OpenMW 0.49.0 Released!

After almost 3 years of development, we’re thrilled to release OpenMW version 0.49.0—our largest and most ambitious update yet!

This new release brings a hefty number of additions to our Lua scripting API, further polish to every single area of the engine—animations and lighting in particular—and it is the first one that goes beyond Morrowind! Be sure to read below for the full list of changes.

Known Issues

• On macOS, launching OpenMW from OpenMW-CS requires ‘OpenMW.app’ and ‘OpenMW-CS.app’ to be siblings
• [#7511] On Windows, a freeze may be reported if engine startup takes too long; ignoring the message is usually harmless as it should eventually disappear, but if it doesn't, share the freeze dump with us
• [#8012] Combat music does not start during pause (e.g., during the dialogue that is scripted to start combat)
• [#8233] Hardware antialiasing may cause driver timeouts on AMD GPUs of the RX 6000 and 7000 series; this is a driver bug AMD is yet to address
• [#8345] OpenMW-CS might crash randomly on Linux and macOS during global search or saving; this is possibly a bug in Qt 6
• [#8464] Shader rendering is tinted red on Apple Silicon; enable per-pixel lighting to prevent that

Removed Features

• [#6624] Support for pre-0.45.0 saved games. Saves made in 0.45.0 up to 0.49.0 RC remain compatible. Use 0.48.0 to convert older saves
• [#7394] Virtual filesystem case-sensitivity support
• [#7720] Broken 360° screenshot support
• [#8214] Script blacklisting used in the --script-all option and OpenMW-CS script verifier, which served no purpose

AI and Pathfinding

Fixes

• [#2623] Actors prioritise Bound and Summon spells more
• [#4207] Actors prioritise healing spells and potions much less
• [#5065] Actors no longer attempt pathfinding while playing scripted animations
• [#5129] Actors back up smoother during ranged combat
• [#5413] Actors don’t yell taunts when engaging in combat against new allies of their current enemies
• [#5755] Friendly hit counter doesn't increment during combat and resets after it
• [#6313] High Fight rating allies no longer become hostile when the player has multiple allies
• [#6574] Navmeshes are no longer generated for very distant exterior cells, preventing a crash
• [#6932] Actors will no longer give preference to unreachable/invisible enemies in combat
• [#6964] Failed path smoothing can no longer cause the path to be rejected
• [#7064] Assaulted actors will realise they were assaulted even if they didn't detect the player
• [#7450] Improved obstacle evasion: more movement directions are used depending on the actor's animations
• [#7548] Actors can open doors teleported from a different cell
• [#7604] Creatures can properly use potions
• [#7639] Weapons are now considered useless if the actor's relevant skill is 0
• [#7646] Ranged attacks against allies make them hostile immediately
• [#7646] Magical attacks no longer prompt vocal friendly fire responses
• [#7647] Wandering interrupted by a greeting properly resumes
• [#7661] AI package assignments interrupt combat
• [#7685] Increased follow package activation distance to match Morrowind
• [#7723] Legalised assault and murder of vampires and werewolves
• [#7724] Guards attack NPC werewolves
• [#7758] Water-walking actors now properly consider their ability when pathfinding over water
• [#7959] NPC in-world book activations are handled as player book activations
• [#8132] Actors no longer face the player for greetings they won't deliver
• Absorb Skill/Attribute effects, like Drain and Damage effects, are no longer used when the relevant stat is zero and are prioritised based on how important the relevant stat is
• Alternate bound weapon spells aren't cast if a bound weapon is already in use
• Bound weapon spell priority takes weapon skill and ammunition into account
• Combat taunts are suppressed for On Self and On Touch spellcasting
• Escort packages terminate immediately when no destination is provided
• Wander AI properly supports crossing cell boundaries
• Weapon enchantments no longer receive spell priority multipliers when rated as weapons

Animations

New Features

• [#6009] Animation blending: optional, moddable animation transition smoothing for both NIF and Collada files
• [#6823] Animation layering support for Collada files (previously erroneously attributed to 0.48.0)

Fixes

• [#4127] Segments of attack wind-up and release are played continuously and are thus less choppy
• [#4610] Weapons can no longer be unequipped during an attack, which ensures bound weapons appear after spellcasting animation ends
• [#4742] Finished scripted animations no longer cause the same animations played afterwards as non-scripted animations to get stuck
• [#4743] Scripted animations that can't loop are no longer automatically disabled
• [#4822] Individual NPC body parts can have their own animations
• [#5062] Accumulated animation movement is no longer discarded in favour of manual movement
  This makes movement match Morrowind more closely, e.g. third-person camera sways for beast race characters
• [#5066] Playing an ongoing scripted animation group with a script no longer restarts it
• [#5371] Animations are no longer enabled for x prefix NIF files without their own x prefix NIF files when they are used as models
• [#6723] Collada files support head tracking and turn to movement direction and smooth movement options
• [#6992] Crossbow reloading animation is played on the entire body again
• [#6993] Shooting the last round of ammunition is no longer interrupted abruptly
• [#7042] Unexpected hit triggers are no longer processed – this stops some weapon animations from applying damage multiple times
• [#7611] Manual movement mode is no longer stuck after turning or jumping – this prevents idle sliding
• [#7636] Scripted animations persist through view mode changes
• [#7637] Scripted animations always restrict movement
• [#7641] Scripted animation loop count matches Morrowind
• [#7886] Ready Weapon transitions can reuse the animation
• [#7980] Paralysed actors no longer play blinking and talking animations
• [#8191] Re-enabled sheathed melee weapon animations
• [#8223] Movement takes priority over weapon animations for non-bipedal actors, allowing them to react to player movement when they're trying to attack
• [#8237] Spellcasting stance transitions are disabled again for non-bipedal actors (for now)
• Recoil/reloading weapon animation choice matches Morrowind

Configuration and VFS

Fixes

• [#6085] Replaced the remaining usage of Boost filesystem library with C++ standard filesystem library
• [[#6876](https://gitlab.com/OpenMW/openmw/-/issue...

OpenMW 0.49.0 RC9

These RC builds are outdated!
We do not provide support for outdated RC builds!

Visit the main Releases page to find the most recent RC build or corresponding stable release.

Windows 10 or newer is required to run the Windows build.

If you're running an AMD GPU and get frequent freezes (driver timeouts), disable antialiasing in the launcher. AMD is aware of the issue and is working on fixing it.

If you're running an Intel GPU and the game's visuals often appear to freeze, try to check if it still happens with the latest available driver for your GPU and downgrade the driver if it does. This also appears to be a driver-side regression.

Finally, we received many reports on Nvidia Windows driver crashes with unclear reason or connection. This is also suspected to be a vendor-side regression associated with post-50 series drivers, but we do not currently have a recommendation on how to deal with those other than to provide us with more crash dumps and openmw.log files.

Changes since RC8:

• [#8039] Fixed movement accumulation for actors that use Collada models on some builds compiled under LLVM
• [#8558] OpenMW-Lua: Light record color is now exposed as util.color rather than as a number
• [#8559] ESSImporter: Fixed selected spell/enchanted item and stolen item counter conversion
• [#8563] Improved handling of content files that are defined in the non-user version of openmw.cfg
• [#8567] Token replacement and relative paths work properly when the paths are passed through CLI
• Linux: Improved application detection for default shortcuts
• macOS: Packages now use Qt 6 like the other systems
• macOS: Reintroduced an Intel package
• Windows: Improved crash catcher error reporting in situations when crash dump creation fails

OpenMW 0.49.0 RC8

These RC builds are outdated!
We do not provide support for outdated RC builds!

Visit the main Releases page to find the most recent RC build or corresponding stable release.

Windows 10 or newer is required to run the Windows build.

If you're running an AMD GPU and get frequent freezes (driver timeouts), disable antialiasing in the launcher. AMD is aware of the issue and is working on fixing it.

If you're running an Intel GPU and the game's visuals often appear to freeze, try to check if it still happens with the latest available driver for your GPU and downgrade the driver if it does. This also appears to be a driver-side regression.

Finally, we received many reports on Nvidia Windows driver crashes with unclear reason or connection. This is also suspected to be a vendor-side regression associated with post-50 series drivers, but we do not currently have a recommendation on how to deal with those other than to provide us with more crash dumps and openmw.log files.

Changes since RC7:

• [#8165] OpenMW-Lua: For Lua-triggered object activation, Lua activation handler takes priority over mwscript activation inhibition
• [#8445] Launcher: Fixed a rare crash on exit due to start cell list reloading being interrupted
• [#8465] macOS: Hardware antialiasing no longer breaks rendering
• [#8469] OpenMW-Lua: Cell change events are no longer triggered when the player is teleported within a cell
• [#8478] Launcher: Various startup, content list loading and mass plugin toggling optimisations
• [#8499] Linux: Generic package launch scripts now support whitespace in the path to OpenMW
• [#8503] OpenMW-Lua: To prevent rendering deadlocks, camera, time scale and animation speed bindings no longer accept infinities and NaN as input
• [#8514] AMD: Fixed broken shadows when they are enabled globally but need to be disabled (e.g. in interiors) on some hardware
• [#8516] OpenMW-Lua: Fixed the order of UI layer insertions if they happened during the same frame
• [#8532] Console search works properly and can no longer crash if the current marked occurrence includes the first character of the history
• [#8541] OpenMW-Lua: util.color:asHex properly converts color channel values lower than 16
• OpenMW-Lua: Animation API is no longer accessible in menu and global contexts
• OpenMW-Lua: self:isActive binding properly returns false when the object is inactive
• Fixed undefined behaviour in the linear bloom shader that reportedly led to problems on Android
• Post-processing shaders can properly request a higher minimum GLSL version on systems that don't support UBO rendering, like macOS
• Weapon/shield attachment/detachment can once again happen at the very beginning of the (un)equipment animation

OpenMW 0.49.0 RC7

These RC builds are outdated!
We do not provide support for outdated RC builds!

Visit the main Releases page to find the most recent RC build or corresponding stable release.

Windows 10 or newer is required to run the Windows build.

If you're running an AMD GPU and you get frequent freezes (driver timeouts), disable antialiasing in the launcher. AMD is aware of the issue and is working on fixing it.

Changes since RC6:

• [#8273] Pathfinding message log level is now controlled by OPENMW_RECAST_MAX_LOG_LEVEL environment variable and is raised to Error by default
• [#8378] Fixed non-breaking space glyph rendering issues in dialogue and books: this further improves Korean bitmap font support
• [#8380] OpenMW-Lua: Lua-opened service menus no longer assume they're opened from dialogue: this prevents "crashes" when they're closed automatically on assertion-enabled builds
• [#8405] Launcher: Major content initialisation optimisations: this eliminates freezes during startup for very large content lists
• [#8425] Optimised plugin dependency resolution: this fixes a freeze when a single plugin has many dependencies during initial loading
• [#8426] Launcher: Data directory selection dialog once again preserves the last directory it was in
• [#8439] Fixed crashes when a creature in the scene doesn't have a defined model, e.g. when it fades out at the edge of actor processing range
• [#8439] Fixed loading of saves that contain inventory items with non-existent enchantments
• [#8441] Main menu video is paused when the window is minimised to prevent a freeze upon reopening
• [#8462] macOS: Fixed crashes when the window is resized or a setting is tweaked in-game
• OpenMW-Lua: TargetPolygonNotFound pathfinding status is properly enumerated
• OpenMW-Lua: victim awareness option is properly supported in crime events
• Fixed a crash when shaders required to render ripples are unavailable or cannot be compiled
• Fixed graphic herbalism support for containers that only contain unresolved levelled items and containers that use skinned models
• Minimum point light radius has been raised to 16 to match Morrowind and prevent zero radius lights from turning very bright when classic falloff is enabled
• Pathfinding debug mesh write errors (e.g. when the files are written to an inaccessible location) can no longer cause a deadlock
• Restored --export-fonts command line option useful for testing bitmap font loading
• TES4 format quest record script variable subrecords are ignored: this allows esmtool to parse Fallout 3 DLC ESMs
• Windows: Config and data path detection errors are now reported
• Windows: Freeze catcher message has been revised and will disappear quicker if the application unfreezes

OpenMW 0.49.0 RC6

These RC builds are outdated!
We do not provide support for outdated RC builds!

Visit the main Releases page to find the most recent RC build or corresponding stable release.

Windows 10 or newer is required to run the Windows build.

Changes since RC5:

• [#7531] Added more missing bitmap font glyph substitutions and removed custom substitutions for characters that are already defined by the fonts
• [#8311] Fixed more potential breakage when an object removed by Lua cannot be properly unloaded, this time in object paging
• [#8317] Magic effect removal in Lua is now a delayed action to prevent it from removing the VFX when they are being rendered (this caused crashes)
• [#8358] Automove is no longer automatically disabled when the player cannot move
• [#8364] Resizing the dialogue window can no longer break the scrollbar and make it crash the game upon use
• [#8365] Actions registered in Lua menu context persist through the entire session
• [#8370] Fixed various memory corruption issues when some bindings are used in coroutines
• [#8378] Support for unofficial Korean fonts: bitmap font kerning is now set up properly and it is now legal for fonts to only provide partial texture data
• [#8387] Fixed invalid memory access when the last remaining saved game is deleted for a character
• [#8389] GetSoundPlaying mwscript function no longer requires a reference to work (it will always return 0)
• LLVM 19.1.0 toolset support
• Medium and strong weapon recoil/reloading animations play properly again
• Starting or loading the game through Lua automatically hides the main menu

OpenMW 0.49.0 RC5

These RC builds are outdated!
We do not provide support for outdated RC builds!

Visit the main Releases page to find the most recent RC build or corresponding stable release.

Windows 10 or newer is required to run the Windows build.

Changes since RC4:

• [#8311] Fixed a crash when an object removed by Lua cannot be properly unloaded; this could happen during saved game loading
• [#8344] Fixed a potential crash when pathgrid geometry is generated but all pathgrid edges are invalid
• [#8346] Fixed a crash when a Lua script attempts to start a new game
• [#8347] Fixed a crash when levelled creature list record creatures binding is used
• [#8354] Editor: Improved the robustness of screen detection on multi-monitor setups; it will never fail — well, as long as you do have a display
• Third-party builds built against SDL2-compat will no longer suffer from unhandled SDL3 display/window event warning spam
• ShowSceneGraph (SSG) command no longer complains about billboard callback (billboard node representation) presence in serialised objects

OpenMW 0.49.0 RC4

These RC builds are outdated!
We do not provide support for outdated RC builds!

Visit the main Releases page to find the most recent RC build or corresponding stable release.

Windows 10 or newer is required to run the Windows build.

Changes since RC3:

• [#7273] Precipitation occlusion should no longer require sky blending to be enabled to work as intended
• [#8280] Attacks evaluated as successful will no longer hit if the target is out of reach when the attack is applied
• Loading progress bar is properly updated for TES4 format files
• Various stereo/multiview setup fixes to allow 0.49.0 and updated OpenMW-VR to use the same shaders: shadow maps are shared between views while sky blending, soft and distortion shader effects and post-processing account for multiple views better

OpenMW 0.49.0 RC3

These RC builds are outdated!
We do not provide support for outdated RC builds!

Visit the main Releases page to find the most recent RC build or corresponding stable release.

Windows 10 or newer is required to run the Windows build.

Changes since RC2:

• [#7731] Fixed default sound output device tracking sometimes malfunctioning under PulseAudio backend and causing audio stuttering — notably on Steam Deck
• [#8286] The launcher will no longer overwrite openmw.cfg if the original file already has all the settings it was going to write (new in 0.49.0)
• [#8287] The launcher no longer has unintuitive special handling for commas in setting values when preserving their comments (new in 0.49.0)
• [#8295] Fixed a crash when the post-processing chain refers to an existing shader file in a different case (0.48.0 issue)
• [#8295] Fixed a crash when the post-processing chain refers to an existing shader file nested into a subdirectory of the shaders directory (0.48.0 issue)
• [#8299] Editor: Fixed a crash when terrain is smoothed at a border with undefined cell (0.46.0-0.48.0 issue)
• [#8300] Flawed weapon type validation has been corrected to allow custom ammunition records to be created through Lua
• Windows build now includes bsatool, esmtool and niftest utilities
• When the relevant setting is enabled, Recast meshes are exported before navmeshes are generated to make debugging navmesh generation crashes easier

OpenMW 0.49.0 RC2

These RC builds are outdated!
We do not provide support for outdated RC builds!

Visit the main Releases page to find the most recent RC build or corresponding stable release.

Windows 10 or newer is required to run the Windows build.
Linux binary was reuploaded multiple times:

• on January 8 to use Qt6, multithreaded Bullet and the latest revision of our OpenSceneGraph fork
• on January 10 to include libraries missing on some systems: libb2, libmd, libcap, libbsd and libzstd
• on January 12 to replace libexpat with a version dependent on glibc 2.35 and fix Ubuntu 22.04 compatibility

Fixes since RC1:

• Localized On/Off buttons in the in-game settings will no longer reset to GMST lines when clicked.

OpenMW 0.49.0 RC1

These RC builds are outdated!
We do not provide support for outdated RC builds!

Visit the main Releases page to find the most recent RC build or corresponding stable release.