Actually it seems you're right about gaamsavv... Even the official Outcast manual has two different spellings; A chapter titled "The Gaamsaav" describes an object named "gaamsavv".

According to the manual, it appears Cutter's nickname should be written Ulukaï with an accented ï at the end.

its nice to see that the demo is now released for the public. i hope i can enjoy the game with my low computer. - nice work!

ok, registered to your damn forum. Hope you are happy, whoever you twitter person are

(and sorry for typos and stuff)

So, my impressions on oasis demo:

Graphics are great, CryEngine was a good chice and the art style resembles the Original a lot. Love it. Except for talans. Although their models are quite good, I get the feeling they are too.. meaty for a talan. Sure, there were those fat traders in original Outcast, but pretty much everyone else looked more like skin and bones, so it feels weird. (Also their forehead actually resembled something I'd call an "egghead", I had always considered it a part of the you know what joke. I could probably say a thing about their jaws, but I suppose those are not that bad.) One thing that however stroke my eyes while talking to shamaz was an absence of self-shadowng, since he is wearing the hood and it wont make any shadow at all. So I hope that will be resolved later.

Camera surely has its clipping problems, actually if positioned into water, Cutter will not shoot from the weapon.

Voice acting. The guy voicing the hunter who calls the player "Cutterslade" nailed it perferctly. Others, not so much. The main problem with voice acting is how slow and monotonnous their speech is. Talans do not talk like that. They sound a bit like english beginner from russia (or something like that, I'm not actually russian to tell) but thats prety much all to it. Especially shamaz sounds like some drugged brainwashed idiot.

note (before I forget it): Do not use adelphian time units in talan's lines, it sound weird. Rather go with approximations or somehing like that. (e.g. Rather than talling player he has to run the course under one "minute", just tell him he has to do it as fast as he can, or he fails the test. Or at least make a subtle explanation of the term during the dialog.) Actually I dont remember hearing any such units in the Outcast.

Back to the shamaz, or rather to the demo questline. It is nice to read OASIS demo wont actually be a part of the final game - I don't know how serious you were about the quests and dialogues in this demo, or if this is more of a proof-of-concept thing, because if that should be the quality of writing in final game, that would be quite sad. Also I suppose some of the things I'll write may not be technically possible yet, so sorry for that. Anyway, since shamaz already speaks with slow monotonnous voice, he could spare me such detailed (and not very sound) explanation of how he got into the situation, unless I ask him for the details. Also he could really move his ass those 50 meters to the oasis, get the water himself while Cutter is sent to do something more challenging (like looking for the plant).

Destructible pots should be in the village from the beginning. Running course should use landmarks that already are at the village, like the gates, daoka, shamazes house, etc. rather than spawning those flag things.

Some sort of geyser effect could be put into the deepest part of the lake to better indicate the place as well as why it is important to put it right there. (Being it the final product, I'd make that last part of the quest optional for extra reward.)

Well that would be all for now. I'm sure I had more stuff to rant about, probably mostly the quality of dialogues, but I sorta have a bad memory and will have to play it again to refresh it.

Oh yes, the music - superb.


Didn't find those alternative solutions, so I guess I'll just go look for them after I finish this post.

Oh, also I was thinking if you developers could put together an article about this demo - what is its purpose, specific aspects of the game that are shown off, what are/were the problems you had to go trough, what is your next aim with each aspect, what are you proud of, what are you not so proud of...
I'm quite sure I'm not the only one who would like to read such article.

Wow, great feedback! Thanks very much for putting your time in.

As the composer/sound director of the Eternal Outcasts I thought I would give you a response on some of the topics you've highlighted:

Firstly, the Oasis Tech Preview is not our vision for a final release. It simply features WIP's and ideas in testing - we are largely using it to gauge the response of our community (your reply suggests we succeeded here! ).

I can't really comment on graphics/engine stuff, but I can say our aim is to retain and expand on the atmosphere and originality of Outcast 1, and this tech demo is just a pre-alpha stepping stone in that process. Simply issues like Self Shadowing, camera clipping, etc, weren't considered because of the limited time frame for release.

Of course the quests and dialogs are not to be taken seriously. They are simply a 'proof of concept' using the capability we have, and we wanted to have a little fun on the way.

As for the script, it was written and revised by myself and Madcybi (myself being the weak link) within about 2 weeks, squeezed into any free time we could find! In fact, all the dialogs were performed by myself (the ludicrously unconvincing ones) and Tassitassi (the good ones!). For the final release, we intend to get as many good voice actors as we can and improve the quality of the script 10-fold. For that time I will focus on sound effects and music.

I'm happy you liked the music

Keep those comments coming, all input is good input afterall!

Again, we all appreciate your time in giving us this feedback and we hope you enjoyed playing the oasis!

aww, thank you for thanking me, I just love criticising other people's hard work

Gameplay videos are up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaxnURi949k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czUAbgKc2d0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FaZF0-j0qI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn9Rx08LyM8

Imo talans are the best they can be. We are taking this stuff seriously... have a look at oc1/2 artworks to see how egghead they are .
We will also have thin, normal and fat talans.


We didn't touch the camera for this release, so it's default crysis camera.

in my opinion it would be best if you release openOutcast in an episodic format...

I kinda like the idea of Outcast Chronicles....

It would be much easier to finish and polish a small part than do this huge uber fan product.

Regarding non-linear gameplay you can still do that within world... i see no problem.

split it into parts and you may finish it step by step... i don't see any other real way to finish it..... please consider this!!!

Thanks for the idea, but episodic format is very unlikely to happen.

As with many others here, Oasis demo forced me to register

I enjoyed playing Oasis, thanks for a great work! It really feels close to original Outcast!

Some feedback

+ Atmosphere is great!
+ Music and graphics are wonderful!!!
+ I really like Cutter Slade model without his huge backpack from Outcast 1. I think, it's better to get rid of all this "nanotechnologies" from 1st game.

- Talans seems to be somewhat "flat", I hope it's technical issue (shadows? don't know well)
- Dialogs are stupid. Cutter shouldn't use that awful lot of Earth-specific words and phrases since it's his second visit to Adelpha and he knows exactly nobody will understand him well.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks.


Cutter talking like a talan wouldn't be Cutter + he enjoys the confused look on talans' faces when they can't get his joke.

He won't ever stop talking like he wants to...and to be honest, a big part of the humour in dialogues would get lost, if Cutter would speak perfectly talan and knows all the words.

IMHO he is not the "nice guy next door". He is a sarcastic and snappish soldier. He respects the talans but that does not mean, that he has to be their best friend.

I agree with Tosh.
+
I think at the end of oc1 cutter liked talan. In ooc when he get's back he likes them more, but he can't show that too apparently + what tosh said, he just loves to see those confused faces

Okay I have just watched the videos, not played the demo myself as my computer would fry for the time being! (I only play xbox, but hell I buy a new computer when the game is finished!)

So for the review:

1. music is great, good work.

2. graphics looks nice, I'm sure it will look great when finished!

3. I realise the voice acting is improvised, but I thought it was pretty good hehe

4. I really don't like cutters default stance, looks some what ape-like. I think you should just have him stand straight.

5. Talans look great but diffrent, should be a bit darker skinned in my opinion. Maybe slightly thinner to.

thats what I got from the top of my head. And guys if you pull this game off, expect jobs from the big ones then!

He's sing default crysis rig and animations at the moment. That will be fixed.