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Open Source Morrowind Version 0.16.0 Released

Posted by Soulskill on from the with-many-eyes-even-that-many-bugs-are-shallow dept.

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?"

3 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. No. by masternerdguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:No. by Elbereth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      According to the project FAQ, Open Morrowind uses the original game assets. They have not created any of their own art. You need to have Morrowind installed on your computer, because this is just the engine. It will natively run on Windows, MacOS X, and Linux, and they're looking to fix longstanding bugs in the MW engine, as well as extend it. Some of the proposed extensions to the engine sound ridiculously complex and/or like they'd break the game, but it's definitely interesting. I'd be curious to see what it looks like in a few more revisions, when it's finally playable.

      There are incredibly replacement textures for Morrowind and Oblivion that make even these older games look beautiful and semi-modern. I wouldn't put down the efforts of modders, though I agree that sometimes open source games have rather lackluster graphics. Part of the problem is that modders are more interested in playing polished, commercial games, which they can touch up, rather than contributing to an incomplete, open source game that has no assets at all. It's quite understandable, really, because one is a hobby, and the other is a full-time job.

    2. Re:No. by polymeris · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Some games that have, IMO, succeeded in the polish department, have done so because they by design don't require many assets or they can "borrow" from another game (commercial or not), to get them started while new content is generated . If I was to start an amateur OSS game project, I'd try to keep that in mind. A good example of the former is naev, and of the latter, openTTD.