Dungeons of Omaz (CMG contest entry)

[diordna]

http://diordna.silvernetwork.net/Omaz.sit

Blind game. Don't worry about the loading or quitting time, they'll both come eventually. I think.

[applekid]

I really liked the idea of this latest CMG contest. It's something I always thought about when I designed games. There's people that are handicapped in some way and most likely can't play the games we able-bodied people play. I always wondered how to create a game for someone that's blind. I haven't met anybody that was blind and a gamer, so I could never find out what they would want or need. Back to your game:

It was pretty impressive. No visual, just sound effects. It literally sent shivers down my spine! I'm going to have to try to beat the game. I got lost at one point. :sneaky:

[diordna]

If you need to, open the level files. They're readable with effort. Or lay out a grid on paper. You start in the upperleftmost corner of the map.

[Snof]

That's pretty cool. It's basically the same as the game I was thinking of making for that. The "lost in a dark maze" concept seemed the most obvious possibility of the challenge. I don't think I'm going to have time to make an entry, my family is about to move and we're quite busy packing everything in preparation.

It always seems to unexpectedly quit whenever it quits, not sure why.

Is there any purpose to the money you find? Just curious if you have plans for doing something with that or if it's just kind of random. Maybe you could make the chests have fake treasure, then the real treasure also be in a chest. Sort of like "Our princess is in another castle."

I love the dripping sound in the background. It would be neat to add other creepy sounds too.

I was thinking that maybe you could add some kind of extra challenge beyond just finding the keys and doors. Maybe each step you take you get more and more thirsty. And you can find sources of water in the dungeon. It would force the player to be more careful about knowing where they are. You could have a trickling water sound like a creek or something that gets louder the closer to the water you are. To avoid making it too hard make it so it would require extremely random wandering to cause a risk of dehydration death. You could add the sound of your breathing, the thirstier you get the worse you sound, with coughing when you're in danger of dying. Just an idea I had, and since I won't have time to make my own, I might as well share it with everyone :)


Devin

[Justin Brimm]

Very good work; a lot of fun to play. My game for the contest originally hinged on Apple's Speech Recognition, but that doesn't seem to work (at all, I can't even get the built in commands to work when I turn them on, and I know my microphone works), so I might just end up creating a program similar to yours. Although I hope to keep it as unique as possible.

Anyhow, Good luck.

[diordna]

Updated. Keith sent me a bug report. Nothing major if you haven't had any errors yet, but you should all get it.

It always seems to unexpectedly quit whenever it quits, not sure why.

Yeah, METAL sucks that way. *points ot obj-c book* In fact, it's not unexpected at all anymore.

Is there any purpose to the money you find? Just curious if you have plans for doing something with that or if it's just kind of random. Maybe you could make the chests have fake treasure, then the real treasure also be in a chest. Sort of like "Our princess is in another castle."

I just put it in there because I felt like there needed to be chests. I think that I'll keep score by a combination of how much money you get and how much time you take in your game, and keep a high score.

I love the dripping sound in the background. It would be neat to add other creepy sounds too.

I've been searching for more, like a rat squeak, but couldn't find any decent ones.

I was thinking that maybe you could add some kind of extra challenge beyond just finding the keys and doors. Maybe each step you take you get more and more thirsty. And you can find sources of water in the dungeon. It would force the player to be more careful about knowing where they are. You could have a trickling water sound like a creek or something that gets louder the closer to the water you are. To avoid making it too hard make it so it would require extremely random wandering to cause a risk of dehydration death. You could add the sound of your breathing, the thirstier you get the worse you sound, with coughing when you're in danger of dying. Just an idea I had, and since I won't have time to make my own, I might as well share it with everyone :)

No time to read over that whole thing now, but from skimming, it looks like a good idea. I may or may not get to it, since I'll be leaving for 2 weeks this Sunday. Yeah, I only get one week to finish this. Oh well.

[blobbo]

God I wish I was at home for this one. I'm a musician by profession, and have always wanted to make a musical game that you could play with your itunes library... It'd be tough, though. I'd have to gain a significant amount more of opengl knowledge...

[ThemsAllTook]

OpenGL? What does that have to do with audio programming?

Alex Diener

[diordna]

New build. Includes new level and introductory commentary.

http://diorna.silvernetwork.net/Omaz.sit

[blobbo]

Hrm, good point. Dunno. Actually, this WOULD be cool, because I wouldn't have to learn any graphics language. I could spend almost all of my time on logic. I may do this for UDG04!

[ThemsAllTook]

I'm posting this on Stephen's behalf:

I will be gone for the next two weeks, away from all forms of technology except for tools such as rocks and sticks. I just uploaded Dungeons of Omaz 0.3.2. In this version, I tweaked some sounds and took the loading time from about 12 seconds to almost instantly. My problem was that at the beginning, when I first typed the Five Arrays to Rule Them All, I was using much more memory than I actually needed - I had room for levels as big as 400x400, and the most I use in reality is 20x20. So now all that time that was spend making room for those arrays is given back to you to play the game with. It should be faster quitting too, but the Unexpectedly Quit Bug That Haunts All METAL Programmers shall remain, hewn into the living code of The Runtime.

If you know METAL and find a bug, then please try and fix it and upload it to your server. Especially those of you (read: Jake Leveto) who volunteered to do so. But I don't expect you to be committed to it. I just don't want to go down the drain because of a bug...

New build is at http://diordna.silvernetwork.net/Omaz.sit as usual. Enjoy your contest.

[eekaydee]

Whoa this game is crazy! I love it. I tried playing it now with my eyes closed...it's 2:09 AM by the way...and it's really scary. I kept expecting to hear a scream or something...:lol:. But with eyes closed it's too hard for me, I get lost very easily. When my eyes are open I can look at the keys on my keyboard and sort of visualize.