OpenMW - Morrowind Source Port

[Fenixp]

With the release of version 0.37.0, OpenMW celebrates another milestone as it has completely switched rendering engine which drastically improves performance (at the cost of some graphical features, for now)
 
So, what is it?
It's a multi-platform, open source implementation of a fully featured Morrowind engine and its construction kit. The current version allows you to play main game and the expansion + any plugins which do not rely on any kind of .exe injectors should function properly as well. Tamriel Rebuilt, here I come! The engine is still in beta tho, so bugs are to be expected and some features don't quite work as they should.
 
What's it good for?
Linux/Mac support, runs well on modern versions of Windows, natively supports widescreen resolutions. Optional features include dynamic shadows (temporarily removed for the new rendering engine), a ton of fixes of the original engine's bugs, native distant land - basically, end goal is that you no longer need to run any external software to play the game properly and full support of modern operating systems. There are also some quality of life improvements, like saves getting automatically grouped by character to which they belong.
 
Where do I get it?
https://openmw.org/en/

 

Is it awesome?

It's friggin' Morrowind, of course it's awesome! For ****'s sake, why are you asking such stupid questions? Dear Lord, you're an idiot, Fenixp.

[Keyrock]

It's an awesome project, but we're still probably years (yes, plural) from Morrowind feature complete and fully playable with OpenMW.  Hats off to the folks working on this, though.

Edited December 1, 2015 by Keyrock

[Fenixp]

Yeah, in the current state, it's definitely not the way to play the game yet - but it seems like it will be, in due time. I'm really glad talented developers take from their free time to do a project like this, I can't even imagine doing anything of the sort after spending 8 hours programming at work and then some time learning new things at home.

[sorophx]

I hope it will have multiplayer. I always wanted to play Morrowind in coop

[Cantousent]

Do you ever do any modding at all in your off-time, Fenixp? Interesting project, at any rate.

 

Second question, is this just a revamp of Morrowind, or is this going to be a platform using the Morrowind engine and whatnot but with different settings and perhaps completely different games? ...Or is it really just so the game can run on Linux and/or Mac? Sorry about all the dumb questions, but I was curious.

[Fenixp]

Well the best thing is that it's open source. While I don't believe there are any plans to implement MP anywhere in the current goalposts, if enough people want such a feature, it's not impossible to add it. To be fair tho, I would not get my hopes up - implementing a functional multiplayer is not exactly an easy task.

 

 

Do you ever do any modding at all in your off-time, Fenixp? Interesting project, at any rate.

I did small amounts of modding for Morrowind, but that's long lost in the abyss of time. It was nothing major anyway. At this point I do have sources of OpenMW downloaded and am reading trough them, altho I don't think I'd ever get to the stage of actually contributing. It does seem fun tho.

 

Second question, is this just a revamp of Morrowind, or is this going to be a platform using the Morrowind engine and whatnot but with different settings and perhaps completely different games? ...Or is it really just so the game can run on Linux and/or Mac? Sorry about all the dumb questions, but I was curious.

The thing with Morrowind engine is that it's already highly modular, and this project is based on matching original engine and construction set perfectly. Since even the main game and expansions are 'just' modules for the engine, if you own them, you can just put them in the new engine's data files, load them up and the game'll work. I've never seen anything of the sort happen, but I can imagine that if someone created completely new assets and a new landmass, it could most likely be loaded precisely like Morrowind is - but all mods, even total conversions, I've ever seen were based on Morrowind + expansions. At any rate, they're not recreating any of the assets or maps - just an engine which can properly read the original's data. Edited December 1, 2015 by Fenixp