wiki.omf2097.com

/home/omf2097/

…Was so tempted to stuck “Ultimate” into the title, always feels thematic for OMF.

This is supposed to be a guide to get a completely new player to install and get the game running, and guide them through beating 1Player mode on easy, and get them started on Tournament mode.

• Install and setup DosBox
• Starting the actual game
• Basic menus
• Basic GUI
• Basic controls
• Basic Jaguar
• Basic 1Player
• Basic Tournament Mode

All praise our lord and saviour DosBox, the bringer of most wonderful oldschool game to any and all modern hardware!

The DosBox web page already has a bunch of good guides for this, so I'll just refer to them:

• Download DosBox
• Install DosBox
• Open DosBox Config

You don't need to edit the config, it generally works without. But it can be useful to set a few settings:

• windowresolution=1280×800 - to whatever you want, different people find it awkward to play the game in either low or high res. Pick something that suits you.
• cycles=14500 - Sets the speed of DosBox, 14500 is a number many OMF fans find to work well for making the speed feel like it used to be. You can still adjust the ingame speed setting.
• [autoexec] - Can be used to setup automated Mount options, saves you from doing it manually each time!

Now you need to have an install of OMF2097, either an installed copy or the installer. You can get either from here:

• https://www.omf2097.com/wiki/doku.php?id=download

Next either copy the game files or the installer to a folder that you want to run it from, example:

c:\dos\omf

Now we can start Dosbox. And the first thing you want to do is to “mount”, which is to tell DosBox what folder to use. Example using the folder in the previous example, type into dosbox command prompt:

mount c:\dos\omf c

This will make the folder “c:\dos\omf” into a drive letter C:\ for Dosbox. So now you just have to type that in to change to the new drive:

c:

And you change the command prompts position to the C:\ drive. (Tip: for the future, you can put these commands into the [autoexec] part of the config file, to have it do this for you automatically each time you start DosBox!)

If you copied in the OMF installer, you can now type INSTALL and follow the installer to complete the game.

If you already installed or copied in a pre installed, then you can type in SETUP to change the soundcard to make sound work. Select “Sound Blaster Pro” and just select the default settings, they work with DosBox.

Once done with those, you can type in OMF to start up. You'll get a menu where you can click the first option “Regular Game”, and you'll go into the game and watch the intro.

Once you've watched the very nice intro, and got into the main menu, with the cool looking robot on the left side basking in the spotlight. We have a few options here I'll sum them up, and then go through the useful ones for now:

• One Player Mode
• Two Player Mode
• Tournament Mode
• Configuration
• Gameplay
• Ordering Info
• Help
• Demo
• Scoreboard
• Quit

One Player Mode

The main story mode, we'll be playing this in a little bit.

Two Player Mode

We can ignore this for this guide. If you got friends that want to play, you can come back here after done with the guide.

Tournament Mode

This is an alternative mode where you have to fight to earn cash and use on buying bots and upgrades. We'll come back to this at the end of the guide.

Configuration

Various options, but the most important one for now is:

• Player 1 Input

So you can change the keybinds if you don't like them. Default is Arrow keys and Enter=Punch and Shift=Kick. You can also adjust volume if you like.

Gameplay

Various options that affects gameplay. There's a couple important ones, you can ignore the rest for now.

• Speed
• CPU:
• Best of

SPEED: Set it down a few notches, as the game can run so fast on new computers that you can't see what goes on. Set it to half for starters, see how it feels, you can adjust it later to where it feels nice.

CPU: is the game difficulty for One Player mode. Set it all the way to the left for the easiest for now: “Punching Bag”.

BEST OF: Default is “BEST 2 OF 3”, but you can change it anything you like, most prefer either “ONE ROUND” or “BEST 2 OF 3”.

Ordering Info

Can ignore this, unless you want to watch the sales pitch.

Help

In-game help and tutorial for the game, can read for some more tips.

Demo

Makes the AI select two pilots/bots and play against each others. Can be fun to watch to see how it plays and what moves do etc. But largely you can ignore this.

Scoreboard

Highscore table, you can ignore this for now.

Quit

Exits the game, very useful when you need to. You can also press “F10” button on your keyboard to instantly exit the game from anywhere, called the “Boss Key”.

I'll explain the User Interface in the actual matches before we start one, to avoid surprises.

1. Health - Red bar upper left, goes purple as you take damage, lose when all purple.
2. Stun - Grey bar under the health bar. Goes purple as you get hit, when all purple you get stunned.
3. Name - right under the stun bar is your pilot's name.
4. Bot - right under name again is the name of the robot you're using.
5. Points - right under the Bot again, points increase by hitting the enemy with attacks.
6. Round counter/wins - To the right of your health bar, shows who has won a match in best 2 out of 3 etc, round Red or Grey markers, red is wins.
7. The opposite side is identical for the opponent.

Insert screenshot here

You can hit the ESCAPE button to pause the game and bring up a menu while in a match, with these options that works similar to the ones I mentioned in the previous section:

• Return to game (Continues the game)
• Sound volume (Adjust volume)
• Music volume (Adjust volume)
• Speed (Adjust speed)
• Video options (Can ignore this for now)
• Help (You can view the help even in game, handy)
• Quit (Quits the match, not the entire game)

Controls

Default:

• Arrow Keys: for movement
• Enter: for Punch or to confirm menus
• Right Shift: for Kick or to cancel/deny some menus (but not all)
• Escape: for entering menu, or cancel all menus

Unlike many other fighting games, OMF2097 only uses two buttons for attacks unlike the more common 4-6 among other fighting games. A lot of old Street Fighter fans for example finds this really crazy the first time they try OMF2097.

Movement

• Left and right will make you move that direction
• Down will make you duck
• Up will make you jump, up with a direction jumps diagonally
• Holding BACK when enemy attacks will make you go into BLOCK HIGH stance.
• Holding DOWN+BACK when enemy attacks will make you go into BLOCK LOW stance.

Regarding blocking, some attacks require specific Block stance. If your opponent uses a jumping attack you need to BLOCK HIGH to stop the attack, if you BLOCK LOW you'll get hit. The same the other way around, if the Opponent uses a Sweep kick you have to BLOCK LOW, and get hit if BLOCK HIGH.

Attacks

Each Bot has a lot of different attacks. The way this works is that you press down the attack button and a direction to get specific attacks. This sounds complicated and weird, but with a little practise it becomes second nature.

I'll be using Jaguar as example:

• Punch + standing still/Forward = a light jab
• Punch + Back = a heavy punch/fierce
• punch + down = a crouching punch
• punch + down + forward = a crouching jab
• punch + down + backward = a slow but heavy uppercut

Note: I'll be using these terms for the Starter Guide, but the rest of the website uses numbers instead of directions, as that's what most OMF fans are used to and it reads easier when used to it. (Example Backward + Punch = 4P per the direction on the numerical pad on the keyboard).

To begin with don't think too much about all these attacks, find a couple you like the feel off, and use those. I'll give some suggestions for the Jaguar later on in the guide. You can spend a little time testing out different moves in 2 player mode if you want to.

Some other notables

Standing close to an opponent and pressing forward and punch will throw the opponent. The main advantage is that Throws can't be blocked, and is the main way to break through a opponent pretending to be a turtle in the corner.

The three low kicks (Down+Back+Kick, Down+Kick, Down+Forward+Kick) are considered low attacks, and must be Blocked Low.

Jumping attacks (jumping and then using either Punch or Kick) are good ways to attack the opponent. And they must be Blocked High.

That should be enough for basic controls. Better to use it to learn more.