Dyson
Dyson is a collaborative project between Omni's own Rudolf Kremers and indie programmer Alex May , with music and sound by Brian Grainger (Milieu). The game was created as a fun entry for the Tigsource Procedural Game Competition and the Dyson thread can be found here.
Dyson is a real-time strategy / colonisation game in which you must take control of an entire asteroid belt. You start as a single seedling that produces a tree on your starting asteroid. Your tree in turn produces new and unique seedlings which can be used to conquer other asteroids. However, the astro belt features up to ten AI opponents that provide fierce resistance and have their own drive for conquest. To defeat them you have to explore the strategic possibilites of the game. Eventually you can build up very large armies of 400 or more seedlings and witness some epic battles. With the exception of the music and sounds, and the font, almost all of the game content is generated procedurally.
The game available for download is the Competition Version of the game. The final game itself is still being developed and is much richer in content.
An in-game tutorial is included to teach you the basics. If you don't have a mouse wheel, the cursor keys and page up/down also control the camera.
The game requires the .NET 2.0 Framework to run.
DOWNLOAD Competition version HERE - 8 MEGS - (winrar Archive)
Spire
Rudolf and Mike McCArthy are currently in the midst of developing the background and working script of an interesting project named Spire. Spire's concept is based on an actual, rather grotesque, nightmare Rudolf once had, about the plight of paranormally gifted children on an endlessly rising tower-like structure, jutting out of an ocean on some fantastical world.
Mike was so enthused by the potential of this vision that he decided he wanted to help breathe life in it. It is turning out te be a dark and grotesque little tale full of unexpected nooks and crannies that can be explored in their own right and it seems that this may be a world that we will develop in quite a bit of detail. The first instalmant is going to be an ongoing graphic novel telling the central tale that spawned the project and showcases the Spire universe.
See the Spotlight page for some of Mike's art!
