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.

Hey everybody!

We’ve just setup a newsletter. This (along with our RSS feed) is probably the best way to stay up to date with our progress, blogposts etc. without having to frequently visit our website and forum. To sign up just click on the link below and enter your name and email address in the fields.

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Besides if you’re browsing with Firefox you can now get our open Outcast “Personas”. Personas are easy-to-install, easy-to-use themes that change the look of your Firefox web browser. To learn more about them and get the needed plug-in visit the Personas website.

Get our oOC personas here:

• OpenOutcast Moons
• OpenOutcast Logo

We also added a new wallpaper to the gallery:

Hi oOcommunity ,

i´d like to present you our new Wallpaper. I decided to make it that time a little bit more colorful and less sterile. Hope you guys like it.

• 1680×1050
• 1920×1200

May the yods be silent! Welcome to the new home of open Outcast!

After long and hard work from all of…wait…again…after long hard work from s87 and some little work from the rest of the team, we are now able to present you our new and fresh oOC site. *fanfare*

Yeah, lets go a bit into the details about the reasons for this switch of homepage. That’s quite easy, it was just because the old page was really terrible to update. No CMS or anything in place, just plain html. Not that we are not competent enough to make updates in HTML – we are – but we somehow just didn’t have time in the last month. As you all know we had something else to do

Okay, but now the new site is live and several things are going to change now:

• More regular news updates on the page
• Weekly developer’s blogs
• More content – Videos & Pictures, maybe some music even
• A lot more activity in the boards

But wait, that’s all? Nothing else?

No, not even close to something like “nothing else”. Lets see…

• We now have a finished OASIS – check
• We received a lot of good and enthusiastic feedback – check
• We all look as good as David Beckham – che…wait.

Okay, maybe not. But at least, we have a plan. And it seems, that it is a good plan. In theory…

But I really should stop talking nonsense now and come to the real important points. One of them seems to be how we are planning to proceed now after Oasis? Releasing other demos? Going the episodic way? Going on holiday with the dev-team? No not at all. We had a long and exhausting developer’s chat the other week and nailed down our masterplan to finish and successfully release oOC. And this is the direction we want to go to:

Four milestones

• Gandha – Pre-Alpha
• Eluee – Alpha
• Ka – Beta
• Fae – Final / Release

Don’t expect us to write any of the release dates down. They are kept internally until we are sure that we can publish something that will hold the pressure. Oh, and by the way…There won’t be any new demo releases for the next milestones.

“D’oh! But why not”, will some of you now ask us.
It’s easy, we want to finish oOC in an acceptable time span. And if we release demos between the milestones, it will last 100 years and when we release it then you are all dead. And that would be a quite unfortunate situation as you could imagine.

So we decided to kick out the new demo releases and just concentrate on the big game.

…
…
…

Okay okay, you are right. Something has to be release anyway to keep you interested. We know that. “Bread and Circuses” as the old romans would have said!
To get serious again…we are planning to release regular update packs for the OASIS demo.

This means the following. If we finished a package of new interesting features (like a new HUD, the quest system, the conversation system, climbing on the walls, camera etc.) we are implementing them into the OASIS demo and release a patch. And you can try out those features right away. Okay, you won’t get anything really new in terms of game assets and quests – at least not in every patch – but hey…there has to be at least some last good reason that you will stay with us to play the final game, right?

We are expecting a lot of feedback about those features from your side and because of that, you are an important part of our developer team. You guys are the one’s we are making this game for and that is why we want to integrate you as much as possible. Tell us your ideas, critics and feedbacks as soon as a new patch comes out. Of course there will be some separate boards for this – just like the OASIS one – where you can post everything you get out of the new version of OASIS.

Yeap, so far so good. That seems to be all for the moment.
*turns around and shouts in direction of the developer’s jacuzzi*
“Okay guys? Did I forgot something?”…
…*blubb*…*blubb*…

Believe us, there will be A LOT more action on the site and the boards, than it was before and even than it was EVER. So stay tuned, guys! The adventure of getting serious in creating oOC has started right now with the release of this news post and you will be a part of this voyage. We are counting you in. Lets rock!

“Even the longest way starts with a single step…”

Best regards,
Eternal Outcasts