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Open Source Morrowind Version 0.16.0 Released
An anonymous reader writes "The OpenMW team recently released a new version of their open source engine. While the project is not fully playable yet, the goal is to preserve Morrowind, provide modders a better engine and tool kit for creating their works, and make it cross-platform. Like most open source projects, they are always seeking new contributors. So, what do you think; what's the state of FLOSS games that are not first-person shooters?"
FOSS games tend to be coded very well but they lack polished art and game assets. It's like building V8 engine and putting it in an ugly car. It runs great but scares people away.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Looks like the state of FLOSS games is two games behind!
Don't know if it 'counts', but the Freespace modding community has made some amazing improvements to the old engine and even released some great content (the recent Wing Commander conversion comes to mind).
I am very curious about the rational for why OpenMW switched from D to C++.
The FAQ points to this page for an explanation, which, at 2012-07-03 8:16 PM Pacific Time, I, an outsider to the effort, do not have access to.
Best comment I've read in a while. I played a demo of arkham city the other day. I almost whipped out the credit card on the spot. Just the graphics alone made want to play it. Games like that cost 1000000x to produce versus what you can get out of some engine and a bunch of modders. It would take a dedicated small team years of hours putting together something on the level of what I played. Even linux owes a lot to significant corporate investment.
zosxavius photography
>So, what do you think; what's the state of FLOSS games that are not first-person shooters?
What, both of them? I looked them up; Frozen Bubble and Tux Racer are doing just fine.
Graphics wise, I'd express my doubts that even with years, a small team would even be able to produce something that is considered graphically amazing for the time of release. This is simply due to the fact that new hardware renders old techniques obsolete (pun intended). For a great example of how protracted development time and constant upgrading can actually make a game look _worse_ at release, take a look at DNF or daikatana.
This is true, but the art requirements for a game like arkham city are insane. Sure there are some really awesome indy games, but nothing quite like that. Fallout 3 also comes to mind. No way could a small team accomplish that. I'm not trying to diminish what people do with less, but more is always better.
zosxavius photography
see "wing commander saga: darkest dawn" and "freespace open". if no one makes the games you want the fans will ultimately find a way. FOSS's problem is they are saturated with projects for quake style scifi arena shoots if they tapped dead genres instead they would have polished games out the wazzoo
This is true, but the art requirements for a game like arkham city are insane. Sure there are some really awesome indy games, but nothing quite like that. Fallout 3 also comes to mind. No way could a small team accomplish that. I'm not trying to diminish what people do with less, but more is always better.
Depends on what you need. Neat graphics usually means heavy system requirements.
A lot of people may be fine with a game that isn't as beautiful, but can be run smoothly on their systems.
I think there's a market for both.
Slipping shoelaces ?
It is the old paradigm of time vs money. With enough money, it can be done in a reasonable time frame. Otherwise, you will get a great work that take years/decades to develop, like http://ifhgame.ru/main/.
morcego
I definitely agree with you there. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to imply that graphics should be the focal point of game creation. At the same time though, I'm not sure whether there would be "polished games out the wazoo". The thing is, the environment for fan made sequels/clones already exists. The tools already exist for FOSS game creation, and the communities/fanbases are there - apart from legal threats, there really isn't much stopping anyone skilled, with enough free time from making niche games that appeal to them.
Graphics wise, I'd express my doubts that even with years, a small team would even be able to produce something that is considered graphically amazing for the time of release.
Who said anything about a small team? And in what way is this not already amazing?
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
It would take a dedicated small team years of hours putting together something on the level of what I played.
The parent of my post did.
Yes, what you posted does look amazing, but it is a pre-rendered movie, not a game. So it's really apples and oranges. I don't mean to demean anyone making FOSS games, I just meant to point out that making a game that looks as good as new AAA games generally takes a sizeable, professional team working full time to accomplish.
what you posted does look amazing, but it is a pre-rendered movie, not a game. So it's really apples and oranges.
No it isn't. One is the flip side of the other. The toolchains involved are nearly identical. So is the project organization, number and quality of artists involved, social structure, etc etc etc. It's actually easier to enumerate the differences. 1) A game needs a game engine. 2) eh... it's really hard to find a second difference.
Look, it is already proven that AAA content can be created by the open community. Delivered according to a plan and on a schedule even. You just saw it with your own eyes. The only remaining question is, to whom will go the glory of proving the point for an AAA first person sandbox game?
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
While the server is down you can find the downloads at Google code page and the Ubuntu PPA
Pong death showdown anyone?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I definately agree with this, just look at Mechwarrior: Living Legends. Noone was making a modern Mechwarrior game so the fans made it. FOSS really needs to start targetting tools and dead genres. Linux already runs about 90% of the flight games out there, they just need to really polish/support force feedback/input configuration. I've been trialing things like thurstmaster HOTAS Cougar gear, and Microsoft Sidewinder force feedback sticks for years now and it's definately close to being a superior experience to Windows in these genres.
but more is always better.
What about more Nazis? Or more Godwins?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
No it isn't. One is the flip side of the other. The toolchains involved are nearly identical. So is the project organization, number and quality of artists involved, social structure, etc etc etc. It's actually easier to enumerate the differences.
From http://www.sintel.org/about/
“Sintel” is an independently produced short film, initiated by the Blender Foundation
In november, the Netherlands Film Fund approved on a substantial subsidy for Sintel, enough to extend the project to 10 months, with possible 1 or 2 extra artist seats in the final months.
With the highly anticipated extra funding from the Amsterdam Cinegrid – also funding a 4k resolution version – Ton finally could extend the team with 5 artists and a developer in March 2010.
I don't see how any of the Blender Foundation productions are comparable.
The only open source game I know of that have money to pay for artists is The Battle for Wesnoth but even they are unlikely to get financial backing from several foundations/institutes.
You've obviously never worked on a game before. When you're creating art for a game, you are strictly bound by the performance of the engine. You can't just freely create stuff and expect it will work well. Also, if you'll note, the environments in Sintel are very small set pieces. In a game, you need a lot more areas in a map and you need to create many maps without making any of the areas look repetitious.
Sintel looks nice for an open source project, but it's still got nothing on the graphics in a full scale commercial film (ie. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within from 2001). It's also fifteen minutes long.
and every time you act like grammar nazi asshole god changes his mind. thanks for helping preserve the small Jewish population
Or put some money to the group to pay for a professional digital artist.
Or, as you're currently doing, just whine about it and do nothing.
OP: Games need good graphics
RP: If that were true, then Dwarf Fortress shouldn't be played
What is it about being non-FOSS make the lack of graphical polish of Dwarf Fortress moot?
I love the game, but travel is tedious and Vivec is horrible. Please fix them.
http://dear-esther.com/ ?
That's about 2005 level. The Source engine really dates the look of it.
Bastion had a very small team and it is the most enjoyable game I have played for a long time.
(Super Meatboy is also great).
I am not really even bothered about 3D too much.
I like stuff like Chrono Trigger / Metal Slug as well games of my childhood.
There are mobile/tablet games that the graphics are at least as good or better but the gameplay / AI sucks.
(Both of the Batman games I haven't bothered playing for longer than 5 mins too easy.)
What about Hawken? (http://www.playhawken.com/)
Small team, indy game, graphics are mindblowingly fantastic, even for today, and its scheduled for release Q4 '12
I like Morrowind a lot, so this is incredibly good news. The engine of the game was a bit buggy (glitches & crashes) so it'd be wonderful to have something more stable, and one of the main drawbacks of the game was the clunky user interface which could be streamlined in the free version of the engine.
The former worked for Wolfenstein 3D.
A decent sandbox game needs much more assets than a movie like that. An order of magnitude more assets. The Sintel movie was ~5 artist-years, wasn't it? Modern AAA sandbox games (say, Skyrim) have 100-200 artist-years spent on the assets. That's a huge effort, similar on scale with the Linux kernel - and unlike game code, game assets cannot be made from small patches by thousands of contributors, there needs to be a specific visual style followed in every single art asset - even that short movie needed sponsorship to get where it is.
There are mobile/tablet games that the graphics are at least as good or better but the gameplay / AI sucks.
How much of the gameplay sucking can be attributed to not having a gamepad or any other physical keys available?
Like many RPGs, Morrowind was loaded with bugs, many of which were never fixed by the original developers.
I understand that English is a living language, but I object to changes arising merely from repeated errors.
As for the toolchain? No - an interactive game requires far more tools, and more specialists to create. While animators and texture artists alone can create movies, you need high skill programmers in order to create a game. It is not as simple as just "putting an engine in". An engine is simply the backend classes, interfaces and methods to handle the resources, game logic and input in a structured way. You still need to craft the game itself around that, which requires, at the very least, competent programmers.
You also need competent designers. Not just for gameplay, but for stuff like HUDs, menus and other interfaces. Tool programmers, level designers, network specialists... You'll find that the amount of specialists required for interactive media is much greater then that of others.
Also, how are you going to convince a large enough group of people that your idea is the one? Unlike other projects, games don't serve a direct or obvious purpose apart from entertainment, so direction is something that is not as obvious. What sort of game would everyone want to see? Can the director get everyone to agree on an art/gameplay direction?
Sintel had paid artists, so in their case it was money. And don't expect a government grant enough to keep a much larger, more complex project going.
I don't even see why the open source community needs to compete with AAA games. More often then not, it is smaller budget games that actually innovate. Hell, most of the surprise hits of recent years have been from the indie community.
Definitely an example of what a small team can do, and I personally think the graphics are more then enough to not detract from the experience - dare I say nice enough to enhance it - but it is no Arkham Asylum, Crysis 5 or Modern Warfare 10. Which in a way, isn't a bad thing at all.
Also, nitpicking, but not open source ;)
What happened to "Less is more."?
Let's talk about another un-released, un-functional titles.
Duke Nukem anyone?
Recursive Godwin is recursive.
cat
One thing I've always wondered: FOSS games don't have to be community developed at least by the definition, but that seems to be the norm in discussion. Why is that?
seems like any game that was developed under normal time lines/conditions could be FOSS as long as the code came with it....in which case it could be community maintained at that point, but was developed behind closed doors.
Most games (and a lot of software, but not all) have to have a definite goal and have to come out under a specific time-frame to "catch" and become useful and/or popular. That's hard to do under a community model in a lot of cases. Pieces of games can work that way, like the framework, game engine, etc. but the final piece (artwork, plot, characters, etc.) seem to have trouble using a community model to hit the right target at the right time...
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
And what of the Mazda RX-8, Lotus Elise, or any of the various hot hatches available right now? Yes, there is a trend of American cars toward beefy drag type cars - examples being the Dodge Challenger and souped Mustangs... but the Corvette falls more toward the racing end of things, even if it is insane on a track.
Tighter, sleeker, more controllable is just another form of race car. It's a mantra of the super car, which also does have power, but not at the expense of those other attributes. It sounds like you want a Lotus, though, or a Miata.
Well, one nice thing about OpenMW is that there are already a ton of high-quality assets out there that were released as Morrowind mods. In my experience, TES modders are usually happy to contribute their assets to other projects if you ask them nicely.
True, but you still need content. I tend to play single-player games. What makes those interesting are mainly:
1. World content, story, complexity.
2. Half-decent engine including AI.
3. Graphics
If your world is interesting but you're the only thing moving in it, then that isn't useful. If the enemies are interesting but the extent of gameplay is to circle each other in the middle of a desert, that isn't interesting.
I want places to go, people to talk to, things to accomplish. All of that requires artwork, scripting, writing, and so on. Even if the graphics are simple you still need to create all the story and mechanics. That takes time/money.
Look at something like Wesnoth. It has great gameplay and decent graphics. However, it only has two campaigns which makes it of limited value - they aren't playable for that long. You don't need that as much for multiplayer, but I like complex games and complex multiplayer involves way to much commitment for somebody with a family...
Neat graphics usually means heavy system requirements.
A lot of people may be fine with a game that isn't as beautiful, but can be run smoothly on their systems.
I am not sure I agree.
Think of the Flash based game Mechanarium.
The hardware requirements were trivial --- the art design and execution extraordinary:
It won the Excellence in Visual Art award at the 12th Annual Independent Games Festivaland the Best Soundtrack award from PC Gamer in 2009. It was nominated for an Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction award by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences and a Milthon award in the 'Best Indie Game' category at the Paris Game Festival.
[wikipedia]
One of the executive managers, 'Zini', is also our lead scripter for the Morrowind modification called Ultima Redemption. Part of the reason he and others founded OpenMW was to get around the scripting nightmare and other bugs in the developmental tools of the original product. Hopefully, in time, they'll have an OpenMW 1.0 and real progress on implementation can be made for the Redemption mod.
I love Morrowind, and am actually playing it now in a bid to put off buying Skyrim till it drops a bit (plus run quests I've never actually found before, because 'Why not'), but . . . I just don't see the need for this project.
The brilliance in Morrowind was in the writing and the plot. The engine is 'stable enough' and runs fine, they're neither improving nor planning to improve the graphics . . . I'm just not seeing the return on this.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
I must have missed something, but there has never been nothing, ever, graphically superior about Call of Duty that had not already been done before by other games that were already available. Not sure why that is even listed along side something like Crysis. I cannot speak on Arkham games; I have heard good things though.