Hello, I have a little doubt. In rare cases (like me) ...
Using the joystick: 90%
Using the Mouse and Keyboard: 10%
Do you plan to include the option to configure a gamepad like the original Morrowind? ...
Or is it something that is not intended to change?.

I'm interested in making a test cell.. but I've got no experience with custom animations and all that jazz. I started with just the CS as-is when you open it and started adding things to it. So far, I've added:

Westley's Mangchu Peoples of the Water (Custom Race)
Arched Tileset by Oom Fooyat
Oshiel's Animation Replacer
(Swiveller's?) West Gash texture replacer

I've got an interior cell and a few exterior cells and the race in. I've added some sounds, and attached the animation, but I'm getting errors about "set a generic sound for default left foot/right foot", and some VFX errors, and then the game crashes. My warnings.txt is full of Animation errors about "Soundgen: Left/Right".. AHH! Anyone?

Have you checked some of the entries in the body part tab to make sure all the necessary slots are filled in? Westly's custom race may depend on Morrowind assets.

Hey Trunksbomb, thank you for contributing your time, it's a huge step forward!

Ok, on to business:
-For the time being, you can create blank sounds to fill in for any sound assets required from the vanilla assets.
-Does the mod load into the game correctly and are you at the stage that you are able to successfully COC into the test cell?

Also, if you want to continue working on it by yourself, that's fine, but if at any time, you'd like to upload it to a file hosting site (like rapidshare or something), feel free. I'm sure we'll be able to continue from where you left off and make sure it has all the kinks worked out and also pick out any assets that aren't public (such as the door marker and direction marker meshes).

I went ahead a created a discussion thread about this over on the OpenMW Google Groups mailing list. Here's a link to the thread: http://groups.google.com/group/openmw/browse_thread/thread/99eb1b3b5161024?hl=en
Feel free to discuss development either here or there. I believe that this modding forum will be a great help in actually constructing the cell(s) and after you are ready Trunksbomb, we can continue development at the mailing list and nail down what should be in the debug/test cell(s).

*Also, this is rather important Trunksbomb, are you alright if your work is passed between people later on so that we can continue development in an open source fashion?

I'll go ahead and PM Westly, Oshiel, Swiveller and Oom Fooyat and ask if we can use their assets for this "mod"/debug cell hybrid.

Edit: Oshiel's inbox is full and I can't find Swiveller in the member list for these forums. Also, it has come to my attention that at least one of Oom Fooyat's releases of his Arched Tileset depends on original Morrowind textures. If this is the case a modder named Clavis has made quite a few retextures of Oom Fooyat's Arched Tileset (some of them look quite good). They can be found here: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=User.EntriesListing&id=7344

Edit 2: I really like the collection of resources you decided to start with, if you decide to use one of Clavis' retextures of Oom Fooyat's Arched Tileset you could really create a consistent theme. I like it. Hopefully Westly gives us the thumbs up!

Try Mr. Swiveller

@harplo: I copied the references straight from the mod that comes with Westley's new race and pasted them into mine, so they should all be there.. I hope. I glanced over them all and they seem to work.

@Greendogo: No.. for the time being, I've squashed all my warnings, and the game gets past "Initializing Loaded Data" (was stuck there earlier), and then "Loading Exterior". Now, here's the weird part.. the game is loaded straight to coords 0,0,0 in cell 0,0- no title screen, no opening movie, nothing. It just loads to the exterior, paused. (http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/8509/mgescreenshot1.jpg). Clicking any of the menu options will CTD me. That NPC is there just so I could verify where I was being placed at (he's right in front of 0,0,0). I can see that the animation is loaded properly because the NPC is assuming the idle stance of the new animation file (it's anime based- not my first pick, but it's free-asset). I can't think of what I may be doing wrong.

I don't mind having other people checking it out and whatnot. I'm uploading it as I type (it's a 15mb file including the meshes and whatnot), so someone else can take a look at what I've done. I've got sounds, one of the tile meshes in, two NPCs (player and god ), the basic scripts (chargen, main, startup), globals, GMSTs, and the VFX (blank, just to shut-up the warnings).

I'll edit this post when the upload finishes (12kb/s...)

http://www.box.net/shared/l80ntbklu8: I hope I included all the necessary files..

There are huge number of problems with using only homebrew datafiles that will break about a million things and are insanely hard to fix. Most of the process is completely undocumented, so the best suggestion at the moment is just to use a blank ESM/TC base file to start off with.
The problem you noticed with missing menus is one. Unless you have the exact setup (I don't remember all the details, but it usually involves a preloaded interior cell with chargen scripts) it'll skip over everything and put you in the default (in-CS) "player" at origin (position 0,0,0). You have to hit the menumode button, then you can do some things. There's a lot of stuff needed to get it working right, though. There's also a lot of info you need setup (VFX, globals, etc) that you've found, that's another of the issues.
It's a real pain to get it all working, so I'd recommend either taking a TC's masterfile or a blank master and stripping it and building up again, because it'll be a lot faster.

Where can we get a blank masterfile?

This one is usually referenced:
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=642
But there are plenty out there.

Edit: I don't think that one has full support for the menus, either (no chargen process).

I have another blank esp (blankESP, it's called) that I'm basing my work off of. I have the same scripts, minus the float script, sign rotate, etc. scripts. I have all the same globals and (I think) all the right sound files. The only error I'm getting right now is that it CTDs without warning. I see that my file has been downloaded already. Has anyone tried it out yet?

Edit: Apparently, there has to be an interior cell named "Imperial Prison Ship".. I can get to the main menu now that I added it. Clicking on New Game still CTDs, though.

I always found it kind of silly not to be able to have water in, say, mountains, and if I'd have such waters it would have to be shallow, because I can't swim in it. Would it be possible to create swimable water over (or bellow) point 0? Or to make some kind of CS "Waterhigh editor" or something that would basically do what Landscape editor does but with water. Or even change the texture of it, or direction, or speed or something?

Also, would it be able to use shaders, like those in MGE, but that they can change depending on area, so that I walk the woods, shader is, say, dark greenish, and I find a nice, lit, water cave, and area shader turns to light yellow-blue (that would be light green tho, I think).

I like everything about this project, especially mention of in game "cinematic" idea. I'd also love to see Alaisiagae's idea, he mentioned something about over-the-shoulder camera view in Witcher. Haven't seen Witcher yet, but I think it's pretty much ala Resident Evil 4 camera style.

Also, could there be some improvement with bow/crossbow aiming? It's terrible, I never know what will I shoot, and cross-hair is not useful at all.



I don't think that's right, I don't know actually, but I had 3 things in the make, based of Thepal's Blank, none of them had that cell, and I had no problems. I made my own CharGen, and it was running normally. Could it maybe be something with the "player" NPC?

I downloaded and opened it in the CS. An actual assessment will come when I have the time to sit down and study it, but I have a date, so yeah...

Encouraged by the amazing progress of the project I will take a risk and ask the same question for the third time (it was, unfortunately, ignored twice in the past on OpenMW topics. No offensive, I understand: there could be reasons for that).

MW/OpenMW PC/NPC/creatures Animation System.

It is not a secrete that MW animation system (data storage (nifs/kfs), AI, animation related scripting functions, collision detection/propagation, etc.) is outdated, very rigid (several serious hardcoded limitations), and primitive even for the moment of the game release. Moreover, there are several serious bugs (e.g. not working for NPCs PlayGroup/LoopGroup functions).

Animation system is a substantial component of a video game. Hence, without significant revision/improvement of it in OpenMW the project IMHO is doomed to remain a pure eye candy (competing with MGE).

I am going to talk neither about fancy things like Havok/PhysX, bone LODs, lip-sync, flex, morpheme, nor about animation related scripting aspects (on this stage of project development). So, let's be realistic: OpenMW is not that opened ? it uses exclusively MW specific nif/kf format (4.0.0.2, very old version) and has Ogre3D as a base (expertise and time of project developers are also not infinite). Moreover, I would like not to post walls of text. I am not a game programmer or artist-animator but I know some MW animation technical details and have access to animation software. To be short, main limitations of MW PC/NPC/creatures animation system (as promised no animation scripting, AI, etc. questions/requests) from my point of view are:


1. As you know MW game engine takes animation data from kf files (x.nif contains corresponding skeleton structure, .the third animation nif is used only actually only in the TESCS) that contain text keys/note tracks (NiTextKeyExtraData) with sequences names (e.g. Idle7, WalkForward, Death2, etc.). These names are hardcoded and their number (206) is limited: there is no way for instance to add totally new combat animation or more that seven idle animations (Idle is reserved for transitions, Idle2 is not supported). This limitation is MW specific, NetImmerse v.4.1 (MW is based on this NDL game engine) does not have it. It would be great to overcome this limitation in the frame of OpenMW.

2. All MW animation sequences should be stored in one huge file: it is possible to "attach" only ONE animation file to a given NPC (PC third person is an NPC with ID "Player") or creature. This is a NetImmerse recommendation that was removed in later (Gamebryo, LightSpeed) engine versions: e.g. in Oblivion it is possible to add nearly unlimited number of animations that are stored in separate kfs. As a result there are zillions of custom animations for OB and only few for MW. Huge MW animations files (ca. 5000 frames) are badly handled in Max and Blender. LisTail's kit helps a lot (split/merge kf), but this excellent tool has several bugs and limitations. So, could this problem (all sequences in one file) be addressed in OpenMW?

3. Partial MW animations like NPC head rotation in the PC direction, arm animations with a torch (other carryable lights) can often corrupt main animations in the game creating totally unrealistic bending abgles. Ogre3D (like Gamebryo) has sophisticated access animations of specified bones or bones chains. How that will be implemented in OpenMW?

4. Alternative Bounding Volumes Proxy Geometry. It is relatively developed in NetImmerse v.4.1 (see MaxImmerse docs) but in MW it is reduced to one big and famous "Bounding Box" structure in animation files. The result of this are very simplified and bad collision interactions with game objects including NPCs. Hence, it is difficult to sit on a chair, to hug, to kiss?he-he. Are you going to change that?

5. Bones. For unclear reason MW PC/NPC bone names and number are hardcoded and limited (usually there are some obligatory bones with fixed names, others can be added freely). Result: no way to add extra animated bones (e.g. for hair, clothes), helper bones (additional to weapon and shield bones), twist bones (supported by NetImmerse and nicely working in MW). Are you going to break this limit?


That's enough for today (again a wall of messy text, sorry). I tried to address only features that are known to be supported in MW animation nif/kf format.

Thank you.

BTW, I have tried to summarize our knowledge about MW NPC/PC animation system here:
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=883042&hl=

I don't know anything about programming, but couldn't this ogre engine handle more than one type of 3d files at the same time eventually? Like, be able to read nif files but also meshes exported into another, more recent 3d format that would offer more possibilities for modelers? As I said, I really dont know anything about programming, that flies way over my head, however since a game engine like morrowind can handle several 2d formats (dds bmp tga), couldn't ogre handle more than one 3d format? Nifs could be a used like a legacy format for backward compatibility, and new meshes could be made with another format with less limitations (hopefully).

Lol, Im probably not even making sense here, sorry about that ^_^ In any case, I hope we'll have answers to your questions, I'd like to know them as well!

And I'm really excited about this project, keep up the amazing work OpenMw programmers!

Mandamus, this (possibility of using another or several nif/kf/kfm formats) was discussed and abandoned here, mainly because of the legal side of the story. The intention is to use exclusively MW game asserts (no need of their distribution (that is not legal) because everybody has them already). Moreover, support of different (e.g. Oblivion) format could create a temptation to use OB, etc.models in the project mods.
How project developers would deal with an outdated format, we'll see. MW ancient format is definitely a great limitation.

I must say that the old format has also a huge advantage: it is relatively simple ? e.g. editing of modern nif formats (tons of unclear new node types) in NifScope is a real nightmare and can be performed efficiently only by few professional game programmers/designers.

Ah, thanks, I didn't know that (probably skipped the posts mentioning that :ph34r: ). I don't understand why it would be illegal to use another format for new meshes created by users though, so I guess I'll have to track these posts down to read more about it. I understand that using other commercial 3d formats from other games like oblivion is a big no-no, but aren't there any format(s) that would be legal to use? (I guess not) Oh well, too bad. :/

And you're right of course, morrowind nifs are easy to manipulate, that's something!

Thanks for the clarification. ^_^


edit: removed useless quote of post right above mine.

I am not a legal expert but I do not see any difference between MW, OB, or any other nif format in this respect. To use original game asserts/artistic recourses (Oblivion or MW, Bethesda's property) in another game (including OB stuff in MW and vice-versa) is definitely not legal, any distribution of them in any format is also illegal. So, in order to use them there should be a converter: external or in-game on the fly so to say. I guess the later is implemented in the OpenMW project ? conversion of MW nifs/kfs in Ogre3D readable/"understandable" format.

There does not. >.< That's one of the few documented "facts" about blank ESMs, and it's completely, absolutely false. Check the last version of my TC, no ship cell and perfect menus. It's related to a string GMST (and/or INI setting) requesting that name, and can be quickly and easily told to use a different cell.

Maybe modifying that?

Taken from http://yacoby.silgrad.com/MW/Tuts/IniTut/IniPopup/StockMorroini.htm

@ Axel: yeah I get it that other nif versions from oblivion, fallout etc. are not to be used in this project. I can see why that would be illegal. I was more thinking of using non-nif formats. For instance, if there is like you say a nif>ogre-readable format converter, does that mean we could create new meshes directly in that ogre-readable format? Which could possibly offer us more options? That's what I was wondering

I see, that's a good question to project developers. As far as I understand they are using epss and TESCS as level designer that obviously accepts only MW nifs/kfs. So, without OpenMWCS no other formats can be used.

Ok, this is post 195 and rather than getting up early tomorrow to make sure there's a new thread if this hits 6 more I did one tonight: http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1077461