OpenMW Example Suite Needs Your Help

[OpenMW]

OpenMW is a new game engine for the role playing game Morrowind. It is open source, cross platform (currently supporting OS X, Linux, and Windows), and written in pure c++. We are designing an engine that runs faster and is vastly more modifiable. We want to preserve Morrowind and provide modders a better engine and tool kit for creating their works. While Bethesda will not release the Morrowind's formulas to us, they encourage our project and we in turn actively encourage our users to purchase Morrowind on Steam. So don't worry; we're not out to destroy Bethesda Softworks.

 

The engine is getting close to playable and the OpenMW team needs the help of modding community to creating the OpenMW Example Suite. This suite will allow anyone, including those who don't not yet own Morrowind, to test OpenMW. Therefore it cannot contain any Bethesda/ZeniMax owned art assets. We believe this suite will boost our user and developer base, resulting in people purchasing Morrowind and putting OpenMW to the test of running the original game. Our engine will provide greater modding capabilities to the mod community once completed, bring native support to Linux and Mac OS X, help out the project will be mutually beneficial.

Location and Setting

The suite will take place on a small island with a fishing village. There will be a dungeon and a crypt (which is already built, and has been the entirety of this project up till now). In addition, there will be a few wilderness areas like a pine forest and some small fields. The player will be a resident of the tiny island village who goes off to kill some monster, fetch some pretty object from the dungeon, or escort someone from the crypt.

 

Purpose

It's called OpenMW Example Suite as opposed to OpenMW Tech Demo, because we don't want a jumble of unrelated rooms strung together to display all of the engine's abilities, like some tech demoes. Instead, it will be a micro-game that, aside from exhibiting the engine's functionalities, is aesthetically pleasing and coherent. Through our small island, with its basic kill and fetch quests, we'll be able to display the functionality of a tech demo. Additional quests and dialogue can be implemented until we have exhausted the feature showcase. Once each feature has been demonstrated at least once, we can consider the OpenMW Example Suite complete, with any future additions to it as icing on the cake.

 

Getting Involved

If you are willing to help, please visit this forum thread http://forum.openmw.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=642 and acquaint yourself with the task, what's already done, who can be of help to you. Thanks for your time. Cheers to keeping old games alive! Below is a description of the tasks that need to be completed.

 

Design tasks (in order)

1. Layout of the island cells with basic topography

2. Cell by cell exterior work, including forest and fields as well as coastal edge work.

3. Layout of the village, including building exteriors, appropriate ground textures and clutter

4. Layout of the dungeon, including dungeon exteriors, appropriate ground textures and clutter

5. Interior work on the village and dungeon, as well as work showcasing OpenMW's shader library.

6. Work on NPCs and distributing monsters and animals.

7. Questing can begin, along with script showcasing.

8. Create list of features not already showcased and decide on an appropriate ways to include them into the Example Suite.

 

We need volunteers to create the basic layout of the island. It needs to be large enough for a fishing village in one corner, a forest in another two corners, and filler area with varied wilderness throughout the rest. The first step is creating the height maps and deciding on the basic shape of the island. Once this step is completed we can move forward.

 

If we get volunteers to do the work for steps 1 and 2, our team member, Greendogo, will start getting the files we have ready for upload (this includes the crypt and the ESM file we're going to build from).

 

Art assets needed

-One custom race using non-Bethesda animations. This means anything using Better Bodies or that's based on Better Bodies are off limits as they use the same animations that were created for the original races (animations created by Bethesda). Unless someone has a compelling argument why we should disregard this requirement, it's going to stay.

 

-Several meshes for rocks of similar types.

 

-We need a texture library for ground textures. This is easy, we can use the ground textures from a texture replacement pack.

 

-We need sounds for all kinds of stuff, like coastal birds, forest sounds, different door sounds (heavy door, light door, etc.). We need miscellaneous materials sounds, called when activating stuff like books or eating ingredients.

 

-We need complete sets of meshes for Town buildings (this can be the TR Necrom set, which Haplo gave us permission to use), and Dungeon buildings (Tarius just said we could use his Aylied meshes, so if they have interiors, exteriors, and doors then we're set).

 

If you know of existing assets (or a total conversion for that matter) that fit our needs please or are the asset creator, please contact us. We will credit your work and contribution. Thanks for your time.

 

Where to Find Us

Example Suite Thread

http://forum.openmw.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=642

 

YouTube Channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/MrOpenMW

 

Download Page

http://code.google.com/p/openmw/downloads/list

 

Chat @freenode Freenode.net #openmw