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?"

Comments

No.

[masternerdguy]

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.

Re:No.

[bughunter]

While it is common to find unpolished (or more accurately, unfinished) games, there are a few that are up to par with commercial games, or nearly so.

Battle for Wesnoth especially. Also UFO: Alien Invasion, Freeciv... and I want to list Nethack and roguelikes, but that niche is intentionally unpolished.

Re:No.

[Elbereth]

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.

Re:No.

[polymeris]

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.

Re:No.

[Charliemopps]

V8 engines belong in ugly cars. It's kind of the point. Nothing like blowing the doors off a brand new corvette with a rusty Oldsmobile.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

It runs great but scares people away.

So what? It isn't a business. They do it because they like it. Some people spend their free time watching TV, others coding games.

And graphics aren't everything. There are some weirdos that have this ridiculous idea that a good game is a fun game, good looking or not. If all I cared for were graphics I'd see a movie or go outside.

Re:No.

[Black Parrot]

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.

That's why no one plays Dwarf Fortress and the Roguelike games.

I'd rather have an interesting game with amateur assets than a dull game with slick presentation.

Re:No.

[angel'o'sphere]

Well, if you can "see" spelling errors a mail to the developers with the error and the correction would be helpfull.

Calling people who can not see spelling errors illiterate is a bit exagerating, don't you think so?

I for my part have to type this on a system where you can not activate spelling correction (no idea why), so if there is nothing red underlined I don't see errors. (My brain assembles the meaning of a word or sentence without the need to parse every single letter and without the need to know how a word exactly is ment to be spelled)

D to C++?

[LionKimbro]

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.

Re:D to C++?

[Lehk228]

because nobody actually codes in D

Re:D to C++?

[polymeris]

Probably. Or to put it in kinder words: To appeal to a larger set of potential contributors.

Re:D to C++?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or to put it in the actual words from when I was helping with this... No one actually codes in D. The founder was the only person who even knew how, let alone having a setup and compiler and everything required because there wasn't anything usable for coders using Windows. After a deluge of people asking to help the switch was finally made, which is a fantastic thing as the founder disappeared and another coder took over, and now there's an entire team.

In other words, it saved the entire project.

Re:D to C++?

[Surt]

Because of the 3 guys who know D, two weren't gamers.

Re:D to C++?

[Daniel Phillips]

Because C++ is mature, capable and nearly all serious graphics toolchains rely on it.

Re:No

[ZosX]

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.

Re:No

[iosq]

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.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:No

[kdemetter]

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.

Re:No

[DMJC]

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.