename
• OpenMW-CS: Implemented configurable size for scipt error panel
• OpenMW-CS: Implemented tooltips in the 3D scene
• OpenMW-CS: Fixed issue with handling of DELE subrecords
• OpenMW-CS: Fixed Verify not checking if given item ID for a container exists

 

[Duellist_D]

Looks like full source code access (since it is MW redone as open source) can give you nice things:



Naturally it is basically just proof of concept but considering they have full access and they remade MW in new engine they can do anything with it really.

Can't wait for ARR of few 'dex people

There actually was a multiplayer hack for the original Morrowind, back in the day.
It wasn't a fun experience and it most likely won't be today.

 

[Akratus]

Yes but the difference is that multiplayer for Bethesda games as mostly closed systems, had to be very awkwardly bolted on. But when it's all open, the quality of what you're making is only dependent on how well you can code.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Something f2online-esque could be p. cool.

 

[Perkel]

Yes but the difference is that multiplayer for Bethesda games as mostly closed systems, had to be very awkwardly bolted on. But when it's all open, the quality of what you're making is only dependent on how well you can code.

Yup. Morrowing was closed source. Even if you used script extenders modding devs were not able to change or modify any vanilla scripts.
With OpenMW you can fork stable version and work on multi without any issue and if you need something changed you can do it.

 

[Bahamut]

So a new feature is in developement

Just a quick heads up of a new feature I'm working on. Background preloading of cells.

My goal is to make flying around the island buttery smooth with no loading bars or frame drops whatsoever. I'm not quite at that point yet, mostly because terrain isn't preloaded yet, body parts are not preloaded yet and because I haven't profiled / optimized the code at all yet. Still, the loading times compared to the main branch should be much improved already.

Currently the preloader will activate if you go near a teleport door, or go near an exterior cell border. I'm thinking about preloading fast travel destinations as well, though of course the downside is we don't know the travel destination the player will pick, so would have to load all of them preemptively.

Feel free to try out the branch and let me know how it goes! I haven't come across any crashes or instabilities yet, which is a good sign that the new resource manager design is solid.

test on a SSD drive

 

[Akratus]

 

[Gord]

No new version yet, but a new update nonetheless:

https://openmw.org/2016/popping/

Including the first part of a new video review of the features introduced since 0.35.0, a short update on the renderer:

Speaking of time well spent, Scrawl has a bit of a surprise for you too. We’ve had this feature back in Ogre3D, and now – after a bit of a hiatus – it’s back: normal maps! Scrawl still had some of PeterBitt’s old normal maps lying around, so he figured he’d try them out and lo and behold:

Subtle, but gorgeous. As an added bonus, OpenMW can now automatically use normal maps if it answers to the naming scheme. As Scrawl explains it: “This is now implemented. For example, for the color texture foo.dds, the game will automatically use foo_n.dds as a normal map (if it exists). The benefit is that you don’t have to go around modifying (and distributing) all the .nif files / mesh files.”

But normal maps are not everything. OpenMW now supports specular maps too, and both specular and normal maps can be used with the terrain shader.

And another video interview talking about the recent progress in the project.

 

[Old One]

I've started playing around with OpenMW as of a few days ago, and I must say it's pretty great. There are a few mods I want to carry over from MSGO 3.0, and I need to figure that out, but otherwise it seems better in almost every way.

 

[Gord]

New version 0.39 is out:

The OpenMW team is proud to announce the release of version 0.39.0! Grab it from our Downloads Page for all operating systems. This release brings background cell loading and caching, which is a feature not to be missed. Initial support for object shaders has found its way back into our engine, and a host of bugs have been smashed. See below for the full list of changes.

The venerable Atahualpa has bravely stepped up to fill WeirdSexy’s boundless shoes as our video producer, check out the video for this release and OpenMW-CS 0.39.0. Check our blog or Youtube channel if you missed his videos for versions 0.36, 0.37, or 0.38.

Background cell loading is nice, I guess, as are the object shaders, otherwise most of this release is containing bug-fixes (not that they are unimportant...).

 

[laclongquan]

point fucking thirty nine! How long until we can rape the poor soul of Morrowind on that gorgeous body of Skyrim? How long?

 

[m_s0]

So... how complete is it at this stage? What's missing?