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VOOZH | about |
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VOOZH | about |
A.: Hey, anonymous interviewer! I’m neither a cat nor a month, but a rather fortunate bird — if you believe some historians’ hypothesis about my nickname’s origin. In my day-to-day life, I prefer to take the form of a German electrical engineer doing his PhD in the field of battery technology. Thanks for reminding me that I still was an undergraduate when I joined the project in early 2016, technically transforming from long-time lurker to, well, bird.
J.: Hello there! I enjoy the company of cats but like my fine friend Atahualpa I also am not a month. I also may not always be that hostile. When I’m not poking around in OpenMW-related things I do enjoy cycling, nature hiking, and playing music. I started hanging out in the OpenMW IRC channel back in 2013 or so and have just been hanging out ever since.
J.: I remember learning about OpenMW, and of course part of that first exposure was a classic release video. I forget which was the first video I saw, but what did stay with me was the style — and I hope we’re staying true to it with our work.
A.: While we might be the somewhat dynamic video duo today, we are standing on the shoulders of giants: Star-Demon, who started the whole concept of presenting OpenMW’s progress in video format over twelve years ago for version 0.6.0, and the brilliant WeirdSexy, whose great voice and even greater love for spears have been ingrained in our collective memory.
(more…)Only for a little while. My previous moniker was CMTuesday, or was it?
I first heard of OpenMW in late 2015, around the release of 0.37.0. The MrOpenMW Release Commentaries hadn’t caught up by that point, but the FAQ video successfully piqued my interest in a clean-room reverse engineered engine that could run Morrowind better than the original. I had bounced off of Morrowind in my first attempts to play it, but after the release of Skyrim ignited my interest in The Elder Scrolls like never before, I was ready to try it again in this new engine. And believe it or not, that was the first time I finished Morrowind’s main quest.
It was already a very playable experience in OpenMW even then, but there were some minor visual and UI hiccups along the way – these I documented and submitted as bug reports, which were promptly fixed by scrawl, who was still working like a machine after moving the engine from OGRE to OSG for 0.37.0. Seeing that level of responsiveness encouraged me, and thanks to the ease of being able to download a fixed build the next day, the testing process was in a sense more satisfying than if I had just played the game and moved on. Of course I played some more, and noticed some more oddities, and opened more issues on the tracker. And I basically never stopped.
It’s news to me, but maybe I haven’t been let in on the joke! First and foremost my role in OpenMW has been as a tester, giving feedback to identify any bugs, issues, or features that will help to improve the user experience. I generally interact more within the OpenMW team than outside it – or to put it another way, if I’m pestering anyone, it’s the devs themselves. Of course, I do regularly wade over to the various Discord servers such as Morrowind Modding Community as well as the big projects like Tamriel Rebuilt to see what’s being worked on there, and occasionally I put in my two cents when certain topics like rendering performance are being discussed. That topic comes up fairly often with a game as CPU-intensive as Morrowind, and mods are constantly hitting that performance ceiling. I don’t care to do any preaching or propaganda for more users to pick up OpenMW, because as far as I’m concerned the engine speaks for itself with each new version that’s released. It’s good enough for me to know that the OpenMW team itself is in great shape, with a community Discord server that’s friendly and focused on the business at hand.
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