(Requiescat In Pace, Slashie)
Omega, the roguelike we all remember with love and hatred. The roguelike of the “up-in-the-air” madness which started all the craze of overworld roguelikes, the underrated, buggy, unplayable roguelike we all remember. Is back.
Omega is interesting as it was one of the first such games to show the influence of more story and quest led games, particularly the Ultima series that were released commercially by Origin Systems for various micros during the 1980s. Rather than simply wandering round a dungeon, in Omega the player has various paths open to them to appease the gods of Omega’s world.
I’ve taken Omega 0.80.2 and built it as a “proper” Windows application (rather than the console mode builds that have been available before). This version can also optionally show the area around the player using graphics, rather than the usual ASCII characters. The graphics come from David Gervais’ tiles, drawn originally for the game Angband.
Check it out at: http://freespace.virgin.net/davidk.kinder/omega.html, Now.
Temple of The Roguelike 
Why no fullscreen?
LikeLike
aah David did a good job on winglk.. However I dont think I’ll ever go near Omega ever again. Too much scarring, bad memories.. bugs..
LikeLike
I don’t know what you mean here with a proper Windows application. DOS executables are obviously outdated, but IMHO the proper way to have a ASCII roguelike in Windows is the Windows console. Using ASCII in your own window is bad because one has to implement fullscreen and all other features themselves.
Of course I mean no offense (this is rather nitpicking about this text), a graphical version of Omega is a good thing.
LikeLike
I would really love to see someone pick this game up and start coding it again. It’s always stood out in my mind as one of THE defining roguelike games of all time. The inventory system has always boggled me a little bit, but considering I was even capable of playing it when I was 7, having only one feature that has messed with me is trivial. Honestly, I’d like to see this game rise again from the dead. I do remember someone writing some newer versions recently, but there were no precompiled .exes and I can’t be bothered to learn how to run a compiler just to check out some bugfixes.
LikeLike
OMG! Thank you so much, I can remember an old macintosh version of omega with graphics, . I love omega and much more then nethack/angband. Cities and overworld and humor. And yes, omega can be very evil and unforgiving, on the other hand once you get your player ball rolling…..about 10 levels or so and an understanding of the main town, it gets easier. And this graphics version helps in one HUGE regard…its easier to tell where the city stores are at…no more squinting at similer ascii looking symbols!!! Keep up the good work.
LikeLike