OpenMW is a modern free and open source game engine for Morrowind, and it's really getting close to a release of version 0.48 now with another Release Candidate ready for more testing. The whole point of OpenMW is to get Morrowind working nicely on modern platforms, with a whole bunch of improvements to how it looks and feels.
The last release for OpenMW was back in November 2021, so it's been a long time coming and as you can imagine a lot of work has gone into this upcoming new release. Going through Release Candidates means it's closing in on release, and needs some testing for any final touches needed and to find any major bugs. The first RC went up back in September 2022, with a fresh one going up just recently.
They haven't yet put up an official list of what's changed but the public GitLab does have an ongoing list, and it seems plenty is already readying up for the release after this too. Some of the new features coming in this release include which I've cherry-picked from their GitLab include:
- Zoom levels of the world map.
- A tab in the launcher for handling different data folders.
- Post processing.
- Support for FBO Rendering.
- Support for FFMPEG 5.
- Windowed fullscreen support.
- Exponential fog.
- Sky blending.
- Add support for controller gyroscope.
- Shader-based object texture blending.
- More realistic raindrop ripples.
- Allow users to easily change font size and ttf resolution.
- Unique object identifier.
- And lots lots more!
OpenMW download links are here for the latest RC build. Remember though you do still need to own a copy of Morrowind for that data files that you can grab from GOG or Steam.
Quoting: GuestQuoting: Grogan2) Morrowind GOTY is $7.99 on Steam and $19.99 on GoG :-)
It was $5.99 on GOG during the summer sale....
Yeap, except for sales, the game is at the same price on GOG and Steam for me (14,99€).
This project uses a lot of third party components... Bullet3 physics engine, opengraphscene (specific fork and configuration), and MyGUI
Additional build deps... luajit scripting, yaml-cpp.
Now for me, it didn't like my QT5 version. I had to build a new one in an alternate location and set variables to use it for the build. (I don't want to upgrade mine for various reasons). This also means I have to run openmw with a wrapper to set QT5DIR and LD_LIBRARY_PATH and friends before launching the game. It requires Boost and not just the headers (first barfage if boost iostream library isn't there). That's something I don't want anywhere near my system (don't want that dependency getting pulled into builds!), so built it in an alternate location too. OK, that shit is just me.
Finally, don't try to use MyGUI from git master unless you want to hunt and poke for hours and fix all the declarations and stuff, use MyGUI 3.4.2 :-)
So I've got OpenMW version 0.49.0 (git master) and it runs far enough to fail on the missing assets, so I should be good to go after I purchase the game files.
Hurrah! It'll be retro RPG'ing for me tonight.
P.S. Well, there was just one more snag. To get out of installing unshield, I had turned off building the openmw-wizard with the cmake option. I was passing the data location on the command line when launching openmw, but it turns out it wasn't so optional so I added yet one more little thing to my system and rebuilt openmw without disabling that, and now it's all working. Graphics settings all configured and I'm playing. Nice clean terminal output too (no errors or missing file noise etc.) and it quits "peacefully" (their word, and fair enough lol)
Last edited by Grogan on 6 July 2023 at 1:11 am UTC
Quoting: Grogan...
... Or you could had just wait to install the official Arch Linux package to avoid all of this...
Quoting: CyrilQuoting: Grogan...
... Or you could had just wait to install the official Arch Linux package to avoid all of this...
First of all, it's old, I wanted the latest code and I want it now. Secondly, I'm not doing this on Arch, it's my own custom (tailored exactly to me), 64 bit only, from-scratch system. Even on Arch though, I don't wait for them, if I want something, or want something done differently, I take over.
I have more games than I can wrap my head around on my Arch gaming setup, I need more games here. So open source games, and even Linux binaries from GoG that don't need any game/store client, though rare, are what I set up here. I still have my old, original UT2004 directory with libraries dropped in so it still runs. (the 64 bit binaries that came in a patch from Icculus)
Anyway, I'm happy with the end result. It's an old game, with rudimentary navigation aids etc. but I played for quite a while last night. Got swords to chop with, fought some enemies on a bridge. I'm seeing some familiar nuances from my time playing Skyrim, too.
Last edited by Grogan on 6 July 2023 at 5:28 pm UTC
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