Re: Omega Game

[90taobri@WAVE.SCAR.UTORONTO.CA (Brian Tao)]

The following revelation escaped System Administrator's lips:
> 
> I wonder why it is, that of all the discussions about games I never hear the
> name 'Omega' by Origin mentioned.  I bought this one a couple of years ago
> and thought it was going to be a HUGE success.

    I bought it a few months after it came out for the GS and I thought
it would be a popular game as well.  I even started up a special message
base and transfer area on one of the local BBS's strictly for Omega
discussion.  The game never seemed to catch on though.

> The entire program is very well written, with nice graphics and painful
> attention to detail.  Documentation was impressive.

    The documentation was nice, but I can't say the rest of the game was
really up to par with a good GS game.  Origin had to stick with the
lowest common denominator when designing the graphics since the game ran
on so many computers.  I played the IBM version and it looks (and
sounds) exactly the same as the GS version.  You were even limited to
8-character filenames when saving tanks!  I don't mind multi-platform
games, but at least optimize the game for each computer type!

    Running simulations on a standard 2.8 MHz GS (that's all I had at
the time) was excruciatingly slow.  I ended up transferring tanks to the
386/25 at school and running tournaments there.  I'll bet Origin didn't
do much code optimization for the GS Omega.

> Origin Software ran an 'Omega Tournament BBS' where you could upload
> your latest designs for entry in the tournament, or friends could do
> this privately or through a common bbs.

    I called their BBS a couple of times and downloaded some tanks of
past champions, but it would have been way too expensive to keep calling
day after day had I entered in the tournament.

> I wonder if it is still available.  Maybe I can stir up some new interest.
> If anybody does have this game and would like to 'mix it up' with some of
> my bad-ass tanks then e-mail me.

    Maybe the timing was all wrong.  Multi-player network/modem games
are getting popular now.  An updated version of Omega would be nice. 
Knowing Origin, however, it will be for MS-DOS only and require a 486
with 4 megs of RAM and 25 megs of hard drive space...

--
== Real name: Brian Tao (Dept. of Exobiology, University of Toronto)
== Preferred: taob@r-node.pci.on.ca (no mail over 15K please!!!)
== Free Plug: =MuGS 2.0=, the only   """"""""""""""""""""""""""
==            Internet mail reader for the Apple IIGS, coming soon!