Sunday, May 6, 2012

ADOM II 0.2.6 released!

"Reease early, release often" now is fully underway. I hereby set a new world record by announcing the third release of ADOM II (0.2.6) in one weekend.

And before anyone complains about lack of quality control - the policy so far was to collect all the bugs for weeks and then release a new version. The new pace really to me feels like a great improvement as the number of critical bugs despite the huge load of changes is going back quickly and 0.2.6 now really should be immensely playable. At least I hope so. And if I still missed bugs we'll see 0.2.7 in a day or two... in any case that's how I envisioned the original roadmap before getting sidetracked with featuritis ;-)

So here we go with the latest list of improvements:


* Added a new logical sense to the game to enhance the precision of messages.
* Added message when an illegal key sequence is entered. That should help to debug some of the unavailable
  key sequences in foreign language keyboard layouts (like issue 347) and might help when using the 
  commands incorrectly.
* Character names now have a minimum length of two characters to allow for names like "Ed", "Ug", "Og"
  and others.
* Added information about the current user settings to the error traces in order to simplify debugging.
* Mountains in wilderness encounters no longer are hard to climb.
* Increased the probability of special rooms for dungeons.
* Fixed several bugs related to killing beings and dropping stuff (issues 956, 964, 980).
* Fixed a problem with the generation of certain uniques (issue 957).
* Fixed a problem with scrolls of identify (issue 958).
* Fixed broken monster frequencies - non random monsters suddenly could be encountered randomly (issue 659).
* Shields now identify when being equipped (issue 960).
* Improved the handling of climbing sets - it's no longer necessary to equip a climbing set in order to
  be able to traverse mountains (issue 961).
* Adjusted the generic recovery message (issue 962).
* Hitpoint recovery in water has been greatly reduced when not in a seaworthy  craft or an aquatic 
  being (issue 962).
* Adjusted very high nutrition values a bit downwards to prevent being overfed too fast (issue 963).
* Fixed a problem with getting too overfed (issue 966).
* Fixed various problems with the new keybindings (issues 967, 968, 971, 972, 973, 981, 982, 984).
* Fixed a problem with the creation of the startup files (issue 970).
* Fixed an army related bug (issue 975).
* Fixed en endless loop problem related to the 'Detect item status' skill (issue 976).
* Fixed a regression with stair generation in tension rooms (issue 979).
* Fixed the width of the skill window (issue 985).
* Fixed a nasty endless loop with monsters that dynamically grow stronger in relation to the PC. 
* Fixed a typo with hill orc chieftains.
* Fixed a null pointer problem when advancing beings without a profession.
* Fixed the missing mapping of '5' to wait in the new ADOM II keybindings.
* Removed some console debugging output.


ADOM II 0.2.6 is available for download here. 

Barring major bugs I will decide within the next couple of days between one of the following options (feedback welcome):

  1. Create 0.2.7 as the first version without JavaWebStart using a standard installation routine.
  2. Create 0.2.7 with fully workable tinker profession options and pocket picking finally working (and maybe fixing more "old" bugs).
  3. Start work on 0.3.x including the options above (which means: no new release for two or three weeks).
Currently my favorite is the order #2 (0.2.7), #1 (0.2.8) and then #3 (0.3.x).

8 comments:

  1. Nicely done---very much in favor of 1 and to an extent 2. You'd definitely be better off having the Install approach down like a champ in advance of the first release in the .3.x series that, unless something has changed, it due to see the premier of the Deluxe Edition doings.

    The more solid your foundations, the better the odds that you'll blow through the dev pace of .3.x and beyond.

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  2. I agree that the new pace is an improvement!

    About the options, I like any of #1 or #2. I don't see any advantage to #3 ("I'm a fan of release early, release often").

    I'm going to play 0.2.6 now.

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  3. "Character names now have a minimum length of two characters to allow for names like "Ed", "Ug", "Og" and others."

    Yay, I got my name in a changelog! :)

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  4. I'll put my bug report here since the forum has a trojan..

    Jackalwere seem to have too much mana/manaregeneration. I almost got stuck in a level and was getting low on sustenance until luckily found the stairs down. It felt like my newbie experience with the old bunny level ;-)

    I went from lvl 9 to lvl 13, several thousand xp, before escaping. Each jackal gave 10-15 xp so you get the idea..

    Maybe I got unlucky and there was a second jackalwere I did not see.

    Then undead started to appear in scores, and attributes started to suffer. Tough for a melee character to evade them all..

    And soon after I was finished off by a common ogre with a killer weapon. We should think if there is some way to visually mark these 'semibosses' (ordinary monsters with huge dongs) because at that point nothing was touching me for more than one or two hp and I got careless. Reserve one colour for monsters with a big weapon (orange)?

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    Replies
    1. The issue manager is working again :-)

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    2. Perhaps having some sort of danger sense which would give you a chance to be warned when you encounter something substantially stronger than usual?

      Delete
  5. From a slightly earlier changelog: "Removed a couple of user settings that didn't seem to get used. Should someone ask for them I will add them again."

    Could you please add back the option for cursor blink speed? I was using that, setting it to lowest possible to make it more like the DOS version of ADOM. :-)

    BTW, what other display options did you remove?

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  6. I bought a large ration for 10 gp and freely went out of the shop in Terinyo. After that a shopkeeper blocked the entrance like I was inside. I chatted with him and payed the money. I don't know if it's a new feature of adom 0.2.7 or not.
    In Ubuntu I found it difficult to play adom II as the game takes the whole screen and there was no possibility to reduce the size of it.
    Thank you for your attention.

    ReplyDelete