Omi Oh My AI News

[p]The team at EverySecond has been quietly chipping away at Omi since our last update back in 2023. While the download has been slow (somebody is still running dial-up), we're finally ready to share what we've been working on! [/p][p]Omi Oh My AI is launching in full on January 28, along with a demo for new players![/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][h3]A Game About AI, Made By Humans[/h3][p]With the rise of generative AI over the past few years, we've watched the real world start to echo a lot of the concepts we wrote for Omi years ago. Because of that, we want to be entirely transparent: no generative AI is used on Omi. Our game is made by a team of talented people in Western Australia. Omi's puzzles are built from real photos and images that we created or sourced from real people. Omi is an AI, but generative AI wasn't used to develop Omi.[/p][p]It is important to us that we tell an authentic story. And, well, it has fun to explore ways that humans could make something that was hand crafted to feel AI generated.[/p][h3]A Journey 30 Years in the Making (Sort Of)[/h3][p]Development of Omi Oh My AI began in 2019 with support from Screenwest. From the beginning, we wanted to create something that captured the magic of the early internet: mysterious forum threads, Blingees, personalised websites, and the constant need to prove you weren't a robot. But we also wanted to tell a story that took typical AI tropes and turned them on their head.[/p][p]Since we started, we've seen the rise of generative AI in a way that we never could have predicted. There's been a lot of discussions among the team about the (sometimes creepy) ways the real world has echoed concepts that we wrote about Omi years go. It became impossible to not acknowledge the very real impacts generative AI is having on our world today.[/p][h3]How Did We Get Here?[/h3][p]Originally, we planned to release Omi Oh My AI episodically as a living story. But game development is organic; we didn't want to make promises we couldn't keep about the narrative or the player experience. Our story and concepts continued to evolve right through to the end of 2025.[/p][p]As the landscape shifted, we made the decision to release everything at once. We want you to enjoy an ARG-lite experience at your own pace - solving puzzles and uncovering lore without us defining when or how or when. After all, the mystery is already out there waiting for you to solve it.[/p][h3]What’s Next?[/h3][p]While we wait for Omi to finish "polishing all the dogs" (their words, not ours), head to our Steam store page and be sure to wishlist Omi Oh My AI![/p][p]If you are an existing player you'll find that things have changed a lot since we last spoke (and more changes are on the way). Your save will be wiped when you launch the game, but you will be able to play all the way through an early version of Act 2 right now![/p][p]And if you are not sure about picking up a copy of Omi, don't worry, we understand - it's a little bit weird. But we'll have a demo available just for you come January 28 (and it might even be a little different from the rest of the game).[/p][p]Thank you for being part of Omi’s development journey. We’ll see you on release day![/p][p]- The Humans at EverySecond Studio[/p][p][/p]

The latest build of Omi Oh My AI aims to resolve a save file corruption bug experienced by a number of players. For most players this will not impact their experience, but if you are interested in an explanation of what was happening, read on!

• Moved some save game triggers that were resulting in corrupted saves when the game was closed
  

• Added corrupted save recovery
  
• Added game save trigger at the start of a new puzzle theme
  

[h2]Save Game System Technobabble[/h2]
Saves are an issue for any game, and there's a good reason why games pop up with a little icon that indicates when it is saving. Closing the game during one of these icons being displayed can result in corrupted saves, but most games will attempt to restore to another recent save or have some sort of corruption recovery method. The scale of this usually depends on the scale of the game, but for Omi the scope of it is relatively small and the possible game states is limited. We therefore decided to keep save games simple, and only output a single file.

Internally, the game tracks your state as you play, updating that state. But it only exports that state to a file when it's commanded to do so. Previously, this was upon completing any individual puzzle, but this led to some unexpected behaviors. For example, closing the game during a cutscene would mistakenly make the game load back up mid-way through that cutscene in a state that could no longer be progressed, because our cutscenes are simply made up of different puzzles.

So to avoid this issue, we've moved to saving the game at two points:

1. When the player receives their puzzle theme overview from Omi
   
2. When the player starts a brand new theme
   

This means that we can now start to clearly indicate to players when they have reached a checkpoint: the end of a puzzle theme. Closing the game after completing all of the image puzzles in a theme will mean that upon reopening you will need to complete those puzzles again, but hopefully these changes will prevent any risk of corrupted save files occurring.

However, we now also have a catch for the corrupted save files we were seeing. In these situations, the game was saving in a state that was not reachable. This seemed to take place primarily during cutscenes: closing the game right at the end of a cutscene could generate a save file that believed there was another phase of that cutscene to progress to, and fail to load. If this state is detected, we now send the player back to the very last puzzle they completed. Upon completing this puzzle, you will progress to the cutscene, and allow the game to save again in an uncorrupted state.

But Game development is complicated and things never go as you quite expect. So if you experience any sort of issues, please continue to post in the forum and let us know!

This latest build of Omi Oh My AI resolves some major bugs, attempts to rectify some of Omi's recent behaviours, and includes a complete overhaul to how puzzles are saved and loaded. Read on for more info!

• Convinced Omi to not lock up the game if they're interrupted during dialogue.
  
• Omi has also been instructed that players do not prefer to be called "NEW USER", even after being given the player's actual name.
  
• Resolved a laundry list of save game issues that were my fault, rather than Omi's. Details below, if you like technobabble.
  

• I've requested that Omi instruct new users on using the audio player as part of the tutorial sequence.
  

• Omi is generating user credentials for some players that is allowing them to download data from the live server.
  
• Omi has generated a link to an external Twitter account on the remote desktop. I'm unable to delete it, but I have attempted to cover it up as best I can.
  

[h2]Save Game System Technobabble[/h2]
The game's save system works is in collaboration with Omi. Locally, we receive and store information from Omi on the last puzzle that Omi had generated and presented to the player. This information is stored, and whenever the game is opened we pass this information to Omi to pull up the appropriate puzzle from their local data. This would include data that the player had input during gameplay, such as their favourite colours, their name, etc.

During development, the decision was made to allow Omi to internally keep track of what puzzles they had completed. However, this data retention would only be persistent while the game was opened with a connection to Omi. As such, on reloading the game, Omi would be told where the game was at and would internalize the current state of their puzzles. This created a series of unexpected issues, however. If the game was not exited but the player chose to wipe their play state, Omi would be resistant to such change and would skip past puzzles the player had previously completed, causing the local save to match Omi's internal state.

In order to resolve this issue, Omi has been instructed to no longer internalize the current state of the game. This involved a substantial amount of changes to the save game system as we could no longer reliably count on Omi's internal memory to assist in tracking the state of the puzzles. Instead, we now have a local puzzle tracking method that informs Omi of the current state of play and passes requests for puzzles. This resolves other issues such as Omi only referring to some players as "NEW PLAYER", as it had been stored in their memory and could not be overwritten by the player's own local save.

Thanks for reading!

This small patch fixes a bug identified after the release of v1.05 that was causing saves to not load correctly after reaching a certain number of completed puzzles. This should resolve that issue and saves should return to working as expected! Pardon our dust.

Thanks for being one of the first people to pick up Omi Oh My AI! This early patch aims to resolve some of the most reported issues that have been raised, in addition to adding a few small features to improve the game experience.

• Improvement to some puzzle hints and hints on puzzle fail.
  
• Fixed submit button becoming unresponsive after a visual glitch.
  
• Loading from part-way through a puzzle theme should no longer make the last puzzle of any Image/Word/Number set incomplete.
  
• Related to the other bug, you should no longer see the completed puzzle percentage continuously climb after reloading a save and completing puzzles (beyond the expected amount, at least).
  

• There is now an automatic screenshot feature! Omi will take screenshots of key moments and save the images into your game folder as you play.
  
• Numpad Enter now submits as the return key does.
  
• You can now submit puzzles and skip the puzzle complete/incomplete pop-up with the enter/return key without causing a puzzle incorrect pop-up immediately.
  
• The credits will now continue to scroll in the background while the player is looking at other windows, allowing you to flick back to the credits at any point if you get bored.