OpenMW 0.40.0 Released | Hacker News Reader

OpenMW 0.40.0 Released

openmw.org

184 pointsrocky113843 comments

The legal status of this is fascinating. Essentially, it's blessed in a series of email by Bethesda, as long as the OpenMW team doesn't explicitly promote its use on mobile platforms - with the understanding, of course, that as a cross-platform open-source engine, it could certainly be used for that purpose. Bethesda had every reason to find legal ways to shut down the project (it's quite the opposite of a clean-room implementation), but they worked to find a happy medium that allowed the project to coexist with its own mobile ambitions.

https://wiki.openmw.org/index.php?title=Bethesda_Emails

But it's certainly unclear in the general case whether engines that require the user to provide their own (presumably legally purchased) data files are derivative works of the original engine. It's even more iffy when, as is the case for https://pokemmo.eu/ , it might be illegal in certain jurisdictions to obtain a ROM even if you have purchased the physical product. Of course the creators protect themselves legally, but is it ethical for a software product to effectively encourage users to break a law that is itself unethical?

(IANAL)

So what's the difference between this and the whole Mojang 'scrolls' debacle? Seems pretty strange Bethesda would let this fly compared to simply naming your name Scrolls.

They are required to defend trademark, just to keep it.

Presumably there is no attempt by the open source devs to trademark their work.

Trademark versus copyright.

Also, my guess is that a court would reject the idea that you could trademark as common a word as "scrolls," and Mojang simply conceded to avoid a costly legal battle.

> Bethesda had every reason to find legal ways to shut down the project

Except it drives sales of a still $15 game. And sales of the sequels. And they don't have to do any work.

They have more reasons to help it at this point.

I think the Elder Scrolls series usually target high end gamers that are interested in a very immersive experience featuring cutting edge graphics. In that regard, many players moved on to Skyrim, and Bethesda may not perceive OpenMW as a competitor.

I'm unclear as to why Bethesda would have any standing in this regard. If people wrote their own reimplementation of a game but simply required assets from the original game to be on the client machines, my feeling is that Bethesda doesn't own anything with respect to the reimplementation. That was entirely coded by someone else.

As long as assets are not shipped with the project, no trademarks are used by the project, and no original code from the original binary or implementation were used, the reimplementation is an entirely new product not owned by Bethesda.

That would be allowable for a clean-room implementation, but OpenMW is not. So while OpenMW is protected from any copyright claim, it would not be protected from any patent claims.

Can you describe how OpenMW is not a cleanroom implementation? I couldn't find anything on it on the website.

I read through the emails, and I believe I'm mistaken: nothing is specified on whether or not OpenMW is a cleanroom implementation.

My point stands, though. If Bethesda can show that OpenMW was in any way borne from reverse-engineering their engine code, and that their code was patented, then they would have an IP claim against OpenMW.

I'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge what I feel is the greatest FOSS reimplementation of a game engine: OpenTTD[1].

I'm sure many here fondly remember Transport Tycoon Deluxe, but for those who don't know it, imagine Sim City but only the transportation side of things (sea, air, road and rail.) The cities grow organically and you need to connect them with each other and industries dotted around the map.

It also has multiplayer which is really fun if you want to work either with or against others.

It seems the game is really enjoyable for analytical / engineering types, and I still love to play it after over a decade since I found it.

Nowadays, OpenTTD is available via most popular distros' package managers, along with free graphic and sound assets so you can jump right in[2].

[1]: https://www.openttd.org/en/

[2]:

  pacman -S openttd openttd-opengfx openttd-opensfx
  apt install openttd openttd-opengfx openttd-opensfx
  yum install openttd openttd-opengfx

I love OpenTDD, but I had no idea you could install it with package managers. That's awesome.

Building efficient rail networks is one of the most interesting parts of the game. OpenTTD extends TTD with "presignals" and "path signals" which allow much better junctions and stations.

https://wiki.openttd.org/Signals

https://wiki.openttd.org/Building_railway_stations

https://wiki.openttd.org/Advanced_signalling_examples

Sounds like a more detailed version of Mini Metro: http://dinopoloclub.com/minimetro/

Apples and oranges, I'm not sure people who enjoy Mini Metro would automatically take to TTD. Mini Metro is a fun little abstract puzzler, wheras TTD is a fairly complex simulation.

and for mac brew install homebrew/games/opentdd

It's very good, runs the original game and both expansions very well. Mod compatibility isn't complete yet, but they're working on it. It's great to be back in that world, and to be able to play natively on a Mac or Linux machine.

Edit:The most important mod,Tamriel Rebuilt works flawlessly. http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org

Another group of developers are remaking Morrowind using Skyrim's engine. They call it "The Elders Scroll Renewal Project".

Their latest dev video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB_ldn6JQ0o

On balance I wish I hadn't clicked that link. It's impressive. :)

I adored Morrowind and spent a ridiculous amount of time in it. I liked Skyrim, but regretted the lack of depth of quests and in the world which is built around you being a special snowflake.

I loved that Morrowind, especially the music, and the fact that you could see the stars at night. A very immersive game.

However today it might look a bit dated, I hope for this project that can bring some cool upgrades to the Morrowind experience as well as that it can thrive from a legal standpoint.

Now, I never really enjoyed the fact you could enter a shop and steal from it, and then sell it to the vendor. In Oblivion they fixed that.

A handful of games trigger a deep sense of nostalgia and... I don't know what you'd call it, home-sense I guess. Morrowind's (relative) immersiveness, large world, and first-person perspective trigger it hard. Walking off that dock is like coming home.

Big thanks to the project contributors. Morrowind's one of a few games that I'll probably never go more than 2-3 years without playing at least a little bit, and their work makes that much easier.

From memory you couldn't. The owner would say something like hey that's mine and you would gain a bounty instantly and guards would chase you.

IIRC you couldn't sell to the person who was marked (behind the scenes) as the object's owner, but the object wasn't classes as "stolen" and made impossible to sell to anyone but a fence, as it would be in later games.

He might be thinking of Daggerfall, where you could use the "wait" command in a shop until the shop closed, then take all the items off the shelves and none of them were considered stolen.

You could if you sold items from one vendor to another vendor, e.g: from another town.

Yes but in the long-term this screwed you hard. If you ever stole e.g. a diamond from one trader you could no longer sell that trader diamonds. Even after years and dozens of looted diamonds you still couldn't sell diamonds there.

The music is just amazing, i still get goose pimples when listing to Nerevar Rising. For a remastered high quality version, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW5GpgG8Bj4

The soundtrack is also available as FLAC, IIRC.

All of that remastering work just to be recompressed by YouTube.

yes, but it still sounds better than all the other versions available for streaming. the uploader also added some reasoning in the video description.

His reasoning violates information theoretic bounds on lossy compression algorithm performance.

It's awesome to see free software games being made, and it's pretty cool that someone decided to reimplement one of the best open world games made. Finally I might be able to play it on my GNU/Linux machine.

This is only a free software game engine, not a free software game.

However, they plan to expand the free software editor to the point where you could create fully free game assets. So while it doesn't have that _yet_, it's on the pre-1.0 roadmap.

You can already play Morrowind in GNU/Linux using Wine. It works fine except for some minor glitches.

Emphasis on the words free software. Games are very under-represented in the free software world.

Only the engine is free software. The game data is proprietary.

True. However, OpenMW has a game editor and the 1.0 roadmap states they want to make the creation of games using the engine doable without requiring any of the proprietary assets from the original game. I expect this will take a while, but you can already create maps without needing all of the "game creation" functionality -- and I have no doubt someone will make a clone of the original once the editor is up to snuff.

Awesome to see this project here! It also comes with an open source creation kit that allows for standalone (non mod) games to be built with no Morrowind associations. The whole thing runs on top of Open Scene Graph, and is multi-platform out of the box. Their GitHub has some useful information as well: https://github.com/OpenMW/openmw

This is something that makes me extremely happy. I can't wait until someone tries something like this for FO3/NV as these are my favorite games.

Hopefully then I can jurry rig some kind of coop system into the game.

I can also be sure that my favorite game will be supported on all future hardware I run, fix any bugs myself, and keep it going until I die. Without VMs of course.

This is very important to me as these sorts of things aren't like books or movies. People who don't game might not understand this. It's more like a really really long game of chess that gets you purposefully emotionally invested in certain characters. I think I'd feel emotionally sick if I lost the ability to be able to start Fallout 3/NV and I don't even play it that often due to college and work.

There have been fleeting little explorations into co-op with openmw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq6bAEQ0fyg. It's lower priority for now than complete mod compatibility, but an obvious and awesome goal.

Yes it is an awesome goal. Great to see it.

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