OpenMW is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

game engine recreation Game engine recreation is a type of video game engine remastering process whereby a new game engine is written from scratch as a clone of the original with the ability to load the original game's data files such as music, textures, scripts, shad ...

that reimplements the one powering

Bethesda Softworks Bethesda Softworks LLC is an American video game publisher based in Rockville, Maryland. The company was founded by Christopher Weaver in 1986 as a division of Media Technology Limited, and in 1999 became a subsidiary of ZeniMax Media. In its ...

' 2002 open-world

role-playing game A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within ...

'' The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind''.

Overview

The project aims to address issues with the original engine, as Morrowind has had no support or bug-fix updates for many years. The OpenMW engine is programmed in

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

and uses the

Bullet A bullet is a kinetic projectile, a component of firearm ammunition that is shot from a gun barrel. Bullets are made of a variety of materials, such as copper, lead, steel, polymer, rubber and even wax. Bullets are made in various shapes and co ...

physics engine, OpenAL-Soft for audio, MyGUI for window widgets, and SDL 2 for input. The launcher and OpenMW-CS tool use Qt for their

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

s. All the quests and other character choices of ''Morrowind'' and its official expansions and add-ons are fully playable in OpenMW, as are many third-party mods. As a game engine recreation, it therefore relies on but does not include the original assets of the game, such as art, textures, music, and other Bethesda-copyrighted material, meaning a copy of the original game (in any edition, including the Game of the Year Edition) is required to play Morrowind in OpenMW. Side projects have been started to create free assets to accompany OpenMW, and the OpenMW-CS content-development tool can also be used without the need for any third-party assets. Due to the engine being developed primarily for Morrowind, as a replacement for the outdated

Gamebryo Gamebryo (; ; formerly NetImmerse until 2003) is a game engine developed by Gamebase Co., Ltd. and Gamebase USA, that incorporates a set of tools and plugins including run-time libraries, supporting video game developers for numerous cross-pl ...

engine some have attempted to port other Bethesda games into the Open-Source engine with varying success. As of February 28, 2019, demo videos showcase Skyrim and Oblivion's game worlds being loaded successfully into the engine. This has been led by a single programmer known as cc9cii.

History

The first public release of OpenMW was version 0.1.0 in June 2008, initially using Ogre3D for rendering. The original lead developer, Nicolay Korslund, left the project early on but passed his roles to Marc Zinnschlag. In 2020, the team officially announced that Bret Curtis (also known as psi29a) took over the leadership role. With the release of version 0.37.0, Ogre3D was replaced with

OpenSceneGraph OpenSceneGraph is an open-source 3D graphics application programming interface (library or framework), used by application developers in fields such as visual simulation, computer games, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling. ...

due to concerns about the future direction of Ogre3D's development. This switch brought significant performance improvements and fixed several long-standing issues in the engine. Since 2016, all of the quests, classes, races, and other character choices of ''Morrowind'' and its official expansions and add-ons are fully playable in OpenMW, though it remains in extended

beta test A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

ing Most third-party mods that are not dependent on any MS Windows executables and which are free of serious scripting syntax errors are also compatible with OpenMW.

TES3MP: multiplayer development

OpenMW is also the basis for TES3MP, an attempt to develop a networked, multiplayer version of the game. It was in early

alpha test Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἄλφα, ''álpha'', or ell, άλφα, álfa) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph , which ...

ing In the middle of 2017, a major breakthrough was achieved and a first playable version was released.

References

External links

* {{Elder Scrolls games Free game engines The Elder Scrolls Game engines for Linux Fangames