Right before the Games Convention 2007, Jana Reinhardt and I decided to do our own university semester project, because the ones offered by the professors weren't to our liking. Again, after "Faszination des Bösen" and "Mummenschanz", we chose to make a computergame, this time together.
Thus, we created a virtual developer label called "SONEN HALS". We called our game "Omertà - Schweigen ist Gold", because we love movies about the mafia.
One of the many good things of this project was that we could split the tasks easily. Jana made all the prefabs (models, textures), while I coded the prototype and designed the map. We both created three characters (models, textures, rig, animations) and, of course, the concept. The whole thing is worth around five months of work.
Our tools of choice were, among others, Photoshop, 3D Studio Max 8, Code::Blocks, Irrlicht, RakNet and Lua.
If you understand German, you can get all the information about the game on our project wiki. The gameplay of "Omertà" mainly consists of recruiting neutral NPCs so they steal, fight and spy for you. Your enemy doesn't know which NPCs on the map are yours and you don't know anything about him, either. As soon as your army is big enough, you should seek the boss of your opponent and attack him. Of course, he plans the same. "Omertà" is a genre mix, with RTS and RPG elements.