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.

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.

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 Mališauskas (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.

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