ADOM II: Legends of Ancardia (powered by JADE)

Request for comment: The size of the global highscore list

2013-05-09T01:22:00.000+02:00

Jochen and I have been talking about the size of the global highscore list for ADOM Deluxe. How many entries should we store? Globally and per player? Should there just be a global limit (e.g. the global highscore contains a maximum of 100.000 entries)? Or should we "just" define a limit per player (e.g. not more than 20 globally stored highscore entries per player)?

Currently I lean towards one global limit (option 1) instead of the "per player" limit as this seems to be the more common way of doing highscores, but let us know what you think...

Another look behind the scenes of current ADOM developments

2013-05-09T01:13:00.003+02:00

Hi folks!

Because recently we have been pretty silent Jochen and I tonight are doing a planning session to resolve certain important issues we right now are working on together with Krys, Zeno and Lucas. This blog entry has been written over the course of the evening and hopefully the recent lull in activity will become more understandable after you read it.

As stated in my post about "the long tail" we have entered a phase in which we are fiddling with a lot of important technical concepts which right now do not yield much gain for you as a player but still are an extremely important foundation for the next actual game features.

In no particular order I'll be going to summarize those things down below. Enjoy!

Jochen and I are discussing how to handle the basic model-view-controller concept between ADOM and NotEye. This has been caused by a "small feature" we added while working on NotEye: ADOM now is distributing pools of blood all over the dungeon (after killing monsters). We added this just as a test but liked the result so much that we would like to keep it. And there comes our current challenge: ADOM does not manage any information about "pools of blood resulting from killed monsters". And Jochen and I both believe that ADOM never should do so - because it would limit the number of concepts that could be used in an enhanced graphical UI (e.g. if ADOM does not manage the amount of bone dust from smashed skeletal monsters there never would be a way that a nifty UI could display heaps of bone dust). Right now we tend towards an event based model where ADOM tells the UI about things like "monster x has been killed" or "the player was damaged for y points by monster z". And then the UI can decide about what to do with this information. If you want to have damage bubbles floating across the screen you can add that. If you want to color the bubbles based on the amount of damage you can do that. If you don't want any of that you just can ignore the event in the UI. As a result the UI becomes very flexible in regard to special effects. But the challenge of this is to find an API that is flexible enough to provide enough information (for whatever definition of "enough") to the UI without creating hundreds and hundreds of different events. And it should work between C (the programming language of ADOM) and LUA (the main programming language of NotEye) without forcing us to add tens of thousands of lines of API code. So this has been keeping us discussing for many days.
Next is the problem of how to store "UI only information". Take e.g. the pools of blood mentioned above. For how long do they persist if ADOM has no data structure describing the amount of blood? Should NotEye generate them rather randomly, should there be some semi-random algorithm or should NotEye go the long and hard way of storing extra save files with "view model information"? Right now Jochen and I tend toward the latter situation but Zeno is not completely wrong in indicating that this adds a lot of complexity and functionality to NotEye. No easy decision here again :-)
Sometimes we spend a couple of hours with "code archeology". Just researching what some ancient piece of code in ADOM might mean and why some things actually do work. Not trivial. Believe us. But very important to be able to extend ADOM. The latest things we researched was the handling of how items are internally identified in order to be able to handle the mapping of images for identified and unidentified items in NotEye in a sane (and correct) way.
We have been working on the ADOM server. Yes, there will be a server. More honestly Jochen has been programming a very cool prototype of the ADOM server using QuinScapes OpenSAGA project (we even have been discussing to allow community contributions by permitting OpenSAGA extensions for the server). But back to the server. We need it for several things: achievement handling with ADOM versions that are not integrated with something like Steam, global highscores, player registrations and more fun to come. So we actually had to define a protocol for data exchange, agree on data formats (we are going to use JSON internally), refactor various data structures for better global handling (e.g. the highscore format) and so on. Weeks of work without any visible results so far as the ADOM community server is not yet publicly available. And there are tons of things to be done, e.g. the layout for the community server to make it a thing of beauty, more means of interactions and so on. This also meant a lot of internal refactoring as the ADOM C code now contains a JSON library for serializing and unserializing objects (hey, we are becoming modern :-) ) and so on. While doing all this we also discussed high score compatibility concluding that the old high scores will not be importable into the new version (this already makes sense for balancing reasons - but there also are good technical excuses ;-) ). The new format is built in a way though to be able to keep new high scores compatible with future changes (at least we hope so).
We have been discussing various ways concerning the future user registrations for the Deluxe version of ADOM. Everyone who invested $40+ in the crowd funding campaign will receive a Deluxe license as explained but once those are processed further licenses will only be available as a pad option. The Deluxe version will provide the community elements and some game extensions (e.g. choosable star signs and similar stuff). So to allow for that we need a player registration, a license management system (which must not be too complicated and definitely must not enforce DRM issues on our target audience ;-) ), etc. Again not impossible to devise but we now have to decide for a way of doing all in a way that will remain stable for the foreseeable future.
Once we have decided upon a licensing mechanism we actually have to implement it (and we are fiddling with those parts right now). This includes things like the "sales client" to "ADOM server" communication code, license management in ADOM, being able to change accounts and so on. Details, details, details :-)
Krys is done with 99% of the item images (but we had some fun complications as it makes a huge difference to the graphical world how items are represented while ASCII characters allow for much less variation) and about 95% of the monsters. Next I'm going to bother Krys with some nitpicky details and then we are back to map tiles and fiddly details.
Lucas continues to work on great compositions. He's also been putting a lot of thought into how to add sound effects to the game (e.g. wolves howling, birds chirping, lightning crashes). Jochen has implemented a nice configurable system to allow very flexible settings.
Which brings me to another point we have thought about quite a bit (and tried various implementations): Extensibility. Many of the new features (sound effects, images, the way the graphical UI behaves) are highly customizable (if you have some basic technical skills and can compose, paint or program). This will allow for fun community adjustments and we probably will be happy to include great customizations into the core if the customizer agrees.
The code for the achievements has been structured and now needs to be integrated with the account based system as well as with the ADOM server. Parts of this stuff already is finished but there still needs to be added a lot of network code to handle error cases, etc.
I personally am still busy writing the ADOM Lite RPG. The goal still is to be finished with the first version until the end of May - quite a bit of work to do as by now space conservation becomes a prime issue in order to fit all rules and a fun game into 64 pages. I have decided to use Hexographer to create a map of the Drakalor Chain that will be included as the setting map (and probably also as a poster in the boxed version - but regarding the latter thing I need to discuss this with Krys as originally we had planned to have him to the poster map; make your voice be heard in the comments below, too ;-) - my line of thinking right now is that a Hexographer style map probably has a higher play value than a painted map).

Taking all this the next ADOM prerelease probably will not happen before the end of May as there just is not enough visible stuff happening. On the other hand we need to get all this stuff out of the way ASAP in order to be able to focus on the next new game play additions so this seems to be the most reasonable way to go.

Ok, enough for now. The past six hours with Jochen have been fun, it's past midnight over here, I'm going to sleep now ;-) (sorry for typos - it's been a long day)

Read ya soon!

Blog word cloud

2013-04-28T08:51:00.003+02:00

I just used this tool to generate a word cloud for the blog:

I'm going back to writing ADOM Lite RPG now ;-)

Call for artists (ADOM Lite RPG)

2013-04-23T08:06:00.001+02:00

While I continue to write the rules book for the ADOM Lite RPG it just occurred to me to include community based material in the RPG. Specifically I was thinking about art as I already bought some artwork for the RPG but am not yet completely happy with some parts. So here's the deal...

If you are a budding (or established) artist and would love to be a part of the ADOM RPG I am open for art submissions. Below you will find a list of things that might be interesting for inclusion.

The rules are simple: You retain all rights to your art, I receive the right to use your artwork in whatever way I deem appropriate as long as it is used in the ADOM RPG (Lite or otherwise; must also be allowed to use the art in marketing the RPGs, e.g. on a website related to the RPG, etc.). Your will be credited by name and specific piece(s) of art and you receive one copy of the ADOM Lite RPG, two if three or more art pieces from you are included (I can't and don't want to pay more as the funds from the crowd funding campaign primarily are intended to further the development of the ADOM computer game). By submitting art to creator(at)ancientdomainsofmystery.com you show your consent to these rules.

What am I looking for? All kinds of stuff but primarily to B&W art related to races, classes, star signs and corruptions. Specifically I'm right now unhappy with trolls, drakelings and hurthlings and I have very few art pieces selected for the classes (although I have a stack of stuff in waiting for that). I have not art for the star signs (but would love to have some) and corruptions are a topic in itself.

As shown here in the sample I am going for a realistic black & white line art style, so that's what your submission should be. 300 DPIs is the resolution required. Submissions best come as TIF or PNG.

If there are other questions let me know and use the chance to gain some (more ;-) ) visibility in the publishing world, even if it's in a (so far) limited edition game.

And before anyone gets concerned: As I tried t state - the progress of the game is not dependent on art submissions, I have enough stuff - I just thought it might be a nice touch to offer the chance ;-)

Cheers
Thomas

Back in the saddle again (ADOM Lite RPG update)

2013-04-16T13:56:00.002+02:00

Hi everyone!

I'm back from a wonderful vacation to Namibia (that's the main reason for my silence during the past couple of weeks... Internet was kind of a problem during our trip - if it was available it usually was so slow that it was not fun to do much). Here'a a quick update of what happened in the meantime.
I intended to use the vacation to finally focus more on the ADOM Lite RPG and partially was successful with that. While I had planned to write and layout directly in Indesign I only did this a couple of times, fiddling more with classical pen & paper to wrench out designs for certain subsystems of the RPG. I also spent a bit too much time fiddling with images (but I love doing that, so...).

What I did:

I fiddled more with racial and class abilities in the RPG. Classes are still not quite done but getting there, races are not pretty much finished (really finished) except for one or two images I'm still unhappy with (hurthlings, trolls, drakelings maybe).
I spent way more time than intended on the random dungeon generation subsystem of the RPG. As solo dungeon exploration is the prime feature of the computer RPG it IMHO also should be the strongest feature of the pen & paper RPG (although nothing in the game will prevent more classical RPG pursuits). It took me a number of attempts to hopefully now find a way to randomly generate interesting dungeons for exploration - the next step here is to get my ideas in a more structured and readable form into Indesign.
I toyed with the combat system (which is way different from the one in the computer RPG), having a somewhat hard time to find the right balance between "fast" and "ADOM enough". That now also hopefully has been tackled.
I battled with space requirements but got some IMHO great inspiration for the monster lists - now I just need to purchase some more art to make this work out. Hopefully I will manage to include more than enough interesting and challenging monsters.
I worked on the content of the bonus booklet for the boxes that will be created and have a pretty good grasp of its content by now.
I have changed my opinion about the map to be included - right now I intend to make it an old-style hex map of the Drakalor Chain as this probably will offer more play value than a more artistic rendition. But I need to talk with Krys about this.

The revised time plan for the ADOM Lite RPG now is that I want to finish the first draft (including layout, I usually can't separate these two things) by end of May latest and then get the draft to a number of people who offered to help with proofreading, etc. I'm not yet sure how to manage this best as I want to keep integrating suggestions and changes as simple as possible but there will be a solution for that when time comes.

Here's a teaser of one of the new pages (with some holes, but you get the drift):

So in summary I made decent progress on number of issues although I also managed to enjoy the holiday ;-)

Read ya soon!

ADOM 1.2.0p12 and p13 are out (kind of old news)

2013-04-03T20:13:00.000+02:00

Hi everyone!

As mentioned in my last post I'm currently quite a bit on the road and have shaky internet connections at best (and little time). So Jochen has taken over release management and released ADOM 1.2.0p12 and ADOM 1.2.0p13 (you can download them in the usual location). If you haven't downloaded either so far, you can skip p12 right away as p13 contains a very important bug fix.

The major new feature starting with p12 is that NotEye by Zeno now is integrated into ADOM. This gives you quite a few new features (like limited mouse support, health bars, full screen mode and more) and is an important test for us on the road to the graphical version of ADOM (graphics and sounds are not yet included in the releases - we want to focus on the stability of the integration for now and get slightly more complete graphical and sound support).

So go now and download the latest versions ;-)

Cheers
Thomas

The long tail

2013-03-28T12:30:00.001+01:00

Hi everyone!

Updates have been few and far inbetween right now, now because we are not working but rather because we have hit what I call the long tail of software development.

Our prime focus currently is to get the first combined NotEye/ADOM release out but this entails still a lot of detail work. We are hard on it and many other parts are being fiddled with (see below) but there is little externally visible process.

As I am going to be traveling a fair bit during the next couple of weeks I have decided to switch my attention for a moment in order to proceed with the ADOM RPG. So here's the task list we are working on right now:

Jochen and Zeno and slugging away to get the first ADOM/NotEye release out of the door. We intend to be p12 the first such release. Jochen in particular still has to fiddle a fair bit withe build system, dependency management, etc.
Lucas is working hard on more and more soundtracks. Slowly but steadily an impressive score is being gathered.
Krys is painting his soul away, below you can see the latest character variant update:

Sadly we also kind of encountered a problem we all totally forgot to take into consideration when doing the initial estimation: we forgot about female monster variants - which probably adds another 120 or so monsters and hardly will fit into our budget schedule :-( Damn. See the problem:

Due to the traveling mentioned above I am going to focus on the ADOM Lite RPG for a couple of weeks to get it to a much more complete state.

Additionally it's time for more community input. Two main issues need to be decided in order to implement them in the near future:

First of all we need to get a better idea what to do with all the new quests and maps that will be added to the game. I have a slew of ideas but I also would like to hear your input. Generally I intend to use them to make the early game more accessible and fun (but not all of them ;-) ) and I also want fill some plot holes in order to get rid of the need for spoilers. Now tell me: What would you like to see the new maps and quests get used for?

Secondly it's time for the achievements system. Jochen already has started working on the server infrastructure and client protocol for that, too, and we now would love to have more input for cool achievements. Long-time supporter and fan Sascha Schnitzer already sent me the following batch of ideas which I like a lot but there's surely a lot of cool stuff we haven't yet thought of:

It Starts Easy

Die your first death.

Time Flies If You're Having Fun

Die due to old age.

Zork'ed

You were eaten by a grue.

Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies

Become a gaming cliché. [Death through falling rocks.]

Things Were Better Back Then

Restore a character from permadeath.

What's this?

Find a si.

Attonement

Recover from being doomed.

Fortune's Favor

Have Fate smile upon you.

Fireproof

Resist a total of X points of fire damage.

Mad Carpenter No More

Find a way to cure Yrrigs.

A Child's Hero

Save a puppy from certain doom.

Dragonslayer

Slay a dragon. Easy, right?

Spoiled Rat

Become sick from food poisoning.

Assassin's Deed

Kill an enemy with poison.

Give and Take

Spend a total of 90,169 gold pieces in shops with one character.

Avatar of Thieves

Steal an item worth at least 6,666 gold pieces.

I Can Do This All Night

Spend 60 days continuously under water.

Cannibalism, ho!

Become a cannibal with every player race.

Stick them with the pointy end!

Dual-wield Needle and Sting.

Filk Will Never Die!

Kill Filk.

So let's gather your input and stay tuned. Hopefully will be real soon now able to do the groundbreaking ADOM/NotEye release :-)

Graphical monster variants & tidbits

2013-03-03T21:43:00.001+01:00

After spending the day with more paperwork and stuff regarding the crowd funding campaign I wanted to give you a quick peek at how Krys manages to shape the monster variants from the basic monsters he painted so far. I really love how these beasts are being individualized :-)

Additionally I can tell you that Lucas' compositions really are taking form now. He's been working on stuff for months and now is starting to finalize the first couple of compositions. Sheer awesomeness. I'm so much looking forward to the first release of ADOM with graphics and sound.

And now I'll be back to bug fixing and then tackling both the user defined statues and the new quests and special levels... so much fun ahead :-)

See ya!

Thomas

ADOM 1.2.0p11 released!

2013-02-18T22:04:00.002+01:00

I'm happy to announce the release of ADOM 1.2.0p11. At the same time I have to say sorry for the reduced amount of community interaction within the past couple of weeks. A series of family crises involving serious heart problems, strokes, sicknesses combined with various other minor annoyances really so far has made my start into 2013 pretty bumpy. Things slowly sort out and hopefully will take a good end but the past couple of weeks have been one long stretch of troubles and worries.
Luckily Jochen continued to move ahead and used my reduced activity to refactor one of the most ancient parts of the ADOM source code (and consequently one of the most confused, convoluted, contradicting and complicated parts) - the code covering line of sight, visibility, darkness and knowledge of places visited. He rewrote most parts and streamlined things enormously - which was an important requirement to get NotEye working a lot more consistently and hopefully also will weed out a multitude of ancient bugs.

I'm slowly taking up pace again and things from now on hopefully will proceed at a more decent speed once more.

Before downloading ADOM 1.2.0p11 please remember that this is a release with the limited access prerelease series - if you want to get in into the fun you still can join the program.

Otherwise please read the change log, log in to the self service portal and proceed to the download and particularly make sure that you read the details about the following two issues:

Issue 1159 covers the details regarding renamed configuration files. If your configurations behave strangely here you might find the explanation. Although we expect everything to work just fine.
Issue 1941 covers the refactoring of the whole internal code structures regarding visibility, tile knowledge, light and darkness. All our tests seem to indicate that the new code works just fine but as the old code was so deeply engrained into ADOM and there seemed to exist tons of special cases (now mostly gone) we cannot be 100% sure. So be particularly attentive to strange behavior regarding map drawing, examined map tiles, look mode, etc.

Finally here's the detailed list of changes:

Feature 1159 - Rename .adom.data
Feature 1800 - Make cursor keys work with w in the default adom.kbd file
Feature 1916 - Repeat room message at game start
Feature 1941 - Refacture knowledge handling of ADOM for the NotEye integration
Issue 145 - Thief Autosearch Bug
Issue 763 - Unused light sources can allow the PC to see things in the dark
Issue 1111 - About Doors and Darkness
Issue 1147 - Graphics corruption in Amiga version
Issue 1292 - Graphical glitches
Issue 1518 - (Destroyed) doors show up in darkness
Issue 1523 - ADoM exits with status 1 when choosing not to restore game
Issue 1698 - Cursed scrolls of repair will "break" normally unbreakable equipment
Issue 1769 - Being interrupted by nothing
Issue 1778 - Fire breath on a boss leads to game breaking crash
Issue 1810 - Poison hands behavior inconsistencies
Issue 1835 - boss monster description typos
Issue 1840 - boss monster description uses default generic text
Issue 1885 - Bloody and crude daggers
Issue 1867 - Naming consistency - "spider bread" instead of "loaf of spider bread"
Issue 1877 - Wrong textual description of PC in monster memory
Issue 1881 - No animation for "icy blast" from ogre magi
Issue 1896 - Mithril scalpel ID'd and unID'd descriptions are wrong
Issue 1917 - Misleading Message For Encumbrance Preventing Duelist Class Skills

Another glimpse of the evolving tile set

2013-02-01T08:53:00.000+01:00

Hi everyone! Here's another quick update of the evolving icon set for ADOM (and ADOM II). I keep loving the stuff Krys is doing and can't wait to release the first version with a somewhat complete tile set :-)

ADOM 1.2.0p10 released!

2013-01-22T20:56:00.004+01:00

Hi everyone!

We are happy to announce the release of ADOM 1.2.0p10, again a closed prerelease for all people participating in the prerelease access program and for everyone who donated to the ADOM: The Resurrection crowd funding campaign at the Wanderer level or above (Seekers exempted).

ADOM 1.2.0p10 is a minor release that fixes an annoying crash bug with the new secret artifact guardians rooms that have been added to the game. Some other minor fixes also have been included. You can find the full list of changes here.

As usual the prerelease is available as a download from the ADOM Self Service portal.

Enjoy!

ADOM 1.2.0p9 has been released

2013-01-13T21:51:00.001+01:00

I'm happy to announce the release of ADOM 1.2.0p9 - again available to all donors of Wanderer level and above (Seekers exempted) from the crowd funding campaign as well as anyone who decides to buy into the prerelease program.
ADOM 1.2.0p9 is - as usual - downloadable via the links provided in the ADOM self service portal.

The amount of changes is again sweeping - p9 has been a very active development phase. Among dozens of minor and medium adjustments the biggest new addition to the game itself is the new set of boss monsters. These boss monsters have been defined by donors from the crowd funding campaign and provide special names, descriptions and a set of extra abilities. They can be generated in place of "normal" wandering monsters and IMHO are a splendid and very colorful addition to the game. Some of them probably need a little more balancing but for now I'm very curious about feedback :-)

Here we go with the complete list of changes:

 Feature 722 - Invisible Monsters
 Feature 1188 - 'l'ooking at an altar should tell you its color.
 Feature 1212 - Kicking certain items should hurt you like with anvils
 Feature 1278 - Shields balancing
 Feature 1300 - Add 45 new items (in progress)
 Feature 1301 - Add 46 new artifacts (in progress)
 Feature 1409 - RFE: Make Detect traps faster to use on doors
 Feature 1410 - Tone down spiked armor of chaos and terror a bit?
 Feature 1413 - Assasins and daggers
 Feature 1418 - [Balance] Easing the start a little
 Feature 1419 - Remove hunger penalty from burden statuses
 Feature 1431 - Add 4 new monsters (in progress)
 Feature 1434 - Tell new players which R/C combos are easiest
 Feature 1460 - Slighty more hp for mist elves?
 Feature 1462 - Balance "room smelling of carrots" Pe increase
 Feature 1464 - [Balance] Make thieves guild easier to access
 Feature 1467 - Rarity limit for Thrundarr's first quest
 Feature 1479 - [Balance] sickness is impossible to survive as mist elf
 Feature 1480 - Make all heir gifts more or less useful
 Feature 1483 - werewolves and dire wolves should see in darkness
 Feature 1489 - Improve worthless possible crowning gifts
 Feature 1490 - More feedback on "very close" message.
 Feature 1495 - [Suggestion] Make Greater Vaults more common, more varied
 Feature 1507 - Minotaur maze made a little easier?
 Feature 1522 - Make surges of power more frequent
 Feature 1591 - Change Dwarf Chaos Knight Starting Weapon To Great Axe
 Feature 1613 - higher strength bonus for 2-handed weapons
 Feature 1641 - [suggestion] Make elven duelists start with racial armour
 Feature 1648 - Reducing the frustration caused by rivers
 Feature 1651 - Slaying sling bullets
 Feature 1683 - Implement special boss monsters
 Feature 1693 - Crystals of power
 Bug 759 - Dungeon generation bugs
 Bug 900 - Some monsters are illogically (un)affected by mindcraft
 Bug 929 - Carpenter quest becomes unwinnable if Yrrigs transforms into a WMoPC
 Bug 1171 - Applying unusable skills consumes time
 Bug 1302 - visible invisible stalker is "someone" or "something"
 Bug 1385 - @ command doesn't work on Windows
 Bug 1399 - [Balance] The transition between Hunger --> Starvation is too quick
 Bug 1449 - Charges on wands in shops are not displayed.
 Bug 1469 - Trying to eat mist wolf corpse crashes the game
 Bug 1472 - Mist Elves Wearing a Single Metal Ring Suffer Damage in Wilderness
 Bug 1473 - Ratling shopkeepers sell things for 1gp?
 Bug 1478 - Gauntlets (10s) do not deal damage to mist elves
 Bug 1486 - tiny quarrels are not affixable, except with heir
 Bug 1505 - Fix monsters squeezing past one another (and cut down on message spam)
 Bug 1506 - Monks can't kick down walls any more.
 Bug 1519 - Staff of creation - guaranteed?
 Bug 1520 - Tone down the Animated Forest, somehow
 Bug 1526 - All Scrolls in Shop run by Ratling shopkeeper cost 1gp
 Bug 1544 - Mist elf hunger rate too low
 Bug 1573 - No turn advance when confusion prevents casting
 Bug 1586 - Slow shadows can be pickpocketed
 Bug 1593 - More meaningful loot
 Bug 1604 - Your equipment suddenly seems to weigh less.
 Bug 1636 - Bouncing rays display with wrong symbol
 Bug 1637 - Washed away by Fairy Dragon
 Bug 1640 - Monsters Randomly Becoming Neutral, Lots of Prompting
 Bug 1642 - Thrundarr still doesn't give potion of literacy to low literacy characters
 Bug 1643 - incorrect ^x description of duelist 6th level class power
 Bug 1653 - Crash when generating mist elf chaos knight
 Bug 1667 - Close door asks for direction when standing on door and there's only one adjacent door open
 Bug 1682 - Undead can pray
 Bug 1690 - Level 18+ duelists can't give elemental gauntlets to the demented ratling
 Bug 1697 - Wrong theft counter increase when picking pockets

Roguelike of the Year 2012: ADOM & ADOM II as #2, #3

2013-01-11T07:49:00.001+01:00

The results from the poll for Roguelike of the Year 2012 have been posted. Congratulations to T.o.M.E. 4 for winning the poll! Personally I'm really flattered (and amazed) by taking both rank #2 (wit ADOM) and #3 (with ADOM II), particularly the rise of ADOM II feeling great. Thanks, folks, for the feedback and love - feel assured that we (Team ADOM) take this as a feedback that will continously drive us trying to create the best ADOM (and ADOM II) ever.

The goal for 2013 is obvious - we'll try to take #1... hoping for #2, too, probably is quite over-enthusiastic so I hope that we'll be able to re-establish ADOM as #1 for 2013 and keep ADOM II as #3 (for now ;-) ).

Here you can find the full results, here's a very detailed analysis, here's a year by year analysis (in Korean ;-) ), and you don't want to miss the honorable mentions for rank #4 to #10.

Thanks for your support, thanks for voting and now we'll resume going for #1 :-)

Thomas Biskup & Team ADOM

ADOM on episode 58 of Roguelike Radio

2013-01-11T07:34:00.001+01:00

Just a short information: My latest interview with Darren Grey has led to episode 58 of Roguelike Radio: Enjoy!

The end of my ADOM sabbatical

2013-01-11T07:04:00.001+01:00

All good things come to an end at some point, so does today my ADOM sabbatical. For about a month I took off from normal work in order to work with full focus on implementing all the rewards from the ADOM crowd funding campaign. A lot got done, a lot more needs to be done, here's the quick summary.

Basically the month was extremely helpful for me to get into the depths of ADOM coding. Since the beginning of the sabbatical in December the following major successes have been achieved:

ADOM has been vastly expanded. Hundreds of bugs and RFEs (literally) have been processed, mist elves, chaos knights, ratlings and duelists have been implemented as new player options, user defined boss monsters have been added (prerelease testers will be able to check those out in the very near future in ADOM 1.2.0p9).
For prerelease testers ADOM 1.2.0p8 is the current official release with p9 soon to come, ADOM 1.2.0p5 was released to the general public as a Christmas gift.
ADOM II saw three releases with ADOM II 0.3.2 being the current up to date version.
The ADOM self service portal was in full operation to collect all the virtual reward specifications from crowd funding donors and results now are being integrated into the game.
An official option to get access to ADOM prereleases has been established. And people seem to like it :-)
I conducted a couple of interviews to spread the word about ADOM.
And most important of all: I coded, coded, coded and coded... which was blazing fun.

So all in all I'm pretty happy with the results of the ADOM sabbatical month always I'm still bothered a little by the fact that I lost roughly the first week of 2013 due to a serious cold... actually so much more could have been done in that time and now that real life once more will come into main focus I'm a bit anxious about keeping up the good progress we have managed to achieve. But we'll see how this works out... I can't bend reality that much so I'll have to cope ;-)

As for what's next:

I want to release p9 at the weekend, some more bugs need to be tackled but we are on a good way.
Then I'll tackle the new statue implementations (another crowd funding reward).
Afterwards it's a combination of "more bug fixing" and "getting the stories behind the new level additions structured and prepared" - I have a lot of ideas regarding the latter thing but these ideas still need to be hammered into shape.
We are looking in how to handle the first release of ADOM integrated with NotEye.

Currently I expect another two to three months of pure coding work on ADOM before I will seriously tackle the phyiscal rewards from the crowd funding campaign (specifically the ADOM Lite RPG, the various mailings and the boxes). Please keep patient on that issue... it's quite complicated logistically, the most expensive physical part of the project and I can't afford to botch this up ;-)

Ok, that's it for now... stay tuned!

New Twitter account: @adom_dev

2013-01-09T11:56:00.001+01:00

Just a quick update: As I got quite a number of complaints regarding certain issue update sprees about which I twittered (and also posted to Facebook) I have decided to add a new Twitter account that will be the only channel receiving all the details regarding issue updates. So if you want high frequency updates you now can follow @adom_dev. @thomas_biskup will only contain a very limited subset of ADOM updates from now on, more general stuff, etc. (and all the other things that interest me - basically it's turning back into my more generic account).

New tile samples...

2013-01-08T09:29:00.001+01:00

While I continue to work on the new boss monsters I'd like to point you to a new tile sample... enjoy!
(And yes: I totally believe they rock!!!)

ADOM 1.2.0p8 released!

2013-01-04T21:44:00.001+01:00

Hi everyone! I'm happy to announce that Jochen saved my day by releasing ADOM 1.2.0p8 - my cold prevented me from doing almost anything useful today :-(

It's again a closed prerelease only available to people who donated to the crowd funding campaign at Wanderer level or above (Seekers excluded) and to anyone who decides to board the prerelease train as a late comer.

Here's the list of changes:

 Feature 1300 - Add 45 new items (in progress)
 Feature 1301 - Add 46 new artifacts (in progress)
 Feature 1431 - Add 4 new monsters (in progress)
 Feature 1612 - Implement the Duelist profession
 Bug 84 - Weird Ogre Guardian
 Bug 112 - Covered Pit Bug
 Bug 770 - D:49 bugs
 Bug 1329 - Using a blessed stetoscope on a 'detected' trapped door says there is nothing to check.
 Bug 1407 - Can't train cooking with chaos knights
 Bug 1408 - [Suggestion] Ghost Lords / Kings should give more XP
 Bug 1412 - Perception modifiers
 Bug 1414 - Stat potential lower than base stat for hurthling CK with strength decreasing corruption
 Bug 1420 - Message for chaotic hurthlings eating black hurthling corpses
 Bug 1429 - Confusion's stagger effect can be ignored by anyone
 Bug 1430 - Kicking a stack of statues breaks the whole stack
 Bug 1436 - Disarmed in a shop: lost ownership and un-ID'd
 Bug 1440 - New star sign effects are not displayed upon creation
 Bug 1441 - Ratling Archer Heir Talent causes error dialog
 Bug 1442 - Crash while eating stomacemtia/alt tabbing
 Bug 1443 - Rolled a Mist elf merchant. Died on the second turn.
 Bug 1444 - Mist elf Chat with creation gives illogical message
 Bug 1446 - Mist elven starting items
 Bug 1448 - White necromancy not included in level up description
 Bug 1451 - Mist elfs taking damage from metal doesn't stop reading
 Bug 1455 - DV penalty when blind
 Bug 1456 - Andor Drakon likes quarreling with himself?
 Bug 1459 - Confirmation query when missile attacking 'Neutrals'
 Bug 1463 - Stealth is totally broken, invisibility with low backstab being preferred for assassin-like play
 Bug 1465 - Mist elf chaos knight starting equipment
 Bug 1531 - Poisoned hands corruption not working as expected.

As soon as I recover (hopefully at the weekend) I plan to focus on adding as much reward stuff as possible (random special monsters in particular, but I'll also start on statues, the tome of donors and the first couple of new special levels).

Have fun in the meantime!

Duelists in ADOM

2013-01-03T10:01:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I finished the initial duelist implementation for ADOM. Here's the text from the manual:

DUELIST -- A duelist emphasizes physical and mental acuity, and
precision in all things. Thus, the ability to accurately pe«rceive
their surroundings, and gracefully move through it, along with an
appreciation for the fine arts that help separate them from their
more thuggish contemporaries. They rely on the swiftness of their
strikes and their agility to keep them safe from harm. Duelists
differ between races however - while a high elven duelist might
elegantly skewer his opponents with a rapier while darting through
his defenses, a trollish duelist's idea of precision might be the
simple fact that their size, reach, and strength allows them to lunge
at their opponent from an amazing range and smash them over the head
before they can respond, while their mental acuity might be the simple
zen of knowing nothing but the clubbing, letting nothing interfere
with their "art".

Duelists are trained in the following skills: Alertness, Athletics,
Concentration, Dodge, Find Weakness, Healing, Law

All duelists rely on fighting unencumbered and using a single
one-handed weapon (and no shields!). When endowed in this way they
receive a multitude of benefits: All duelists receive an extra +1
to-hit bonus per weapon skill rank and +1 to damage per two weapon
skill ranks with their weapon. At level 6 they require 15 energy
points less for melee attacks per weapon skill rank for their
weapon. At level 12 they receive an extra +2 DV bonus for each weapon
skill rank in their selected weapon. At level 18 they can glove
slap opponents by giving gauntlets to them (for 1d3 turns). At level
25 their armor penetration probability is increased by +20%. At
level 32 their dexterity increases by +12. At level 40 they can a
+6 weapon skill rank bonus for all one-handed melee weapon skills. At
level 50 they receive a +20 speed bonus.

Feedback welcome as there is ample time to fine-tune them!

Getting access to ADOM prereleases

2013-01-02T11:23:00.002+01:00

Hi everyone!

In the past couple of weeks there were a decent amount of requests by folks who either missed the crowd funding campaign or then didn't have any available funds to enter it to get access to the prerelease program for ADOM Classic. Now there is a way...
Please make sure that you read the following text very closely and understand all steps. Entering more people into the prerelease program requires me to do this manually and I'd like to avoid another round of mail- and FB-based "hotline support" as such activities really distract from programming ADOM Classic ;-)

Here are the rules:

Determine the amount of money you need to donate (see below).
Donate the money via Paypal to thomas.biskup(at)gmail.com.
Send an email to creator(at)ancientdomainsofmystery.com (and no other address!) containing the headline "Buying into the ADOM prerelease program", your first name, your last name, the email address under which you donated and your current email address.

(replace the "(at)" with "@" in the text above). Once the money appears on my account I will give you access to the prerelease program. Please give me ~~a day or two of time~~ up to five days of time to enable access as I'll be doing this only during my breakfast ADOM preparations and not all day ;-) (and I had to learn that sometimes Paypal takes a while to process stuff, and I'm back at work and things are hectic as usual and... sorry for needing more time but experience so far shows that one or two days were not realistic).

How much to donate?

This depends on whether you already are a donor to the ADOM crowd funding campaign or not:

If you donated as either a "Villager" or a "Seeker" (the only two donations levels without prerelease access) you will need to donate $30. In this case you must provide your full name and the email address you used to donate to the campaign.
If you have not donated to the Indiegogo Crowd Funding campaign you will need to donate $40.

Why so much?

To be honest: I try to be fair to existing donors. I now from a number of conversations during the crowd funding campaign that quite a few people had to save in order to be donate. Making the entry level too cheap would be unfair to them. Thus I decided to differentiate by current donor status. Please don't start any discussions about the fairness of these levels (with me) - it seems fair to me and I won't change the decision as this again would cause problems with people who donate.

What do I get?

Access to all ADOM Classic prerelease versions that we create. Roughly we try to have one new version per week, sometimes it's a couple of days, sometimes two weeks or more (there must be enough interesting stuff to make it worthwhile to release a new version).

Please note that you are not allowed to distribute prerelease versions or give access to third parties.

What happens if I make a mistake?

If it's easy to clean up we'll do that. Otherwise I'm grateful for your donation. Note that I'd prefer to spend my time programming ADOM and not postprocessing donations ;-)

A Happy New Year to you all! (ADOM II 0.3.2 released)

2013-01-01T21:39:00.000+01:00

Happy New Year to everyone!

I'm happy to start the year with the release of ADOM II 0.3.2. Again it contains a slew of bug fixes and some minor improvements, making it the third ADOM II release in eight days. I'll now return to work on ADOM Classic starting tomorrow but for now I'd like to focus on the latest ADOM II improvements (sadly still no new installer... *sigh*... the endless story).

Regarding ADOM II 0.3.2: Another couple of annoying and serious bugs have been discovered and fixed. Thus here we go with ADOM II 0.3.2. Hopefully this is the final release for the next couple of weeks so that from now on I again can focus on ADOM Classic.

Here's the detailed list of changes:

Added a new splash screen (thanks to Krys for lightning reflexes!).
Changed the material attribute position for orcish spears and orcish knives.
Fixed an initialization problem with clean installs (issue 1362).
Fixed a serious problem with item material handling (issue 1578).
Fixed some more typos (issue 1580).
Refined animation delays (issue 1581) by adding a progressive speedup and providing the new "$ad" configuration command that allows to switch between standard and ultra-fast animation speeds.
Enemies usually should no longer spawn in sight (issue 1582).
Fixed a problem with missile targets getting out of sight (issue 1584).
Fixed a problem with status-less items (issue 1588).
"w." now only gets disturbed by hostile beings (RFE 1589).
Fixed a problem with shooting missiles (issue 1590).
Fixed a surprising number of new problems related to playing hurthlings (issue 1595). These issues also affected various missile weapons and other stuff. Amazing.
Fixed a problem with item type filters in the item list display.
Fixed a problem with beings picking up items in shops thus causing the shopkeeper to block the shop entrance for the PC.
Added a notification for owners of missiles that get destroyed while shooting them.

As usual the download is available here.

ADOM II 0.3.1 released!

2012-12-28T00:14:00.000+01:00

I'm happy to announce the release of ADOM II 0.3.1. As a Christmas gift to myself I decided to work on ADOM II for a couple of days and it has been a nice change of pace compared to ADOM Classic. ADOM Classic is a mountain of detail and content with a somewhat arcane, baroque copy&paste C-based API. ADOM II is a youthful and brash re-imagination of the game, still with a serious lack as far as content goes but with an incredible promise for the future (as far as I am concerned). And a wonderful architecture and API that I'm so much looking forward to to toy with extensively.
But back to ADOM II 0.3.1: The recent 0.3.0 release has been plagued by various bugs, most prominently in the sound area. I have adjusted the internal audio manager to hopefully cope with all these problems. Sadly I right now can test only on Mac / OS X and on that platform everything has been running perfectly in 0.3.0 :-) So if new problems arise I'll do an ultra-quick 0.3.2 release to fix those before returning to ADOM Classic.

Here's the complete list of changes:

Updated the credits (sorry, folks, for being late!).
Enhanced the error information in the error dialog with an internal diagnosis protocol.
Added a means to turn rocks into stone sling bullets.
Added (de)activation of immersive window mode to the context/configuration menu (issue 1557).
Added "w_" command to walk to the nearest known altar (RFE 1559).
Fixed an excessive dot in the forge description.
Fixed a problem with the reduced missile breakage professional ability which accidentally increased the chances of missiles breaking when hitting something. Doh!
Fixed a problem with looking at secret doors (issue 1192).
Fixed (added) damage for being thrown into objects (issue 1193).
Fixed shopkeepers losing readable items (issue 1194).
Fixed various typos (issue 1205).
Fixed the composition of wooden walls (issue 1207).
Fixed excessive SPACE handling (issue 1542).
Fixed a sound panning problem (issues 1543, 1545).
Fixed a problem unequipping missile weapons (issue 1547).
Fixed a typo in the beginner screen (issue 1548).
Fixed starting equipment for hurthling and hill dwarven archers (issue 1550).
Fixed the starting equipment for trollish archers, barbarians and commoners (issue 1551).
Fixed a problem with entering positions that contained a "killing shot" (issue 1552).
Fixed a problem with attribute wasting (issue 1553).
Fixed a summoning impression (issue 1554).
Fixed a summoning message (issue 1555).
Fixed the hint concerning saving and quitting (issue 1562).
Fixed a problem with processing map features (trees in the example, issue 1564).
Fixed a problem with "Detect Item Status" in conjunction with gold (issue 1567).
Fixed a problem with item conversion (issue 1570).

And here you can download the latest release. Enjoy!

Oh, BTW, it's still time to vote ADOM or ADOM II to be the Roguelike of the Year 2012.

P.S.: Yes, still no Installer. Still Java WebStart. This seems to become an endless quest. But seriously: I'm very happy to have found a couple of hours during Christmas days to work on all the stuff above and there just wasn't enough time to learn everything about the Installer. If there are no more brutal bugs, it's next on my list for ADOM II, promise!

ADOM 1.2.0p5 released (Ho Ho Ho Ho!)

2012-12-24T15:30:00.002+01:00

We are happy to announce the public release of ADOM 1.2.0p5 - one of the slightly older closed prereleases of the ongoing ADOM development due to the success of our crowd funding campaign.
Take this is yet another Christmas gift (after the release of ADOM II 0.3.0 tonight), this time from "Team ADOM" (that is Jochen, Krys, Lucas, Zeno and yours truly). It's the first time that ADOM is driven by an international team (with members from South America to Poland) and advised by the steadfast thousands of loyal fans out there and it's a truly amazing and exciting time for all of us. We are very much looking forward to show you the versions of ADOM brewing in our laboratory but they still need a bit more finish.

In the meantime we thought it appropriate to release one of the older closed prereleases so that some of the annoying bugs out there can be avoided (internally ADOM 1.2.0p7 has been released and p8 is under heavy work and probably will be out before the end of the year to the prerelease testers).

You can find the download here, the changelog describes the changes (although you only get the stuff up to and including p5) and if you enjoy ADOM there is still time to vote for it as Roguelike of the Year 2012 (right side) ;-)

Cheers, peace, love, health, happiness & Merry Christmas
"Team ADOM"
(Jochen, Krys, Lucas, Zeno & Thomas)

P.S.: We probably will be offering a prerelease access program in the New Year. It won't be for free (as that would be totally unfair to the other donors from the crowd funding campaign), it will probably around $40 (somewhat expensive, yeah, but we need to be higher than the $25 required in the crowd funding campaign lest we again might be unfair to the early donors) and it will require Paypal. In return you get access to all prereleases for the remainder of the implementation duration of all the crowd funded features (which will take major parts of next year, too). There will be a couple of public milestone releases but they will be a lot rarer than the somewhat continuous stream of prerelease updates.

ADOM II 0.3.0 released! (Merry Christmas!)

2012-12-24T01:49:00.002+01:00

I'm proud to announce the release of ADOM II 0.3.0. While this new version is not as complete as I wanted it to be (missing a general compiler, extensive testing and many details for new players) I didn't want to let it sit on my hard drive after neglecting it for almost three months (the ADOM crowd funding campaign cost more time than I expected ;-) ). So here we go with new stuff and changes...
There are three major new features in ADOM II 0.3.0:

Missile combat has been added. Finally.
The UI has been redesigned / improved. ADOM II from now on will try to be a lot more newbie friendly (see the screenshots below) and offer game variants that reduce complexity and difficulty. 0.3.0 is only the beginning in this respect - a lot more will be added during the next couple of releases in this regard. New commands (like the contextual command invoked by pressing SPACE) will help new players to find their way around the game a bit faster.
Music and graphics have been added to a certain extent. Again a lot more will happen in this respect in future versions.

Here are some screenshots to give you a general idea:

The new starter screen for beginning players:

The new starter screen for expert players:

The default game start in tutorial mode:

The following list summarizes all the changes in ADOM II 0.3.0:

Completely revised the startup sequence and the main screens to give ADOM II a beautiful modern look and feel, simplify the start of the game for beginners and provide a more graceful introduction to the game. The efforts started with 0.3.0 still need work during the 0.3.x line, though, as both the tutorial and the manual promised by the buttons still are missing.
Implemented missile combat (which include an item type hierarchy for missile weapons and missiles, a target selection mode, various item compatibility tests, item breakage, lots of modifiers for missile combat, etc.).
Added a lot of intelligence to monsters in the game: They now can pick up items, drink potions, read scrolls and optimize their equipment. Additionally the API for monster behavior now allows for trivial expansions - you just need to implement one class with a fixed package and it automatically will be included in game execution.
Added a command to display the missile weapon statistics ('M' in ADOM Classic / Custom / JADE key bindings, \At in ADOM II key bindings - had to map 'Show game time' to '\Ap' [p for passed time] for that to happen).
Changed SPACE to a contextual command, e.g. ADOM II tries to guess the best next course of action. This should allow you to press SPACE most of the time instead of having to learn other commands.
Added audio support to ADOM. This is far from finished but there now are means to play both audio tracks and sound effects and a few already have been integrated into the game. Additionally all audio effects can be adjusted in volume separately, also allowing to turn them off.
Added 3 new monsters. Equipped many old monsters with missile weapons.
Added 22 new items.
Added 4 new weapon skills for thrown weapons.
Added 6 new construction plans.
Added archers and assassins as a starting professions.
Added the masonry skill.
Added scent based tracking to improve efficiency the most common tracking case implementation.
Added a context menu to both the start screen and the game screen.
Added context menus to the main screens.
Added colors to the wilderness encounter messages.
Enhanced steel slightly over iron.
Enhanced Fnuk and Joan a little bit.
Finally implemented pocket picking in all its variants.
Mud blocks now can be collected.
Good and bad luck now have a much more noticeable influence on skill checks.
The melee attack bonus progression by profession now has been separated from the missile attack bonus progression so that professions can be even more varied.
Started improving color details for the ASCII representations of items. More work on that during the 0.3.x releases.
Look mode starts now with the nearest being or interesting position preselected.
Revised the way weapon experience is gained (issue 1129).
Enhanced the handling of the 'Detect item status' kill.
Added more color indicators to messages.
Added weaponry to black orc brutes.
The teleportation professional ability now is turn-based and no longer uses up power points.
Enhanced look mode slightly.
Enhanced the readability of messages asking the user to provide some input.
Fixed a problem with the singular form of dry meat.
Refactored the internal handlers for materials completely. Now it's actually easily possible to transform item materials (before it was a mess). Alchemy, we are coming!
Gnoll warbands now occur only at higher levels.
Increased the frequency of liquid summoning gems.
Sped up character creation by selecting default skills.
Skills now are much less readily available.
Healing now is much slower while moving. Power point regeneration also is reduced while moving.
Full screen mode now respects the variable locations for both the message display and the statistics display.
Fixed a problem with the message display height.
Fixed a problem with various maneuvers (they didn't modify any game rules).
Fixed some internal problems with critical hit probability modifiers.
Fixed a problem with (now two-handed) pick axes failing to be equippable in the tool slot.
Fixed a typo with touch attacks (issue 1087).
Fixed a problem with shield to-hot modifiers (issue 1127).
Fixed the problem of not suffering heat damage while resting in the desert (issue 1132).
Fixed a problem with thrown opponents not getting hostile (issue 1135).
Fixed a problem with various items granting bonusses although there weren't equipped in the right location (issue 1139).
Fixed various typos (issue 1140).
Fixed a problem with higher tile movement costs not being taken into account during path finding (issue 1145).
Fixed a problem with the look mode which allowed you to spot invisible monsters (issue 1157).
Fixed a problem with the path finding algorithm which managed to cause traffic jams (issue 1162).
Fixed a problem with the lack of weight adjustments for higher level materials (issue 1163).
Fixed a problem with improper endings after winning the end game (issue 1166).
Fixed the missing symbol for writhing masses of primal chaos (issue 1169).
Fixed a problem with army encounters on dungeons (issue 1173).
Fixed a step numbering problem during character generation (issue 1181).

You can download the latest release at the usual location.

I'm curious for feedback and will try to continue ADOM II development alongside ADOM development. ADOM has priority though as long as the promises from the crowd funding campaign have not been fulfilled.

Enjoy the game and if you like what you see there is still time to vote ADOM to be the Roguelike of the Year 2012 ;-)

Merry Christmas
Thomas Biskup
(and if you do not celebrate Christmas: Freedom, Peace, Love and Health to everyone out there!)

ADOM: The Resurrection among top 12 Indiegogo gaming campaigns of 2012

2012-12-21T23:53:00.004+01:00

Hi everyone!

I just got notified that ADOM (not surprisingly - given the blazing success you made possible) is ranked among the top 12 Indiegogo gaming campaigns of 2012! Place #2 as far as I can see as Starforge managed to surpass the success of ADOM: The Resurrection by about 50% - phantastic, it has been an amazing year so far and I expect 2013 to become a truly awesome year for ADOM with at least two major public releases (1.2.0 and 2.0.0) as well as ADOM Deluxe with Steam integration and more.

IMPORTANT: For now you still can vote for ADOM to become #1 as Roguelike Game of the Year 2012 - please do so if you haven't voted yet ;-)

Ok, I'm now back to work...

Cheers
Thomas