Sunday, October 14, 2007

Omerta tips: Moonshine & Speakeasy

The Moonshine business
The profit from it comes when you produce and sell the alcohol. You have 2 options: only to your family, or to everyone who want to buy it. But beware, if you sell it to everyone, high profits can attract other players into the market. The more upgrades you have, the more alcohol you produce. This business is really simple to manage.

The Speakeasy business
If you have an alcohol supplier and are in a family, you can create speakeasy business. The amount you sell every hour depends on the upgrades made and the land your family has. However there is a maximum you can sell every hour and it depends only from the family land. Even if your speakeasy could sell 1000 alcohol in an hour, but your family has less land, you won't sell the max. So land is the key to highest profits.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Omerta tips: Casino

How to make profits from the casino illegal business?
The main thing is to make the players play in your casino. It's just simple maths. The more times a player plays the closer to statistical your win/loss ratio will come. In order to be profitable, losing possibility in your casino should be more than 50%.

Bigger losing possibility = bigger profits for casino?
No way! If the chances of winning in the casino are too little none of the gangster will come to play, then your casino profits will drop down drastically. As experienced players say, the optimal chance of losing is somewhere between 51% to 56%.

What the max bet should be?
The optimal max bet of a casino is a difficult question to answer. There are some gamblers, who use various betting strategies. The most common thing in all the them is raising bets every time they lose. So your max bet should limit their ability to do that too many times. On the other hand, if you max bet is little people will not lose as much money as they could if the maximum allowed bet is bigger.

Additional benefits of having a casino
I think the most important benefit of having a casino is keeping the illegal money safe from robberies. When your illegal money is in the casino none of the thugs can rob you. BUT, beware of the mafia wars. In time of war someone can easily burn your casino with all the money inside.

Monday, September 10, 2007

New: Moonshine Still

Moonshine still - a new illegal family business
Several rounds ago we raised an idea to have a family businesses. After long discussions we decided to make one. And here it is - the Moonshine Still.

This new business will have 2 main parts:

Moonshine Still
  • Can be built only by the boss of a family.
  • Upgrades must be built in a free legal business.
    If you want to upgrade MS, you will have to have a free legal business. In case of arson you will lose only a part of your business.
  • Depending on the ammount of upgrades, produces alcohol.
    You will be able to choose whether to sell it only to family members or to everyone who wants it.

Speakeasy

  • Can be built by family members except the boss of the family.
  • Sells alcohol every turn.
    Sale amount depends on the territory the family has. Extorted or bought, does not matter.
  • You can have as many speakeasies as you can afford, but the sales will be divided for every speakeasy in the family equaly.

Additional Information

As far as it is a new illegal business, it is still beeing balanced, so all the prices, profits and other information will be announced when the game starts. Some of the details will remain secret, only the most inteligent players will find out how to use that businesses in the most effective way.

Omerta Round v1.3

Timetable


  • Character registration start: 2007.10.01 18:00

  • Round start - 2007.10.03 18:00

  • Chaos round start - 2007.12.20 18:00

  • Chaos ends when there are 15 players left

Additional Information


We hope to make Omerta Supporter accounts available, however PayPal restrictions and various legal issues make it extremely difficult. We are now discussing taxing issues with legal authorities, try to sign contratcs with companies which would allow you to pay for the servies in a convienient way.


This longer break between the rounds was needed for us, becouse we had several exams to pass and make a lot of testing in order to remove minor bugs from the Omerta game. We will announce the changes and new features a little bit later.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Chaos Round v1.2 ended

The winners
The last 15 players alive this time were:
  1. Kw3k
  2. Tsing Tao
  3. Loki
  4. xMafiossox
  5. 1 1
  6. ANUBIS
  7. Briedis
  8. rangas
  9. BuoZe2000
  10. -Baldur-
  11. m4a1
  12. Whenu
  13. Meyer Lansky
  14. Ayalla
  15. TheFace
Families
  1. Contract Killers
  2. G-UNIT
  3. Cosa Nostra
  4. the OldTown
  5. CHAOS LEGION
Last kill
Last kill was made by rangas on 2007 Aug 28 07:01:13

The new round new will be announced after few days.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Omerta Round v1.2 Updated

Players started a major discussion in Omerta public forum and we could not close our eyes, we needed game updates which should encourage new players to join our small gaming society. After long debates Omerta administration decided to make following updates:
  • Players will be able to join families from gangster rank (was wiseguy before)
  • After killing a gangster you will get 1 Killing Skill point (was 2 skill points before), of course, only if you are not higher than 2 ranks from the victim
  • Quotes are allowed for everyone (only Omerta Supporters were able to use them before)

Thanks everyone who participated in the discussion, we hope that omerta is getting better every day and you will get the most out of it.

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Server problems

Game is down for more than 24 hours
Omerta is down becouse of problems with our servers. Dalius is doing the best he can, but he is only a human and can not work more than 12 hours a day. These recent problems showed as once more that we need new servers and not some time in the future, but now.
Lack of funds
Lack of funds stops us from getting better servers, now it is time to unite and help omerta. As soon as our servers will start working normaly i will start raising funds for new omerta servers. Every single donation or Omerta Supporter will get us closer to a better, quicker and more reliable server.
The game should start working today (2007.08.01), but we still do not know exact hour.
Please be patient and understanding.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

New: Administrator Levels

Omerta is expanding and we thought that it is a good idea to separate responsabilities between Omerta admins. What is more, we also wanted to remove corruption possibilities in administration. So today we introduce to you administrator levels:
  1. Help desk, translator - can access only message center and forums. Does not have any administrating rights. These accounts will be given to people who have to have a constant account in Omerta. Contact them if you have any questions about the game.
  2. Moderator - can access only message center and forums. Has right to delete threads and/or posts which are violating Omerta rules. These admins should be contacted only if you have something to report about bad behavior in forums or if you receive messages with advertisements.
  3. Anti cheater - can access message center, forums and the administrating system 'Bebras'. Has right to delete threads, posts and can suspend, kill or fine in any other way characters who are violating the rules of Omerta. Report possible cheaters to them.
  4. Game creator - has all the rights and access to all game and administrating sections. Game creators should be contacted ONLY if you have a bug to report.
All levels of administrators except Game creators will not have any money, action points and will not be able to access any in game sections. We hope that this update will raise the level of confidence in admins and will make it easier for players to get help or information they want from the game administration.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Omerta Round v1.2

Timetable
  • Character registration start: 2007.07.13 18:00
  • Round start - 2007.07.16 18:00
  • Chaos round start - 2007.08.25 18:00
  • Chaos ends when there are 15 players left
Targets
  • add new illegal family business
  • add extra features and statistics for Omerta Supporters (paid accounts).
  • start marketing and promotion campaigns
Changes from v1.2
  • Omerta Supporter accounts added
  • all sections of the game are now working
  • game help is now up to date
  • a lot of security bugs fixed
  • other minor changes

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Chaos Round v1.1 ended

The winners
And the winners are the last 15 players alive.
  1. Vladmir Vetso
  2. wWwOwWw
  3. CTM
  4. Dalai Lama
  5. Goblin2
  6. 0900-8844
  7. BlackEagle
  8. Chenvonpuntgen
  9. rav3n
  10. Dezavu69
  11. Astorre Zeno
  12. Juiceman
  13. Kickeris
  14. letourneau
  15. Kalnietisltu

Families

  1. Siauliu Ekipazas
  2. 77-88-96-19-4-88-77
  3. Babilon
  4. thanks vladmir vesto

Last kill

Last kill was made by Vladimir Vetso on 2007 Jul 2 18:46:21.

I hope chaos round was fun, check the blog or http://www.omertamafia.com/ for updates on the next round.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Round v1.1 problems

The round goes to the end. We have looked into it and tried to seek out the problems we encauntered. There is a list of them.

Major problems
  • The first major proble is that hackers are trying to harm our servers in a lot of various ways. As our budgest is low, we can not fight with them properly and our servers sometimes go offline. What is more, those hackers are nothing more that Omerta players or ex-players, this fact schocked me the most.
  • The second major problem would be lack of game help for our newcomers. As i can see from our traffic and game logs, there are plenty new people coming to omerta, but due to poor game guides they leave after beeing killed the first few times. This leads to the third major problem.
  • Killing for fun. I noticed that some of the highest ranked players kill low ranked people only to have higher bodycount. Of course, if you have killed more than 100 people in one round you will have something to boast about for your friends, however these kills have major impact in Omerta expansion.
  • Bug abusing and cheating is the last, but not the least problem. Some players find bug and instead of reporting it, they abuse it to gain an unfair advantage in the game. This problem is i think the most serious one. If we want to improve our game and make it even more interesting to play, we have to know about the bugs. Duping is another problem which can not be solved only by the game administration. People have to understand, that cheating is not the way to play. We try to catch and kill the cheating persons, however our budget does not allow us to spend as much time on omerta as we would want to.

Minor problems

  • Missing game sections. The game is in developing stage so until now we have several sections in the game which do not work - upgrade legal business, voting poll and casino illegal business.
  • Killing screen. I receive tons of messages telling me that current killed screen is not as nice as it cuold be.
  • Anti cheaters mistakes. This is sad, but we are all humans and we make mistakes. Sometimes unguilty people are killed by anti cheaters, however this is only becouse of poor quality of the tools they have to detect cheaters, we are working on this issue in oerder to minimize the mistake count and maximize catched cheaters count.
  • Mistakes in game sections. Some of the game sections are in the place where they should not be. For example Family invitations should logicaly be in the family section and now they are next to the messages. Family bosses can't see or remove the invitations they have sent... etc.

I think this list should be bigger, but i think that these problems are the most important. All of these problems will be solved, but again, our budget is so tiny that we can not afford to spent a lot of time on our beloved mafia game.

Soon we will have donation section and supporter accounts, then you will be able to support our game and help improve it.

Meet you in the round v1.1b and good luck in the chaos.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Omerta tips: Ranking

How to rank fast?
As experienced players may have noticed, the fastest way to rank is to make thefts. This feature gives you less money than any other actions, however your rank will grow faster. The most important thing in fast ranking is not to miss the 4 hour, or in other words, 120 action points limit, spend as much action points as possible on theft.
The tricky thing is that different ammount of AP spent in theft gives you slightly different rank growth. Spending 5AP four times will not give the same ammount of prmotion points as spending 10AP twice. It' is you who will try to find the ultimate technique of spending APs on theft to get the highest results.

Money or rank?
A lot of players often ask themselves "What should i do now, to get a high rank, or start earning money?". I think that everyone's answer is right no matter what s/he chooses. The higher rank, the safer you are, but what's from that safety if you have no money. On the other hand if you are rich and with low rank, there is a high probability, that someone will try to kill you only for the money you have.
I prefer ranking until Wiseguy, then join a family and only then start earning money.

Killing skill or rank?
This is the hardest one. Killing skill is very important in Omerta, it gives you wieght in the game. If you have good killing skill you are a valuable player and a lot of people will be afraid of you. Gaining killing skill requires a lot of money and even more action points, that is why you should decide you want to rank or become a hitman first.
If you have high rank you are able to earn more money for shooting, but it is harder to find a target you could shoot at. You should always thinks if you want to be a defensive player or offensive. If you just want to be neutral and do not shoot at anyone ranking to the sky is the way for you, however if you want to ba a family hitman, try to raise your KS instead of ranking first.

I hope this information is usefull. In the future i will post more tips and tricks in omerta.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Omerta history

The roots
Everything began in early 2001. I was in 9th grade, played various online massively multiplayer games with friends, when one day realized that there is no game which would be perfect to me. I had only choice - to create one myself. After searching the web a few weeks i found out, that it is not so difficult to create an online web-browser based game, one must learn PHP and mySQL to create those.

The team
One of my friends also had the same feeling about online games. We started learning and creating the game. So the first Omerta game team was born - Laurynas MaliĊĦauskas (Malas) and Indrius Kairys (Indrionas).

The idea
Our main idea was to make an online massively multiplayer mafia game, where every single job had to be made by a real person. In that way people should make relationship like in the real life. What is more, it is always more interesting to make business with other people than with some NPCs.
Another thing which makes Omerta exclusive from all other games is that there is no censorship (except child pornography and advertisments) in the game. People can say whatever they want to each other, that way natural relationship are made, some people talk respectfully and are respected, other tend to offend everyone and consequently fight with everyone.

First versions
The very first version had almost nothing. Just a registration/login, legal businesses and whacking. The frst few versions were played only by our classmates and the total registered players never exceeded 30. Almost everyone told us that our game will never evolve to something real. One of the most laughing ones was Mindaugas Zilionis a.k.a Katras, who is now one of our administration team members.

The official version
The first official version (v1.0) was released in 2007.04.04. Current black-red-white design was introduced, however due to major works moving from old to new design some of the game features were not working. Players called that round one of the worst in Omerta history. Despite that there were more than 150 active players and more than 400 registered players.
In this version of Omerta major work was done in the system of the game, it became faster, lighter and easier to maintain. What is more, we have started to develop a stand-alone admin application with code name "Bebras" ("Beaver" translated from Lithuanian). It's main target is to prevent cheating in Omerta.

The future
For today our main goal is to make Omerta bug-free, easy to play and profitable. We plan to add premium accounts in the nearest two versions (v1.1, v1.2) in order to raise some money monthly, add More advertisments to the site.
The greatesting thing for casual players will be brand new illegal family business. As fas as it was discussed with oldschool players, everyone liked the idea very much.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Omerta Round v1.1

Timetable

  • Character registration start - 2007.06.04 23:00
  • Round start - 2007.06.08 18:00
  • Chaos round start - 2007.08.25 18:00
  • Chaos ends when there are 15 players left

Targets

  • fix the few remaining bugs
  • add more tools for anticheaters
  • add premium account system and features
  • add donation system

Changes from v1.0

  • The main change frmo previous cersion is, that now we will have working public, family and boss in-game forums. You will now be able to edit your posts. The boss forum will be visible only to the bosses of families, there they will be able to discuss their relationship and possible deals between families.
  • Counterfeit money and Casino illegal businesses added.
  • updated game help will be added