Lankan ‘omi’ app: Introduces a local game to a new generation card game app?
Gone are the days when you run around your neighbours house looking for three other friends to play the famous OMI card game. The last time you played the game using actual physical cards probably might be long ago. Technology has advanced so much, everything is just at the touch of a button.
Screenshot taken from the app
While there are many card game apps available online, the Mirror Magazine came across the OMI Sri Lankan card game on the App Store and caught up with developer of the app, Nadeesha Lakmal Chandrapala for a chat.
Nadeesha (25) is a software engineer from Negombo who works for Codegen International. He initially developed the app for a competition as a desktop application while doing his higher studies at the National School of Business Management. The desktop version of the app was developed by a group of four students including Nadeesha for a group project.
After obtaining his B.Sc in Computer Science, while he was working as a web developer for a local accounting firm, Nadeesha learnt to develop the same desktop app for iOS. The app was released in April 2016 and today the game is available on iOS and can be played using the iPhone and iPad.
The app has reached around 45,000 downloads as of today with around 70 downloads per day on average during the last two years. The app pops up on the App Store around 2,000 times on average daily.
“I’m hoping to develop the app on android phones and improve on the user interface,” Nadeesha said.
The game at the moment can be played as a single player. He is working on developing the app for multiple player mode as well.
On another note he also mentioned that 304 is another challenging card game that he wants to develop in the future.
The OMI Sri Lankan card game gives the player a real experience as if one were playing with three other real players generated by the iOS system itself (one as a player’s partner and other two as the opposing team).
All rules, scoring methods and allocating tokens are included as in the real game. Most of the OMI playing strategies are included in the system generated players, so they are closer to the real players. And they play perfectly taking into account of the cards that the other players have played as how real players play.
At each round, the trump choosing chance rotates anti clock-wise among each player. When the trump choosing chance is for the system generated player, it chooses the trump considering the first four cards it gets from the dealer. Before you start the game you can select the number of tokens (5 or 10). At the end, the first team to get that number of tokens wins.
