News From Australian Game Developers

Silencer

Silencer

Night Watchman
Staff member
Admin
The team responsible for the Omega Syndrome project, a retro-pulp themed cRPG, have posted an update a few days ago on their website.<blockquote>
The Omega Syndrome Updated To Ver 3.1!

The Hard RPG!
The Hard RPG rule is a big change for The Omega Syndrome and you won't find it enforced in similar RPGs. In the Hard RPG you can save your game at any time by pressing F6. However you are only given one slot to save in, so there are no reloads or go backs if you make a mistake. Also if your character is killed your save game will be invalidated and you'll have to create a new character and start again. </blockquote>So, play, but don't let those pesky aliens kill you. Or something. Read the whole update on their site.

Link: Omega Syndrome
 
That sounds brave. Hopefully this feature will fit the game. Nothing annoys me more than having to play through the same stuff again and again. The game should be flexible enough to choose an entirely different path when you have to start over.
 
It was already done before and it's a good idea but in games with little to no roleplay at all it's actually just an annoying feature. I hope that this is not the case with Omega Syndrome.
 
Can you name some examples? I know that's pretty much the standard for roguelikes, and that Diablo 2 had such option. What else is out there?

Anyway, dying is an unpleasant prospect in many games, more so if the death is irrevocable. The only way I wouldn't be pissed off and could accept my character's end would be if it were some great roleplaying experience.
Diablo 2 was hardly that, though, and I couldn't stand the somewhat random nature of deaths in adom (yes, I was a save scummer, and a bad player to boot).

I'm quite interested to see how this turns out.
 
Wex said:
Can you name some examples? I know that's pretty much the standard for roguelikes, and that Diablo 2 had such option. What else is out there?
Click to expand...

The Temple of Elemental Evil also : I may be wrong but I think that there's a mod in which if your party dies then it's game over, you have to start a new game and there are automatic saves only.
 
Hi Everyone,

This is the actual news post I sent to Silencer. You'll probably notice its a lot larger (I got the Hard RPG update done before he had time to post it).

http://www.ausgamedev.com/news_0046.html


To answer your question about multipathing. Yes you can multipath quite easily. Also with the updates mentioned in the link above you can use your speech skills to bypass many quests.

To get an idea of what you can do, see how many ways you can get past the Seargent guarding the blast doors at Gamma 15.
 
The random deaths were what gave NetHack its charm, but that doesn't mean I like them in games with a narrative.

There's a difference between dying half-way through a linear, mostly randomly generated dungeon crawler and dying half-way through a complex full-fledged RPG while doing an unimportant side-quest.

With the latter kind, I prefer being able to load up a recent savegame and try again.

Same with Diablo, btw. Those deaths weren't funny, they were frustrating. You'd either die because you got run over by a mob you couldn't possibly have killed, or you'd die because you faced a boss monster so much stronger you couldn't possibly have killed it either. The only way to "hardcore" it is to hang around in the low-level areas until you got the uber gear to take on the next crowd with ease -- and that's where it boils down to even more mindless grind.

EDIT: I'm all for an optional hardcore mode, though. As long as its not a requirement for having a rewarding game experience...
 
As much as I love the ability to play hardcore Ashmo's anology is perfect. They should make it an option to turn on and off at least if its a long, multi-pathed RPG as opposed to a randomly generated one you can play in short parts.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
Davaris, how will you prevent this feature killing the fun factor of the game? What if I get killed near the end of the game a few times? Won't I get frustrated? Would an inclusion of a checkpoint aka autosave improve or deteriorate the whole concept?

Ashmo said:
EDIT: I'm all for an optional hardcore mode, though. As long as its not a requirement for having a rewarding game experience...
Click to expand...
Heh, every game has "an optional hardcore mode"... If you can force yourself not to reload when you fall. 8)

Hmm. Hardcore in diablo didn't give any advantage over playing a regular character. (All right, the player would take a more careful approach, and would level more before venturing forth, but hardcore is not the required requirement for such style) It is a weird thought that it is a purely roleplaying option, given that no munchkin player would usually use it. Got me thinking.
Hmm, it was also a matter of prestige, people would play hardcore to prove that they can. Oh, well.
 
Davaris, how will you prevent this feature killing the fun factor of the game? What if I get killed near the end of the game a few times? Won't I get frustrated? Would an inclusion of a checkpoint aka autosave improve or deteriorate the whole concept?
Click to expand...

What I wanted to do was play fair with the player. So if you get yourself killed, you'll blame yourself rather than a "rigged game". So there are no instant kill death traps. Well there are a couple but you'll know them when you see them. Trust me. :) Also the game is multipath, so you don't have to go the same way to finish it.


Heh, every game has "an optional hardcore mode"... If you can force yourself not to reload when you fall.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

As much as I love the ability to play hardcore Ashmo's anology is perfect. They should make it an option to turn on and off at least if its a long, multi-pathed RPG as opposed to a randomly generated one you can play in short parts.
Click to expand...

I don't think its possible to create a truly random RPG, as they are organic. However it is possible to make a random dungeon crawler.

As for the easy option I won't do this as long as I have the Hard RPG label on it. With the easy option, it wouldn't be a Hard RPG anymore, it would be an RPG with a hard option.


These are some of the things I wanted to address with the Hard RPG rule:

1) Move the focus away from power gaming and dungeon crawling and bring it back to role playing. So instead of playing the game to beat it, you play *with* the game and see what happens to the characters you invent.

2) To me the enjoyment of games come from skill and the element of chance. Imagine if a sporting team was able to reload their games until they reached the finals and eventually won? Would anyone be interested in watching them or care if they won?

3) I want the player to feel strong emotions when they play my game, so they'll be drawn into the world I've created. I think making them risk something is a good way to do it.
 
Hi there, I'm a long-time lurker at NMA, and I've recently dl'ed and played some of the Omega Syndrome.

I really like the game, but I have a major gripe that's killing what would otherwise be an interesting gaming experience (and a potential purchase).

The game crashes infrequently, but when it does crash, my savegame is subsequently 'invalidated' - which incredibly frustrating, given the already hard nature of the game.

Is there a solution/workaround for this? Am I the only Omega Syndrome player experiencing this? Are there incompatibilities I should be aware of?

For the record, I'm running a Win2k SP4 box, 3ghz Pentium, Geforce 6600 with 1024mb RAM.
 
Pip_dude said:
The game crashes infrequently, but when it does crash, my savegame is subsequently 'invalidated' - which incredibly frustrating, given the already hard nature of the game.
Click to expand...
it might have been done thisway to prevent players that just died to force-close the program (making it crash) in the hope that their save will leave them alive.

(just a hunch)
 
Is there a solution/workaround for this? Am I the only Omega Syndrome player experiencing this? Are there incompatibilities I should be aware of?

For the record, I'm running a Win2k SP4 box, 3ghz Pentium, Geforce 6600 with 1024mb RAM.
Click to expand...


Hi Pip_dude. Yes there are issues with the third party copy protection system, the third party engine (PopCap) I'm using and Win2000. I thought I had resolved this issue several months ago when I adjusted the settings on the copy protection system for a player who was experiencing similar problems. So what I'll do is get rid of the delete character thing on a crash and make an announcement when its online in 24 hours.

Also if you contact me at my website I'll make a special executable to see if I can get rid of those crashes on your machine.


it might have been done thisway to prevent players that just died to force-close the program (making it crash) in the hope that their save will leave them alive.
Click to expand...


Yes you're correct SuAside. In this case I went too far.


EDIT:

I went through the code last night and found the problem. It was not the Win2000 conflict (I'm pretty sure that problem is in the past). It was a bug I introduced when I added the Hard RPG rule. Sorry about that everyone. Anyway the latest version is online and you can get it here:

http://www.ausgamedev.com/news.html
 
That system should work if game has many random stuff, otherwise you will get biring very quick. Sometime you need risk to check some new ways, what it will look whan you olways will be careful? Simple you dont learn all game possibilities. Mostly in games i try everything on everything and load again.
 
Just a minor announcement:
If you download the latest version and you have a prevoius version installed. Install the new version to another directory. One of my players alerted me to a bug yesterday that is caused by an old file not being overwritten by the latest installer. This will be fixed on the next update.

In case you're interested, the next update will have close to Fallout quality animations for the humanoids. My only problem is reducing them to an acceptable size. At the moment they are 20 Mb per creature which is way too high.

>Mostly in games i try everything on everything and load again.

This is the habit I am encouraging players to break, because I think it flattens the experience.
 
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