Happy Second Resurrection Day!

To me it's unbelievable but we already have the second anniversary of the ADOM Resurrection day. Today two years ago the unbelievable, incredible, breath-taking determination of the ADOM community allowed us to start an exciting journey that yet has to come to a conclusion: The complete resurrection of ADOM.

About the current ADOM development progress...

As many people have asked over the previous weeks I'd like to give a short summary regarding the progress of the promises given in the crowd funding campaign and what we actually are working on right now:

Currently we exclusively focus on getting ADOM to Steam. This task for us has highest priority for several reasons:

1. We have been greenlit and as long as the green lighting process still exists it is a very useful barrier against a threatening myriad of mediocre games. Or in other words: If we get ADOM to Steam before this barrier falls exposure will be much more effective and we have a much better chance to be noticed by tons of potential new players. 
2. Being very successful on Steam might mean immortality for ADOM as the possible funding gained might help us to continue developing ADOM for a very long time (far beyond what was achieved in the crowd funding campaign).
3. Tuning ADOM for Steam makes it a much more modern and accessible game and this is good to entice a much larger community. Which in turn is good for ADOM.

Thus all our current work focusses on the milestones laid out for the Steam release.

Specifically

• I am currently working on the new game options settings and next will be tacking lots of internal additions in order to allow for a graphical inventory (and much more - what we call 'the tome of knowledge').
• Jochen is transforming our save file structures. In the future we will be able to have compatible save files, even if this will slow development somewhat. But very important for Steam.
• Zeno and Krys are refining the interface and adding tons of graphical bells and whistles.
• Lucas is churning out scores of sound effects to enriched the game experience tremendously.

Many of the things we right now are doing are far beyond the scope of what was promised in the crowd funding campaign. And this comes at a temporary price: The other important activities (like finally finishing the RPG) currently rest. Not indefinitely but they rest. I have to ask and hope for your continuing patience. You all will receive the physical rewards and I want to have them out before Christmas but as long as we are not yet on Steam we'll focus all energy on that endeavor. Even at the price of delaying other promises more.

As explained above we do this in the hope of being able to work on ADOM far beyond the budget of the crowd funding campaign which should be beneficial and fun for all of us.

Comments welcome, but that's how it is right now.

(BTW, if you are one of the donors receiving physical goods - fear not. I will ask for a confirmation of your current shipping address well in advance of beginning the shipping process, so you are safe, even if you have moved in the meantime).

Below you find a quick teaser to the new ASCII game options menu for ADOM Deluxe to your enjoyment (hopefully ;-) ):

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

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

The ADOM crowd funding campaign is over!

And it was a totally amazing, absolutely awesome resounding success. Much more than I ever dared to expect, much more than any troll ever believed possible and much more than one game designer can hope for. But we did it... and broke record after record.

(click here for the March of Triumph by Lucas Dieguez)

ADOM crowd funding: The finest hour has dawned...

Greetings everyone!

The last 24 hours of the ADOM crowd funding campaign have been nothing but a totally dreamy awesome superduper amazing campaignfest... we stormed five (!!!) stretch goals in a row unlocking everything from #4 to #8, made ADOM the most successful computer gaming project on Indiegogo ever (by a far margin) and now have something like 35 minutes to even make it the most successful gaming project ever and unlock stretch goal #9: three more epic community quests!!! If we make that, too I'll add in another free one map mini quest as the topping!

So in short summary (more later on when I manage to catch breath): Stretch goal #8 (two more epic community quests) has been unlocked during the night and we are in to the final race about stretch goal #9 and becoming the most successful gaming project ever on Indiegogo!

Is there enough air for yet another surprise?

(yes, we know that the +4 in the image is wrong - we right now only are at the +2 pledge level but as we never thought we'd get that far we didn't prepare an appropriate image ;-) )

ADOM crow funding: stretch goal #7 (Rolf) unlocked!

What can I say? Yes, the ADOM crowd funding campaign passed the $80,000 mark for stretch goal #7: Rolf Quest. Yes, this is surpassing all expectations and there are ten more hours left for more wonders. And yes, soon I'll be running out of stretch goal images ;-)

Ok, so here we are: A new extensive quest concerning the secrets of Rolf (and Rolf?) will be added to the game. Probably with some new artifacts and stuff thrown in... we'll see about that, too :-)

The next stretch goal #8 at $85,000 will add two more complex quests to the game. Theming and general direction will be decided with lots of community input in order to add content to missing dark spots in the game.

10 hours left... everything right now seems possible :-)

ADOM crowd funding: Twin mega legends grace the Ancardian sky!

You did it yet again! You are truly the best community ever! So we made the $72,500 in the ADOM crowd funding campaign, Jeff Royle cashed in his promise and *KABBOOOOOM* - $75,000 and stretch goal #6 has fallen: ADOM will get the volcano quest - a truly extensive and world shaking thing that will get all my love, creativity and  energy. I really hope that you will love it :-) Jeff is the second mortal to rise to the status of mega legend and he'll also receive some very special treat to immortalize him in the game. Things to be discussed later on ;-)

And that's not enough: We are still moving forward at tremendous speed: Although we still have $3,685 to go to unlock stretch goal #7 - the quest for Rolf, yet another extensive mega quest that will allow me to return to one of my oldest RPG characters (yeah, that's where Rolf comes from) - I'm pretty sure that we have a very good chance of making that goal, too. It's $284 per remaining hour but right now we are doing this easily... so let's see if yet another legendary story can be brought to a closure.

Awesome, awesome, awesome... beyond belief.

Just in case... yet another wonder happens and someone picks up the Demigod pledge level, here's the next stretch goal list (we have no graphics for that and I don't think it's realistic - but I wanted to mention them just in case):

• $110,000 will be the iPad version and five new mini quests,
• $120,000 will be the Android version and three more mega quests,
• $130,000 will see the ADOM Lite RPG converted into the true ADOM RPG and expanded to 128 pages full-color hardcover splendor - at no additional cost for all the folks who decided to pledge for the RPG! (at this level I probably would consider selling it later - but I'd add some special limited thing for all donors to make your version different from the one available later... something like 16 pages of unique art).

Ok, just to have it mentioned in case you manage to surprise me beyond my wildest dreams ;-)

Cheers
Thomas

ADOM crowd funding: A new mega legend has been born!!!

We just made $70,000 in the ADOM crowd funding campaign which means that ADOM will be getting an achievement system and highscore servers and stuff (strech goal #5). Andriy made true on his promise and I'm once more awed beyond any recognizable limit. This is mind-blowing. And the madness doesn't necessarily end... now we are in touching distance to the $75,000 if Jeff makes true on his equivalent promise and we reach $72,500.

Andriy thus will enter the newly available rank of mega legend and we'll work out some nice thing to immortalize him in the game (and beyond).

And we right now are but $1,513 away from $72,500 - about $85 per hour for the remaining 18 hours. Maybe James (Facebookers know) even might get his Rolf answers if yet another wonder happens. You never end being surprised :-)

Thanks for making this the most exciting 60 days of ADOM!

Oh, and one more thing: Three new micro quests now also will be added for free - cashing in on the promise I made!

ADOM crowd funding: The final race towards... stretch goals #5, #6 and #7?

Wow, wow, wow. I'll need to recover for days from the excitement. The ADOM crowd funding campaign is entering the very final hours - 27 to go at the time of this writing.

We made it yet again.

Stretch goal #4: Steam (& co.) support has been unlocked!

And now more exciting things are happening... that might allow us to get to the next stretch goal #5 (achievements & highscore server at $70,000) and even towards the $75,000 (stretch goal #6: the highly elaborate and detailed volcano quest). The following facts will make the remaining 27 hours a hell of an exciting race towards the end of the campaign:

1. Currently we are at $65,907, a mere $1,593 away from the magical $67,500. Andriy has put up a promise to donate another $2,500 if we make that margin so that he pushes us to the $70,000 stretch goal mark and will unlock stretch goal #5: achievements and the high score server. @Andriy: You'll get a very special extra in the game if we really manage that - promised! If we manage to pul this off I have promised to add an extra three mini quests to the game (one level maps with special challenges). So there's the possibility of getting a load of extras with $1,593 in pledges!
2. Jeff Royle just took up Andriy's generous offer and (read comment #8 here) offered to chime in an additional $2,500 if we manage to get to $70,000 in this way and then up to $72,500 by community pledges (my interpretation - Jeff, please correct me if I'm wrong - again, you won't be held responsible for that ;-) ). He'll in that case put us at the $75,000 mark. @Jeff: As for Andriy - if that is to happen something truly special will be added in-game for you, too.
3. Now that we have gotten to the $65,000 everyone who pledged at least $40 (no matter in what combination) will receive a free license for ADOM Deluxe!!! So far this leaves about 259 folks at the $10 and 426 people at the $25 level without a free license for ADOM Deluxe (the numbers are not exact as a number of them pledged more than once or upgraded behind the scenes but they are a good estimation). Now imagine this: If 259 people were to pledge an extra $30 (and you are not forced to upgrade to the RPG level if you don't want that) they'll get a free license and the roughly estimated $7,500 extra would put us even beyond stretch goal #6: The Rolf Quest (with the special pledges above added it)!!! And if the 426 people at the $25 level were to add another $15 (again without being required to buy the RPG) we'd have another $6,000 that might even unlock yet another two mega quests beyond the Rolf quest!!! How awesome is that? While I don't believe that this is very likely to happen it's totally amazing to see that there is a slim fighting chance to unlock stretch goals #6 and #7. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

I've already vowed to make the volcano quest very special - I'll now add that I'll make it a world shaking event if we get that far.

I'm not sure how I'm going to concentrate on real life today. All this is just remarkable beyond any means. Keep it up folks, you are truly

ADOM crowd funding: 37 hours and $1,078 to get some steam! (stretch goal #4)

Hi everyone!

So the final hours finally have begun and its less than 37 hours till the end of the ADOM crowd funding campaign (37 - my magic number :-) ). Currently $1,078 are missing to get us trying to have ADOM Deluxe on Steam, Gamersgate and Desura (and maybe others), the pace again has trickled down quite a bit but I'm more than happy as we achieved so much more than I ever expected - so this will be a glorious end in any case.

Two exciting things have happened:

One of the legend level donors - Andriy - just promised that he will donate $2,500 if the pledge level reaches $67,500 (see the image below with my marker). Now I wouldn't ever hold Andriy responsible for that promise but seeing that he is a legend level donor he surely is someone to be taken very seriously. Which raises the interesting question: Do we manage the $67,500? Because then we might have a pretty serious chance of getting to $70,000 - stretch goal #5 - which means an achievement system and global highscores :-) Exciting times. And try to see it like this: We'd need less than $97 per remaining hour to get there. Truly exciting times :-)

I'm still betting on making stretch goal #4 and then the work will start... this probably is one of my last posts here before the end of the campaign... as I'm watching exhausted and elated.

BTW, as the mini quest quest is running I'm happy to state that we actually scored one new mini quest. I'm not sure why I reported something different earlier but the latest fund balance from Indiegogo indicates that we scored $1,455 (easily surpassing the required $1,000 on August, 26th), $1,890 (sadly failing the required $2,000 on August 27th by a slight margin) and $3,269 (again failing the required $4,000 on August, 28th by a little more).

So here's the deal I offer as the hopefully second exciting thing to happen:

If we make the $67,500 and if Andriy really meant his promise seriously I'll add the two missed mini quests for free as we both times had amazing pledge levels and missed by only a little bit - and I will add a third one just for the sake of it! So that's the final and ultimate chance to procure more free content from the campaign. Wanna try your luck or get others to pledge? And you probably need to act fast as Andriy might need time to act, too :-)

Cheers
Thomas

P.S.: Sorry, Andriy, but that was just to tempting not to mention ;-) And if you don't do it I won't hold it against you - you already have pledged so much as a legend (and beyond) that I'm close to being totally ashamed :-)

The ADOM: The Resurrection virtual party

Hi everyone!

On Facebook I already weeks ago announced the idea of having a virtual party if the ADOM crowd funding campaign is successful... now that we have succeeded the party will take place. Originally I had planned to start the party on August, 31st, 20pm, GMT+1 but many ADOM fans from the US brought to my attention that they would have to pass as that would put them off work due to timezone difference.

I feel sheepish for not having considered that, so I have decided to add a poll to the right. Please decide if the ADOM: The Resurrection virtual party should take place on either the 31st of August or the 1st of September (in any case it's at 20pm, GMT+1) and

Please also post suggestions about where to host the party in the comments (Reddit AMA, Google Hangout+, IRC, some forum, something else). I'll add another poll tomorrow for a quick decision :-)

Thanks!

Thomas

ADOM crowd funding: 3 days and $649 to go for new races and classes

Just a short update as I'm in a hurry this morning: The final three days are on and we have just $649 to go to get mist elves, ratlings, chaos knights and duelists. My guess would be that we'll manage this today :-)!

The exciting question will be if there is still enough steam left for a final rush to drive the pledge level to $65,000 for the Steam, Desura & Gamersgate integration :-) ? It will be a close one at best but let's see if yet another wonder is going to happen :-)

ADOM crowd funding: 4 days and $2,959 to go for new races and classes!

The very last days of the ADOM crowd funding campaign are upon us. We are getting closer to the $60,000 donation mark which will add mist elves, ratlings, chaos knights and duelists to the game. My current guess is that we are pretty likely to hit the mark but we won't get much farther without a new push in donations from "somewhere". Which is more than ok as the campaign surpassed my expectations and we are happy that new versions of ADOM are going to happen. And that ADOM II will benefit from it, too.

The mini quest quest yesterday resulted in but donations of $905 and thus failed to reach the $1,000 limit. So no new mini quest. Additionally the limit today rises to $2,000 so my personal guess is that it will be very hard to unlock mini quests - maybe also as a consequence of being very successful at reaching all possible donors in earlier fundraising phases.

Nonetheless all this is totally amazing - so thank you very much so far and let's have exciting final four days... maybe we'll get to the new races and classes ;-) And maybe even to the Steam level due to some last minute rush :-) ?

Cheers
Thomas

A glimpse at a past version of the ADOM RPG

The remaining (less than) five days of the ADOM crowd funding campaign offer the one and only chance to come into possession of the yet to be written ADOM Lite RPG - for a pledge of $40 (shipping included) you can get hold of a single copy, additional copies are available for $25. For $400 you can become the owner of a highly limited boxed set for ADOM, including the RPG, a hand-tuned d20, an extra manual for master classes and other stuff. See the campaign page for details.

The ADOM Lite RPG will never again be available once the campaign ends - neither as PDF nor as print. So the remaining five days are the one and only chance to become the owner of this highly limited collectors item for the ADOM afficionado.

ADOM crowd funding: 5 days and $3,394 left for new races and classes!

Hi everyone! Latest update while I finally find some more time to finish ADOM II 0.3.0: There are still almost five days left in the ADOM crowd funding campaign and we are moving closer to stretch goal #3: new races and classes.

If $3,394 in pledges are collected before the end of the campaign the following new races and classes will be added to ADOM (and as a consequence eventually also will find their way into ADOM II):

• Ratlings, beloved by many, finally will become a PC race, in all their glory.
• Mist elves, a new ephemeral elven race associated with white necromancy, will show up.
• Duelists, true master of fighting one on one, will introduce a new fighter variant.
• Chaos knights for the first time will introduce an option to side with corruption and spread ChAoS in the game.

Additionally the mini quest quest is running and for every $1,000 collected today a new mini quest will be added to ADOM. Already tomorrow unlocking new mini quests will become twice as difficult as by then $2,000 will be required to unlock a new mini quest.

I'll be back to working on ADOM II now hoping to be able to finish 0.3.0 before the end of the crowd funding campaign.

ADOM crowd funding: The mini quest quest

Hi everyone!

For the final five days of the ADOM crowd funding campaign I'm hereby announcing the

mini quest quest

Yes, the name is correct. The quest for mini quests. The quests already defined as stretch goals are complex quests (e.g. multi-level quests with interesting dependencies and secrets). To keep the momentum of the crowd funding campaign the mini quest quest is designed to allow for the addition of so-called (surprise!) mini quest.

A mini quest is defined as a quest that will add one new special map to the game, probably with new monsters, items or other special features to make for an interesting experience. Many of those will be added as side levels to existing dungeons, to further the chance of more variations in play. None of those mini quests will have non-local effects, e.g. they are just interesting and challenging extra locations to spice up the overall game.

How can mini quests be added to the free content of the game?

These are the rules:

• There are daily pledge level brackets defined which are used to count the number of mini quests gained.
• Pledge level brackets are $1,000 (for August, 26th), $2,000 (for August, 27th), $4,000 (for August, 28th), $8,000 (for August 29th) and $16,000 (for August, 30th - the final day of the campaign).
• For every full multiple of pledges of a specific bracket, one mini quest will be added to the game (in addition to whatever stretch goals might be unlocked).
• No more than 10 mini quests can be added for one single pledge level bracket. If enough donations are accumulated for a single bracket on a single day (example below), the next mini quests are figured out according to the next higher pledge level bracket (and so on).

Example: On August, 26th, a total of $3,248 are pledged. This would make for three free mini quests to be added (three multiples of the pledge level bracket defined for August, 26th, were donated). On August, 27th, someone pledges for the $50,000 demigod level. Additionally another $3,450 are pledged by other people for a total of $53,450 (yeah, dreaming here - that really would alter the future of ADOM ;-) ). First of all ten mini quests would be added as there is a maximum of ten multiples of $2,000 (the pledge level bracket for August, 27th). This leaves $33,450 in donations unaccounted for. They are handled according to the next higher pledge level bracket ($4,000 for August 28th) adding yet another eight new mini quests (eight additional multiples of the pledge level bracket of $4,000). A total of 18 (!) mini quests thus would be added to the game.

Yes, it's quite costly to get one free mini quest (but I guess, we'll see a couple nonetheless). That's because it's also quite a bit of dangerous work to add them to ADOM (it's complex and the code for that is pretty fiddly and ancient). And yes, it's worthwhile to pledge as much as possible early on :-) Later on less mini quests will be added.

Now go and get them!

Actually the power pledge drive #5: artifacts now is over!

Nobody noticed. Even I forgot to mention it. The final power pledge drive: artifacts is over.

Nonetheless it helped you to garner a lot of additional free content for the ADOM crowd funding campaign.

It started on August, 10th, at a donation level of $31,468 and accompanied us - unnoticed by many - until August, 24th. During that time a total of $23,270 were donated!!!

This brought us up to a donation level of $54,738 and now will bring a flood of artifacts (and also lots of new items) to ADOM: 46 new artifacts (!!!) as a direct result of the "one artifact per $500 pledges" rule, and an additional 32 for 16 multiples of $1,000 on one single day we managed to pass!!! The best day having been the 21st of August with more than $6,500 in donations on a single day! Absolutely awesome.

So there's 46 new artifacts and 32 new items coming your way for free!

As for the artifacts: ADOM in the future only will provide subsets of the total list of artifacts per game to make the game a bit more random and increase the difficulty of creating the perfect build for a winning character. Nobody said that ChAoS sleeps ;-)

Cheers
Thomas

ADOM crowd funding: 6 days and $592 for the next stretch goal!

The awesomeness continues... we still have 6 days left until the ADOM crowd funding campaign ends and now only $592 separate us from allowing me to hire Krys for a prolonged amount of time to paint an awesome tile set, get even better music and also work on the tile set engine for ADOM II - yes, that's all included in the $592 we still need to puck up for stretch goal #2!

Afterwards we can start to wonder and hope for stretch goal #3 (mist elves, ratlings as new races; duelists and chaos knights as new classes) and stretch goal #4 (ADOM Deluxe on gaming sites like Steam, Desura and Gamersgate).

Six more days... almost enough to create a world ;-) More than enough to build the foundation for a new generation of awesome games!

Thomas Biskup
ADOM & ADOM II Maintainer
"The Creator" ;-)

ADOM crowd funding: 7 days and $2,467 to go...

...until we reach stretch goal #2: A hand-crafted tile set of amazing awesomeness for ADOM and ADOM II. Besides that we now have more than 1,000 funders (according to Indiegogo - I honestly have to admit that I didn't check the facts so far, so it also might be "1,000 fundings" depending on how they count).

EDIT: Wow, this is the first time this week that I'm up so early that it actually still shows the same number of days on the Indiegogo main page. Actually it's more like seven days...

I'm right now tired beyond belief. My time tracking sheet tells me that so far I have spent more than 140 hours on the crowd funding campaign alone (almost 18 full work days - try that with a more than full time job and some resemblance of private life during a period of 52 days) so the first thing I'll be doing at the weekend is "catching a lot of sleep".

Besides that I hope to get up a new video tonight... it's overdue. Keep your thumbs pressed and - please - continue spreading the word about the game. I continue to be amazed how many actual hard core fans haven't even heard about the campaign. Something that completely puzzles me in this digital information age but it's a mystery I probably won't manage to solve... so next to fall is the

ADOM crowd funding: 8 days and $3,902 left for awesome tiles

Hi everyone! Here's the next quick update regarding the ADOM crowd funding campaign:

1. The awesomeness continues. We have reached $51,098 in donations as the time of this writing. So the campaign is easily funded and all pledge rewards are guaranteed!
2. We are a mere $3,902 away from being able to hire Krys for a prolonged amount of time in order to create a truly beautiful tile set (stretch goal #2, see the picture of a demo tile set below that I keep reposting to make sure that everyone really has seen it ;-) ). Keep it going - this is my personal pet stretch goal as I am - as mentioned quite a number of time - totally in love with the stuff Krys is doing. And keep in mind: ADOM II also will benefit from it as I would be able to reuse the tile set - so you basically are funding two games at once (I promised to add tile support to ADOM II, too, if we reach the $55,000 stretch goal).
3. The final power pledge drive for this campaign (#5, artifacts) is running out tomorrow, midnight. The deal still is that one new artifact will be included for every $500 pledged over $31,468 (the donation sum when the power pledge drive started - see how far we have come). Already now 39 (!!!) new artifacts will be added to ADOM. Additionally - as two new standard items will get added for every day on which we surpass $1,000 in donations (multiples count) - another whopping load of standard items has come together - sadly I right now can't give you the exact number as Indiegogo once again updated the platform introducing new bugs... this time the funding overview page is broken (paging no longer works) and I can't check all the details. Customer support has been notified :-( But I'm pretty sure that another dozen or so normal items easily should have come together as a bonus.

Every day I keep being surprised about getting into contact with a surprising number of people who never before have heard about the campaign. So please continue spreading the word - especially now that the campaign is successful and all pledge rewards are guaranteed! You can

• tweet about the campaign on Twitter using the #ADOM tag,
• share the campaign on Facebook or Google+,
• blog about it,
• post about it on message boards and forums,
• notify journalists, other bloggers, online editors, etc. about the success of the campaign and
• generally talk to everyone about it.

The untouched potential still seems to be enormous so every help here is more than appreciated - especially since this is a wonderful way of providing more support to the campaign without pledging more money yourself ;-)

And here's the tile support demo image once more ;-)