Wednesday, February 1, 2012

ADOM News

Yeah, ADOM... not ADOM II :-)

I just wanted to let you know that Jochen is responsible for some tremendous progress on ADOM. He's done fantastic work on the iPad port and today he urged me to start bug fixing on ADOM. Actually Jochen probably will have to be honored for fixing the majority of known bugs in ADOM (thanks to all you out there for providing such detailed and great bug reports).

In any way in the near future we will start a closed beta test of ADOM for the iPad and once we are happy with that version we will release ADOM in a new version for iPad, Windows, Linux and Mac.

Yes, ADOM actually will gets  new release. We are not planning to add new content but the known problems hopefully all (or most) will be fixed.

One important question remains: Which version number will be next :-)

I tend towards 2.0.0 (despite the low number of changes - but it's a major and for me unexpected milestone), 1.2.0 also might be an option, 1.1.2 seems to little.

Stay tuned - and if you want to participate in the limited beta test for iPad let me know at creator(at)ancientdomainsofmystery.com!

21 comments:

  1. Will the app work on iPods? I just sold my iPad...

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  2. I'd call it 1.1.2 - it's a bugfix release after all. But after all these years, I think it's reasonable to honour its significance by calling it 1.2.0. ;-) Though 2.0.0 is definitely too much and implies a total overhaul (and might confuse people for ADOM II).

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  3. I wholeheartedly agree with Laukku and vote for calling it 1.2.0.

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  4. My vote for 1.2.0

    And damn, this news worth buying iPad )

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  5. Jochen: "Hey Thomas, we should fix some ADOM bugs, do you know of any?"

    Thomas: "Yeah, jackals are way too weak, so are spiders. They must both be significantly buffed up!"

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  6. Concerning Android... you need to ask Jochen ;-) It's a lot of work to get ADOM ported to a new system and I totally lack the time. If Kickstarter would accept Germany-based projects we probably would do a Kickstarter call for an Android port.

    Concerning the iPhone... we have discussed that a lot... but our efforts seem to indicate that a roguelike with complexity of ADOM just can't work on a tiny iPhone screen (or on any other smartphone out there).

    How about the other rogue like ports... is anybody really playing them on a smartphone? I ran in horror after a couple of minutes as the interface always seems to be too clunky...

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    1. There are platforms that target both iOS and Android. Specifically, you may want to consider Marmalade SDK. I have not tried it, but it appears to allow the developer to retarget C++ to Android and maybe other platforms. My guess is that it will also handle C.

      FYI, IndieGoGo is an international crowd funding site.

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    2. I know I'm a little late to the party, but I felt I had to chime in here...
      I play a LOT of roguelikes on my smartphone. Including ADOM, but to play ADOM I use remote desktop on to my home pc, because I could never get it working in DOSBOX for windows mobile.

      I feel I should mention that a lot of smartphones have slide-out real querty keyboards, making them perfect for roguelies, and more significantly making roguelikes pretty much the perfect games for a handheld device... Non-processor intensive, you can go do whatever you're doing like get on the bus or go into your meeting, with the game waiting for you and not needing to 'save' or 'pause' etc etc...

      Adom for windows mobile surely wouldn't be as difficult a port as the iphone OS, but I can see it working so much better, given the abundance of real-keyboard windwos mobile devices.

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  7. The Slash'EM droid port is playable enough on my Galaxy S2: Portrait mode with touchscreen keyboard occupying the lower third of the screen. Yes, it's not ideal, but it's a small price to pay for a proper mobile roguelike. I think you underestimate what people would be willing to deal with just to have portable ADOM. I'd pay good money if it was functional :D

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  8. I have tried several ports of PC roguelikes on my smartphone (Android) and yes, the interface is so bad I always close them before even getting out of the first room.

    With roguelikes designed specifically for phones (such as Legends of Yore) it's different, those are fun to play but it's because the whole game design (dungeon size, item complexity, etc.) is scaled down to fit a smartphone.

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  9. If it offers zero new content and just fixes bugs, it should be 1.1.2. 1.0 to 1.1 came with the bug temple I think, going from 1.1 to 1.2 would promise a similar development. Also, ending on a zero implies a version with new features that hasn't been bug tested, and it might seem strange that this particular x.x.0 version is actually the last bugtested one. I simply do not see a reason to break the conventions either. Even if took ten years to get to it, a bugfix release is a bugfix release.

    (2.0.0 is nonsense, you're just going to breed confusion with ADOM II.)

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  10. Well, fixing the "half of the artifacts are missing" bug can count as content IMHO. I think 1.2.0 makes sense.

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  11. I would prefer ADOM version 1.2, since ADOM 2.0 v.s ADOM II is makes recognition impossible.

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  12. Great news to hear! A big thank you to Jochen for his hard work on the old girl. And I gotta agree with Silfir - if it's just bugfixes then you can't really justify anything other than 1.1.2. Calling it ADOM 2 would just be madness.

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  13. Agreed with Silfir and Darren Grey---last thing needed is confusion with ADOM 2.

    Besides, hey, optimism here---who is to say that this is the end for the original after said fixes are in presuming it manages to knock out all major-moderate bugs?

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  14. I would love to also see a Debian or an Armel build. <3

    I spend quite some time in being able to play this on an SSH server but that site has been down since last month.

    Anyway, I figure the worst that can happen by asking is to consider myself yelled at for this request. :o)

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  15. I'd also like to see an Android port. I think ADOM would even be playable on some Android phones, particularly those with an actual keyboard, since you wouldn't have to waste screen space on the control interface. Phone keyboards have enough variation that you'd need an easy way to map keyboard commands, though.

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  16. Here are some pictures I once had of it on my N800 tablet. :o)

    http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=70484

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  17. Where will you put the download link once ADOM 1.2.0 is done?

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