14 DAY TRIAL // OpenMW 0.30.0, an open source implementation of The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind game engine and functionality, has been released and packs quite a few changes and improvements.
OpenMW, or OpenMorrowind, is a project that aims to bring one of best role-playing games ever created into the open source world, but not by simple porting. The developers have been working really hard to get all textures, sounds, and other assets from the original title and use them with a new engine that should completely transform the user experience.
As you can imagine, the development is moving rather slowly and the challenges that have to be overcome are numerous. It will take a long time until the game reaches a stable version, but it's playable right now.
“The OpenMW team is proud to announce the release of version 0.30.0! This release includes ranged combat, and crime & punishment. OpenMW just got a whole lot shadier… Other new features include terrain threading, many fixes and improvements to save/load, and a laundry list of bug fixes,” reads the announcement on the official website.
A number of important changes have been added, as usual, although this update seems to be bigger than usual. For example, the character generation sequence can now be skipped, some items can be stolen without raising an alarm, Ranged Combat is finally available, the Sneaking Skill icon has been added, the Crime and Punishment system has been implemented, the trader gold handling is now done correctly, all NPCs in the area are now attacking the player when the player attacks one of them, and terrain threading has been added.
Also, correct GUI save/load progress bars have been implemented, the save game now also saves the weather state, quicksave, quickload, and autosave have been implemented, users can now delete saves, the bribe gold is now being placed into the NPCs inventory, and vertical axis navigation for flying and swimming creatures has been added.
A complete list of changes and new features can be found in the official announcement. Users must legally own and install the game before they can use OpenMW – as it is intended – to play Morrowind. You can download OpenMW 0.30.0 right now from Softpedia.
OpenMW aims to be a full-featured reimplementation of the Morrowind engine capable to work natively on all supported platforms and to support all existing content, including Tribunal, Bloodmoon, and all user-created mods.
Keep in mind that this is not a stable version and bugs might still appear.
