14 ms·

OpenMW: Open-source TES3: Morrowind reimplementation

363 points by agluszak 3y ago

zamadatix 3y ago
For those that have a liking to the blog style project updates some other projects do, the main website is a good feed https://openmw.org/en/ https://openmw.org/en/.
- troad 3y ago
  I like the blog, but I wish it were updated more often. Even little updates would be welcome. Another interesting blog in a similar space is the Daggerfall Unity bloc over at https://www.dfworkshop.net/ https://www.dfworkshop.net/.
causi 3y ago
OpenMW is a great way to play Morrowind on Android.
- monetus 3y ago
  I found an unmaintained version on gitlab and github, is there a current version that you use?
  - ceearrbee 3y ago
    I believe that Sisah2's fork on GitHub is the newest version that's stable/widely used and on version 0.48[1]. I haven't played through OpenMW in awhile, but I was able to do it on a Blackberry KeyONE from 2017 and it ran smooth and was quite fun! [1] https://github.com/Sisah2/openmw-android/actions/runs/4935403360 https://github.com/Sisah2/openmw-android/actions/runs/493540...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - causi 3y ago
    The old version is, essentially, complete. There's nothing wrong or missing with it as far as I can tell.
wheybags 3y ago
There's a fantastic fork of this project which adds multiplayer also: https://tes3mp.com/ https://tes3mp.com/ It's a bit awkward to set up, but I played coop with a friend and it worked great.
Acrobatic_Road 3y ago
It re-implements a little more than MW :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8jkNO-M9cg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8jkNO-M9cg
- veave 3y ago
  That's cool, but let's be honest here, Skyrim SE runs perfectly fine on recent computers. It's Morrowind that doesn't, which is why OpenMW is necessary.
  - Acrobatic_Road 3y ago
    Disagree. Skyrim has all kinds of problems that an openSK could address. - 60fps cap - no native support on mac/linux - engine bugs/limitations
  - faangsticle 3y ago
    Open open source engine would be absolutely huge for stability & moddability. Stock Skyrim SE mostly runs fine, but is still prone to crashing, corrupting save files, etc. Many of those can be addressed by mods such as the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch and various mods aimed at overhauling the save system but an open source engine would be really great.
  - account42 3y ago
    Skyrim doesn't have a native Linux version, OpenMW does.
dabluecaboose 3y ago
OpenMW is nothing short of amazing. I only wish there was a similar undertaking for Oblivion. The PC version is playable, but the game came out in the weird, awkward dark ages for PC configurability and accessibility, so there are some stumbling blocks. For example, despite first playing and loving Oblivion on my Xbox 360, the PC version still does not have controller support, and any attempts to hack it in require mapping the mouse to a joystick (Which is not a great approximation).
- shakow 3y ago
  OpenMW seems to be on the early road for that, too. For now, it can load assets & worlds from Oblivion, FO3/NV & Skyrim. ‶Only″ thing missing is... well, all the game mechanics.
  - dabluecaboose 3y ago
    hah, as soon as I posted this comment I googled it and saw that Oblivion support was nascent. Here's hoping it gets to a good enough state! Oblivion co-op would fulfill the dreams of 15-year-old me
- khalilravanna 3y ago
  This is somewhat antithetical to your desire of playing it on PC but Oblivion got updated to run backwards compatible on Xbox Series X at 4k 60fps. Unreal you can pay $10 for a used copy and play this classic and it runs like a dream. In general I love Microsoft’s investment in backwards compatibility and wish we had more 1st party support from all the companies so these games could be more easily enjoyed for the rest of time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backward-compatible_games_for_Xbox_One_and_Series_X/S https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backward-compatible_...
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Agreed - Microsoft's Xbox backwards compatibility is awesome. I bought Xbox 360 LEGO Batman ages ago and play it with my son now 2 player on Xbox One.
Floegipoky 3y ago
I've used this project, really appreciate the ambition and quality.
tkuraku 3y ago
Morrowind was just fantastic. I loved that everything seemed to always exist. You could wonder around and find a super powerful artifact or kill or lose something required fornthe main quest. It felt more immersive that way.
- samstave 3y ago
  I didnt like morrowind, when I played it, only because it felt such a massive map and I would get lost easily... and if I stepped away from the game even for a short while... https://i.imgur.com/jB0TZm6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/jB0TZm6.jpg
  - huevosabio 3y ago
    Funnily that's one of the things I loved the most! Nowadays games with massive world-maps have navigation on the HUD, and always-available fast travel. Morrowind had neither. A quest's instructions were like "take the road to Balmora and then on the second fork, go past the tree and you will find a cave". And then you would spend hours trying to find that spot. And unless you had the proper scrolls, you wouldn't even be able to teleport back to a main spot. It made the world so wonderful to explore.
    - bamfly 3y ago
      One of the things I really like about the new Zelda game is that, while it has quest markers and all that for many of the quests (but not all! Some will just mark where you need to return when it's done, and the rest is up to you!) you also get lots and lots of hints about locations of interesting or valuable non-quest things, and those are purely up to you to pursue, based on what you've been told. Not even a quest entry, just something you can do if you want to.
      - djtango 3y ago
        Yes I find being overladen with quest markers and journals so immersion breaking. And it also devalues conversations with non quest demoting NPCs because the game mechanics are laid bare. In Final Fantasy pre-12 the game obfuscated progression steps and quest givers to some extent. As a result the game rewarded you for talking to everyone and, as you never knew what was a quest and what was just filler it you would pay a bit more attention which ended up immersing you in the lore a bit more. Games are often a lot of smoke and mirrors and once the trick of the magic is clear it's often much more disappointing. I feel that way when games just descend into busy work fetch quests with markers and highlighted words.
bamfly 3y ago
I played the main quest, a high fraction of the sidequests & major faction quest trees, one of the expansions, and most of the other one, in OpenMW something like 18-24 months ago. With a few mods, and draw distance cranked up fairly high, and at 4K resolution. Worked perfectly. Zero glitches the whole time, and the official engine would have crashed at least a dozen times in such a playthrough, while this one didn't even crash once. [EDIT] I mean, zero unexpected glitches. Obviously the entire game is made of glitches.
- mawadev 3y ago
  "All of this just works" - Todd Howard
- bjablonski 3y ago
  Would you care to share mods that worked as expected with OpenMW? I've just started my journey today, so any input will be appriecieted.
  - Acrobatic_Road 3y ago
    Unless it says "MWSE" it should work with OpenMW. 99.9% guaranteed.
  - bamfly 3y ago
    I can't remember which ones I used. Texture mods IIRC worked fine, pretty sure I had hi-res replacement mods for most of the textures in the game. I did some loading art replacer thing so they'd be widescreen and hi-res, but that wasn't so much a mod as replacing some images. I think I may have used some of the "Comes Alive" stuff—I know I used to "back in the day", so I assume I did this time, and I'd probably remember if it hadn't worked. One obscure library mod that I like, that adds an empty library just outside Vivec that you can fill by giving them books to copy, that worked fine. Twin Lamps, fairly certain I used that one. As I recall, the main things that don't work are graphics overhauls that require patching or wrapping the original executable in some fashion. Usually these do some kind of shader magic to e.g. make the water look nicer. [EDIT] Oh, and I think I had Herbalism installed. If not that, something similar. A mod that turns plants from containers into pick-ups is one of those don't-play-without-it things, for me.
1MachineElf 3y ago
I did not know 0.49 had been released. I wonder what the highlights are.
- l-p 3y ago
  0.48 is not even released yet (still a RC) you'll have to wait a bit more for 0.49. There's nothing preventing you from building it yourself though, the master branch is stable and you can complete the game without a single crash or game-breaking bug.
  - 1MachineElf 3y ago
    The README.md certainly is confusing then: Version: 0.49.0
- boobsbr 3y ago
  I don't think it has been released. 0.48 is in RC phase.
sBqQu3U0wH 3y ago
>Open source. >You need to own the game to play. So, what's the point?
- haunter 3y ago
  >OpenMW is a game engine recreation and only replaces the program. OpenMW does not come with any “content” or “asset” – namely the art, game data, and other copyrighted material that you need to play the game as designed by Bethesda Softworks. You have to provide this content yourself by installing Morrowind and then configuring OpenMW to use the existing installation. https://openmw.org/faq/#whatis https://openmw.org/faq/#whatis The point is that it makes the game available on more platforms, more graphic features, stability etc. https://wiki.openmw.org/index.php?title=Features https://wiki.openmw.org/index.php?title=Features
- jraph 3y ago
  The code can be updated, adapted and audited. Or someone could provide alternative artwork and data.
- bamfly 3y ago
  1 - Having an open engine allows for enhancements. 2 - Having an open engine means opportunities to fix defects (OpenMW crashes far less than the original, even in its final version) 3 - You can recompile it for other architectures and operating systems, that weren't supported by the original. 4 - Someone could write a whole new game for the engine, and release the entire thing for free.
  - xen2xen1 3y ago
    5. Probably also easier to add large new sections or expansions if other games are any judge.
- shakow 3y ago
  - Playing in 4K - Playing on Linux - Playing on a better implementation of the engine - Changing what you don't like in the game
- 3y ago
hu3 3y ago
Bethesda games community is amazingly insane. For example yesterday I found out that modders managed to "merge Fallout 3 and its DLC into Fallout: New Vegas, allowing both games to be played in a single playthrough". It is called Tale of Two Wastelands and it goes above and beyond modding. This is art. More info: https://taleoftwowastelands.com/faq#What-is-ttw https://taleoftwowastelands.com/faq#What-is-ttw If you like playthroughs, Gopher youtuber is recording an amazing series of it: - Playlist of Chapter 1 (57 videos): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-Dekit0ce4niPaNoRWT2ggi3 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-Dekit0ce4ni... - Playlist of Chapter 2 (4 videos): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-Dfag97E44fFV6xG4yz6O7Su https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-Dfag97E44fF... - Playlist of Chapter 3 (32 videos): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-DcRVZclOtOYd-34dahx8Ktu https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-DcRVZclOtOY... - Playlist of Chapter 4 (10 videos): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-DeLxMTphztmOisaLI2lrhp8 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-DeLxMTphztm... - Playlist of Chapter 5 (9 videos and counting): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-DcDxBImozYsvMQdz-u2LJLr https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-DcDxBImozYs...
- jakkos 3y ago
  While this mod is great, I'd recommend playing Fallout NV on it's own first. TTW can ruin pacing and when i played it (admittedly close to a decade ago) I had quite a few near playthrough-ruining bugs.
  - zerocrates 3y ago
    > I had quite a few near playthrough-ruining bugs. Sounds like it preserved the core authentic experience then.
    - BookPage 3y ago
      I tried to play NV vanilla a few months ago and ran into multiple of these within the first couple hours. Never went back
hombre_fatal 3y ago
This got me to finally play through and beat Morrowind in my 30s, avenging my 13yo self who had looted and lost an essential quest item got stuck in the main quest line. I played it while taking notes about the quests which was a bit more fun than just following quest markers. Though that was only fun because of Morrowind's weird alien world. There are only a few games intriguing enough to warrant note-taking. Something interesting in the ecosystem is the tes3cmd cli tool anonymously(?) written in Perl: https://github.com/john-moonsugar/tes3cmd/blob/master/tes3cmd https://github.com/john-moonsugar/tes3cmd/blob/master/tes3cm... for manipulating game/mod files.
- troad 3y ago
  > This got me to finally play through and beat Morrowind in my 30s, avenging my 13yo self who had looted and lost an essential quest item got stuck in the main quest line. Hah, I had the same experience in my teens as you did. Was it worth the replay? Any tips, other than note-taking?
  - hombre_fatal 3y ago
    I don't know. I played it during covid when I had a lot of time and patience. I'm also not a big gamer anymore so Morrowind wasn't competing with much more stimulating games. That's probably going to be the biggest obstacle for most gamers: why play Morrowind when you can hop into Diablo 4 or whatever with your friends in your limited free time. With OpenMW, you can be playing as soon as the game files download, so just give it a shot. If you get to Cassius' House in Balmora and still can't give a damn about what's going on, then just shutter it for some other time.
    - tpxl 3y ago
      > why play Morrowind when you can hop into Diablo 4 10 years from now, Diablo 4 will be dead and you'll still be able to play Morrowind :)
    - troad 3y ago
      Gracias! Me, I'm much more of a 'tinker with qemu-system-ppc for hours trying to get this obscure System 7 game to run' kind of gamer than one who requires instant gratification, but I totally hear what you're saying. I like the idea of playing it in a different language. I'll see if I can pull up a version in the language I am learning; could be quite fun.
hashworks 3y ago
This is only Singleplayer, right? How is the Linux support?
- voidpointercast 3y ago
  Good.
- SquareWheel 3y ago
  TES3MP is a sister project built on OpenMW which adds multiplayer. https://tes3mp.com/ https://tes3mp.com/
nfriedly 3y ago
There's also an Android port: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=is.xyz.omw https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=is.xyz.omw with more info at https://omw.xyz.is/ https://omw.xyz.is/ It has onscreen and physical controller support + an emulated mouse mode that can be helpful for navigating menus and such. It works well on the Retroid Pocket 3+
- ceearrbee 3y ago
  Sadly, that version is fairly outdated and has issues with newer Samsung devices. There has been a couple forks[1] of it that still work with newer devices and are based on newer releases. [1] https://github.com/Sisah2/openmw-android/actions/runs/4935403360 https://github.com/Sisah2/openmw-android/actions/runs/493540...
throw_m239339 3y ago
Interesting. So it's basically the game engine without the assets.
smittywerben 3y ago
OpenMW is one of my favorite open source projects. The upcoming 0.48 apparently fixes the Lady birthsign bug. Someone must have bit the bullet and reworked the magic effect system. Thanks guys!
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
I'd like to mod Cliff Racers into every Bethesda game.
ianbicking 3y ago
I wonder if there's some new opportunities for these game engines with generative AI. One possibility is treating the game like scaffolding. It feels like textures and images could all be replaced fairly easily with generative versions. Toss them in Midjourney with /describe, play around to create replacements. Or Stable Diffusion or whatever. (Not sure how many things are "images" and how many are other structures like shaders.) Maps are harder, at least I imagine harder to deconstruct into atomic pieces that can be replaced. Though it's interesting to think about whether an LLM could decompose them into more semantic pieces, if it could understand the underlying structure that may only have existed in the mind of the original map creator. I imagine things like quests, stats, etc., would all be amenable to generation. Maybe the big question is if things really are separable enough to use the old game as scaffolding: can you replace 10% of the game, or 50%, or 90% and have a meaningfully playable game?
- kqr 3y ago
  It may be unimaginative but I'm really looking forward to really deep NPCs with relationships and interests and personalities and all.
- nightski 3y ago
  You might want to check out what Nvidia is doing with RTX Remix - https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/rtx-remix/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/rtx-remix/
- dr_monster 3y ago
  This is a plot point in the Orson Scott Card novel 'Ender's Game'. Ender plays a generative video game on an iPad-like device that responds to his decisions and incorporates people/events from his personal life, to the point of manipulating his subconscious thoughts and dreams. A game like this could be interesting, but you would not be able to discuss it with others as a shared experience that has fixity the way you can with any modern media, and it could certainly be used to manipulate people.
- yomlica8 3y ago
  Morrowind's predecessor Daggerfall had randomly generated dungeons. Overall, they were pretty bad although they were kind of interesting and added variety. I got the impression they randomly stuck basic dungeon chunks together to build them. The idea of using the AI to generate new similar textures is a pretty cool one.
ricardobayes 3y ago
Hmm, this got my hopes up. Turns out this is just a random mention, and not a new release. Last release seems to be from 2021.
- agluszak 3y ago
  OpenMW is in active development, but for some reason there are no longer release announcements on the webpage/GH. The newest version is 0.49 (the one you mentioned from 2021 was 0.47).
BlackLotus89 3y ago
I really miss the old commentary videos on youtube :/ For weirdsexy life got in the way and suddenly stopped doing the commentaries and was replaced by some german dude (sorry don't know his name). Somehow watching the release videos wasn't as fun anymore as it was before. I don't want to talk down on the work the new guy does, but only want to highlight how exceptional high quality (especially for their time) the old release videos were. Also... I can't stand the german accent
beebeepka 3y ago
"I fear not the man who has released 10000 games once, but I fear the man who has released 1 game 10000 times." - Todd Howard.
CoBE10 3y ago
There is also a fork that has very basic initial support for Skyrim. Here are videos: https://www.youtube.com/@PetrMikheev/videos https://www.youtube.com/@PetrMikheev/videos https://www.youtube.com/@cc9cii/videos https://www.youtube.com/@cc9cii/videos
markbnj 3y ago
I did a recent full playthrough of Morrowind and all the expansions on OpenMW, using one of the available curated mod lists as a starting point. It was rock solid throughout, looked much better than the original, and was at least as much fun as I remembered it was. Highly recommended for TES fans.
cactusplant7374 3y ago
Not seeing a binary for mac. Is there one?
- metal_am 3y ago
  Yes! It runs pretty well on an M1 Mac edit: there’s a .dmg on the GitHub
  - cactusplant7374 3y ago
    The last release is from 2021. Is that correct?
ineedasername 3y ago
I love this just on principle, but maybe someone can clarify something for me. Does this: 1) Provide a better experience of the game immediately? or is it 2) The (very high) value of this tool is that it will lend itself to faster/better/easier fan base development and modification of the game, enhancing the entire ES ecosystem? 3) something i didn’t think of 4) some combination. Of the above Regardless, it makes me want to kick my current gameplay to the curb (it’s Shadow of Doubt, it’s incredible check it out) and dump another 100 hours into Morrowind right now. Nice work!
- joeman1000 3y ago
  It performs better on modern hardware and fixes a number of issues in the original game. This is generally the purpose of source ports. It also simplifies modding, as you can use the launcher to enable/disable mods as you like. Graphics are also improved. For example: the water effects look much more realistic in OpenMW. Fun fact: OpenMW now stands for ‘Open Microwave’
  - account42 3y ago
    > This is generally the purpose of source ports. While the purpose is the same, OpenMW is not a source port but a engine reimplementation which is something on a whole different level of effort.
JSavageOne 3y ago
Just some advice if you want more people interested, put some images and/or videos of the gameplay. Clicked around and could not find even a single image of what the game looks like.
- tdy_err 3y ago
  Blessings to you, n'wah. Yet we must remember that, unlike your endeavors, OpenMW is not a highly scalable monthly-subscription SAAS to be built out of a coworking space… it is a client, for Morrowind: the third chapter of one of -if not _the_- the most popular RPG series of all time.

363 points by agluszak 3y ago

For those that have a liking to the blog style project updates some other projects do, the main website is a good feed https://openmw.org/en/ https://openmw.org/en/.

troad 3y ago
I like the blog, but I wish it were updated more often. Even little updates would be welcome. Another interesting blog in a similar space is the Daggerfall Unity bloc over at https://www.dfworkshop.net/ https://www.dfworkshop.net/.

causi 3y ago

OpenMW is a great way to play Morrowind on Android.

monetus 3y ago
I found an unmaintained version on gitlab and github, is there a current version that you use?
- ceearrbee 3y ago
  I believe that Sisah2's fork on GitHub is the newest version that's stable/widely used and on version 0.48[1]. I haven't played through OpenMW in awhile, but I was able to do it on a Blackberry KeyONE from 2017 and it ran smooth and was quite fun! [1] https://github.com/Sisah2/openmw-android/actions/runs/4935403360 https://github.com/Sisah2/openmw-android/actions/runs/493540...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- causi 3y ago
  The old version is, essentially, complete. There's nothing wrong or missing with it as far as I can tell.

wheybags 3y ago

There's a fantastic fork of this project which adds multiplayer also: https://tes3mp.com/ https://tes3mp.com/ It's a bit awkward to set up, but I played coop with a friend and it worked great.

Acrobatic_Road 3y ago

It re-implements a little more than MW :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8jkNO-M9cg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8jkNO-M9cg

veave 3y ago
That's cool, but let's be honest here, Skyrim SE runs perfectly fine on recent computers. It's Morrowind that doesn't, which is why OpenMW is necessary.
- Acrobatic_Road 3y ago
  Disagree. Skyrim has all kinds of problems that an openSK could address. - 60fps cap - no native support on mac/linux - engine bugs/limitations
- faangsticle 3y ago
  Open open source engine would be absolutely huge for stability & moddability. Stock Skyrim SE mostly runs fine, but is still prone to crashing, corrupting save files, etc. Many of those can be addressed by mods such as the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch and various mods aimed at overhauling the save system but an open source engine would be really great.
- account42 3y ago
  Skyrim doesn't have a native Linux version, OpenMW does.

dabluecaboose 3y ago

OpenMW is nothing short of amazing. I only wish there was a similar undertaking for Oblivion. The PC version is playable, but the game came out in the weird, awkward dark ages for PC configurability and accessibility, so there are some stumbling blocks. For example, despite first playing and loving Oblivion on my Xbox 360, the PC version still does not have controller support, and any attempts to hack it in require mapping the mouse to a joystick (Which is not a great approximation).

shakow 3y ago
OpenMW seems to be on the early road for that, too. For now, it can load assets & worlds from Oblivion, FO3/NV & Skyrim. ‶Only″ thing missing is... well, all the game mechanics.
- dabluecaboose 3y ago
  hah, as soon as I posted this comment I googled it and saw that Oblivion support was nascent. Here's hoping it gets to a good enough state! Oblivion co-op would fulfill the dreams of 15-year-old me
khalilravanna 3y ago
This is somewhat antithetical to your desire of playing it on PC but Oblivion got updated to run backwards compatible on Xbox Series X at 4k 60fps. Unreal you can pay $10 for a used copy and play this classic and it runs like a dream. In general I love Microsoft’s investment in backwards compatibility and wish we had more 1st party support from all the companies so these games could be more easily enjoyed for the rest of time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backward-compatible_games_for_Xbox_One_and_Series_X/S https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backward-compatible_...
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Agreed - Microsoft's Xbox backwards compatibility is awesome. I bought Xbox 360 LEGO Batman ages ago and play it with my son now 2 player on Xbox One.

Floegipoky 3y ago

I've used this project, really appreciate the ambition and quality.

tkuraku 3y ago

Morrowind was just fantastic. I loved that everything seemed to always exist. You could wonder around and find a super powerful artifact or kill or lose something required fornthe main quest. It felt more immersive that way.

samstave 3y ago
I didnt like morrowind, when I played it, only because it felt such a massive map and I would get lost easily... and if I stepped away from the game even for a short while... https://i.imgur.com/jB0TZm6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/jB0TZm6.jpg
- huevosabio 3y ago
  Funnily that's one of the things I loved the most! Nowadays games with massive world-maps have navigation on the HUD, and always-available fast travel. Morrowind had neither. A quest's instructions were like "take the road to Balmora and then on the second fork, go past the tree and you will find a cave". And then you would spend hours trying to find that spot. And unless you had the proper scrolls, you wouldn't even be able to teleport back to a main spot. It made the world so wonderful to explore.
  - bamfly 3y ago
    One of the things I really like about the new Zelda game is that, while it has quest markers and all that for many of the quests (but not all! Some will just mark where you need to return when it's done, and the rest is up to you!) you also get lots and lots of hints about locations of interesting or valuable non-quest things, and those are purely up to you to pursue, based on what you've been told. Not even a quest entry, just something you can do if you want to.
    - djtango 3y ago
      Yes I find being overladen with quest markers and journals so immersion breaking. And it also devalues conversations with non quest demoting NPCs because the game mechanics are laid bare. In Final Fantasy pre-12 the game obfuscated progression steps and quest givers to some extent. As a result the game rewarded you for talking to everyone and, as you never knew what was a quest and what was just filler it you would pay a bit more attention which ended up immersing you in the lore a bit more. Games are often a lot of smoke and mirrors and once the trick of the magic is clear it's often much more disappointing. I feel that way when games just descend into busy work fetch quests with markers and highlighted words.

bamfly 3y ago

I played the main quest, a high fraction of the sidequests & major faction quest trees, one of the expansions, and most of the other one, in OpenMW something like 18-24 months ago. With a few mods, and draw distance cranked up fairly high, and at 4K resolution. Worked perfectly. Zero glitches the whole time, and the official engine would have crashed at least a dozen times in such a playthrough, while this one didn't even crash once. [EDIT] I mean, zero unexpected glitches. Obviously the entire game is made of glitches.

mawadev 3y ago
"All of this just works" - Todd Howard
bjablonski 3y ago
Would you care to share mods that worked as expected with OpenMW? I've just started my journey today, so any input will be appriecieted.
- Acrobatic_Road 3y ago
  Unless it says "MWSE" it should work with OpenMW. 99.9% guaranteed.
- bamfly 3y ago
  I can't remember which ones I used. Texture mods IIRC worked fine, pretty sure I had hi-res replacement mods for most of the textures in the game. I did some loading art replacer thing so they'd be widescreen and hi-res, but that wasn't so much a mod as replacing some images. I think I may have used some of the "Comes Alive" stuff—I know I used to "back in the day", so I assume I did this time, and I'd probably remember if it hadn't worked. One obscure library mod that I like, that adds an empty library just outside Vivec that you can fill by giving them books to copy, that worked fine. Twin Lamps, fairly certain I used that one. As I recall, the main things that don't work are graphics overhauls that require patching or wrapping the original executable in some fashion. Usually these do some kind of shader magic to e.g. make the water look nicer. [EDIT] Oh, and I think I had Herbalism installed. If not that, something similar. A mod that turns plants from containers into pick-ups is one of those don't-play-without-it things, for me.

1MachineElf 3y ago

I did not know 0.49 had been released. I wonder what the highlights are.

l-p 3y ago
0.48 is not even released yet (still a RC) you'll have to wait a bit more for 0.49. There's nothing preventing you from building it yourself though, the master branch is stable and you can complete the game without a single crash or game-breaking bug.
- 1MachineElf 3y ago
  The README.md certainly is confusing then: Version: 0.49.0
boobsbr 3y ago
I don't think it has been released. 0.48 is in RC phase.

sBqQu3U0wH 3y ago

>Open source. >You need to own the game to play. So, what's the point?

haunter 3y ago
>OpenMW is a game engine recreation and only replaces the program. OpenMW does not come with any “content” or “asset” – namely the art, game data, and other copyrighted material that you need to play the game as designed by Bethesda Softworks. You have to provide this content yourself by installing Morrowind and then configuring OpenMW to use the existing installation. https://openmw.org/faq/#whatis https://openmw.org/faq/#whatis The point is that it makes the game available on more platforms, more graphic features, stability etc. https://wiki.openmw.org/index.php?title=Features https://wiki.openmw.org/index.php?title=Features
jraph 3y ago
The code can be updated, adapted and audited. Or someone could provide alternative artwork and data.
bamfly 3y ago
1 - Having an open engine allows for enhancements. 2 - Having an open engine means opportunities to fix defects (OpenMW crashes far less than the original, even in its final version) 3 - You can recompile it for other architectures and operating systems, that weren't supported by the original. 4 - Someone could write a whole new game for the engine, and release the entire thing for free.
- xen2xen1 3y ago
  5. Probably also easier to add large new sections or expansions if other games are any judge.
shakow 3y ago
- Playing in 4K - Playing on Linux - Playing on a better implementation of the engine - Changing what you don't like in the game
3y ago

hu3 3y ago

Bethesda games community is amazingly insane. For example yesterday I found out that modders managed to "merge Fallout 3 and its DLC into Fallout: New Vegas, allowing both games to be played in a single playthrough". It is called Tale of Two Wastelands and it goes above and beyond modding. This is art. More info: https://taleoftwowastelands.com/faq#What-is-ttw https://taleoftwowastelands.com/faq#What-is-ttw If you like playthroughs, Gopher youtuber is recording an amazing series of it: - Playlist of Chapter 1 (57 videos): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-Dekit0ce4niPaNoRWT2ggi3 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-Dekit0ce4ni... - Playlist of Chapter 2 (4 videos): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-Dfag97E44fFV6xG4yz6O7Su https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-Dfag97E44fF... - Playlist of Chapter 3 (32 videos): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-DcRVZclOtOYd-34dahx8Ktu https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-DcRVZclOtOY... - Playlist of Chapter 4 (10 videos): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-DeLxMTphztmOisaLI2lrhp8 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-DeLxMTphztm... - Playlist of Chapter 5 (9 videos and counting): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-DcDxBImozYsvMQdz-u2LJLr https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE7DlYarj-DcDxBImozYs...

jakkos 3y ago
While this mod is great, I'd recommend playing Fallout NV on it's own first. TTW can ruin pacing and when i played it (admittedly close to a decade ago) I had quite a few near playthrough-ruining bugs.
- zerocrates 3y ago
  > I had quite a few near playthrough-ruining bugs. Sounds like it preserved the core authentic experience then.
  - BookPage 3y ago
    I tried to play NV vanilla a few months ago and ran into multiple of these within the first couple hours. Never went back

hombre_fatal 3y ago

This got me to finally play through and beat Morrowind in my 30s, avenging my 13yo self who had looted and lost an essential quest item got stuck in the main quest line. I played it while taking notes about the quests which was a bit more fun than just following quest markers. Though that was only fun because of Morrowind's weird alien world. There are only a few games intriguing enough to warrant note-taking. Something interesting in the ecosystem is the tes3cmd cli tool anonymously(?) written in Perl: https://github.com/john-moonsugar/tes3cmd/blob/master/tes3cmd https://github.com/john-moonsugar/tes3cmd/blob/master/tes3cm... for manipulating game/mod files.

troad 3y ago
> This got me to finally play through and beat Morrowind in my 30s, avenging my 13yo self who had looted and lost an essential quest item got stuck in the main quest line. Hah, I had the same experience in my teens as you did. Was it worth the replay? Any tips, other than note-taking?
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  I don't know. I played it during covid when I had a lot of time and patience. I'm also not a big gamer anymore so Morrowind wasn't competing with much more stimulating games. That's probably going to be the biggest obstacle for most gamers: why play Morrowind when you can hop into Diablo 4 or whatever with your friends in your limited free time. With OpenMW, you can be playing as soon as the game files download, so just give it a shot. If you get to Cassius' House in Balmora and still can't give a damn about what's going on, then just shutter it for some other time.
  - tpxl 3y ago
    > why play Morrowind when you can hop into Diablo 4 10 years from now, Diablo 4 will be dead and you'll still be able to play Morrowind :)
  - troad 3y ago
    Gracias! Me, I'm much more of a 'tinker with qemu-system-ppc for hours trying to get this obscure System 7 game to run' kind of gamer than one who requires instant gratification, but I totally hear what you're saying. I like the idea of playing it in a different language. I'll see if I can pull up a version in the language I am learning; could be quite fun.

hashworks 3y ago

This is only Singleplayer, right? How is the Linux support?

voidpointercast 3y ago
Good.
SquareWheel 3y ago
TES3MP is a sister project built on OpenMW which adds multiplayer. https://tes3mp.com/ https://tes3mp.com/

nfriedly 3y ago

There's also an Android port: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=is.xyz.omw https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=is.xyz.omw with more info at https://omw.xyz.is/ https://omw.xyz.is/ It has onscreen and physical controller support + an emulated mouse mode that can be helpful for navigating menus and such. It works well on the Retroid Pocket 3+

ceearrbee 3y ago
Sadly, that version is fairly outdated and has issues with newer Samsung devices. There has been a couple forks[1] of it that still work with newer devices and are based on newer releases. [1] https://github.com/Sisah2/openmw-android/actions/runs/4935403360 https://github.com/Sisah2/openmw-android/actions/runs/493540...

throw_m239339 3y ago

Interesting. So it's basically the game engine without the assets.

smittywerben 3y ago

OpenMW is one of my favorite open source projects. The upcoming 0.48 apparently fixes the Lady birthsign bug. Someone must have bit the bullet and reworked the magic effect system. Thanks guys!

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

I'd like to mod Cliff Racers into every Bethesda game.

ianbicking 3y ago

I wonder if there's some new opportunities for these game engines with generative AI. One possibility is treating the game like scaffolding. It feels like textures and images could all be replaced fairly easily with generative versions. Toss them in Midjourney with /describe, play around to create replacements. Or Stable Diffusion or whatever. (Not sure how many things are "images" and how many are other structures like shaders.) Maps are harder, at least I imagine harder to deconstruct into atomic pieces that can be replaced. Though it's interesting to think about whether an LLM could decompose them into more semantic pieces, if it could understand the underlying structure that may only have existed in the mind of the original map creator. I imagine things like quests, stats, etc., would all be amenable to generation. Maybe the big question is if things really are separable enough to use the old game as scaffolding: can you replace 10% of the game, or 50%, or 90% and have a meaningfully playable game?

kqr 3y ago
It may be unimaginative but I'm really looking forward to really deep NPCs with relationships and interests and personalities and all.
nightski 3y ago
You might want to check out what Nvidia is doing with RTX Remix - https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/rtx-remix/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/rtx-remix/
dr_monster 3y ago
This is a plot point in the Orson Scott Card novel 'Ender's Game'. Ender plays a generative video game on an iPad-like device that responds to his decisions and incorporates people/events from his personal life, to the point of manipulating his subconscious thoughts and dreams. A game like this could be interesting, but you would not be able to discuss it with others as a shared experience that has fixity the way you can with any modern media, and it could certainly be used to manipulate people.
yomlica8 3y ago
Morrowind's predecessor Daggerfall had randomly generated dungeons. Overall, they were pretty bad although they were kind of interesting and added variety. I got the impression they randomly stuck basic dungeon chunks together to build them. The idea of using the AI to generate new similar textures is a pretty cool one.

ricardobayes 3y ago

Hmm, this got my hopes up. Turns out this is just a random mention, and not a new release. Last release seems to be from 2021.

agluszak 3y ago
OpenMW is in active development, but for some reason there are no longer release announcements on the webpage/GH. The newest version is 0.49 (the one you mentioned from 2021 was 0.47).

BlackLotus89 3y ago

I really miss the old commentary videos on youtube :/ For weirdsexy life got in the way and suddenly stopped doing the commentaries and was replaced by some german dude (sorry don't know his name). Somehow watching the release videos wasn't as fun anymore as it was before. I don't want to talk down on the work the new guy does, but only want to highlight how exceptional high quality (especially for their time) the old release videos were. Also... I can't stand the german accent

beebeepka 3y ago

"I fear not the man who has released 10000 games once, but I fear the man who has released 1 game 10000 times." - Todd Howard.

CoBE10 3y ago

There is also a fork that has very basic initial support for Skyrim. Here are videos: https://www.youtube.com/@PetrMikheev/videos https://www.youtube.com/@PetrMikheev/videos https://www.youtube.com/@cc9cii/videos https://www.youtube.com/@cc9cii/videos

markbnj 3y ago

I did a recent full playthrough of Morrowind and all the expansions on OpenMW, using one of the available curated mod lists as a starting point. It was rock solid throughout, looked much better than the original, and was at least as much fun as I remembered it was. Highly recommended for TES fans.

cactusplant7374 3y ago

Not seeing a binary for mac. Is there one?

metal_am 3y ago
Yes! It runs pretty well on an M1 Mac edit: there’s a .dmg on the GitHub
- cactusplant7374 3y ago
  The last release is from 2021. Is that correct?

ineedasername 3y ago

I love this just on principle, but maybe someone can clarify something for me. Does this: 1) Provide a better experience of the game immediately? or is it 2) The (very high) value of this tool is that it will lend itself to faster/better/easier fan base development and modification of the game, enhancing the entire ES ecosystem? 3) something i didn’t think of 4) some combination. Of the above Regardless, it makes me want to kick my current gameplay to the curb (it’s Shadow of Doubt, it’s incredible check it out) and dump another 100 hours into Morrowind right now. Nice work!

joeman1000 3y ago
It performs better on modern hardware and fixes a number of issues in the original game. This is generally the purpose of source ports. It also simplifies modding, as you can use the launcher to enable/disable mods as you like. Graphics are also improved. For example: the water effects look much more realistic in OpenMW. Fun fact: OpenMW now stands for ‘Open Microwave’
- account42 3y ago
  > This is generally the purpose of source ports. While the purpose is the same, OpenMW is not a source port but a engine reimplementation which is something on a whole different level of effort.

JSavageOne 3y ago

Just some advice if you want more people interested, put some images and/or videos of the gameplay. Clicked around and could not find even a single image of what the game looks like.

tdy_err 3y ago
Blessings to you, n'wah. Yet we must remember that, unlike your endeavors, OpenMW is not a highly scalable monthly-subscription SAAS to be built out of a coworking space… it is a client, for Morrowind: the third chapter of one of -if not _the_- the most popular RPG series of all time.