Hey Guys,
Well here's our first demo. I was wondering if anyone could offer any suggestions so it will be more likely to sell.

http://www.ausgamedev.com/omegasyndrome/files/OmegaSyndromeDemo.zip

The website is here:

http://www.ausgamedev.com/omegasyndrome

Thanks. :)

Typing this as I play (assuming alt-tab works, here's hoping). Screenshots look nice, though they load a bit slow. I don't try that many games on here, but the screenshots look good so here goes.

Main menu buttons are small and don't fit really well with the background. Background itself looks great. Playing tutorial now. So far so good. Maybe make the tutorial screen look less like a console, as that combined with the multitude of keyboard key instructions (add more mouse interface?) give the game a DOS feel, which I'm not sure is what you are aiming for. Died the first time dog attacked me but then figured combat out. Collecting health packs was a confusing process, reminds me of Fallout interface. Maybe have double click be for default action? That way people could double click to attack enemy and double click to collect collectable items, and double click to talk to friendly people? Okay died again. This time I was shot by the guy that comes around the corner. Gun noise was good but perhaps a tad loud. Couldn't figure out how to kill gun weilder, so now I'm examining inventory. Inventory screen is nice, I like it but one minor complaint. The weapon 1 label behind the sword or knife that I am carrying stands out much better than the pic of the knife itself, took me a while to orient myself and realize there's a knife there. Bonus points for calling the guy Max Power.

Ok strange this time the game wouldn't let me attack the dog. It gave me an x as mouse cursor icon and hitting a key told me that it's invalid target. Noticed a gun this time, going to pick it next time. Oops, couldnt' figure out how to battle with the gun, had same problem as with dog. Just know discovered that there's a lot more to the tutorial than I first thought. Some of your tutorial text doesn't fill the whole box, and I thought after the attack instructions for pressing a key, that the tutorial info was done. Maybe have some sort of indicator that there is more? Reading the text has made the game make more sense now.

I think this looks very promising, and aside from what are mainly interface issues, this looks a fun game. I'll definitely give it a second shot tomorrow, but it's late and sleep needs to happen. Excellent work so far :) Not many people actually manage to create an rpg!

Lizardsoft:
Excellent feedback. You gave me a great picture of what is going on in a first time users mind.

I have to agree with everything that Lizardsoft says. It looks like it could be a great game, but the user interface is confusing (my vote is for more mouse and less keyboard :)).

Something else that confused me was that the right-click menu cancels when you select an item with the left mouse button. You have to click the right button to activate an item. Your tutorial text explains this, but it's not very intuitive and totally unlike standard user interface practices.

The tutorial text was pretty good, by the way (I chose the "full tutorial"). However, when you start explaining the inventory screen, you give a lot of information that doesn't apply to the tutorial at that moment (like how to heal other people). I skipped through this because it's too much to remember at that point. Maybe you can move these explanations to a later part of the tutorial.

... oh, is THAT why nothing I was doing was working?

I didn't get a chance to read much of the tutorial text, something started attacking me when I had only gotten as far as "Click to walk" and since I couldn't figure out how to fight back I was quickly dead. Which seemed awfully unfair for a tutorial. :)

I see that you're going for a fallout style game, but I think the interface needs a LOT of work before this can be considered a decent game. Most of the interface stuff has already been said by previous posters, but I also think that the interface is very ugly. Even just changing the font and the colors in a lot of places would give you a better looking game.

The combat also seems a little unbalanced. That is, it seems to be way too easy to die for a tutorial level. An autopause when and enemy comes in view option (ala KOTOR) would be nice also, especially considering how deadly combat is. Also, the NPC helper doesn't seem very useful, he just stood there while the two guys with guns masacred me... Maybe my battle strategy wasn't quite right though.

The tutorial is way too long and has too much text. The game should walk you through the text as you perform actions, right now it's just a badly written onscreen manual.

It's nice to see someone working on an RPG of this style though. Hopefully you can fix the problems with the interface and the combat. Also, hopefully the game has a good storyline, it's very hard to tell from just being able to play the tutorial.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I've been working hard on the game for the last two weeks and I've made all of the changes that everyone recommended except for the way the interface looks. I have no skills when it comes to choosing colour schemes. I'll have to save up some money first and hire a good 2D artist.

You can get the latest version here:

http://www.ausgamedev.com/omegasyndrome/files/OmegaSyndromeDemo.exe

I also added a few things to the index page on the website. I listed the game features and included a sample conversation.

Let me know if there is anything else that you think needs changing.

Conversation - I'm not a native english speaker, so I may be off on this one, but for me conversation sound somehow bland...Have you thought about collaborating with some good amateur writer ? I think you can pick up some fanfic writer from fallout forums or like...Just MHO...

serg3d:
I tried collaborating with quite a few people (artists and writers) in the past, but they had no drive and were unable to finish anything. In the end I had to do the design and writing myself or the game would never have been finished.

I'll post the text at some writers forums and see what advice they can offer.