Experience stored while sneaking outside of any creature's range is not added when you enter their range

Issue Description

In Morrowind.exe, experience towards your Sneak skill is only received when you sneak inside a 500 units range around any creature/NPC's (to me more precise, the radius is defined by the GMST parameter fSneakUseDist, which is 500 by default). However, while you are sneaking successfully without being in range of anything, the game still saves the time you spend sneaking, and once you step into the range of a target (without being detected, of course), you will receive experience as if you had been sneaking near a valid target the whole time. This explains why the sneak skill often barely increases at all for prolonged amounts of time, and then suddenly jumps up an entire level in an instant. This allows you to naturally level up you Sneak skill with relative ease.

In OpenMW, the time you spend sneaking successfully without being in range of anything is not saved, and you do not receive the experience once you enter the range of a target. Only the time spent inside a creature/NPC's range is taken into account for sneak experience. Which makes leveling this skill a lot more tedious than in Morrowind.exe, requiring you to spend lots of time in a target's range without being detected or to use trainers' services.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Find Pemenie north of Caldera, while she is still blinded by her Boots of Blinding Speed. You can get there directly by typing "coe -4 3" in the console, and then take the road that goes northwest from you.
  2. You can disable other creatures around you like cliff racers to make sure they won't parasite the reproduction.
  3. Sneak successfully out of her range (500 units by default) for something like 20-30 seconds. You can see your distance from her by typing "pemenie->getdistance player" in the console.
  4. Enter her range while still sneaking successfully. On Morrowind.exe, you instantly gain something like 20-30 experience points in the sneak skill. On OpenMW, you gain nothing and only start to gain sneak experience once you go in her range.

System Information

  • OpenMW Version:

    0.52.0 (development build)

  • Operating System & Version: Windows 11

  • Morrowind Version:

    Retail CD

  • Language:

    French

  • Addons:

    Tribunal, Bloodmoon

Mods

  • Are you using mods? No
  • Are you using any shader mods? No
  • Does it happen in a clean vanilla install? Yes