ADOM II

Every adventurer needs a mission and as ADOM II (powered by JADE) is my personal adventure here is my mission with ADOM II:

To build the most flexible and most interesting single-player computer fantasy roleplaying game ever.

What does this mean?

ADOM II is all about flexibility. I strongly believe that the replayability of a game is highly determined by the flexibility it allows in the ways a player can approach the game. Specifically for ADOM II this means that
  • large parts of the game are randomly created anew each time you start to play. This minimzes repetitiveness and maximizes replay value as each game will be different from the last.
  • random parts and predetermined events are used in a healthy mixture. This provides for a familiar game background that people can share, defines fix points that can be used as goals for the individual player and permits players to evolve different strategies.
  • highly different approaches to tackling the game exist. In the end you will be able to use a combat-heavy approach, try your luck with skillful approaches, engage in intense magical studies or try all at once. Additionally you can try to make heavy use of resources for building stuff or simply try to move ahead as fast as possible Whatever your personal preference... ADOM II should offer a venue to experience it to the fullest.
ADOM II should be interesting. This means that there should be surprises lurking around every corner and I want to have enough content that people after years of playing still will be able to discover new stuff and be amazed by the depth of the game. The venerable game Wasteland here is my deepest source of inspiration - never have I seen a game that was as detailed and as imaginative, especially for its tiny size compared to todays games.
At the same time ADOM II should not fall into the trap of other overly complex games that require weeks of hard learning before you can get anywhere. While in my humble opinion it's perfectly ok to require years to master and win a game, you effortlessly should be able to enjoy the early game and have more than enough alternatives ahead of you to avoid any kind of frustration.

One side aspect of "interest" to me is that ADOM II must be a roguelike game. The most compelling feature (besides randomness) of roguelike games for me is permadeath - when your character dies, he's dead and (usually) won't come back. Especially not just because you might be able to restore an older save point in the game. Permadeath adds a peculiar edge to a game where the player has reason to fear for his character with each new challenge... this is vastly different from the endless repetitiveness so prevalent in many modern game "designs" (IMHO repetitiveness not design but rather anti-design - if you force your players to repeat certain parts of a game again and again without any real new challenge this is boredom and not good design... try harder!).

ADOM II is single player. I yet have to see a decent multi-player design for roguelike games and also am not much of a fan of MMORPGs so ADOM II is for all you out there who feel like me. You should be able to play ADOM II all on your own and get endless hours of entertainment out of it.

ADOM II is a fantasy game. I love fantasy, I breathe fantasy and I very strongly believe in a coherent, strong and unified background story that helps to ground the player in the game. No chainsaws here (except maybe if at some point a time trip gets implemented ;-) ).

ADOM II is a roleplaying game and as such it is all about the main character which means that you should be able to build a highly detailed character if you so are inclined. On the other hand the design challenge here is to find a way that allows casual players to quickly get into the game without being overwhelmed by miniscule details.

So here we go... this is what drives me in my quest with ADOM II. If you share these ideals and like these goals maybe we'll together manage to make ADOM II the most successful computer RPG ever... but that would be the sugar coating on the cake and not a goal in itself ;-)

See ya in Ancardia - Axes high!

13 comments:

  1. I like the way you see Jade. All the points you write are important features, and it's also my vision of the 'perfect' roguelike. I like the single player aspect. Each company today (except Bethesda) adds a multiplayer aspect even on strongly solo oriented games (think of Mass Effect 3) and it's sometime a great mistake.

    Good job again. Thanks for bringing to the community ADOM and now JADE

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  2. -"JADE is single player."
    Thank you! I am so tired of WoW and similar approaches to gaming where one must "grind". Why play these games when I could "grind gold" at my local Starbucks in real life?

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  3. "I like the single player aspect. Each company today (except Bethesda) adds a multiplayer aspect..."

    "I am so tired of WoW and similar approaches to gaming where one must 'grind'..."

    I second this completely. ADOM is in my top 5 games of all time, and holds a special place in my gamer heart. :) Bethesda has come out with some decent games, to be sure - and I play them often - but there's something to be said for the timeless roguelikes. The rogue like community lives on.

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  4. Jade dont work on mac os 1.6.3
    may be becasue it is not content fresh java, but there is no way to update java on macos without updateing OS.


    when i press Launch it redirects me on
    http://java.com/en/download/apple_manual.jsp

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  5. I've been playing Adom for a long time, and i can't stop finding new things, and get tired of the game. I think that's the best thing in Adom. The possibilities. The replay value.
    It's interesting how old style games are so much awesome. They are not so comertial. I have to thank you for the game, and my dad, for showing it to me. :D

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  6. "At the same time ADOM II should not fall into the trap of other overly complex games that require weeks of hard learning before you can get anywhere."

    IT SHOULD! DON'T MAKE IT TOO SIMPLE! I like to choose from 20 different classes =/

    One of the best thing about ADOM was the complexity. Kept me restarting with a different type of character after hundreds of deaths..

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  7. "Permadeath adds a peculiar edge to a game where the player has reason to fear for his character with each new challenge... this is vastly different from the endless repetitiveness so prevalent in many modern game "designs""

    "(IMHO repetitiveness not design but rather anti-design - if you force your players to repeat certain parts of a game again and again without any real new challenge this is boredom and not good design... try harder!)"

    I have couple of complaints against this.
    From the first quote, I would like to say that Diablo 2 had a hardcore mode when it came out in 2000 and pulled it off. This is the closest to a ascii dungeon crawler i've come in a hack-slash game.

    From the second quote, i have to repeat a part...
    "if you force your players to repeat certain parts of a game again and again without any real new challenge"
    I have played the beginning of ADOM probably around a thousand times, without exaggerating and it has become really boring. I have had to have loooong pauses between sessions to keep it fresh.

    I have yet to try ADOM II but i tried JADE and was not impressed. I am downloading ADOM II after this post, and I'm expecting the best that i can :)

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  8. As I have now played ADOM II for a bit, I would like to continue my previous post.

    You sir, have renewed my faith in the continuation of ADOM. More than JADE ever did, ADOM II really feels like a successor to ADOM. The interface is clear and easy to read. The ascii graphics are just like ADOM. The world is much bigger.

    I was very happy when I noticed that you had continued the development of JADE and changed the name to ADOM II. Thumbs up to you.

    I realised that my previous comment about ADOM might have sounded harsh but I love it and it is, after 11 years, still the only roguelike I return to when I get the itch. Thank you for all these years :)

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  9. As duckman pointed out, permadeath brings its own kind of repetitiveness: starting from scratch. The earlier parts of the game are experienced again and again, while many cool crannies of the game are available only to the extremely dedicated.

    RPGs are a strange blend of combat simulation and storytelling. Permadeath swings a game heavily toward the former. "Oh, there goes Sorcerer #35. Time to re-roll." Why not let players choose? Optional permadeath would create a broader spectrum of player experiences, giving the game more "flexibility".

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    1. I didn't follow the blog up until a few days ago, I sincerely thought JADE was mothballed and ADOM too. So, I don't know how often the author interacts with people on this blog, but it feels like this two objections are very solid, while the argument in favor of perma-death is not.
      I lost a character once while moving in the wilderness. I was just hitting the keypad to get where I needed to go. In 5 keystrokes, my character went from Hungry to Starving, and apparently each keystroke still counts as an action, because in the time of 5 keystrokes I starved, with a backpack full of food. I'm sorry, but I don't feel that character's death was my fault for not hitting the key very slowly and carefully. All I did was hit the movement key repeatedly to my destination. When something like this happens you should be prompted like when you encounter someone. Instead, permadeath: off to reroll, off to the small cave again, hoping no encounters occur while you travel there as a lvl 1 char, then off to Terynio, then... how's this not repetition?

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    2. 1) Starving when pounding movement in the wilderness is an interface design issue and you're right it's not your fault. Ideally I'm sure it would have a warning requiring a response before letting you die, and/or and auto-eat function for the food in your pack. However, I never died this way and once people get how this works, they probably won't either. The player does get a warning in the more common cases in a smaller-scale location. It isn't so much a permadeath issue as something that should have a preventative warning.

      2) Starting new characters can be repetitive, and ADOM 1 doesn't have massive variety but it does have a decent amount if you notice, and far more than most games, especially more than typical games without permadeath since those tend to be designed with the idea the player will savescum and will probably mainly only use the first stage of a game to learn how to play. In ADOM though you can skip Terniyo, and/or choose from a variety of starting quests, and the encounters, equipment, and character (including random skills and equipment) you end up with will give you a different starting game, unless you aren't noticing and are just trying the same thing each time. I actually find the first part of ADOM more engaging than the mid-game, because it tends to be more dangerous and unpredictable, especially if you take chances, e.g. the permanently invisible wizard I ended up with.

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  10. I'm really glad ADOM is not dead. I kinda gave up after there was no 1.1.2 version.

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  11. Sorry to say this, but I think Dwarf Fortress stole your thunder on this goal of: "To build the most flexible and most interesting single-player computer fantasy roleplaying game ever."
    You and Tarn Adams are still both my heroes! Happy birthday!

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