Releasing Osim source code

 I was reading up on current OGAME events when I found that the author of   (comment: don't know if the site was taken dawn or just temporarily, but lately its not there!) French Osim OGAME simulator was releasing the source code to it!! wow, maybe I will contact Jok and try to set up Osim here at OGameBlog? (just a thought). Anyway here's what he said in his Blog :

By Jok, Sunday 18 May 2008 12:04

Gamasutra Interviews Gameforge on Rise of web-based MMOs

May 6, 2008

Interview: Gameforge Talks Rise Of Web-Based MMO

German browser-based online game developer Gameforge has announced that is has opened a new San Francisco office to spearhead the company's push into the U.S. market as Gameforge Productions Inc.

Interestingly, the company also plans to seek out U.S.-based developers of full-scale MMOs looking for a partner to localize and operate their games in Europe.

Gameforge's own core development specializes in free-to-play titles such as Ikariam and OGame, whose graphical game clients are run entirely in-browser.

Its games are large social worlds apparently aimed more towards the 'hardcore' PC gamer, with an emphasis on more complex gameplay with player-driven communication, alliances, and trading.

Ikariam, a Civilization-like game, will be the title on which Gameforge's U.S. division first focuses - OGame, which the company also runs, is a strategic space-trading sim.

Gamasutra has a chance to speak in-depth with Gameforge Productions Inc. president Lars Koschin, previously CTO of MMO portal Curse, about the company's products and plans.

Building Awareness

Though many of Gameforge's titles are already playable in English, Koschin stated that there is less North American knowledge of this genre than there is in Europe, where Gameforge has seen considerable success. "We have some U.S. customers, but not enough," he admitted. "We want to make this kind of gameplay more popular. We want to bring more marketing, PR budget, and explain to people what these massively multiplayer browser-based games are."

Koschin spoke to a common preconception about web-based games, that they are often assumed to be simple puzzle games regardless of their genre - an image issue sure to be on the minds of InstantAction.com developer GarageGames as well. "Many people in the U.S., when I talk about browser games, say they're mini-games - but this is a real world, where you can build your cities, build your armies, and if you log out and you log in the next day, your island is still there."

MMOs, Casual, And Social Networking

The exec drew a distinction between these games and more traditional MMOs, however: "World of Warcraft, that consumes a lot of time - our barrier of entry is very low, so you can play right away without downloading a lot of stuff. You can decide how much time you want to invest in your game, and it's still fun to play. You can play from 10 minutes a day to five hours a day, but it's still fun to play."

When queried about Gameforge's target audience, and how it categorizes its own projects, Koschin drew parallels to casual games, MMOs, and social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook. "It's not like we do a lot of preexisting 'quests,'" he explained. "Most of the content is social interaction with other players. This goes from PvP to trading to just plain messaging and making friends - not just doing quests to achieve something, but achiving things with friends or with an alliance."

He added: "In Ikarium, we have shared resources on the island, so you work together with your friends or with people who live with you on this island. You have to talk to them and say, 'Hey, we have this lumber resource, and we can improve that if you spend some money on the god that protects our island.' This is the main point in most of our games - the social interaction."

"We are in between all these things - MMOs, casual, social networking - that are already on the market," Koschin continued. "You can decide how long you want to play, so if you play a big MMO - EVE Online, WoW - you can still play our game. On the other side, we are like a social networking platform. We are a new breed, actually having been around for a long time, but not as recognized."

Solidifying An Audience

Gameforge believes it can capture both existing gamers as well as some of the audience that currently devotes significant time to social networking sites, particularly with the advent of in-browser games connected to those sites.

Koschin commented: "People going to MySpace or Facebook know this concept of playing games or exchanging information through a web portal. That is who we want to target. The other kind of gamer we want is people who play Civilization single-player, and they work in an office and now have a chance to use this simple system for that kind of gameplay."

In Europe, the company has begun doing outreach to major guilds and player bases, as well as planning real-life player conventions and get-togethers. In the longer term, it hopes to build similar events in the U.S.

MMO Localization

In addition to the promotion of its own projects, Gameforge is looking to market its experience operating more traditional full-scale MMOs in Europe to U.S.-based MMO developers that lack the resources to bring their games to Europe.

"We have a lot of games in Europe, so if someone wants to launch a game we are the perfect partners, since we have the contacts and the experience in almost every country in Europe," concluded Koschin.

Is he trying to warn us? OR is he trying to get back at GameForge??

I was visiting a site called ripoffreport.com trying to find some info on a certain company, unsuccessfully though; that's when I thought lets see if GameForge or OGAME is listed. So I ran a search and guess what I found a  interesting post / warning. Of course how true this is I don't know, but I wouldn't think that a well established company like GameForge would take these kinds of  fraudulent actions. My thought is that it might be a pissesd off player who got banned and is trying to get back somehow. But again who knows maybe he's telling the truth. Here's what he said: 

OGAME Gameforge Stole money from credit card Internet

Gameforge is still a passive-aggressive low-level criminal organization

MMO Publisher in legal battle with bot author

     If OGAME becomes as big of a MMO as World of Warcraft, and will have the resources; do you think they will go after authors of OGame bots or even OGame cheat sites like OGameBlog.com? Vivendi games (publisher of WoW - biggest mmo) already had started their offensive campaign against automation-bot authors. Maybe Gameforge (publishers of OGame) will follow the same path. Anyway keep reading to find out what exactly WoW is up to:

Story from BBC NEWS::
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7314353.stm

Blizzard is suing Michael Donnelly, the creator of the MMO Glider program, which performs key tasks in the game automatically, such as fighting.

Both sides have submitted legal summaries to a court in Arizona.

Blizzard says Glide is a software bot which infringes the company's copyright and potentially damages the game.

If you are going to delete your account, Please give it to OGAMEBLOG.com

     This guy got attacked  in OGame, and completely lost it! He did the unthinkable, he deleted his account! All that resource mining all the scanning universes, so many hours of wasted time. OK if you want to stop playing hit vacation or at least give the account to someone (ogameblog.com for example) I will make good use of it :)  Anyway go on read his article >>>

Original article from: http://www.brianmcculloh.com/blog/index.php/2008/02/21/ikariam/#comments

"   A week ago I deleted my oGame account in a fit of rage. At the time, my rank was hovering in the mid 600s and I was about to start trying for moon shots. With thousands of rocket launchers, hundreds of levels of mines, 9 planets, and the almighty ability to start building Deathstars on the horizon, I was hit by a pro in 2 waves and lost everything.

I feel a little ashamed of the private message I sent him, which I most definitely will not post here. Judging by his lack of response, he’s either too good to respond to such a low-down, dirty message, or he’s Chinese. In either case it doesn’t matter because I proceeded to click the delete account button. When you click the delete button, oGame gives you something like 7 days to undo your decision by clicking the UNdelete button, just in case you were delerious when you clicked it or someone hax0red your account.

I did not click the undelete button.

I realize the point of the game is to attack people, but they’re not supposed to attack ME! It actually was a little dirty because I hadn’t been attacking anyone, didn’t have a fleet or very many resources stored up at the time for him to loot, and he did it in the middle of the day. His boldness infuriated me. All I had to do was click the oGame tab on my browser anytime between 11:00am and 1:00pm that day and see that he was on his way to kill me, and I could’ve fleetsaved. But this, by chance, happened to be the ONE day I happened to not check my oGame, by chance, over lunch break at work, coincidentally, by chance. It also happened, by chance, to be the first time, somehow, that anyone has attacked me at all in months, happenchance, oddly enough. Put those two together and you get one helluva coincidence.

I don’t like when people who are already experts, and don’t need any luck, get extremely lucky. It causes baby puppies to fall off cliffs and oGame accounts to be deleted.

Now that oGame’s out of the picture, I’ve started a new browser-based MMO game by the same creators - LOL. It’s called Ikariam and graphically it’s far superior to oGame. It’s got the look and feel of Age of Empires, and the setting to go along with it - taking place in the ancient Mediterranean Sea.

It works similarly to oGame. You build, research, and deploy buildings, technologies, and ships, respectively, but instead of space ships, deuterium mines, and hyperspace technology it’s catapult ships, taverns, and seafaring technology. There are a lot of differences besides the beautiful interface and graphics, however. One of the main differences so far is having to choose a research specialization from the get go. I’m not sure how easy it will be to research all 4 branches, if it’s even possible, but I know it will take a long time. It took 1.25 hours to research the first level, which was Conservation, and the level I’m currently on - Wine Press - takes 22 hours.

There is also more of a co-op feel in the addition of donations. You can donate to sawmills, vineyards, even the gods, to increase the wealth of your local island - which helps out the 10 or so other people with towns nearby. I suspect the effects of this new element will be quite interesting. What happens if you’re the only cheap miser not donating for the greater good? A stern warning from the other towns? An errant catapult or a wayward battalion of swordsmen “accidentally” showing up on your doorstep? I’m not going to find out.

I’ve only been playing for a few days so I can’t tell you how good the game is, or what it’s even truly about. When I started a few days back, there were only 3 servers to choose from (that number’s up to 5 already), as opposed to oGame which has something like 33. The game has only been around since Valentine’s Day this year, so I’m probably pretty high up in the ranks already. You should get in the game now while it’s still brand new! It’s really easy to create your account and get started, and there is even a “first steps” guide right on the main page which is well-written and gets you up on your feet in no time.

Best of all, it’s free!

So, what’s to stop the same thing from happening to me in Ikariam that happened to me in oGame? Nothing - what’s the point of your question?  '

GameForge is in need of CUSTOMER SERVICE

              I was considering making a new section of OGameBlog about complaints directed towards OGAME or Gamforge (makers of OG) itself for a long time now. The reason why is simple, since I started this site I've been getting a lot of emails with complaints of mistreatment from GOs, SGOs, and so on...  The players don't really have a place to complain about Admins tyranny. The mistreated player cant post on their forums because they will delete it pretty fast.  My point is there is no place to complain/expose for the larger player community to witness! Therefore if you would like to share your "OGAME horror story", email me and I will post. 

                  If I get enough stories I will make a new section for players to post their complaint and other remarks that admin ignore. There is only one catch, I've gotten hundreds of email complaints, but they are all short sentence or two. In order for me to post it, the complaint  needs to be an article. It doesn't have to be lengthy but a (minimum) paragraph would be nice.  So as soon as i have a small collection of 'article' complaint I will make a section; till then I will post them here.

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This complaint is from S.T. ; its about one of GameForge production called BiteFight.

     well heres my story,i hope you post it for all to see the mistreatment and abuse that players like me and many others endure,and yet,it is us players who keep these games alive by playing them.myself,along with many others play an online game  called bitefight where it is over seen by gos and sgos who are suppose to be there to help you,so we thought,i have contacted them for several reasons only to get ignorant responses as well as threatening messages in a round about way telling me not to contact them again,or else,and we all know what the or else means.basically if you dont play by there rules or if they dont like something you are doing,you will get a ban or permanent ban,it is ok for them to disrespect you,but if you give it back,you are banned,and loose all your money you have put into the game,too bad for you.i have a clan mate who was just recently banned permanently for what they call insult.i went into the ban forum on bitefight for server 7 and could not believe that there must have been at least 40 ppl on a permanent ban,so what do they do,take your money then ban you?and theres no use going higher up because they all end up agreeing with one another anyway,they have all become friends so there not going to go against one another.so,what do you do,and who do you turn to?playing with the enemy is what i call it.i have recently contacted consumer affairs as something has to give about the abuse that players endure from the ppl who are suppose to be protecting them.we are threatened by the very people who are suppose to be helping us.

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This complaint is from A.S. ; its also about a GameForge production.

My letter isn't about OGame, it has more to do with Gameforge itself, in particular BiteFight. I am sure you are more than aware of the current problem most of us players are experiencing from those in administrative positions. Namely the GO's and other controllers of BF who are meant to be working for Gameforge to maintain the game with a fair and optimistic manner, yet seem to have a rather sinister agenda of their own which involves making players feel worthless and at THEIR control.

The power games are just way out of hand and it is leaving members such as myself and those in the clan I am a member of on server 7 without any other alternative than to try and receive some sort of fair treatment or at least the respect we deserve as paying or non-paying customers. It doesn't matter to me whether members are premium or playing the game free, paying members such as myself pay so that others of lesser opportunity can still play the game (of course without certain perks). The Go's and the other admins, moderators, operators only have a game to bestow their rather strict mannerisms upon because WE pay for it to exists, that BF exists because of those who can pay, and do pay good money simply because they enjoy the game which isn't quite so these days... the fun has been stolen from it because of their rude and hostile attitudes even when approached amicably and respectfully.

A situation has recently occurred where a certain member received an 8 year ban, due to bashing (even though we all saw he was perfectly in the line of rules and his rights), and a remark that the GO took as abuse. When asked this certain GO replied rudely, wasn�t at all optimistic and impartial to the situation and declared that he was going to make up a special rule/case to have this member banned for 8 years. To me, this was over the top, too extreme for what it really was, if the member had threatened to hack BF, then by all means apply a permanent ban? but certainly any costs this member had paid, should be refunded. He cannot be expected to pay for service he is no longer receiving simply because some high-stung power-tripper got offended and took it to a ridiculous level. There has to be some give and take in such a situation.

Next issue, is the fact even if you have paid, basically you have no rights and that your account can be terminated at any given time to the whim of any game operator? Again, if you have paid for a service what gives anyone the right to find justification to terminate your membership for whatever purposes usually most will signify contempt or prejudice of that particular person and in my opinion allows for personal grudges to interfere in a game where they should not. Perhaps Gameforge need to take better care on who they hire for support staff, or staff period? Thus far from what I have seen, and certainly on server 7 where I am a premium player, the GO there has shown me nothing but rudeness, disrespect and favoritism to his own �personal� agenda on Bitefight not for the game itself. Banning someone for 8 years because of a remark, or rather words on a screen that may have been said out of anger, frustration and perhaps even mistake of different language? Who knows? we have!
 e asked for answers and only received hostility in the GO�s approach to the question along with other issues ingame.

I do not believe any GO or Game operator should be able to go into your account and read �personal� messages, alter your profile settings or anything else in YOUR account that is an invasion of privacy. I do not believe they should be able to treat you like you do not matter, that you have no rights and other intimidating, manipulative, over-bearing behavior received by MANY BF players. We want something done about it as paying customers, as players and certainly as human beings who deserve the respect we have given only to be treated like animals in return. I suggest Gameforge find better staff, GO�s who are better equipped to deal with people with a friendly, impartial attitude (as per good customer relations) who look out for the members and the integrity of the game instead of the Nazi�s they currently have running the place. (no insult intended but I assure you, there is no exaggeration in the comparison). Better care needs to be taken. If I do not see an improvement I !
 myself will take this issue to Consumer Affairs and have the matter dealt with legally.

Thank you.

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Like I mentioned earlier if you have any complains about OGame or any GameForge productions for the larger player community to witness than email me (min. paragraph) article and I will post.

Thanks TROJAN

OGAME looses a great player

Original from http://brubakers.us/blog/

 "  Jan and I drove to Hutchinson, Kansas yesterday to attend the funeral of Brian Rush. Rush worked with Brian at Cox Communications before working with me. Brian left Cox shortly after Rush left Cox, so they only worked together briefly.

My fondest memory of Rush is how we kinda-sorta met, but didn’t meet. I initially met Rush online in 2005, playing OGame. Everyone at Cox played OGame. Naturally, when Brian worked there, he played OGame too. Since he was playing it, I started playing it too. Rush was one of the highest ranking members of the Cable Mafia, our OGame alliance. He was a great ally in OGame. He, along with a few other players, sent me some resources to help me build up my planet. It wasn’t long before I beat Brian. I couldn’t have done it without all the help, though.

Anyway, as things got busy with work and school I quit playing the game. As luck would have it, Rush got hired on at work so instead of playing together online we began working together. I didn’t ever meet him face-to-face until his first day of work, though. We were buddies on OGame for a while without ever having met.

Rush was a really cool guy. He was well-liked by everyone. People had a tough time at first because he was hired from outside the company, but he turned them all around. He made everyone realize that if you hire the right person it doesn’t really matter where they come from, whether they’re coming from inside or outside the company. Before long it seemed like all the CSRs wanted to be on his team. That’s how great of a guy he was.

Just as he was a great ally on OGame, he was a great ally at work too. We both pushed for friendly competitions. Before his cancer returned, we competed with each other. We would often ask each other how our respective teams were doing in terms of stats. He was always trying to beat me. I’m lucky because my team always had great stats. I have an outstanding group of CSRs. He had his work cut out for him. Each week he’d make progress and he would proudly tell me his team’s average availability and then he would ask me mine. Of course, I knew where he was at already. Eagerly, I’d tell him my figure and burst his bubble.

It’s tough to burst his bubble, though. Rush was always so positive and optimistic. Each week he would make progress, while my figures pretty much remained the same. After a while my figures started to dwindle and his team eventually surpassed mine in terms of availability.

He fought cancer with the same gusto. He sought treatment of all kinds — experimental, traditional, what have you. It didn’t matter. He was willing to try anything. Each week we would receive updates. Whether it be good or bad news, Rush stayed positive through it all and kept his sense of humor.

He passed away of cancer at around 1:30 am on January 29th. My only regret is that I never got a chance to visit him before he passed. He inspired me not just to become a better supervisor, but a better person overall. I never had the chance to thank him for the positive impact he has made in my life. He made a tremendous impact on the lives of many others. I already knew this, but hearing others speak at the funeral yesterday only confirmed it.

I didn’t speak, but I wish that I would have.. I didn’t have the courage to… Maybe they have computers in the after life and he can read this blog entry in his honor, and he’ll know how very grateful I am for the opportunity to work with him and to know him.

I leave you with a PPT slide show that I created at Kasey’s request. I got the pictures that Kasey selected on Thursday evening. I didn’t get a chance to start working on it until Friday because scanning the pictures, which were all in hard copy, took a lot of time. Thankfully, Darcy helped with the second part (the family section) of the slide show. Without her help, completing the slide show before the funeral would have been an even bigger challenge (specially since I had to go to the doctor with Brian on Friday afternoon).

My section is set to the tune of Ozzy’s “See You On the Other Side” song, one of Rush’s favorites. Kasey said he specifically requested for this song to be played at his funeral. Garth Brooks’ “The Dance” is the background music that Kasey selected for Darcy’s section. The clip above doesn’t have music, unfortunately, because I couldn’t figure out how to add it.

Here’s one that I made through Slide.com with music. Except I couldn’t find the “See You On the Other Side” song. All I could find is the YouTube video. I hope this works.  "

More ogame blogs:

OGame video recordingging

            I’m sure you have seen OGame videos on YouTube and other video sharing sites. Did you ever want to make your own OGame video? But were discouraged after all the technical mambojambo to actually record your screen? Or simply you didn’t have the necessary software to do so. Well now you are closer than ever to make that OGame video a reality.

            I found a cool website called WeGame, it provides the tools for gamers to share screencasts of their favorite in-game moments. The website itself is very similar to most other video sharing sites out there – users are free to browse, search, upload and comment on videos – with the exception that WeGame is focused solely on game screencasts.

            Capturing screencasts might be a obstacle for many people, of course there are programs like MyScreenRecorder Pro and others; but they aren’t free. WeGame.com provides free recording tools too capture all your game play.

            The site is very very new, it launched January 9^th 2008, I’m writing this only a couple hours after they launch. Therefore the site being so young, it lacks the feature of recording games played through a browser, like OGame! Luckily WeGame is currently working hard on this problem, and soon we should be able to record, upload, share our OGame moments. Probably by the time you read this WeGame will have a browser game recorder, so enjoy, and I want to see some cool OGAME videos so I can post them here at OgameBlog.com.

http://www.wegame.com//