Oni Res joins Oni Central

The recently launched site, Oni Res, is now part of Oni Central. Acrappa's site for Oni resources is now hosted at Oni Central and is a welcomed addition. Be sure to visit his great site today to get the most from your Oni experience!
 

Scans of PC Gamer UK Oni review available

Steve was so kind as to scan in the four-page review of Oni in the January 2001 issue of PC Gamer UK. The review is interesting, pointing out both the good and bad in the game. Interestingly enough, they used both newer and really old screenshots. :)

Many thanks to Steve for the scans!
 

New Oni review

Gameunit posted a very positive review of Oni for the PC. The review is very neatly arranged and talks about various aspects of the game in different sections and gives Oni a very good review. Check it out!

(Thanks to Stan Spaeth for the heads up!)
 

New Oni resource site launches

Acrappa launched his own resource editing site today; it has everything you need to fiddle with the current Oni demo as well as play level 2 which is available with the Oni demo on the PC Gamer cover CD.

PC Gamer cover CD has a different Oni demo

Nathan made a post to the forum about an Oni demo being on the cover CD of the latest PC Gamer magazine. Strangely enough, the demo has a different demo than what we got when the demo was released on the web.

Read Nathan's forum post here.

On a related note; the latest issue of PC Gamer seems to have a preview/review of Oni, scans are appreciated.

Update: The PC Gamer demo has levels 1 and 2 and the training level.

How do you like the Oni demo?

Since the demo was released, the gaming world had a chance to try out the game we've been waiting for all this time. Mostly good impressions, along with some bad.

The new poll asks a general question: how do you like the Oni demo? Head over to the poll and cast your vote!

 

Reviews of Oni demo

Three more sites posted reviews of the recently released Oni demo. The first can be found at 3Dactionplant, the second at The Stratos Group and the third one at IntelGamer.

All are a positive look on the demo, with the biggest gripe being the "installer" for the PC version of the demo (the downloaded .exe being a zip archive that extracts itself, and when the demo is quit deletes itself again).
 

Original fan art of Konoko

Oni Central was blessed with two new original works of fan art, both portraits of Oni. Matt Freels, who sent in the "Konoko Shades" image, let me know that the How to draw Konoko tutorial really helped him.

Have a gander at those new images!

Mac demo released

MacGamer has released the anticipated Mac version of the Oni demo, which is identical to its PC counterpart. It is 75.5 MB large and can be downloaded from 5 different mirrors.

Make sure you read all read me's before playing the demo for your full enjoyment. Oni suggests you have at least 114 MB of free memory and turning your VM to at least 200 if you do not have the physcial memory to support its requirement. Oni will not work with the RageIIc card that can be found in Rev A iMacs and beige G3's. Other known issues and important info are included in the read me files.
 

Scripting section added to Archives

It turns out that there is a certain third-party editing side to Oni; people have realised that the scripts for levels included in the recent Oni demo can be edited to affect certain things in the game.

A few edits have already been made, so I decided to add a section on script edits in the Oni Central Archives. Go check out the new page here.

Update: This section is now gone due to Oni Res being part of Oni Central.
 

Entertainment Depot and Games Domain post demo reviews

Ryan Newman of Entertainment Depot posted a review with his impressions of the recently released PC demo of Oni. You can read it here.

Games Domain also posted their review of the PC demo, which you can read here. (Thanks Claude!)

Update on Mac demo

Matt Soell made the following post to the forum:

Hey All- Just got word that the reworked Mac demo is almost ready to go. We'll be sending it to Gathering later today. They might run it through another testing gauntlet but in any case you shouldn't have to wait much longer. Thanks for being patient with us. :-)

Watch Oni Central for news on when the Mac demo is released!

What does your favourite Konoko look like?

James Gurnee (aka Redox) suggested this poll to me. It's an interesting questions and worth a poll. There have been a number of different versions of Konoko, our beloved heroine of Oni, and the poll asks what version YOU like.

Matt Soell comments on the Mac demo

Matt made a post to the forum concerning the Mac demo (or lack thereof):

Here's the deal on the Mac version. We caught a problem with OpenGL at the 11th hour. We need to fix this before we GM the Mac CD and release the Mac demo. According to Stefan it's not a big operation and shouldn't take too long, and he will be working with the Oni guys to make this happen. I don't have a release date yet but it shouldn't be an unreasonable wait.

Obviously we're sorry about the delay, especially since the PC demo is already out, but not taking the time to fix this problem would mean a significant number of Mac users couldn't use the demo at all. That would suck. So bear with us a tiny bit longer and we'll have an Oni demo that you and your Mac will love.

Oni Central will let you know when the Mac demo hits the web.
 

More Oni demo information

The demo that appeared yesterday at Adrenaline Vault caused a flurry of activity both on the Oni Central forum and on comment sections of various gaming sites. Here's some info I obtained from around the web and the forum:

• The demo consists of the training level, a warehouse level and an Airport level, along with an anime intro.
• People are complaining about the installation process of the demo - it installs into a temporary directory by default and basically uninstalls itself when you quit the game. Reportedly, you can manually unzip the .exe things should be different. Some assume it's a "beta" demo. 32 Bit graphics don't seem to work and there seem to be problems with the UI. Otherwise people are saying that it was worth the download and is a great game to play.
• ATI Radeon card users may have problems playing the demo, "My Modem is on Fire" of Bungie confirmed this in a forum post.

Here are more Oni demo mirrors:

FilePlanet
DemoNews
3DDownloads
3DFiles.com

If you've played the demo and want to share your experience then don't hesitate and head to the forum now!

(Thanks to Jonathan Bradley, Johnny Cedergren and Carl Nelson for e-mails with info)

Oni demo at Adrenaline Vault?

A demo for Oni seems to have appeared at Adrenaline Vault, but there is no mention of it at Gathering of Developers' homepage. I do not know if it is a playable demo or not.

The demo is PC only and weighs in at about 69 megs.

Oni team moves to Redmond

The guys of Bungie West have moved up to Redmond from their office in San Jose, according to Matt Soell's latest Halo update found at haloplayers.com.

An interesting note to point out is that David Dunn, one of the architects of Oni, now is helping out in Halo:

David Dunn, formerly of the Oni team, has joined the Halo folks and is working on environments. He's currently doing some interior stuff for us. I can't tell you specifically what he's working on because saying who built the structure and what it's used for is just a wee bit too revealing at this point.

Oni and the lack of blood: an editorial

Following MacNN's editorial on "unrealistic violence" in Oni, Corey Tamás of macgamer.com (formerly Mac Gamer's ledge) posted his own editorial on the lack of blood in Oni and his reactions to people criticising the game for this.

Certainly the gameplay of Oni would be no different if blood were present, so there's no grounds upon which to assert that it makes for a better game. What's more, it could easily increase the system requirements and demand a more powerful 3d card (as drawing stuff like that on the screen can often slow down the frame rates). I am thus left asking the disturbing question: "What's the appeal?"

It's a good read and I know Corey, like me, is a huge Oni fan and advocate.

(Thanks to Claude for the heads up.)

Rockstar's Oni site launches

Rockstar finally launched their own site for Oni. It's all in flash, and can be found right here. A wealth of interesting info and visuals can be found.

I was also notified that Jacen Burrows is the artist of the Oni art you see on that webpage, and the image I mentioned six days ago. Jacen also did the "clean" version of the image of Konoko in ripped clothing holding weapons.

Rockstar is porting Oni for the PlayStation 2, and will be released with the Mac/PC version on January 29th, 2001.

Oni and the lack of realistic violence

games.macnn.com posted an editorial on "The New Face of Gaming", a discussion of the removal of blood in Oni.

A quote:

The removal of Oni's realistic violence is designed to make the game appeal to the widest possible demographic and thus increase sales. Oni is no longer a game meant solely for the Macintosh and Windows platforms, but is also Bungie's first foray into the world of console gaming with its PlayStation 2 version. The target market has changed and it makes good business sense to tone down its original vision in order to sell as many copies as possible.

More new screenshots

Voodoo Extreme posted four more shots today, while Eurogamer posted 20 new shots from the PS2 version (some are seen in yesterday's Console Domain preview).

The cutscenes I've seen so far look really nice, ranging from stopping a truck, to riding a bike to jump over a gate, to hang gliding.

New screenshots and a new preview

Some PS2 material to report today:

Inside PS2 Games posted 5 new screenshots of Oni (Thanks Sarwat), whilst Console Domain posted their own positive PS2 preview of Oni along with shots (thanks Hank).

I am wondering who did the image above (which is included in the preview). It's done by an artist I myself haven't seen before.
 

New forum

Time for a bit of internal news: the Oni Central forum has been upgraded to the latest version of WebBBS, and is even more slick than before. Beneath the hood and on the surface improvements have been made, so get your posting done on the new forum from now on!

VoodooExtreme posts hi-res shots

I missed posting about their first set of shots, and I just saw that they posted new shots today.

You can find the three new ones posted today right here, they are at a 1024x768 resolution.

Four days ago, Voodoo Extreme posted five shots that were taken at "1600x1200 with 2x FSAA sampling enabled on a 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 card". Check them out here.

New Oni comic information

Dan Rudolph pointed out the following items on Dark Horse's site:

A description of issue 1 (coming February 14, 2001), a description of issue 2 (coming March 14, 2001), 4 preview images (looking good!), an overview of the upcoming comic and lastly, an interview with Rockstar member, Jeronimo Barrera.

It all sounds like Rockstar developed Oni, but we know better, right? :)

Matt's Oni update for December 1

Matt graces us with an Oni update again, it will be the last but it's long:
--
Matt's Oni Report - December 1, 2000

Barring total catastrophe, this will be the last weekly Oni update. I can't come up with enough interesting tidbits to make these updates worthwhile, and the Gathering marketing machine is finally churning out Oni goodies, so these have kinda run their course. If big news happens, I'll just post it to the forums.

- First, a clarification/request. Some of you have downloaded the b4 Mac build that some sucker punk leaked to the net. I'll leave out the speech about why beta leaks suck because most of you already know why. The build floating around out there is a few weeks old and contains several bugs that have since been fixed. Don't mistake a beta build for a final candidate. (The easiest way of doing that is to not download it in the first place, which has the added benefit of keeping you on steady legal/ethical ground.)

- We thought Oni for Mac was ready to GM earlier this week, but at the last minute we had to fix a little CarbonLib problem. Once that's done and the installer is rebuilt, we should be ready to roll.

- Some of y'all have been asking about a demo. Lucky for you, so has Gathering. We're helping them put one together now. I haven't had a chance to talk to any Oni folk this week so I have no idea when it will come out. (Nor do I know if there will be a PS2 demo Ð that's Rockstar's decision.) But the important question finally has an answer: Yes, Virginia, there will be an Oni demo.

See you in the forums. :)
--

A demo IS in the works and the Mac version will soon hit Golden Master. Joy!
 

games.macnn.com posts huge in-depth preview

games.macnn.com posted a large in-depth preview of Oni today, 5 pages of text and 10 pages of shots.

The preview describes the gaming experience and the ease of learning controls and gameplay, the weapons of the game are also described in detail as well as items and gameplay. While the preview praises Oni on various things, it also offers criticism. Needless to say, this is an excellent read with no plot spoilers.

The shots and the captions may spoil things for you, but if you're hungry for Oni visuals be sure to check out the nearly 100 shots.