Omega: The author speaks.
Laurence R. Brothers
Gee, it's really fun to read about my game... It's been such a long
time that I really don't remember much about it... It almost sounds
as if it would be fun to play (:-)
A few comments and a general release to prospective omega hackers:
1) I don't maintain omega source. In fact I don't even have the source
anymore. Don't ask. Don't send me floppy disks to copy for you. If you
send me a check I'll tear it up if you imply that I should do something
for you, or cash it if it is just a thank-you. Don't send me suggestions,
patches, or bugfixes, because (let me repeat) I am not doing anything
to further develop the game. Don't expect me to reply to your mail.
2) There have been numerous versions released, mainly thanks to Nat
Brokaw who did all the MS-DOS work and also provided some bugfixes. I
haven't spoken to Nat for years, so I doubt trying to track him down
would work. I think the final released version was probably something
like 0.8, but it would have been extremely close to the 0.7x versions,
probably just with minor bugfixes.
3) I hereby release the source code to be modified and distributed by
anyone who wants to with the following provisos:
a) Keep all the original ownership attributions. Feel free to add your
own name and to identify the version history.
b) Do not under any circumstances charge money for your work or for
distributing the source code or binaries.
c) Oh yeah, remove my email address from the source code along with the
ancient request for bugfixes and suggestions.
4) Before you add more features, it would be nice to seal up the silly
ways to win quickly. The original intent of the game was to slowly build
up strength by going from dungeon/quest area to dungeon/quest area, not
to become an adept and then swoop down on them all. Possibly you might
consider adding additional low-level and/or mid-level quest areas. Possibly
more entrance criteria might be required before the adept challenge can
be started.
5) Have fun... A few random comments from what I remember about the game.
- Of course I knew all the features, but I never had much trouble
winning the game from an *honest* assessment of my real statistics,
without ever "cheating". It's quite possible, if you know what to
do. No, I'm not an olympic fencer, a 9-dan kenjutsu sensee, or even
an SCA knight, nor do I have any paranormal abilities....
- The dungeon generation code was always a kludge, even more so than the
rest of the code. Could probably use help.
- The object lists and so on can probably be completely reimplemented...
Remember, this was my first real C program and I had a lot to learn.
- I had wanted to make the endgame more like an adventure-style endgame
or a mud quest, and also to make it more pertinent to the original
"hook" in the starting sequence, but I never got the chance.
--
Laurence R. Brothers (qua...@bellcore.com)
Bellcore -- Computer Technology Integration
"Mundus Vult Decipi" -- James Branch Cabell
Ken Hornstein
>
>A few comments and a general release to prospective omega hackers:
>
>anyone who wants to with the following provisos:
> a) Keep all the original ownership attributions. Feel free to add your
> own name and to identify the version history.
> b) Do not under any circumstances charge money for your work or for
> distributing the source code or binaries.
> c) Oh yeah, remove my email address from the source code along with the
> ancient request for bugfixes and suggestions.
Ah, good :-) Lawrence, I'm glad you spoke up. This was my one hesitation
to releasing omega. Anyway, there's a version of Omega available for
anonymous ftp from ftp.physci.psu.edu, as /pub/omega/omega.tar.Z. This
has a few bugfixes applied to it by myself and Kevin Thomas (Kevin did most
of them).
In response to someone else's post ... I'll be glad to put up a machine as
the official "home" of Omega, if a development team wants to form (I'd also
be interested in joining such a team).
--Ken
John DiMarco
>Ah, good :-) Lawrence, I'm glad you spoke up. This was my one hesitation
>to releasing omega. Anyway, there's a version of Omega available for
>anonymous ftp from ftp.physci.psu.edu, as /pub/omega/omega.tar.Z. This
>has a few bugfixes applied to it by myself and Kevin Thomas (Kevin did most
>of them).
>In response to someone else's post ... I'll be glad to put up a machine as
>the official "home" of Omega, if a development team wants to form (I'd also
>be interested in joining such a team).
Very good. Thanks, Ken.
I hereby make the following proposal. Let's dub Ken's current version as
"net-omega 1.0". We'll take him up on his offer to be the home of net-omega.
As for Tom's C++ version of Omega (TOMega?), that sounds pretty divergent, and
Tom seems to be actively developing it, so I don't think it'll be a good
base for a group to work on.
As for me, I can't promise I'll find a lot of time for this, but I'll see what
I can do on a development team.
How's that?
John
--
John DiMarco j...@cdf.toronto.edu
Computing Disciplines Facility Systems Manager j...@cdf.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto EA201B,(416)978-1928