u/OmniSystemsPub

Hi all! I’m Rudolf Kremers, creative director and founder of Indie games studio Omni Systems Ltd.

I’m 56 years old and have been making games since 1984(!!!), professionally since 2000. In those years I have built up a crazy range of experiences, working in many disciplines as game and level designer, creative director, producer, narrative designer, writer and more.

My work has been awarded/nominated in many ways, (Bafta, Independent Games Festival, Apple Game of the Year) and allowed me to work on a wide range of titles. After 10 years working at various studios like EA, The Digital Village, Argonaut, I started my own indie studio Omni Systems Ltd. Our debut game Eufloria has sold over 1 million copies since release.

Beyond traditional video games I have also worked on amazing interactive experiences, for example a location-based VR experience for the Lionsgate Entertainment World theme park in China, or being part of a think tank tasked with conceptualising interactive public spaces in a “future city”.

The games work allowed me to travel the world, visiting among other places Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Germany, France, and multiple USA states. I’ve been blessed to work with amazing people, encountering famous and mad (sometimes both) characters along the way and I still can’t quite believe what a blessing this has all been. 

I’ve branched out into other areas as well, including writing. I’m a published author, having released a well-known game design text book, and various fiction books crossing multiple genres.

I am currently developing Eufloria 2, the sequel to our well-loved debut game, writing a new book about game design philosophy, and juggling pets and family.

I'm looking forward to answering your questions!

Hey all,

Hope this is post is OK, but I know there are a fair few people here who enjoy Brian’s output, either as Milieu, Coppice Halifax, or one of his many other monikers. So it seems fair to share the news that he is working with us again, this time on Eufloria 2. (Recently announced) The Eufloria games have a strong ambient component, in gameplay AND music, and we are actually strengthening that aspect even more. I even wrote an "ambient gaming manifesto" back in the day, haha. I Really do care about it.

Brian and Eufloria’s ambient qualities go hand in hand, so I’m extremely happy to have him onboard again.

He recently did some terrific ambient tracks for Eufloria Classic, and an super deep ambient OST for Bioframe Outpost, which have yet to be published by him, but he told me he is catching up on his releases backlog.

If you haven’t heard his stuff before, check out his Bandcamp. The reason why he got involved in the first place is because I was a big fan of his Milieu ambient output. I reached out to ask if we could use his music in our game demo, and turned out he loved the game, and we got on like a house on fire. He's a great ambient artist, but also a really cool person.

There’s a lot there, I'm way out of date with his recent work myself.

So, way back in 2008 we made a procedural game for an indie games contest, based on a mix of Freeman Dyson's trees and Astrochicken concept, Phillip K Dick's "Autofac" story, and my own fascination with cellular automata.

The idea was that lost colonies of self-replicating terraforming units would eventually come into conflict with other offshoots of the same original units, and end up in a perpetual war for resources.

That eventually became the game Eufloria and now also Eufloria 2, but the same basic principles behind it are still adhered to.

I even made a mod recently where the game plays itself, and you can just observe them in their hunter/prey cycles as they fight over resources.

I'm frequently drawn to extreme mega structure environments, like in Tsutomu Nihei's Blame! manga, https://www.yokogaomag.com/editorial/infinite-world-of-blame-manga but also others. Yet, I don't see much of these pop up in procedural environments, even though it seems like a natural fit.

Is this indeed rare or am I simply not looking correctly? Especially if interactive or traversable, in games or other interactive environments.

Thanks!

Hello all, first time posting here with a request for help. :-)

(Experienced writer, using scrivener for years, but not at all very good at using its potential)

So, here is my question: I am working on a project that involved "prompt cards" for creatives, to help them solve issues, inspire ideas, recontextualise situations, and so on. Think Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies but for a different creative field.

Not only am I writing the prompts themselves, but also an accompanying book on how to use the prompts, with each prompt receiving a dedicated section. There will be other chapters as well but that is just standard writing.

So, I am looking to organise the writing with the following elements:

• Cards
  • Name (Might just be an ID for tracking)
  • Description (Idea behind the prompt)
  • Card Copy (The actual prompt)
  • Book Copy (Prose about the prompt, for the accompanying book)
  • Key Words (labels?)
  • Notes (whatever I need to add here)
  • Status
• Book Content
  • This is just standard writing so not an issue

I was hoping on advice on how to organise these things in a way that lets my write, track and export the content in a way that makes sense. I assume some of this is done with custom meta data, some with obvious functionality like the Status field, and ordered in the outline view?

I am really not a power user, so would love to hear workflow and pipeline suggestions on how to do this.

Hope this makes sense to people. :-)

Thanks!

Lookatemgrow!