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Rejoice RPG fans! There's a fresh and fancy new release of OpenMW, the free and open source game engine reimplementation for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. One of the best around, this enables you to play Morrowind on modern platforms (like Linux!) easily with many enhancements over the original while still keeping the original gameplay.

Over a year since the last release this brings with it absolutely tons of bugs solved for the game and the editor, while also bringing with it brand new features. A fair amount of the game engine features improved and background things, some of which users won't directly notice but keep OpenMW running smoothly. There's improvements like:

  • Supporting Skyrim SE's compressed BSA format.
  • Alpha-to-coverage anti-aliasing (this improves the look of alpha-tested objects, e.g., foliage from “Morrowind Optimization Patch”)
  • Improved handling of groundcover mods via grass instancing
  • Projectile-projectile collision, including targeted spells (a successful hit cancels both projectiles); emulates vanilla behaviour.
  • A new, shader-based, customisable lighting system which removes the limit of eight light sources per object.
  • A bunch of new optional features you can enable like NPCs avoiding collisions when moving, more realistic diagonal character movement and others.
  • Basic support for 'Collada' animation format

There's a lot more, check out their trailer:

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As you do need the Morrowind data files to play it, you do need to own a copy. You can pick up a copy of Morrowind easily from GOG.com or Steam.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky.
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6 comments

Cloversheen Nov 5, 2021
Woo! \o/
Zlopez Nov 5, 2021
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If you have Morrowind on Steam I can recommend a very useful tool called LuxTorpeda, which allows you to use various native engines or open source re-implementation of the game engines directly on Steam. :-)
MayeulC Nov 5, 2021
If you have Morrowind on Steam I can recommend a very useful tool called LuxTorpeda, which allows you to use various native engines or open source re-implementation of the game engines directly on Steam. :-)

Sounds nice, but being a bit lazy I think I'll wait for the flatpak add-on: https://github.com/luxtorpeda-dev/luxtorpeda/issues/54 https://github.com/flathub/com.valvesoftware.Steam/issues/394

That would make it a few-click options (with automatic updates) for us flatpak users.
TrainDoc Nov 5, 2021
I'd love a link to their github to look at the code, unless I'm missing something there's no direct link to the project in the article?
BielFPs Nov 5, 2021
Liam the link of Steam's Morrowind from the article is incorrect.
Ananace Nov 6, 2021
Well, this release took a while from beginning to end, with everything from fun Microsoft shenanigans to a newfound hate for COLLADA's lib.
Hope you all enjoy the results of the team's hard work though.
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