Installation
Versions
Demo (PC & Mac)
You can still get the PC demo HERE, the Mac demo HERE, and both demos HERE (the demos will be backed up on oni2.net if other sources are discontinued)
Beta (Mac)
Not publicly available.
Retail (PC, Mac & PS2)
Mac version available from Feral. PS2 version available from Take 2. PC version no longer available from Take 2. Consider eBay and Amazon.
Installation process (PC & Mac)
When the Oni CD is inserted, the installation will automatically start with the following steps :
- Language selection : if you happen to have e.g. the European edition of Oni, you can choose between e.g. English, German and French
- Installation process itself : usual stuff (software licence agreement, installation folder selection...)
- Installation of DirectX : skip this, as the version of DirectX provided with Oni is very old.
(Mac users, if parts of the process do not apply to Mac, please put those parts in italics or otherwise indicate them as applying to PC only)
A shortcut is automatically generated and placed on your desktop. You're only one click away from your Oni experience...
- Note
- for the demo, the installation process does not start automatically, as there's no CD.
For Mac OSX, the installer requires OS9 to function. If you do not have Classic, open the CD and drag the "Oni ƒ" folder to the desired place on your hard-drive. You can play from this.
Blam, Oni crashed?
Damn! Go straight to the Troubleshooting page.
Patches and updates
PC
An unofficial patch for PC... fixes a crash on startup for Windows XP and recent GFX cards.
Get it HERE
Mac
Omni Group created an OS X native application of the game, which is still available. This application is a free download, and works with both the regular game and the demo; you don't need to alter any files, though you must have the data files from the game CD-ROM. (See notes below.)
After downloading the file, put the application anywhere you wish (/Applications/ is a good place). The first time you launch the program, it will ask for your Oni installation folder, and then will proceed loading the game.
Note: there have been many changes to the Mac OS since the Omni Group did the original port back in 2001. The port was done for free and they don't have the developer resources to maintain it through the system updates, quicktime updates, video card updates, and processor architecture changes that have happened since then. If you manage to get it working, please post tips here, but they don't offer support for the game.
It still works on Intel-based Mac w/10.4 installed, running under Rosetta (version 1.36 can be found here). No signifcant performance issues even on Intel Mac Mini at 1280x1024/32-bit. One problem relates to the display resolution switching, make sure your display preferences do not list unsupported resolutions or refresh rates or Oni may try to use them, if it does hit command-option-escape to force-quit Oni. I needed to use DisplayConfigX to disable the unsupported resolutions on my system.
@ contributor above: please sign when you say "I". Concerning resolutions: check out the -noswitch mode.
Installation folder
Here's more on "what is where" in the folder.
| PC | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Default location | ||
| C:\Program Files\Oni | /Applications/Oni | Default location of the folder on your hard drive |
| Subfolders | ||
| GameDataFolder | A subfolder with movies, scripts and binary resources | |
| Files generated on installation | ||
| Oni.exe | Oni | The game's executable |
| key_config.txt | The key configuration file | |
| readme.txt | The readme file | |
| ONI.url RegisterOni.url |
URL locations | |
| Files generated on execution | ||
| persist.dat | That's where your progress is saved | |
| startup.txt | This logs the major runtime events (startup, shutdown) | |
To be completed...
Registry entries (PC)
Oni doesn't create any registry entries. So the whole installation folder can be moved around, copied and kept as a backup.
A backup copy of your installation folder is thus enough to "reinstall" Oni.
However, unless you get rid of the CD check, you still need to have the Oni CD in the drive to play (actually, any CD will do, as long as its volume name is ONI...)