I would be very surprised, shocked in fact, if after release of the editing tools, gundam or transformers mods were not introduced to the community.

The basic theme and style of this game lends itself so easily to that format and theme of play that it would be silly not to extend the mod set into those universes.

Something that hasn't been mentioned yet (that I've seen) is the amount of variations you can find within the game. Most fighters contain up to maybe 20 characters you can choose from. They each have their own specific attributes, as is expected, but you can only master maybe a half dozen or so of them because otherwise you end up starting to confuse one characters attacks with anothers. Not the case with OMF: BG. Although you only have 8 official HARs to choose from (I'm sure that fan-made ones will pop-up rather quickly, be they additions to the OMF universe or themed ones such as Transformers, Dragonball or anime mechs) you have the choice of 50 pilots to choose from. As well, if you so desire, you can create your own pilot for the sake of play. This allows you to know the moves for most of the HARs but be able to change how it plays each time you choose a different pilot. If you select one pilot you'll be as quick as the wind and be near-impossible to knock down from high endurance but your focus may be rather low reducing the number of super attacks you can do and you'll have to smack away at your opponent for a long time before they go down because you simply lack the strength to do heavy damage. OR you may choose to go with high strength and focus but risk moving around like a slug and being able to be knocked out with a couple of well placed hits. There's a pilot for just about every variation of the 4 pilot attributes (strength/speed/endurance/focus) so you'll easily find one that'll fit your bill. As for the HARs you'll be busy trying to figure out how to devise your next combo. BG is like checkers: easy to pick up, difficult to master.

Zoung... You're A poopiehead... and... .. dont tell others what to do, in that angry kinda way you said it, if they did not ask. but if ... arrggh screw it... I LOOOVVVVE OMF:BG!! CAnt hardly Wait..1?1+1 waeeeewagka aaa!

The sky is better, yes. It also does it's job.

When you're playing you pay more attention to your behind being pummelled by both the interactive arena and the many opponents than the sky... yet, it has not been ignored!

The sky is individual to each level. The sky being a surface with an applied texture, active in some levels, passive in others. Remember that the videos are all from at LEAST two builds ago, and in some cases MANY more so there have been ALOT of graphical improvements since the videos were taken.

The sky is considerably better than the low rez textures of the early engine builds.

I saw the video and some pics: I HOPE the sky is going to be reworked, as it looks like a giant skybox low-res texture.

Modifications to this engine are extremely easy (compared to some FPS and RPG platforms, remember that there really hasnt been a fighter released specifically for the PC platform so we never have really had something to compare to for fighter engine modification) and will certainly be encouraged by the developers. The editing tools will either be shipped with the game or made availible to the public sometime shortly thereafter.

As I noted in my earlier post, the engine recognizes modified content as just as valid or genuine to the game as developer created content. This sort of modifiable nature should encourage this game be a platform for innumerable fighting enterprises, allowing new models, pilot actions, charachters, paintjobs, skins, arenas, and other content.

This comment was edited on Mar 7, 23:14.

As Clocks mentions somewhere in his personal monster there, the crowning jewel of OMF is the engine.

One thing I hear is that it is very mod-friendly. I certainly hope the mod community embraces this game. This is a first opportunity for many mods that would like to include Hand to hand combat, as this game has a beautiful fully 3-D environment as well as full fighting game features(REAL hand to hand combat would rule in a Bid For Power[Q3 Mod] style mod).

This comment was edited on Mar 7, 23:00.

Indeed clocks, that pretty much gives a ton more info than the original explanation.

The game is in late beta now, with fine-tuning and shining-up going on now. The netcode is pretty amazing, and it's quite smooth, even on a Dial-up connection. The fighting system is like no other. Visit www.omf.com for more info.

One of the many unique aspects of this system (there are way too many for me to explain all of them here) is a "Counter". A counter is activated before you are hit. If you activated it succesfully, you will retaliate with a special move of your own. This is extremely useful in tight-melee-battle situations.

For the past several years, the PC Gaming industry, and in particular the first tier publishers, have shunned the PC Fighting genre due to a lack of market in the early days of the platform. Over time, this lack of content and games has forced many game sites, both online and in print, to stop recognizing fighting games as a spearate genre altogether, grouping them instead with action games in terms of content and reviewing procedures.

One Must Fall:Battlegrounds, in development by Panama City Beach Florida-based Diversions Entertainment, may finally be the groundbreaking game to change all that, re-igniting interest in PC fighting and introducing the world of gamers to the first ever truly multiplayer 3D internet fighting experience. For the past year and 5 months, I have enjoyed the opportunity to play this game as it has developed from a OpenGL-based "rough cut" to the more refined 85% completed Direct3D product that currently plays in a beta pool that has grown to over 400 members.

When first introduced to the One Must Fall game, the first and most striking thing to be recognized is the graphical beauty this game serves up as it pitches together 90 foot bots in gigantic arenas. From the animated fire sparkling aroudn the top of the ring in the fire pit, to the starry night sky twinkling above pharoahs fire, to the glistening beauty winking up from the frozen pierced steel planking that forms the upper structure of the iceberg, this game delivers crystal clear textures, scalable high resolution, crisp colors, beautiful original particle effects, and a robust reflections system. This Direct3D based engine demands a Transform and Lighting capable video card but is sufficiently optimized to allow even low to mid end gamers to play albeit with some lower graphical settings.

We all know that when it comes to gaming, eye candy is nice but it means nothing (particularly in a fighter) if the gameplay isnt up to par. Having already delivered the Gamespy-Hall-Of-Fame One Must Fall 2097 title in 1994 (Published by Epic Megagames), Diversions Entertainment (DE) leaves no doubts and solidly delivers. The control system allows directional movement, 4 basic strikes, jump, and evade. Moving away from the intensity based strikes of some more traditional games, OMF instead gives players the capability to execute left and right side punches as well as left and right side kicking. A single press unleashes a basic move of medium power. Adding a directional press to an attack unleashes a second tier of moves for each bot, allowing players to make quick strikes with each of the four attacks or to make strafing moves with the evade button (double tapping a direction in combination with evade allows a player to dodge in a direction to get around some attacks). Three-button-sequences such as up,down, left-punch create a whole third tier of attack options, allowing individual bots to make use of signature moves of medium to high magnitude, all these without use of the "super" energy. Each bot is additionally empowered with 2 to 3 super moves which create large swaths of individual or area damage, devestating when drawn out in close combat but requring built up energy to use.

Although berift of the long complicated move lists encompassed in a traditional console fighter such as Tekken or Soul Calibre, the OMF combo system is dynamic, relying on players stringing together series of quick, powerful move combinations in order to form multihit combos to devestate opponents. The highest combo that i have personally been witness to thus far is 16 hits, although some beta players have made claims of the ability to score as high as 20 against an opponent. This unique approach to the combo system allows beginners to jump right into combat with the intuitive controls while still allowing more advanced players to make use of memorized move sequences or "skill" combinations against opponents.

The engine powering One Must Fall:Battlegrounds is actually the crown jewel of this game, an entirely custom build by the DE development team. The modularized engine uses a java-like scripting language to set up artificial intellegence routines, game content, game movement, specific articles, and other content loaded in a DE Objects format. The engine also has been constructed to allow highly modifiable game content, recognizing third party content as just as genuine as developer created, with the server controlling what may or may not be loaded for modifications. In addition, the modularized segregation of input, output, control, and interaction functions allows games constructed with this engine to be easily ported from platform to platfom, with relatively little cross platform development time invested.

The graphical, gameplay, engine flexibility, and solid performance of this game have kept me coming back for more for over a year and 4 months, validating several years of waiting in the One Must Fall community. Players will not be disappointed when the game releases later this year, estimated for general release in the second quarter.

I'd like to hope that OMF bg will be the C&C of the fighing genre. OMF will be mechanically closer to real fighting and with it's high modability a game capable of lasting for a long time.

I agree with you plugo... the music enhances the atomosphere to no end...

One Must Fall Battlegrounds is an exellent mix of old skool fighter and new technologies combined. It features an attempt at a game designed for everyone and not just those of the older teenage population, since it's robots fighting and not human players trying to rip eachothers heads off as in most other games today. The grafics are awsome and have amazed me since I started to test it for Diversions Entertainment.
It's a must get for anyone, it's specifically designed to get the most fun with the attempt at the best replay value you can find. The many variations on the modern fighting allows it to become more than just a fighting game, but a game of football and more.

This comment was edited on Jan 2, 05:45.

All I can say to you Zoung, ... You're missing out.

I've played this game for a good while, and I can say it is up there with the top 10 of today's games, maybe even number 1. Hmm Zoung, lets think.... This game is going to be absolutely chair rocking in the first few betas.... Even though it was fun, it is nothing in comparison to what it is now. And who made the law that a "fighting" game goes on a console? If you pardon me, I'll safely say this isn't a fighting game you've ever played before, gameplay is totally different, and with up to 16 player support, this game was MADE for the pc.

Of course you could just play it for a few minutes and complain that it doesn't have this, or doesn't have that. Instead of you actually put some time into it, you will find its much more enjoyable then any dinky two-player fighting game. I can't stand people who review games that goes as follows: HEY THIS GAME SUCKS I BOUGHT IT FOR $40 BUCKS AND IT IS SO DUMB THERE IS NO (Put random feature here) AND THE GRAPHIX SUK!!! Because do you think they actually put some real... whats it called... BRAIN into it? No. And of course this isn't a game for everybody. Some people will like it, (hopefully the majority) and some people won't. How it goes.

"Something like OMF:BG is meant to be more of a sparetime fun action game, not an all tim consuming FPS or RTS type game, etc."

Heh... That certainly isn't true for me. As a beta tester, I've spent more time playing this game than just about any other game. For comparison, I've spent WAY more time playing this than playing Warcraft III. I've also spent many, many more hours playing this than playing Jedi Knight 2 (despite enjoying JK2 immensely).

This game truly is a gem. Anyone who disagrees... well, he must have extremly poor taste in games :D.

I'd have to agree with killer roach as well. Honestly, look at the games which the industry has been pushing as of late. Warcraft III was no big improvement over II or then again I, they just added a couple new units, purdy'd up the graphics and shipped it as a new title. In the FPS realm there haven't been all that many changes either. Sure, minor additions have been made (a la Bombing Run for UT2k3) but on the whole, things are the same.

I personally herald back to a lot of the games from yester year when it comes to specific gameplay that I'm seeking. Case in point, I still play Street Rod 1&2. Why? Because EA decided to screw over Motorcity and go for the money grab. Same thing they've done with the Sims, I might add. The games which have come out from the smaller developers are the ones which I actually find interesting to play now. Has anyone here played Post Mortem? I've just tried the demo but it seems to be a rather promising title in the adventure genre, another one which has suffered a rather ill fate along with the PC fighter.

Basically what I'm saying is that OMF: BG is not an econo game turned out to make a quick buck. They've seriously thought about the game to all degrees and actually LISTEN to what the beta testers are saying. Heck, we even actually talk to members of the team. Some of them more then others, but they still talk. I couldn't imagine anyone from a company like Blizzard or EA taking time out of their schedule to personally answer questions or just strike up a conversation with a curious member of the community. Its a game for the gamers, just like their motto says: "We make the games you would make if you were us".

Heed KR's words.

OMF:BG is a groundbreaking title... And I'm not just referring to Warlord's Earthquake Smash! There are already OMF Clans and the community aspect of the game is very tight while at the same time expanding. People from all over have had their jaws dropped, their eyes opened and their fingers itching to have a go at BG...

I can see it now, in a few months time a huge following of players wishing to beat the snot out of each other in huge bouts with surprise attacks, painful combos, using the interactive arenas to inflict maximum damage. It's a match made in heaven: Robots and close combat, but we recieve it in a game made in Florida

-PBN

You might want to cut Tanto Edge just a bit of slack.

Yes, I know, he's more than a bit of an imbecile. However, he's also an UNINFORMED imbecile. Baldur's Gate 2 never came out for the PS2. Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, a Diablo-style action game set in the Forgotten Realms universe, was released for the PS2, Xbox, and GCN. Perhaps he's gotten his wires crossed... being in a state of furor does that to a person.

Anyways, I've been gaming on the PC since 1990, and I have seen (and played) quite a few different titles (by my own count, I have played approximately 800 different PC games, either shareware or purchased full versions, since then). What has been bordering on disgusting has been the fact that the current publisher system is turning into the same sort of complacent monolith the movie industry was in the 50s (before Congress ended the studio system) and what the record industry is today: too many bigwigs wanting to take minimal risks by putting the same types of tripe on store shelves year after year and hoping it still sells.

Even still, for a developer to eschew a major publisher is nothing new. It generally merits little more than a yawn when one of these independents creates a very innovative title. But for an indie to create a title that more or less revives a dead PC gaming genre and obliterates the previous paradigm within by means of a huge, ambitious project... THAT's news.

You look at what is being done recently with the PC fighting game genre. According to FilePlanet's own statistics, OMF 2097 was the fourth most downloaded PC fighting game file of the past week. And the game is nine years old and, due to it being a DOS title, has problems running under modern operating systems. That, in my opinion, is a testament to not only how pervasive a following the One Must Fall franchise has gotten but also how little there has been since.

I guess there's always gotta be critics, though... although I'd prefer that somebody who has to give a dissenting opinion at least post something that can at least stand muster to a John Doe, let alone somebody like myself who stands from an informed opinion on the game and the history of the once-proud genre on the PC.

To the public, I say to be aware of what is coming up from out of nowhere in the PC gaming industry. To the flamers, I say en garde.

Re Tanto: Funny, one would expect people to be /happy/ that there are more than two types of games made for their favorite gaming platform, not the other way round.
Given their team size and game's originality DE has been putting in a fantastic effort and we can only hope this makes Battlegrounds enough of a financial success to warrant sequels and possibly bring us other console ports aswell. I'm sick of WW2-themed first person shooters and fantasy RPGs, PC games need the originality and just-darn-fun feel that consoles seem to have in volume.