For example https://flarerpg.org I didnt follow it closer since years so, so cant tell about the current state. The homepage has some recent news entries though.
The Infinity Engine was used for Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment. It has an open source reimplementation called GemRB: https://gemrb.org/
I'm pretty far into a project to create a Typescript framework for turn and tile-based (think roguelikes) client/server games: https://github.com/chaos-framework. Mix of entity-component and event-driven design (inspired by Brian Bucklew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U03XXzcThGU and Thomas Biksup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGLJC5UY2o4, though looking now I'm surprised I landed on a similar but imo more robust event system as I was only looking at EC pattern at the time). Typescript means entity factories and their components can be fully written in the language rather than XML per the videos above, and people can for example distribute a package that is basically DnD5e or Pathfinder rulesets, custom world generators, or anything else to be plugged into a published game.
Typical Minecraft "infinite" world data structure, handles binding up event system to component listeners automatically, (will soon) handles serialization, listeners are async generators ala Redux Saga for neat inversion of control and advanced patterns as needed. It doesn't have any specific frontends or clients (APIs and react hooks+utils exist but not super advanced yet, and a small WebGL renderer + react component), it's more a collection of objects that recursively process state updates in response to a user input until it finishes (like a classic console roguelike), and produce a serialized stream of events clients of any kind can listen to, completely agnostic to how any client may choose to represent it, so you could easily make a DM interface vs an interface for players connected to the same server, but it's also not something like Unity that is an all-in-one engine that's ready to publish (unless a proper ecosystem gets fleshed out). It's been a joy to architect and program in, and excited to someday publish it and document it (I haven't updated the examples I've written for the new saga-based event system so it'll probably all be gibberish to an outsider still).
Not going to lie, my heart skipped a beat at the headline.. It's selfish but would hate for someone to publish something that covers a lot of the same ground. Sometimes I think to look around again and stop myself.
I am amazed at the longevity of the Morrowind IP. I still get occasional waves of nostalgia going back to playing the game when I was young. This was before the internet made it trivial to find out everything there was to know about a game. Brb...installing...
I went back recently to morrowind, I shouldn't have. It looked like someone threw mud in my eyes. I got sad about it and started to install the HD textures but it felt forced and I had this feeling like the time I opened my Christmas presents early and had to fake being surprised about all my new socks and sweaters.
I fell so hard for Morrowind and then Oblivion just wasn't engaging at all, felt like I never got anywhere, I certainly didn't get into any of the main quest like I would have liked.
But yeah the graphics are awful and enabling the expansions from day one causes you to suddenly be assassinated in the night when you are still a nobody. On a plus note if you survive and are determined you can use the paralytic effects of the assassin's daggers to win a really powerful sword from a depressed Orc, he wants to die a noble death in combat... Not sure getting paralyzed so that your opponent can drink gallons of Sujamma and smack you with Hulk strength into a wall counts as noble but hey we all have our quirks.
The addictive thing about Morrowind was clearly the stories we told ourselves. You knew the people who would get really hooked because they spent hours on that “what’s your name?” screen.
One of my favourite games of all time is Mafia 1 that was released the same year as Morrowind (2002) and similarly it has a big, lively open world and the 3D graphics were top-notch at that time. I revisit Mafia every few years and for some reason the graphics still amazes me - sure, the textures are low resolution and models are low poly, but the overall art direction is amazing, the colors, the city design, the lighting at night, everything just blends in perfectly and to me it's as immersive now as it was back then.
I am too young to have played Morrowind at its release date, so I am not biased by nostalgia. Honestly, with a couple graphics enhancing mods, it can still look beautiful today. Of course not the NPCs, but the artistic direction for the landscapes give it a timeless feel. Wandering though the wilderness, seeing Vivec city for the first time with its meteor, with a bit of good faith on your part to not set expectations too high, and you can still be surprised by this game...
That looked surprisingly usable. The main issue seems to be that the levels aren't designed for an isometric camera. OTOH, it would make the experience of a swing which clearly visibly connected but failed due to a bad 'attack roll' less jarring.
Thanks - not being familiar with OpenMW, but being very close from the Baldur's Gate license, this whole video and that final reference were all very confusing to me.
It's a joke, but I sometimes honestly wonder why no one has made a game based on OpenMW. Then I remember that making a game engine is no longer the bottleneck, as Unity and Unreal are essentially free.
and Godot is actually free, but all of these are very general purpose, there is a lot of value in very specific engines for specific types of games, and we may see more of that in the future I think.
I don't know why you got downvoted dead. I think it's an interesting point. I don't know if you're right, but it was an interesting premise to think about.
Certainly people have for a long time licensed engines made available as a side effect of the creation of a certain type of game to build further on what's been accomished, or to cash in by making derivative games. For example all the shooters made with the Quake engines, which no one would call general purpose. There's a few examples of reused RPG engines (e.g. Infinity Engine) and RTS engines, too. There's also plenty of toolkits dedicated to adventure games and visual novels.
I believen OpenMW is considering this as a goal, but the modding/level editing tools aren't there yet (they're still focused on getting morrowind support better for now)
The bottleneck is content, especially RPGs require a lot: Art, models, sounds, music, dialogs, story, gui, level design, etc. And everything in a consistent style otherwise it looks too cheap.
Multiplayer games require little content relative to play time. Single player do though and thus there are only very few open source ones.
I wonder why people haven’t made a stand-alone game using the creation kit. I assume it’s not allowed in the ToS. But aside from that there would be nothing stopping you from creating a game from scratch with your own data files, right?
Check out The Forgotten City. The original version was a Skyrim mod, but was remade as a commercial game in Unreal Engine. The author prototyped with multiple engines and found Unreal was the most productive for them.
I was building towards it a while ago. [0] There were a few stability regressions in the editor that made it too painful to continue.
I found that even with the simple set of features I was really pushing some of the limits of the scripting system, (there's a reason I referred to the forge as "the bane of my existence"), and some of the things I really wanted to do like generating new items from scratch weren't entirely possible.
But as an engine, OpenMW is actually one of the nicer experiences I've had.
(Note on building towards - Items and other objects were slowly being replaced, with the intention to eventually be able to start from scratch, but sourcing art was the hardest part, so starting with a total transformation seemed wisest.)
Somewhat related: if you subscribe to Amazon Prime, the follow up to Morrowind, Oblivion, is available to claim during the month of April: https://gaming.amazon.com (GOG key)
39 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 77.3 ms ] threadTypical Minecraft "infinite" world data structure, handles binding up event system to component listeners automatically, (will soon) handles serialization, listeners are async generators ala Redux Saga for neat inversion of control and advanced patterns as needed. It doesn't have any specific frontends or clients (APIs and react hooks+utils exist but not super advanced yet, and a small WebGL renderer + react component), it's more a collection of objects that recursively process state updates in response to a user input until it finishes (like a classic console roguelike), and produce a serialized stream of events clients of any kind can listen to, completely agnostic to how any client may choose to represent it, so you could easily make a DM interface vs an interface for players connected to the same server, but it's also not something like Unity that is an all-in-one engine that's ready to publish (unless a proper ecosystem gets fleshed out). It's been a joy to architect and program in, and excited to someday publish it and document it (I haven't updated the examples I've written for the new saga-based event system so it'll probably all be gibberish to an outsider still).
Not going to lie, my heart skipped a beat at the headline.. It's selfish but would hate for someone to publish something that covers a lot of the same ground. Sometimes I think to look around again and stop myself.
unity is commercial production tier
Going back and seeing it now, it looks like nothing special at all, but for the time I remember it being a huge leap forward graphically.
But yeah the graphics are awful and enabling the expansions from day one causes you to suddenly be assassinated in the night when you are still a nobody. On a plus note if you survive and are determined you can use the paralytic effects of the assassin's daggers to win a really powerful sword from a depressed Orc, he wants to die a noble death in combat... Not sure getting paralyzed so that your opponent can drink gallons of Sujamma and smack you with Hulk strength into a wall counts as noble but hey we all have our quirks.
The addictive thing about Morrowind was clearly the stories we told ourselves. You knew the people who would get really hooked because they spent hours on that “what’s your name?” screen.
So 2040.
Certainly people have for a long time licensed engines made available as a side effect of the creation of a certain type of game to build further on what's been accomished, or to cash in by making derivative games. For example all the shooters made with the Quake engines, which no one would call general purpose. There's a few examples of reused RPG engines (e.g. Infinity Engine) and RTS engines, too. There's also plenty of toolkits dedicated to adventure games and visual novels.
Arguing growth is possible is not outrageous.
Multiplayer games require little content relative to play time. Single player do though and thus there are only very few open source ones.
I found that even with the simple set of features I was really pushing some of the limits of the scripting system, (there's a reason I referred to the forge as "the bane of my existence"), and some of the things I really wanted to do like generating new items from scratch weren't entirely possible.
But as an engine, OpenMW is actually one of the nicer experiences I've had.
(Note on building towards - Items and other objects were slowly being replaced, with the intention to eventually be able to start from scratch, but sourcing art was the hardest part, so starting with a total transformation seemed wisest.)
[0] https://morromod.netlify.app/frontier/
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/233860/Kenshi/
However, looking at the video on the OpenMW site, it does look perspective.
I think they just meant top down 3rd person.