A few minutes ago I was at telnet:\\bbs.memphistw.org playing OOII (even though someone beat Overkill a long time ago).
I was walking around on map 3 of Purgator mapset, near the mid-top left area where all the pits are, and was in such a hurry to get to
the hole down (to grab more duroplast hehe...4 days: 5 bases breached/looted, 1 destroyed) I didn't even notice I had 2 hp left.
Suddenly a Hexman appears....I have 3 choices...

1) Try to fight him with 2 hp...if I survived the LR hit, I could surrender half my crystals and live....hmm no way!
2) Full Surrender...and lose my nearly 20k crystals?  No way!
3) Try to Flee, and get shot in the back...no thanks!

So how did I get away with all my crystals and my life?

Simple....DISCONNECT!  Hehe...old-school trick.  You then wait 4 minutes or so and log back on (unless your plays-per-day is 1)
and you're right there where you left off before the combat.

I am quite please with my progress thus far, but I see now the value in using all text.
I was thinking graphics would improve things, but really it just complicates things.

It's okay though, I know what I'm doing and how to do it.

I kinda wish I had used only text though, so I'm seriously limiting the use of graphics in my game.
It will have graphics for the map terrains, planets, stuff like bases, vehicles, mecha, spaceships, etc.

But other than that, the combat will be text-based, as will most of the game menus.
Don't let the editor fool you, the graphics you see are pretty much it, except I haven't added
the graphics for vehicles, mechs, mounts, and spacecraft yet.

I COULD do graphics for items, but there's simply way too many of them.

I'm building the game Server now, and once it's more-or-less functional, I'll begin making a Client program to test the Complex menu and walking around the map.  Once that works, and multiple people can connect, walk around the map, and explore space, and be able to see each other,
then I'll be ready to fairly quickly flesh out the rest of the game.  Then it will go BETA, and I will be a happy camper.

Well, the base access code is only 2 chars long, so sometimes it's very easy to get in and take over.

Last year sometime, I figured out that OOII could be played on Telnet (oh joy!) and one of the first games I got in
was actually active!  So I went in and found a bunch of bases, all owned by the same squad.
Since they all had sexual innuendo to their names, I guessed "69" as the code.  Got it right on the first try! 

I went in to about 4 or 5 bases, all with the same access code, and looted them.  }:)

They had some good stuff too hehehe.  I went (at level 1 fresh out of the Complex mind you) via their telepods down to
map 4 and got the GOOD stuff, so I was level one for a very short time.  Once I got back to map 1, I was blasting shockels left and right with my Herculeon.  Ahhh good times!  I hit the records for wealth the first day, even though an active squad had over 1 mil crystals.

I used to go around back in the day and stockpile Zimmers, so I could try hacking base codes.  Everyone gets a Zax, thinking it's the best cause it's the most expensive, but a full inventory of Zimmers & MedPacks gives plenty of chances to get the code right.
Gamma-Radix cannon is the best IMHO, because most people forget to look at their Rad level while they're attacking things,
and unless they have a shitload of medpacks or a nearby base, the attacker is pretty much boned.

I missed OOII, it was a huge part of my pathetic life in 88-91, and half the friends I have I met through that game, back when BBSes were
the cool thing, and most everyone with a computer was using them.  So I'm working on a game, you can read about it here in the forum thread "Oasis Project".  I figured out how to do multi-client networking today, so it shouldn't be difficult to do the rest.
It will be a MMOG loosely based on OOII / TradeWars / VGA Planets / LOD / NetHack, and Final Fantasy 2.
The main inspiration for it came straight from OOII.  Of course, there's no substitute for the real thing, I know.  It's like running out of weed and smoking some oregano, but at least it will have graphics!  XD

[Step 1:]

Okay, here's some things I do to get rich in OOII.  This helped me kick many asses back in the day:

Step 1:
When you first start out (assuming you're starting with 2000 crystals), buy a Medkit and Summoner.
Put the rest of your crystals in the bank, but keep 10 on you in case you need to surrender at some point.

Now go out and fight monsters!  LOTS of them, but stay within 1 or 2 steps of the Complex.  Pick up medkits/rations when you need to,
and sell the rest of the loot.  Keep doing this until you're level 5 or so, when level 1 monsters give less exp.
At that point,  you should move on to step 2.

Step 2:
Now that you're tough enough to survive outside, and probably have some nice moolah saved up, buy yourself an Enviro Suit and
buy a Hemp Rope if you don't have one.  Now you can be a dirty cheater and look at the map text to find the nearest hole down.
Make sure it has a hole back up within easy reach.  If not, figure out the best path to get you from the Complex to map 2 and back.
Now farm items like you did in Step 1, until you're level 7 or so, or until you feel comfortable going to map 3.
Once you have enough crystals to build a base with a telepod, move on to step 3.

Step 3:
Now for the fun part!  Once you know a good route from the Complex to map2, then to map 3... head on down there and find a good
spot to build a base.  The ideal spot should be within telepod range of the HOLE UP on map 2, the hole you used to farm those items in
step 2.  Now you can farm items on map 3, store them in your base (helps avoid the Hydrite Sweep), and to sell them simply tele
to the hole up, use your rope, and walk to the Complex.  If you're lazy, you can build a base on map 2 as well, or even make a "chain" of bases to use simply to move items from lower map levels back to the Complex to sell.
Once you have a stockpile of Zimmers, Trikorders, and at least 1 TrigNet, move on to step 4.

Step 4:
Now that you've become a badass in the wastelands, head down to the map level 5 AFB.  Inside, there is a Clone Guard.
Uber wealth can be gained from it as follows:
Carry 1 weapon, preferably a TrigNet or other long range weapon.  Carry only valuable items, or things you want lots of, like Zimmers,
Telegrasps, Trikorders, Floppy Disks, etc.  Make sure to leave half your inventory full, and 1 weapon slot empty!

Now beat the hell out of yourself and when the clone dies, it drops all the crap you're carrying.  Just pick it up, move over to a safe spot,
drop the cloned items, heal up, and repeat!  Don't forget to keep at least 1 full medkit on you so you can keep it up.
If you have a medpack with say, 2 charges left on it, that's what you'll get on the cloned one.  So having a full medpack just for cloning
is important if you wish to keep it up a lot.
I'm sure lots of you have done this, but I built 2 telepod-chains of 10 or 12 bases in about 3 days from doing this, ended up with a base
loaded with Zimmers, Telegrasps, Landmines, Floppy Disks, TrigNets, and other cool stuff.
I kicked a lot of butt back then on my Vic-20 and 300 baud modem, mostly using the techniques listed above.

One cool thing to do is to clone lots of Zimmers and Duroplast.  Then you can carry half your inventory of Zimmers and Half Duroplast, allowing you to attack a base and Zimm back after the Zaxtron teleports you away (cause you KNOW everyone used the Zaxtron lol)
You can easily wtfblast a base open in under 3 minutes this way, assuming you have the stuff you need.

Personally, I liked the Gamma-Radix cannon.  Also the Spore Sprayer.  Those are probably the best for base defense really.
The Gamma-Radix cannon has left corpses at the doors of my bases before.  Don't underestimate the power of rads!
If you build your base on a Radiation Dump, I THINK it works better, because they're also taking ambient radiation exposure.

 

I am very close to finishing a game editor for the game I'm working on.  It's going to be a MMOG based loosely on OOII and other BBS games (LOD, BRE, TradeWars, NetHack), but with graphics.  It will look like a cross between Final Fantasy 2, OOII, and VGA Planets.

The editor isn't finished yet, but I uploaded a functional version to FilePlanet for people to check out if anyone is interested.

Here's a link to it:  http://www.fileplanet.com/217947/210000/fileinfo/Oasis-Project-Galaxy-Editor-ALPHA

And here's some info about the game:

20 planets to start with (50 max) in a 5000-sector galaxy.  The map movement is like OOII, but 9x9 view, and the outer space travel is similar to Tradewars 2002.  I added Laptops, which were inspired by LOD, but nothing like the ones in that game.  In Oasis Project, the laptops will have hard drives, and you can store programs, or copy them if you have a spare flash drive.  There is a device called a Brainjack, which allows the players to explore the "DataCore Matrix" which is somewhat similar to moving around the map, except that it's a randomly generated map of "nodes", some of which are open (allowing passage), locked, firewall protected, corrupted, etc etc.  Every Complex, Starbase, Mothership, Base, Vehicle, Mecha, etc has a "Control Node" associated with it, which allows use of most menu options of that place/object remotely via a laptop + Sub-Space Modem.  These can possibly be hacked, allowing players to potentially take over other players' ships/bases/etc by hacking their control rooms.

The DataCore system is way too complex for me to go into complete detail here, so I'll leave it at that.

Each of the 20-50 worlds range in size from 50x50 (small), 100x100 (medium), to 200x200 (large), and each has various settings which control the AI behavior of that world during maintenance, and the world geology/terrains/ weather will all change according to geological activity, gravity, humidity, avg rain, avg bad weather ("gloom"), and other factors. 

There are 11 planet types, and planets can be owned by building a Complex there (1 per planet).
Each planet has 1 AFB and 1 Alien Prison.
There will be World Trade and Galactic Trade options, which is where items will go when players sell them to vendors.

There will be both random monsters (like in OOII & FF2) as well as NPCs.  Players may group with up to 4 other players/NPCs.
NPCs in a party can be hired or join for various reasons, including randomly generated quests.

There are 10 playable "factions" and 2 non-playable ones (aliens & bandits/space pirates)

Each world has both a surface and underground map, equal in size.  AFB and Alien Prison each have a 30x30 sub-map and special terrains.
Bases may be built on the surface or underground.  Certain upgrades can allow for hovering (above ground) bases or underwater bases.

Combat system will be sort of like Final Fantasy 2, but with an action combat somewhat similar to OOII.

Players/NPCs can be "knocked out" in combat, and can be "captured" into the party (if there's room) as a prisoner.
Prisoners may be taken to a Mothership or Complex, where they are immediately thrown into the Brig for up to 3 days, or until they escape.
Prisoners who escape the Brig within a ship or complex and manage to fight off the guards (if there are any) will have a chance to break into the control room or other rooms.

The game will have vehicles (cars, trucks, boats, airplanes, helicopters, hot air balloons, tanks, APCs, etc), Several types of Mecha, upgradeable motherships, many skills to learn (players can learn all skills, but start with only 1), bounties & rewards, randomly generated quests,
AI-controlled weather patterns, "anomalies", and geological activity.  Plants and animals may also be harvested for various reasons, and a Taming skill allows taming of some beast-type monsters as NPC party members, and a Riding skill allows use of mounts such as horses & dragons.

The graphics are somewhat crappy, basically I did all of the terrains, planets, and background views as .BMP images in Bryce 4 and Photoshop 5, and for the animated images, I found lots of nice "royalty-free" .gif animations to use.  Since the combat system is similar to FF2, these .gifs should work out just fine in the long run, since I'm still a noob programmer.

The editor kicks butt, for being my very first Visual Basic program ever.  I haven't programmed since Turbo Basic in the late 80's & early 90's.
I somehow learned VB 2008 in 3 hours after drinking 2 Venom energy drinks. 

Check out the link above, and let me know what you think, or if you notice anything wrong, keeping in mind that a lot of buttons don't yet do anything.  You can however create maps for all the worlds, place weather, NPC camps, and other things.  You can edit the info for each complex, afb, alien prison, starbase, and space sectors (including building warp paths to other sectors).

for all the options that say "Owner" you should leave that at the default value of "0" because I haven't added the player variable data yet, and entering anything other than a number will give an error message & crash editor.  Other than that, it works, and saving/loading works fine too,
so you can play around with it and build maps and imagine how it's going to be.   

Next thing I'm adding to the editor:  Base placement, Mecha/Vehicle/Mount/Spaceship creation, Random Monster Types editor, SmartMine creator (15 types of SmartMines), NPC editor, Quest Generator / Editor, Item creation & placement.

For now, the editor is good enough to make a map & space to play-test as I build the game itself.

I'm still figuring out the client/server stuff, but I've read that it's way easier in VB than in C++ and most other languages, so that's encouraging.  I looked at some tutorials and it's not overly confusing, so I shouldn't have too much of a problem with it.
I might make a single-player version just for testing, so I'll have a lot of code ready to cut & paste once I'm ready to do the MMO version.
 

-={Dragonstar}=-
Surfing atop the Short-bus of life

Great intro!

Hey thanks!  Heh, I completely forgot I wrote that.  I need to copy & paste it to a local file so I don't lose it

Maybe I should continue it....ahhh this game programming crap is wearing me out...7:50am here and I'm wide awake!!!

...But not for long...and Enviro-Suit Ernie will once more transmit a scratchy message on a busted half-nuked HAM radio....

The game is called "High Orbit"... it will be a MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game), and will allow thousands of players to play at once.  It will be Freeware, but when I have 10,000 players I will implement a way for players to purchase (with their credit card)  Ultra-rare and Unique items, vehicles, weapons, spacecraft, etc.  Common and Uncommon items (and just about anything in the game) can be purchased in this way, but cheaper than rare stuff.  The game software would still be freeware, with no fees for playing like with fancier games, but I'd get money from people buying stuff ingame (or better yet, thru PayPal).  Then I could afford to assemble a team of super-nerds to help improve on the concept and turn it into a REAL game, with better graphics and some music,  cinematics, etc.

Good luck on your project, Blaze.  Sounds very aspiring!  I hope you stay on target with it, as multiplayer gaming is always expanding.  We need more!

I gave up for a while on my game idea, but then one day after downing 2 cans of "Venom (Death Adder)" energy drinks, I somehow learned Visual Basic 2008 Express programming in about 2 or 3 hours.  I made a quickie mp3 player, a graphical login screen for my game, and then realized I may actually be able to make the whole thing myself (cheap and crappy though it most certainly may be).

I realized I would need to make an editor for it first, so I began about 3 weeks ago working on an editor for the game.
I changed the game name to Oasis Project, and so far I have a map editor that you can explore OOII-style
along with a (still glitchy) space editor + starbase maker (those need work though, just left off on it earlier tonight).

I added editable mapflags (fire, landmines, etc etc) and up to 3 editable weather patterns per each of 20 planets.
The planets themselves range from 50x50 to 200x200 in size, with an equal-sized "underground" map, and each planet will have 1 AFB sub-map and 1 Alien Prison sub-map.  There's also a dialog for creating complexes for each planet.  A planet is considered "owned" when someone claims a complex (except Terra Complex, which is where everyone starts out).

The coolest part is when I realized I can use animated .gifs in VB, so I went bananas and downloaded a bunch of "royalty free" gifs of mecha, ufos, etc etc.... although all the BMP images (terrain graphics & planet / building images) I did myself in Bryce 4 and Photoshop 5.

I decided to limit the graphics.  Although you can choose a mech image or ship image to use for your mech/ship/vehicle/etc, it's mostly just eye candy.  You will see it on the combat screen, and I considered a hybrid OOII / Final Fantasy 2 type of system, where the party and the enemy party (btw did I mention you can have 5 players/NPCs in a party?) are lined up on the screen and take turns like in FF2, but with a graphical version of the OOII action combat, which I always loved...Action Combat *MADE* the BBS experience for me.

I'm such a nerd....lol

Anyway, I'll put all my current game notes and a copy of my UNFINISHED editor up on FileFront, and I'll be back here to post a link to it should any of you be interested in taking a look.  HOWEVER, before I do that, I need to add a few more things....ability to place bases, create Vehicles (cars, trucks, boats, airplanes, helicopters), create mecha and spaceships, NPCs, and generally just make all the buttons "do something".

As it is now, I could spend hours crafting a map for just 1 world, laying out Caves to go between above-ground and underground, figuring out the best places to put a Bone Pile or a certain cell in the alien prison...man oh man, Overkill warped my fragile little mind as a teenager, now my chair is giving me 'roids, carpal tunnel, and arthritis from all the sitting and typing and drawing and crap....I truly hope I can at least make a single-player WORKING version.  I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the Client/Server networking stuff.  Seems to be easier in VB than in C++ (which I did *NOT* learn in 21 days--or ever, despite the name of the book), but reading other peoples' code confuses the hell out of me.

OH!!!  I should also mention, I figured out a way (assuming I can get the MMOG thing down) to do multi-player action combat...
They'd take turns, like in FF2, but with an action combat option.

Damn, I'm excited, can you tell? 

You guys rock!  Thanks for the list.
 

[HL-1 is my favorite game of all time, definitely.  I haven't played HL-2 yet, citing a shite video card, but veryvery soon.  (Santa, are you listening?)

Anyone played Far Cry?  Gorgeous terrain.  That'd be a nifty game engine to use for an Overkill 3-D type game.

Does any modeler/animator out there want to build about 50+ monsters for it? [/quote]


Half-Life 2 was well worth the $60 (tax and all) I paid for it.
There's a "Zero-point Gravity Gun" which you can use to draw objects (from cinder blocks to old shoes to office desks) towards you, then launch them away.  Great for clearing traffic jams.

Towards the end of the game, your grav-gun gets super-charged, and you can literally yank the enemy to you and shoot them back at the others.  They fall REALISTICLY, ie if you throw something at their legs they flip over as in real life.  The physics in HL2 are AWESOME.   The grave gun (when supercharged it becomes energy gun) is SOOOOOO coool!!!!!    I was grabbing dead bodies and using them as shields, then sending the other enemies flying by whacking them with the corpse of their comrade.   GET IT DUSTIN!!!  SHOOT YOUR OLD VID CARD, GET A NEW ONE, AND BUY HALF-LIFE 2!!!!!!  You will NOT regret it!!!  Plus, they just (2 days ago) released the multi-player DM version.  I've never before in my life seen a game where players can beat each other up with urinals and street signs.   (drool....)

Ok, gotta go play it now.....hehehe.  By the way, if OO ever goes 3D use the HL2 engine.  Go to www.havok.com for details on the physics system they use.  Also, the SDK for HL2 is out, and just like HL1 it's a very easy to learn engine.   Imagine throwing your rations at a germite as you rush back to the complex with 1 hp....
lol....ok maybe a shockel, but not a germite.......(thems good eatin'!!!)

-=<Dragonstar>=-
King of the Blazewarrior Alliance
...Germite farmer/ration chef extrordinaire  :roll:

You could try what I used to use......DEBUG.

LOL.   Yeppers.  Good ol' Debug (or better yet "Hex Workshop")
works great as an editor.....

Unfortunately, I never realized that, or knew how to use it, until
door games had already phased out and the internet began to rear it's many ugly heads......

Tough to use DEBUG as an editor, but I assume the file structures
are organized the same, in which case it's easy.

Write down or print out your character stats screenshot, then convert the stats to hexadecimal, then search thru debugging the
player data file until you find sequential numbers corresponding to your char's stats.  At that point, assuming you've found the correct place in the file, you can begin hacking your char.  I suggest replacing the values for HP and DEX with "FF"  
You can hack monsters the same way, and do even more knifty stuff if you're skilled with DEBUG or Hex Workshop.   DEBUG, for those who don't know, is included with DOS and Windows, and can be run from the Windows "Run file" command prompt window or DOS.  Hex Workshop is MUCH better and runs in Windows.

Yeah Yeah....too much to bother with?   Yeah....heh....get EDITOO.
 :roll:

Woohoo!  A vote of confidence from Dustin himself.  Wow, I feel like I won an Oscar.     Thx weezal.

I'll keep working on my game but I must admit, I just bought the MechWarrior 4 compilation (mercenaries, vengance, and black knight) and that's kept me busy for a while.....

....to make matters worse, I bought Half-Life 2 as well.  I will NOT be able to do anything other than play it til I've beaten it.

If any of you haven't played Half-Life (or even better Half-Life 2)
please do yourself a favor and try it out!!!

I wonder how hard it would be to make an OOII-type MOD for HL2?

Imagine OO in 3d.......I'd soil myself at first glance.....

Hello?  You still there?

I have a feeling I know who you are......Wes, perhaps?

This is Dragonstar, your underpaid wasteland tour guide.
Today our tour will take us down to the vile and smelly depths of
map 5, where we will be learning some nice cave decorating tips from Martha "Shrie" Stewart, who will also devour our brains in a lovely Jublatta Soup......

 8O

It's been my experience that killing the guard isn't THAT hard.
You are correct that common items (and even those purchasable in the AFB) aren't worth cloning.
My favorite thing of all to clone are Zimmers, Telegrasps, Landmines, and Trikorders (if team needs em).
Anything else is a waste of time.
I usually do clone 1 medkit as well, and YES I most certainly do use action combat....otherwise it'd be pointless.

The best strategy to use against the guard is as follows:
Go fight weak monsters near the complex, intentionally missing until your accuracy is near to nothing.  This will also affect the guard's accuracy (he is after all your clone).  Try not to run away, so as to keep your bravery around 80% or better.  Once your accuracy is shot to hell, go fight the guard with your TrigNet.  I guarantee he will miss if your accuracy is low enough.  Of course now the thing to do is recover your action combat skillz and whoop his rump.
Also, it's best to not wear armor when fighting him so he'll take more damage from the TrigNet.  PolyCarbon can be bought in the AFB so it's not worth risking your life over.....

This is the same strategy I used to use back in the mid-90's when I spent most of my gaming time cloning Zimmers, Telegrasps, and Landmines.  Ahhh...those were the days......

I hope this helps, and let me know if it makes cloning easier for you.  I know it always does for me.  
And YES he CAN be killed with a trilasm...though it's dumb to try.  :roll:

Hey Mindphaser, are you a programmer?  If so, are you familiar with Visual C++ 6?  I need someone to help code the game I'm working on, but I'll probably end up doing it myself (I used to do assembly, so C++ shouldn't be too hard to learn)

If you want to see my work on it thus far, email me:

dragonstar_reborn @ yahoo.com (without the spaces of course)

The game is called "High Orbit" and is not very graphical at all.
mostly it's text like in overkill, but with some minor graphics, mostly non-animated.  You start on Earth, exploring the map, etc, but over time you can get land, water, and air vehicles and spacecraft, as well as taming wild NPC creatures as mounts.  Once you have a good ship, you can travel to other space sectors, find other worlds, and build empires that span the stars.  There are many rare and unique items, and new things (items, plants, animals, monsters, etc) can be created by players with access to the proper buildings...

It will be a MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game), and will allow thousands of players to play at once.

Combat is similar to the combat system used in Final Fantasy series, to save me a crapload of animation headaches.

I have 2 jobs, so I have very little time to work on it (or to learn VC++ 6 for that matter) but I will hopefully be able to get the project going sometime soon....
I have tinkered with it enough to where I feel the game will be well balanced and easy for newbies to figure out.....

It will be Freeware, but when I have 10,000 players I will implement a way for players to purchase (with their credit card)
Ultra-rare and Unique items, vehicles, weapons, spacecraft, etc.
Common and Uncommon items (and just about anything in the game) can be purchased in this way, but cheaper than rare stuff.
The game software would still be freeware, with no fees for playing like with fancier games, but I'd get money from people buying stuff ingame (or better yet, thru PayPal).  Then I could afford to assemble a team of super-nerds to help improve on the concept and turn it into a REAL game, with better graphics and some music,  cinematics, etc.

WHEW!!!  A lot of work cut out for me, but I'm up to the challenge.
    Now I just need a couple of years to get started....  :?

Great intro!

Thanks!  By the way, in the old versions of OOII (the ZIP that included the stories from various players in a separate ZIP) I wrote a great story.  I don't remember how it went exactly, and I no longer have a copy of it.....well I MAY have a copy of it, and if I do I'll post it, as it was very good in my opinion, and a LOT shorter than my last post.  The story was originally posted in an ancient FidoNet echo, where Dustin picked it up and kindly dropped it into the OOII game archive.  I'll look for it in between my 2 hectic jobs
if I can manage to stay awake long enough.  8O

-=<Dragonstar>=-
Leader of the Blazewarrior Alliance