OpenMW

OpenMW is a free, open source^[2] and modern game engine which reimplements the one that runs the 2002 open-world RPG Morrowind.^[3]

OpenMW does not recreate game assets, such as art, textures, music, and other Bethesda copyrighted material. It is therefore necessary to own a copy of Morrowind to legally play the game with OpenMW.^[3] There are however existing free assets such as the OpenMW-Template project which gives game developers a working base for creation of their own game.^[4] Another project exists, OpenMW-Example-Suite is a free and DFSG compatible stand-alone game which will be used to demonstrate what OpenMW is capable of.^[5][6] It is also possible to operate the OpenMW-CS tool without the need for any third-party assets.

History

The first public release of OpenMW was version 0.1.0 in June 2008.^[7] The original developer was Nicolay Korslund, who left the project early on. At that point the leadership passed to Marc Zinnschlag, who remains project lead in 2016, with the latest version 0.4.0.^[8]

Rendering engine switch

OpenMW initially used Ogre3D for rendering. With the release of version 0.37.0 Ogre3D was replaced with OpenSceneGraph, due to concerns about the direction of future Ogre3D development.^[9] This switch brought with it significant performance improvements and fixed several long standing issues.^[10]

References