Discussions have come and gone regarding the subject, but there was never any real work done. Our productive developer Petr Mikheev ptmikheev therefore decided to take the matters in his own hands. It resulted in this merge request which is frequently updated by Petr. Although it is still in early stages i. Getting this implemented is crucial for us to be able to get on with the de-hardcoding phase planned once OpenMW 1.
It is also crucial to be able to make OpenMW the great moddable engine we want it to be. Ever since OpenMW implemented object paging, we have been enjoying long viewing distances with distant objects and playable performance. Some have even been able to run grass mods without much issue. With emphasis on the word "some". Object paging was not implemented with groundcover mods in mind, even though it might provide increased performance for them too. Enter instancing.
Our veteran Andrei Kortunov akortunov has, together with Master of Shadows Chris Djali AnyOldName3 , been working on supporting groundcover through a system much more suitable for it. You see, supporting grass and other groundcover require some special tweaking before you can get acceptable performance with it.
Otherwise, each and every piece of grass will have to be sent to the CPU before the GPU can render it, and this takes a very long time.
This is called a "draw call". Draw calls are slow. Reducing draw calls was actually the main reason we implemented Active Grid Object Paging, which merges many smaller objects into fewer larger objects thus reducing draw calls , not only in the distance, but also in the active cell. So while Object Paging worked out great for buildings and similar, grass can get handled better, especially since you want grass to sway with the wind and to get bent under your feet when you step on it.
The new groundcover system enables grass and other groundcover with better performance and with full support for animation and reaction to you stepping on it. This puts some limitations on what can be done. In the future, we plan to implement an even better system to handle groundcover.
Try the groundcover system today in an unreleased build of OpenMW, or wait for the next release. You can read on how to enable groundcover mods here and here. Did you know that OpenMW only supports up to eight lights for each object? You might have noticed lights turning on and off while walking around in a few specific places in Morrowind. If you use Active Grid Object Paging, you might have noticed this quite a lot. Every object in the game can only receive up to eight light sources at the same time.
There are so many reasons why this is a must-have package it's difficult to know where to begin. We can start with the fact that Morrowind is one of the best RPG 's ever made on any platform, we can talk about its deep interaction, wonderful scenery and revolutionary character development system.
Or then again we could mention the fact there are so many mods available for it now that the original game is only the beginning of your adventures and many user-made add-ons await if you still want more. Then of course there's the fact that Tribunal, the first Morrowind expansion, is also included in this package. Tribunal brings a new town, new dungeons and quests and of course monsters to the Morrowind experience, and while it's admittedly a little small in scope compared to the original game, it certainly expands the excellent storyline in fine style.
This in itself would make Tribunal a worthy add-on, but the developers also re-worked the journal system to make it much more user friendly, and a new annotatable map and general tweaks to the game engine make the expansion desirable as much from a technical standpoint as for pure gameplay reasons.
If, after all this, you are still not convinced this compilation should be at the very top of your RPG shopping list, let's face it, you never will be. So, you've got your latest RPG installed on your hard drive.
You fire it up and start playing. You know what to expect. Kill monsters, gain experience points - kill enough of them and you gain levels. The only thing that makes this one different from the last one is the graphics have changed and it has a new plot. You may or may not be happy about this, but nine times out of ten this is exactly what you are going to get.
It's called working to a successful formula. Game developers don't like veering away from the norm - they know what works and they're not afraid to use it.
Online RPGs are more guilty of this than their single-player counterparts, but a general lack of imagination is apparent in the make-up and design of most role-playing games on the PC, and it's about time something changed.
The people to do something about this state of affairs are Bethesda, and the result of their labours is a game called The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
There are so many ways in which Morrowind puts the competition to shame that it's difficult to know exactly where to start. The beginning seems as good a place as any. At the beginning of the game you need to choose which race and class you are going to play. There are three ways of going about this. The first method is fairly straightforward: pick from a list of predefined classes which specialise in magic or melee or a mixture of both - in other words, standard RPG character selection procedure.
The second method is more entertaining: answer a set of questions and the game will generate a character based on your answers. This is not entirely dissimilar to the character generation process in the Ultima series. The third method is a lot more time-consuming, but ultimately the most rewarding and without a shadow of a doubt the best choice if you want to succeed in the game: create a custom class in which you decide which major and minor skills your character will have and whe their miin attributes will be.
Asing this option, you can create a character that does all the things you want themib do. In fact, choosing arecb to wtiat the lefined class is immAded until you learn and understand different schools of magic do and how the different skills affect you as you explore the game world.
I can almost guarantee that once you have played for a while you will start the whole game again from scratch and create a character knowing exactly what skills you want them to be proficient in, and Morrowind's custom character option will give you exactly what you want in every department. What this effectively means is that once you have created your ideal character, you can play exactly how you want to, and this, more than anything else, puts Morrowind head and shoulders above the rest of the single-player RPG crowd.
But this would all be in vain if you had come this far only to be faced with yet another RPG that encourages you to plough through as many monsters as possible and gain levels in time-honoured fashion. Thankfully, Morrowind's character development process is a lot more imaginative and satisfying than that.
Character advancement in each skill is entirely dependent on how often you use it. Use bladed weapons constantly and your skill will go up accordingly. Use spells from the school of destructive magic and your skill in this school of spells will raise over time. Dungeon Siege has a similar character advancement system, but whereas in Dungeon Siege there are only four areas in which you can specialise, in Morrowind everything you do raises skill in this way.
Repair your armour between battles and watch your armour skill go up. It's such a simple concept, but an excellent one. Instead of mindlessly bashing things in the head to go up a level, you will only reach the next one when you have accumulated ten new skill points.
As long as ten of your major or minor skills go up fit doesn't matter which ones you will advance a level. The wonderful thing about this method of character development is you are rewarded with levels through doing the things you like to do most. Additionally, if you are in a hurry to go up in level or you just want to get better at a particular skill and don't want to do it through practical use you can pay a trainer to advance you in whichever skill they specialise in.
What this all boils down to is you spend less time doing things just to 'level up' and instead just get on with playing the game, safe in the knowledge that your important skills are being developed as you play. It's the most rewarding and satisfying character development system we have seen in any RPG since Ultima Online , and that's saying something.
And it gets better still While you start the game with no faction alignment you will quickly discover there are a whole host of guilds and factions who are more than ready to employ your services and reward you as you advance through their ranks. You can join any of the guilds in Morrowind - the mage, fighter and thief guilds being the obvious choice for specialist classes, but there are a host of other guilds too.
Each one will give you simple tasks to start with and then send you on more challenging missions as you rise in level, obviously with much higher rewards for successful completion of the tasks you have been set. This is typical of the totally open-ended nature of the game.
You are not forced down a set path at any point in time. There is a main quest, and you can see this through to the end and complete the game if that's your thing. But if you do just stick to this path, you will miss much of what Morrowind has to offer. The plot is hugely intriguing and twist-ridden, one which is so compelling you'll feel totally immersed in it. Rumours that an evil Nerevarine dark elf cult is gaining influence throughout the land abound, and it's up to you to find out why and how to stop it.
I don't want to give too much away, but believe me, it's a thrilling ride. Just exploring the breathtaking landscape is a joy in itself Morrowind sports the best graphics of any RPG to date and there are so many characters to interact with, many of whom will give you detailed information on places and events, you will want to explore every part of the gaming world before making any serious headway into the main quest.
It's the sort of game you just don't want to finish because you know that when you do there will be nothing of even vaguely similar quality to occupy your time when you do.
Yes, it is that good. There are so many different things to do at any one time that you will often have to sit back and take stock of the situation before deciding what to do next, and you can keep track of everything that's happened in an excellent journal which has hyperlinks.
These give you detailed information on all the people, places and things you have come across to date. Even when you have finally finished tile main quest and reached the end, you can acquaint yourself with the construction kit that comes with the game.
This allows you to make your own adjustments to the game world and play through it again. It remains to be seen how far people go with this feature, but it's a very powerful tool and the potential is certainly there to expand greatly on the existing game world for those with a little imagination.
As it stands, the single-player game currently has no equals in the RPG genre. It's the most accomplished and absorbing title to come our way in a very long time, and if you have even a casual interest in RPGs you owe it to yourself to get your hands on a copy.
So go lose yourself in a title which has emerged as a leading contender for game of the year. Even if you've already played or are still playing Oblivion, its predecessor isn't without its advantages.
Look past the dated graphics and pretend sword fighting style and this game remains every bit as expansive and opportunistic as its prettier offspring. A better levelling system, an actual sense of danger when walking in the wilderness, a bigger wilderness and a crab which bought things off you - any Elder Scrolls fan will tell you exactly what Morrowind has over its more widely received successor.
Of course, if you haven't played an Elder Scrolls game, then this little budget bundle of joy is an essential purchase. Ooh, aren't we controversial? Yes, but constant bickering among the team has left the Vvardenfell lobby victorious.
The argument runs thusly: Motrowind is a better game than Oblivion, if only for the things that Bethesda sacrificed in their pursuit of making the latter that bit more action-orientated. Consider that moment three hours into the game when you realise you've covered only a minute fraction of the map - the sheer scope of Moirowind's world is breathtaking even by today's standards.
It focused on creating a rich, deep back-story for every faction and race, and its lore and fantastically varied environments were more enjoyable to delve into than Oblivion's. You were also more attached to your character and his role in the story. More practically, the taxi-like Silt Striders were infinitely better for RPG gameplay than the adventure-impeding Fast Travel feature, while the levelling system made you feel like you were actually getting progressively stronger and pushing further into the game's wilderness.
The absence of voice-acting allowed characters to move beyond the somewhat restrictive vocal talents of Oblivion's actors. In retrospect, the combat was pretty crap, but hell, we stuck with it regardless, and if that's not a measure of this game's brilliance we don't know what is. It was a sprawling mess full of randomly generated quests that were terminally dull and a huge gameworld that had virtually nothing of interest in it.
The one thing that was interesting about Daggerfall however, was that it was hugely ambitious. Bethesda tried to create a huge world that was perfect for random exploration but unfortunately, they failed.
They haven't this time. Even from the time I've spent playing the preview code thus far, I can tell you now that Morrowind is so much better than Daggerfall in every way that comparisons between the two are pointless. The concept is the same: a huge gameworld with many NPCs and quests and freedom to explore, but this time round the graphics are beautiful this is now officially the bestlooking role-playing game ever , the quests are not only well-designed but they play a part in how your role in the game develops, and the character development system is hugely flexible to the point where you can literally design your own class if you put enough time into it.
As you can see from the screenshots here, the game looks absolutely stunning. Gorgeous landscapes appear literally everywhere you go, and every town in the game has its own unique theme with artwork and atmosphere to match.
The attention to detail is literally stunning. Of course, it remains to be seen how Morrowind holds up over extended playing periods. I've been playing for two days and haven't even got into the main plot yet because there's so much to see and do everywhere I go, but you can rest assured that the signs are very good indeed that we have a very special game on our hands.
If, however, the main theme of the game doesn't grab you, you can always redesign it with the help of the TES Construction Kit. Bethesda is planning to give away the tools they used to create Morrowind with the game. Create your own armour designs, mess about with the towns and NPCs, give them new dialogue, make new quests, you name it, you can probably do it with the TES design tools.
This goes a long way to making up for the fact there is no multiplayer option in the game. With a gameworld as attractive and full of character as this one, you can fully expect people to spend a long time creating their own versions of Morrowind, and of course they'll put them straight up on the Net as soon as they've finished.
The future looks very bright for Morrowind - tune in next issue for a full in-depth review. You know it's going to be good, but how good? Well, you'll just have to wait and see. Along With hex-based strat 'em ups and those soulless management sims our German cousins seem to adore so much, RPGs used to be one of the ugliest gaming genres around.
While the likes of Baldur's Gate and Diablo looked presentable enough in their day, such games were kept grovelling in the shade by the gloriously-lovely likes of Unreal , Half-Life et al.
This was the unwritten rule until spring , when PC roleplayers got their first real taste of succulent eye candy with the release of Morrowind, the long-awaited third instalment of Bethesda Softworks' Elder Scrolls series. Pixel shading, now almost as much a PC gaming staple as WASD keyboard controls, was but a twinkle in some crazy coder's eye until Morrowind amved on the scene, wowing all and sundry with its eyepopping water effects.
But the game was to prove far more than a mere visual feast for graphics-starved RPGers. It happened to be one of the most ambitious, wide-ranging titles ever to appear on a home computer, giving you the freedom, as Bethsoft's motto has it, to live another life in another world". Creating this feeling of liberty was a core part of the previous Elder Scrolls games, Arena and Daggerfall, and it was always going to figure in the series' third title.
In fact, as project leader Todd Howard points out, Morrowind was originally planned to be extremely similar to its predecessor. We first came up with the idea around , during Daggerfall's final days. The initial concept was to build on the Daggerfall codebase and do it like that, but in high resolution.
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