Hey there!

It’s quite a long time ago, since we last posted some news here. But don’t worry…we are still there and are currently working on the first in-game region “Okasankaar”. As we are still in the concept phase at the moment, we decided to give you an artistic insight in the form of an “Artbook” on how Okasankaar looks in the minds of our concept artists.

The Artbook features drawings from all our concept artists and shows as well landscapes, flora & fauna and even some talan sketches directly out of Okasankaar. The artists were able to write a short comment to their pictures and in addition, the Artbook is being produced in high-quality to give you the possibility to print it out and enjoy it on real paper also

Use the link below to download the Artbook!

DOWNLOAD ARTBOOK

See you guys in the next news release!

The artists of ooc

A feature that no game calling itself sequel to Outcast should be missing is the ability to travel between different regions freely (the game world Adelpha was connected through portals – the so called Daokas).

Is it possible to transform a merely linear First-Person-Shooter like Crysis Wars into an adventure game that supports this kind of free travelling?

See for yourself:

NOTE: The morph targets for the Cutter model weren’t finished, so his lines aren’t lipsynched. What do you think about his voice? Should it be changed – maybe YOU can do it better?

When introducing free travelling we also had to think about following issues:

• Will the inventory/questlog of the player be kept when travelling to another level?
• Will modifications performed to the current level be remembered when travelling elsewhere?

Our solution for both of them was the development of a persistence system (check the corresponding feature on ModDB for more). We were pretty much relieved when it worked out the way we imagined, since it wasn’t clear whether the Crysis Wars SDK would permit such sort of modification altogether.

This and the dialogue system (presented in an earlier news post) were features not clear to be doable with the SDK – so we decided to implement them first to make sure we chose the right engine for our project.

Again we were confirmed in our choice … while it is still a long way to go until we’ve finished the programming work (not to mention asset creation) we are at least certain now that the remaining things we want to alter are definetly possible.

You also may have noticed that some custom UI elements for the questlog were added. Under the hood we further created a Lua-driven quest system that fits our needs better than the stock mission system of Crysis Wars.

And finally we added some screenshots of the new marketplace, city walls and the tweaked Cutter model with the incredible Backpack 3000:

The next step in terms of programming will be the implementation of an improved 3rd person camera with support for proper aiming (in combat mode) and collision detection (everyone who tried Oasis surely noticed that navigating in buildings was pretty annoying).

More on that soon…

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And finally some advertisment for vacant jobs:

We are always searching for motivated and talented people who want to help us release open Outcast some day and improve their portfolio along with getting experience working in a team with a professional claim at the same time. Currently we have a considerable shortage of 3D artists (modelers and the like) and besides we could need some tool programmers (C# knowledge required) and community managers (who can translate news postings and “spread the word”).

Take a look at the official job announcement at ModDB to learn how to apply and what the detailed requirements are.

Who doesn’t know the charming “Inventory is full” or “You are over encumbered” messages popping up when you want to pick up your reward for killing some tough boss enemy. Now there is a solution for these kind of problems: the Backpack 3000!

To get a full overview of it’s capabilities (along with testimonials and a list of famous people already using it) make sure to read the fact sheet.

Now seriously again:

In the last weeks we were working on our quest system and custom user interface (adding a journal for example). Tests with saving local data when travelling between levels were positive and we already implemented the basics of our persistence system that will enable free travelling between levels, while your progress and your modifications to each level aren’t lost.

It’s hard to give an exact date but expect some ingame video showing all of this around the middle of May.

GOG.com (gog stands for Good Old Games) is a website distributing classic games for the PC. However they are NOT the next underground community operating semi-legally. Everything is done very professionally, games are offered with the consent of the copyright holders and I assume for mutual benefit. All available titles are pretty cheap (between $5.99 to $9.99), DRM-free, compatible with new PCs and new operating systems like Windows XP/Vista (I think full support for Win7 is on it’s way too) and often come with additional materials like soundtrack, making-of, artworks etc.

So what?

Well, a few weeks ago GOG announced that they are working together with ATARI to re-release some of their classic games as Master of Orion, Master of Magic and, you guessed it – the Master of Them All – Outcast!

Yesterday our favorite game officially made it’s debut on GOG and, as the community over there would say, it was “an instant download”

So, does it work?

I guess the main question on many peoples’ minds is “Is the game still buggy”? Well, from what I’ve seen so far this gotta be the most stable version of OC yet. Installation went smoothly on Windows 7. I had some old save-games so I was able perform a quick bug-check.

• Twan-ha riding? – No problem! OK

• Going through the mud in Shamazaar? – Cutter switches to normal walking speed, just like he should! OK

• Music? – Plays normally! OK

• Getting to the boat light in Cyana? – Couldn’t do it! X

I am not quite sure if the last one is a bug but if a normal jump doesn’t work after fifty attempts there is something wrong. I also recall that I was able to get to the light without cheats the first time I played OC.

Another question that you’re probably asking yourself is “Can I play in high resolution”. Unfortunately, my prayers to “about a thousand different gods” went unheard and the max resolution is still 512×384. HOWEVER …… I tried the famous unofficial 640×480 resolution patch and it friggin works! For the first time I get it to work! I was very skeptical since the folder structure of the GOG release is a bit different. But it did work (after switching Win98 compatibility mode for the oc1/2/3/.exe files to ) and here is a proof

Damn, it’s beautiful to go through Adelpha without that stupid black frame around the game screen! I want to stress though that the resolution patch is still unofficial and there is no guarantee it will work for you! Also the game gets unstable when using it – in my case it crashes every time I try to load from inside the game (loading from the “loader” is OK) as well as when I die.

What you get with the GOG release

• The original  1999 Outcast, as bug-free as it gets and running smoothly on your brand new PC!

• PDF manual

• A making-of video

• The soundtrack on MP3

• The “outtakes” videos

• Artworks in high resolution

I wish you a lot of fun on Adelpha!

Here is what the front page on GOG.com looks now. It will change in the near future so I decided to keep it for the coming generations.

To avoid any confusion: In spite of the date this posting is (fortunately) no joke at all

Crysis Wars has a feature rich Dialogue System including support for all kinds of facial expressions and generating lipsync pretty much automatically.
The trouble starts though as soon as you try to make dialogues nonlinear: the integrated system only allows Dialogues which run straight from top to bottom.

Since interactive dialogues will play an important part in open Outcast we had to find a better solution. Together with our Game Designers we set up following feature list for our own implementation:

• Dialogue flow is nonlinear (influenced by chosen options and logic / Lua scripts)
• Dialogues are defined in XML files
• Translation support
• Different camera modes that are configured over a config file
• Triggering actions that can be defined using the Flow Graph System of Crysis
• Starting sequences and optionally resuming the Dialogue again after they finished
• Support for Lipsync and facial expressions
• Providing simple Flow Nodes so Leveldesigners can integrate Dialogues easily
• Skipping lines of the dialogue

Now all of these features have been implemented, see for yourself:

If you are interested in the technical details or ask yourself how your mod could benefit from our system, read along in the corresponding feature on ModDB.

Successfully adding a modification of this magnitude to Crysis Wars confirmed us that we chose the right platform for our project.

A Highlight of the system are the camera modes you can see in the video below.

The next challenge is the extension of the Quest system and support for persistence – you heard right – that would enable travelling between different regions (levels) freely without losing quest progress!

More on this to come after we implemented it.