You know, I always try to put myself in the other persons shoes before commenting. This was a game made by two people and now a team of three. They made games with mostly 2D assets and have now decided to jump in the ring with a game that uses 3D assists. It takes time to learn and develope when doing anything new. They are charging only one dollar for a game that people are having a blast playing for many hours. So when I comment , I keep in mind that this a a real learning experience for a team that for years has worked mostly in 2D. This is not a five or ten dollar game on the App Store where we have come to expect an AAA title for that kind of price point. This Is a Dollar game made by an indie developer at a price we are also used to seeing made by a one or two man development team. Just keep that in mind when commenting. People comment of how they really like the story and the open world feel. For me , when I play a game, it is the story that is the driving force to keep me playing. However , I also love looking for hidden things and of course levelling up my character. How about having some notes , scrolls, books that are hidden in the gaming world that will take a bit of hunting to find? Perhaps it is a book hidden behind a tree or on the very top of a shelf. When you read the book, you learn more about the world or it could be a short fairy tale. Once read, you will gain experience. You may even learn a new spell or item to craft. Have fun with it! Thanks
Thanks, gemineye62, those are great ideas and very easy to do. Will add some in the update. I'm glad you're enjoying the game.
Thanks, drelbs, it was a big jump to rolling our own but it's getting easier. I'm glad you like Omber. Have to google Strife.
I've been lurking for awhile and this thread actually inspired me to pick up my copy of The Quest that I bought years ago and never played. Turns out I fell in love, quickly! My question is how does this game stack up to The Quest? I'm looking to either start another RPG or continue onto one of the expansions and this seems like it will be exactly what I'm looking for if I decide to take a break from The Quest games after I finish the first one.
We tried to make our players as comfortable in the 3d world as they were in the 2.5d world and much should be familiar. Wizzard Island was our first 3d effort but the editor we used within Unity for the battles was in its infancy. It's grown as we have. We try to make the game better. Am working slowly on redoing Wizzard Island with the Ork Framework. If you would like to try Omber, Voloster, pm me and I'll give you a promo code.
Re qdiddy Something is seriously wrong with the thread here. A majority of the five star reviews are no more than three sentences long and offer no context to their praise. Furthermore, a majority of the reviewers are junior members, which set off some red flags with me. @Lokina has only been seen on threads about YOUR games, Catacomber, which, to go along with the drone-like praise that follows every post Lokina makes, affects your credibility. May I point out a couple of things. I only comment on games I have purchased and played unlike a lot of people here. I only comment when I feel a need and usually there is no need. Messages like the one above show there is a need to defend good games that I have really enjoyed playing. I made comments about Nimian Legends which had GORGEOUS GRAPHICS but no story to hold it together so Cat's games are not the ONLY ones. If you are going to slate me be accurate. I often observe game feedback on other games and I have never seen such picky feedback as there has been here. I do not understand why or for what purpose. Some have been obviously helpful and some obviously not. I reserve the right to defend games I like and I like these games.
qdiddy does have a heart and a sensitive side inside that molten magma of a ...a.... smiling face....we've really reconciled our differences I hope. : ) I'm sure he'll be more sensitive to your feelings. Peace in this thread is a wonderful thing. This is slightly off topic for the Omber thread --please forgive me moderators--but since I did write the quests and many expansions for the Quest there is a tie in between our games. Redshift taught me a lot of what I know and Sylon of Redshift does a lot of our graphics. For those of you who loved and still love the Quest, Redshift may have a little surprise for you. : ) That's all I can say. Don't ask me anymore. Enjoy Omber.
@catacomber - since you went off topic a bit, can i ask if "The Quest" games are like Wizadry of old? Although I have been around TA for a long time as well, I never really remember looking hard at those games. Do they still work in the more recent ios? I might want to check them out as i have a longing for some old old-school RPG. Incidentally, bought Omber and will check it out.
Honestly I agree with some others, the graphics don't look too great based on the screenshots. A big reason is the texture size. I think if you just increased the size of the textures for basically everything (mostly the ground) it would help a lot. Thanks
We used smaller textures for the ground to keep the game stable and mobile shaders. That's fairly common advice for keeping a game stable on mobile--especially for devices that are not the latest. But will experiment in Nine Dragons to see how that works out. If everything stays stable it's very easy to change the textures in Omber. : ) Thanks. That was helpful and will see how things go with larger textures. It may be that with the more powerful ios devices the need to use the smaller textures and the mobile shaders is no longer important for stability.
The Quest and its and our expansions are hard core, old style rpg games. Redshift was and is a big fan of the old school style, like Eye of the Beholder, Wizardry and others. The games are still in the app store but no longer under Chillingo--but Redshift--it's not as easy to find them though since there are so many games with "quest" in the name. The Quest Gold is a good start if you're interested in the game as it includes the base game, the official expansion, Ice and Fire and our (Zarista's) HOLI, where I perish in Argimon's dungeon waiting to be rescued by the way. There's lots of help at my website and at Redshift's website.
Well, thanks to the generosity of Catacomber, I have finally gotten a chance to play Omber. With her permission, I have been given the green light to provide the best honest review I can write, so here goes. Starting off the bat, I'm hit with a poor UI. It's not that fun to look at. The textures for the text boxes looked stretched to capacity in order to fit the size of the box. The voice acting sounds a bit like Microsoft Mike, which to a longtime Mac user, irks me a bit. Then I got to the actual game, the walking is at a good speed but the turning takes a little too long. The way you talk to a person or pick up an item is you have to walk up to it. This is problematic because I could be exploring and then suddenly "CAN YOU PICK UP THOSE THINGS FOR MY FACE LOTION?". As for the world itself, the ground texture looks blurry and stretched, some assets are floating in space, and when I went to fight the first few spiders they were floating two feet off the ground. I got to the temple of the Moon and I see who would talk to me so I go to a nearby door. Something didn't look right so I examine it and the door isn't even attached to the wall, it's floating two inches away from it. The first person view is also unpolished. The hands are floating out in space with unarticulated fingers. The shield looks like it was glued onto the left hand while the sword is stabbed through the right hand. My character, Dickbutt, doesn't seem to complain much so I assume he's ok with it. Also, every time I exit the game to answer a text, the game shuts down and restarts. What I seem to have here is an alpha to a game that seems to be pushed out as a full product. It has some good ideas, and the good ideas are the writing and the story. Seeing as how Catacomber wrote those, I can see why. But the rest of the game can hardly be called a game, but instead is a mess of assets and textures strung together. Floating assets, blurry textures, and a poor UI bogs down the game so much that I couldn't play it for more than ten minutes without a fear of falling through the floor or walking through a wall. I realize that the dev team is small and can only accomplish so much, but then the dev team for bug heroes and heroes and castles is only about three people. What those games have that is different from this game, however, is polish. A vision to what the game should look like and the time taken to make it as beautiful as the picture in their head. Omber was not ready for release, and should've had a few more months of development before being put out for sale.
Anything running iOS 7.0 --iPhone 5 and iPad mini 1. It's meant to be played in landscape mode. What device are you playing it on? Since I'm doing an update there is no reason not to work on the textures. Your comment made me realize that maybe the newer devices can support larger textures and a few non mobile shaders. Maybe metal would help. Since I see the bulk of qdiddy's resnarks are about graphics (not story-- ) perhaps I can do something about that. The only thing is that we have some players using iPhone 5.0 and I'd like to keep them. @qdiddy-- thanks for giving Omber a try. I'd be interested to know what device you're playing it on. I'll give some attention to the spiders and your other comments in the update. We honestly never had a problem with crashing. Thanks for the praise for the story. As far as this point goes---"The way you talk to a person or pick up an item is you have to walk up to it."---that's how it works in the Quest and our expansions. We tried to make things familiar for people playing our Quest expansions so carried that forward. In our next game, Nine Dragons, we're going to do it a little differently. Anyway, let me give the more intensive graphics a try and see what happens. No one of our betatesters complained about graphics or had their game shut down. Thanks again nxtboyIii for a very helpful comment that's gotten me thinking. Let me reimport my assets at their original size. .
Yeah no problem. Those devices can definitely handle higher res textures, plus maybe you could bake in some lighting/shadows too to make it look nicer?
That's also a great idea, nxtboyIII, why not? Using Unity 5 now and I think it has terrific possibilities. I think there was some problem with lightmapping but maybe it's been solved. Any suggestions for my 3d arms, sword and shield? : ) I have a few. Not sure how they'll work out. Thanks again. I'll try to pack as much into the next update as I can.
Yeah, no problem I'm not sure about the arms and stuff but you said there was a light mapping problem before, if you want I can help you with it Also another question, about how many triangles are you drawing on screen at the same time in the most intense moment? And what mobile shaders are you using? Thanks
Omber was made with Unity 4.6. Just updated to 5.x and reading about lightmapping and shadows notice that there have been some problems with Unity 5. I'd love it if you could give me some tips on that. Triangles on screen I don't know how to calculate. : ) Edit--I found a script to do that but maybe it would be more meaningful once I change all the textures? : ) The most intense moments are when the particle effects are on screen. I made them smaller to work better on mobile. For mobile shaders, using legacy mobile diffuse, legacy mobile bumped diffuse and legacy mobile specular and legacy mobile bumped specular. I notice the water in Unity 5 is much nicer than 4.x and going to substitute that. Had no problem upgrading the game to Unity 5.x--fixed the skies and any error messages. It was a clean update. Thanks for your kindness.
Was thinking about this and, since we're doing an update, maybe one interesting way to do this would be to add a quest from the Mage (Mage-ess) Gemineye, which is a perfect name for a Mage or Mage-ess in a role-playing game, to find a sequence of hidden things, like a chain quest. I love chain quests and haven't done one in awhile. And it wouldn't be that hard for me to put it in. The twists and turns in a chain quest can be very exciting.
