ADOM 3.1.0 available as Steam Beta and for prerelease testers

Hi everyone!

We are proud to announce the availability of ADOM 3.1.0 ("the T&T release" - talents & traps) on Steam as a beta version. You can find the instructions on how to activate the Steam beta here. Additionally ADOM 3.1.0 is available to all prerelease testers from the crowdfunding campaign in the usual place.

ADOM 3.1.0 offers the following improvements:

• We have put quite a bit of thought into improving the talent system used by ADOM. Currently many people do not overly like it, talents have been somewhat unbalanced and only very few were deemed worthwhile the effort of taking them. I went through the many comments in our issue database and touched many talents in order to make them more interesting. This ticket contains a summary of all the changes implemented. The manual and online help obviously have been updated.
• The way traps work has been revised. There were lots of complaints about sudden death situations, etc. and the revised mechanics of traps try to take the recklessness of the player into account (e.g. if you storm through a dungeon with 1% of your hitpoints, death shouldn't be too surprising... if you are at full strength, there should not be any insta-death situations... and this with a sliding scale).
• Additionally there is the usual long list of bug fixes and minor enhancements summarized in the changelog.

Please test the beta version intensely and provide feedback via our issue tracker as we'd like to release  ADOM 3.1.x as soon as possible to all available channels.

And now have fun hacking!

Thomas Biskup & Team ADOM

P.S.: The next major milestone for ADOM 3.2.0 hopefully be the fully visualized PC equipment on the PC sprite. Our internal version already has made great progress but there are still kinks to be worked out before we can release it. Stay tuned!

Announcing ADOM 3.0.5 as a prerelease and public Steam beta

Hi everyone!

We just released ADOM 3.0.5 to our prerelease testers... the most important new feature is the ability to delete highscore entries which became a necessity to allow people to remove highscores created through uncouth means before synchronizing them to Rogueleague.org. This now is possible.

All other bug fixes are documented as usual in the changelog. The prerelease is available from the same location as always.

IMPORTANT UPDATE (slight miscommunication between Jochen, who is doing the Steam deployments, and me ;-) ): ADOM 3.0.5 is already on Steam as a public beta. This page explains how to activate it.

Oh, and please vote for ADOM to become the Indie Game of the Year 2017 at IndieDB ;-) Thanks so much!

ADOM 3.0.4 prerelease and Rogueleague.org server available now

Rogueleague.org

Hi everyone!

This prerelease hopefully will be the very final one before we publish a polished and complete (as far as our crowdfunding promises go) ADOM to Steam.

ADOM 3.0.4 again contains a number of bug fixes and minor enhancements as well as one major new feature: After registering you now can connect to our Rogueleague.org server to manage your global highscores (e.g. in competition to all the other ADOM players out there).

IMPORTANT: 

• If you own highscores achieved by cheating you might want to delete them. In the next couple of weeks we probably also add some kind of community-driven cheat detection and cheaters will be banned from the server. If cheating becomes excessive we might be forced to limit the server to Steam only (and only in connection with Steam accounts) which would be sad but necessary if people start ruining the idea of the server. So be honest and remain a good member of the ADOM tribe :-) !
• Connections to the global highscore server are only possible with ADOM Deluxe (and in a couple of days the Steam version). The pure ASCII version does not support this.
• Highscores are synchronized after you quit ADOM - only then they will show up on the server.
• You will need to register an account in order to be able to synchronize with the server.
• The global highscores probably will enhance the fun with challenge games a lot :-)
• Our Rogueleague.org server really is a version 0.1. We have tons of ideas on how to improve it, the layout and design needs a lot more work and we have extensive statistics planned and more - but all this takes time and we will on it step by step in the months to come. So please be patient with us :-)

Now all prerelease testers can go to the usual location and start having fun :-)

When you submit bugs or RFEs you now also can choose "Rogueleague.org" as a category in order to inspire us with your ideas of what would be great to have for a community portal - so let us know what you come up with :-)

Axes high!

Thomas Biskup & Team ADOM

ADOM 3.0.3 prerelease now available!

Hi everyone!

We are only one more small step away from the next huge Steam: ADOM 3.0.3 just has been released to our prerelease testers - it gain features a sizeable number of bug fixes and enhancements. Our impression is that the load of changes introduced with 3.0.0 now mostly has stabilized and that we now can do the next step to Steam.

The final major functionality not yet included is the global highscore server as we still are wrestling with some legal and data security details ("terms of use" and similar things need more attention than we anticipated - the world is truly a complicated one ;-) ). But it will be there very soon now...

If you are among the prerelease testers go to the usual location to enjoy the latest ADOM release.

Have fun playing!
Thomas & Team ADOM

P.S.: Help us win this baby here:

ADOM 3.0.0 released as a prerelease test version!

Hi everyone!

Today - as a special treat honoring Roguelike Celebration 2017 - we are very proud to announce the release of ADOM 3.0.0 as a prerelease test version. ADOM 3.0.0 is one of the most feature-heavy releases we ever have done as it wraps up most of the remaining crowdfunding promises. As a consequences it includes:

• Four new mini maps and three new community quests have been added.
• The Ultimate Nihilist ending has been added.
• A new special adventure - taking place after closing the gate - has been added.
• A new special "getting funded" level with a special boss monster & minions as well as two new artifacts has been added (and 16 other new items peculiar to this level).
• 33 (!) new artifacts have been added.
• The legend level donor artifacts have been added.
• Fixed and extensions to the many magical statues (a few still are unimplemented as the wishes of the donors where simply not feasible - we will work out something better with you; expect to be contacted soon).
• The immortalization of the mega-legend level donors has been done.
• The revised manual available in more and smaller pieces throughout the game.
• The basic infrastructure for global highscores has been added (but will not be activated before 3.0.1 as we still are busy testing the server - more on that in an upcoming post).

The changelog has the complete list of changes as usual. 

ADOM 3.0.0 can be downloaded for prerelease testers from the usual location.

All this should make for an exciting new release. After it has been extensively tested it will take the usual route first to Steam and then to the general public.

We are very happy about now coming to a conclusion of our crowdfunding campaign and we are looking forward to the next exciting things looming on the horizont.

Have fun!

Thomas Biskup & Team ADOM

Announcing the (graphical) prerelease of ADOM 2.3.4

Hi everyone!

Today marks another important milestone to getting ADOM back on track and rolling after this rather bumpy year: We just released ADOM 2.3.4 to our prerelease testers. This release contains the full graphical glory of ADOM Deluxe. Now you will be able to try out tons of amazing features accumulated over more than nine months in our graphical user interface:

• a new HUD
• better typography
• (mostly) animated monsters
• better tooltips & dialogs,
• refined icons and graphics in general,
• many new music & sound effects,
• a huge amount of usability enhancements in order to simplify playing ADOM by mouse (really important for the Steam release),
• and more: read the changelog for the full details (and note that many of the changes listed  between 2.3.0 and 2.3.4 will finally be visible in the graphical release - especially in the 2.3.0 release notes)

ADOM 2.3.4 still is somewhat rough around the edges and a couple of features are still under development (e.g. the personalized and animated PC sprites). We also expect it to be buggy (comparably to the ADOM 2.3.0 ASCII release). So expect to meet some rough spots - but we strongly believe that it is one of the best releases ever.

We now need your support in quickly stabilizing the graphical release in the same amazing way you so far worked on making the ASCII version much better as we now want to do the Steam release as soon as possible to then turn over to much smaller and more regular releases.

As usual the prerelease can be downloaded from the usual location.

What's up next?

Starting today I will be working on the remaining crowdfunding promises. I finally have updated the project flowchart for the current state:

From the flowchart you can see that most of the remaining tasks are now the part that is the biggest fun to me: adding content.

There are still a lot of levels, items & artifacts to be designed and that's the part of ADOM I always enjoyed the most. Immediately after this release we will use a two-pronged approach to continue:

• I will immediately start adding content (maps, monsters, items, artifacts, quests) from a big pool of notes that has been lying for far too long. 
• The rest of Team ADOM will continue working on stabilizing the current version in order to get both to Steam and to a general public release.

Once we have the next Steam & public release (which will be in October... hopefully sooner than later) we will change our development process to much smaller and more agile releases in much more regular intervals.

And then we'll have some more news at the Roguelike Celebration in San Francisco.

Announcing the (pre)release of ADOM 2.3.3 (ASCII again)

Hi everyone!

We are happy to announce the (pre)release of ADOM 2.3.3 - yet another ASCII-only (pre)release for our impending graphical and Steam release. Besides having fixed lots of bugs and optimized some of the new features even more (see the changelog) we this time would like to direct the attention of our prerelease testers to two focus areas:

• We have revised the configurable character generation process. You now can choose between the following base difficulty modes:
• Tutorial (the introduction as you know it)
• Easy (a new mode that reduces deadliness and somewhat favors the player)
• Classic (roguelike, the standard mode for ADOM ever since the game was created)
• Personalized (the configurable character generation sequence)
• Please try them out, test the navigation and provide us with feedback. The idea here to find an easier introduction for new players with the Easy mode - and give experienced players more means to personalize their game experience (among other things with a means to configure a "medium" level for hunger, fudge die rolls to some extent and configure on whether and how to use talents in your game).
• This mode is a very important addition for Steam where we learned that many of the more casual games get too easily frustrated by the steep learning curve in ADOM. Together with the many UI enhancements (and many more to come in the graphical version) we hope that they will enjoy ADOM far more and that this will allow us to get better visibility with a wider audience (more happening in the background for that - stay tuned for a later update).
• Since ADOM 2.3.0 we have included a completely revised point-based character generation process for your attributes. It provides a lot more flexibility and basically factors in all the points for your disposal which in former versions were hard-wired. Naturally we also would like to know how you like that mode.

That's it - barring any major hiccups the next release will be the graphical prerelease - we are closing in. Here are some more teasers to what is going on with the graphical version :-)

Announcing ADOM 2.3.2 for prerelease testers

Hi everyone!

After ADOM 2.3.0 and ADOM 2.3.1 we are happy to announce ADOM 2.3.2 for our prerelease testers. Again we have lots of bug fixes but as I am a bit late in doing the official announcement (being on vacation - in theory) we sadly also already have our first bug report :-( Luckily it's not tremendously important in so far as most players never will even get close to that situation in the game - but it is very annoying as it again affects one of the cool new quests. So there probably soon will be yet another release in the very near future.

The changelog is getting shorter but still somewhat impressive. Enjoy the game for now and also give us some feedback on the revised point-based character generation, pick/drop, etc.

Stay tuned!
Thomas & Team ADOM

P.S.: Our focus (besides maybe another small bug fix release on the sideline now is a graphical release - we are getting closer).

ADOM 2.3.1 (release 74) released to prerelease testers

Hi everyone!

Almost directly on the heels of ADOM 2.3.0 follows ADOM 2.3.1. As expected ADOM 2.3.0 was a pretty experimental release and contained... err... well... a number of issues and room for improvement ;-) And so we repaired and improved.

The changelog is pretty impressive again although it's mostly fixes and fine-tuning (87 official tickets and more stuff going on behind the scenes - the result of almost 72 hours of frantic work behind the scenes). We are particularly grateful to Grond (master bug hunter who almost single-handedly killed every bug existant in the release), but also to Laukku, Ben Mathiesen und Qui from the forums. Your help was invaluable (and thanks also to everyone else who contributed). I also have to thank Jochen once more for being an undaunting force of bug destruction - great teamwork!

So without further ado we dearly recommend that you download the latest ASCII-only prerelease from the usual location.

Depending on how many more issues are found we now move towards finishing the graphical version.

Enjoy!

ADOM 2.3.0 (r73) released to prerelease testers

Hi everyone!

After the longest break (pardon the pun) since the Resurrect ADOM development crowdfunding campaign we finally are getting back on track. Tonight we released ADOM 2.3.0 (r73), a special release in many respects:

• It is the first "ASCII only" (pre)release in a very long while. The reasons are twofold:
• We have added so much stuff that our graphics wizards in Team ADOM are still hard at work with catching up.
• We are fed up with the long break and want to get feedback as soon as possible. As some features are still missing in the graphical version (or broken) we decided to put the ASCII version on the testing block.
• It is probably the biggest release ever we have done. The issue tracker lists about 140 tickets (to be honest: after yet another 15 hour day I didn't count) for this release but the number has to be taken with some caution (partially because graphics fixes also are listed for the version number, partially because a single ticket can mean huge changes). Some of the huge changes are:
• More than 100 new items including a completely new category with new mechanisms,
• Rolf and Volcano quest added,
• an ASCII windowing framework to make interactions more obvious and don't miss them in endless text wastes,
• a speech bubble system for conversations,
• a completely revised pick/drop dialog (I'm pretty nervous about that one as it is a very deep change and probably needs a lot of fine-tuning),
• completely revised screens for quest status, talents as well as merged screens for skills and spells to simplify navigation,
• a new quick hint system that tries to teach keyboard commands with tooltips,
• a new look (and target) mode
• and hundreds of other major and minor changes.
• It is probably the most experimental release ever. This kind of follows out of bullet points #1 and #2 because we tested stuff - but our resources are far too limited to test everything. As a consequence regard this as a true prerelease: 
• There probably will be crashes.
• Characters might get lost.
• Save files might get corrupted (although we haven't seen this so far).
• Or in other words: Here be dragons. Proceed at your own risk.

The prerelease is available via the prerelease tester access. Follow the instructions and start playing as soon as possible :-) The change log can be found here (also as usual).

Please use our bug reporting system for all your findings. Discussions about the changes are especially welcome in the ADOM forum. We want to get any problems sorted out as soon as possible, because our roadmap looks like this:

• Stabilize the ASCII version ASAP.
• In parallel add more unaddressed promises from the crowdfunding campaign.
• As soon as the ASCII version is stable, we will do at least one graphical prerelease for an equivalent feedback round on the graphical version.
• Then we will go to Steam beta with the prerelease.
• As soon as we know that the Steam beta is stable, we will make a public Steam release (including one of our front page lucky shots) to increase awareness. A major topic of our work for the past couple of months has been the simplification and enhancement of the UI - as a consequence it is a bit sad that you can't yet see all the fantastic changes in the NotEye/ADOM version. But we promise: the wait is worth it. IMHO the upcoming graphical release is spectacular.

On a side note we (again) changed the version numbering system:

• We have returned to the major.minor.patch level system.
• We still count releases but you now only can see the number with the 'v' command.
• This will allow us to do more branches in our GIT system so that we can have parallel development and bugfix branches. For the current version the 2.3.x branch will be used for bug fixes (with x > 1) and the next real big feature release branch will be 2.4.0.

Ok, we return to work immediately. So much to do and so many plans :-)

See ya soon with the next release!

P.S.: Here are some of the mind-blowing changes of the upcoming graphical release on which all of Team ADOM have also been doing amazing work:

• a completely revised HUD which is much clearer and more beautiful than the previous one
• tooltips
• mouse-based navigation
• animated monsters
• more icons, warning, indicators, etc.
• real scaling for big screen resolutions
• multi-monitor support
• and more!

ADOM R69 released to both Steam players and prerelease testers

Hi everyone!

We are happy to announce the release of ADOM R69 to both our Steam players and the prerelease tester circle (the usual download access for prerelease testers). Some time later we also might do a general public release of R69 as lots of new stuff has been added to the game since the last public release.

ADOM R66 (version 2.2.0) has been released to prerelease testers!

We are happy to announce the release of ADOM R66 (version 2.2.0). This is a limited prerelease available only to the prerelease testers from the crowd funding campaign. Nonetheless it is a very important step towards a public release as we want to use the limited release for bug testing. If no major problem is found, the next step in the very near future will be a public Steam beta release. And if that works out, too, there soon will be a public Steam release. If all goes well, the public Steam release should happen within the next 6-8 days.

Sadly R66 took us much longer than we expected - getting the new character generation process transformed into a beautiful graphical version cost a lot more time than we had expected.

As explained in other blog posts there has been parallel progress on new features - but the majority of new stuff will be included in the stable release after this one.

As usual you can find a summary of changes here. Prerelease testers can download the prerelease version here. And now go playing the latest release ;-)

Please check it in-depth and report bugs as usual here so that we hopefully soon can release with the Steam beta version.

Thanks!
Thomas & Team ADOM

ADOM R58 is available now... for everyone!

Team ADOM is very happy to announce the release of ADOM R58 (version 1.15.0). This release is a very peculiar release in many respects:

• On one hand it's not that big as far as changes go. We are still fine-tuning some annoying issues we want to get rid off before the Steam release and which are very hard to fix.
• On the other hand it's our biggest release ever: Jochen built 59 (!!!) different binary versions for both Steam and the public. This probably makes ADOM the most flexible roguelike game ever as far as platform support goes!
• Additionally it's our first public release since ADOM 1.2.0p23 (released on the 10th of May 2014 - more than a year ago). The amount of changes since then is mind-blowing - expect a very different and quite advanced game if you remember that old version: We have fixed hundreds of bugs and added at least as many exciting new details and feature - too many to recount here.
• It's ask the first release with two versions: the Deluxe version for prerelease testers and Steam beta program members on one hand and the Non-Deluxe public version. We are very curious for the reactions to the public version as source code management has become quite difficult and we hopefully didn't introduce any major problems here.
• Oh, and if you wonder about the difference between Deluxe and Non-Deluxe: Visit the new (well, kind of) of ADOM home page. It explains the differences and at some point we will do a version comparison chart.

ADOM is available from several sources:

• Prerelease testers can download it from the usual location.
• If you have a Steam access key the latest version will be updated automatically.
• We have provided download torrents for the various public versions.
• Very soon it will also be available from IndieDB (uploads running right now; they should be available in a couple of hours at most).

While we for the moment have lost some speed due town extremely busy real life (I never worked as much as this year), yet another tragedy on team ADOM and high quality ambitions we still are on track. I've also been wrestling with the final editing of ADOM RPG (finally, it's long overdue).

More updates to come... now play the game and provide feedback :-) !

Thomas & Team ADOM

Announcing ADOM 1.2.0 Prerelease 23!

And there we go again with yet another prerelease of ADOM. After about two weeks of more hard work tempering the code, removing bugs (especially some nasty crash bugs) and working on the rebalanced late game Team ADOM is happy to announce the (closed) prerelease of ADOM 1.2.0p23.

Announcing ADOM 1.2.0 Prerelease 22...

Hi everyone!

I'm happy to announce the release of ADOM 1.2.0p22. A mere eight days after the (sadly quite unstable) release of ADOM 1.2.0p21 this prerelease hopefully will prove to be a lot more stable and enjoyable.

ADOM 1.2.0 Prerelease 20 now is available as a limited prerelease

Hi everyone!

This time just a short notice: You now can download ADOM 1.2.0 Prerelease 20 from the limited access area (if you participate in the prerelease access program). Here are the (few) changes. Due to the quality problems we had with p18 (save file crash bug) and p19 (much more general crash bug due to last minute changes) we are going for another closed prerelease access. If no major problems show up we will make either p20 or a p21 with very limited changes again to the general public to allow everyone to revel on the resurrected ADOM in its full glory during the Christmas days.

If you want to participate in the prerelease access this still is possible. Find the details here.

And now download the game and enjoy it!

ADOM 1.2.0 Prerelease 19 is now available… again for everyone

*** UPDATE: It seems that we botched again :-( All NotEye versions still have a problem. Jochen just contacted me and I do not yet have the details… I expect at least 24 hours to get this fixed. Sorry :-( :-( 

The good news: ADOM 1.2.0 Prerelease 20 again will be available for everyone :-( ***

And it's not available for everyone because we want to devalue the prerelease access program (don't fear) but basically we botched up ADOM 1.2.0p18 and introduced a bug that could ruin your saved games. Shame on us but we try to improve ;-) Read on for the details…

ADOM 1.2.0 Prerelease 18 is available... for everyone!

Today I'm particularly proud to announce the release of ADOM 1.2.0 Prerelease 18. While feature-wise it just contains a couple of minor bug fixes,  new sounds and stuff it actually marks the beginning of the next phase of the resurrection of ADOM: Now we are moving forward in slow (but progressively faster) steps towards getting ADOM on Steam and other gaming platforms.

Important: You should remove the adom.data directory in order to get a fully workable feature set. See the release notes for ADOM 1.2.0 Prerelease 17 on how to activate many of the new features.

ADOM 1.2.0p18 is a public prerelease that absolutely everyone can download as we feel that the world should see all the progress on the graphical front, all the major game enhancements, etc. to ramp up more public interest in ADOM and get us to conquer the next frontiers: Steam and other gaming platforms.

In this way we not only are going to fulfill the promises of the crowd funding campaign but actually hope to establish a viable commercial environment for ADOM in order to be able to pay Team ADOM for an extended period of time and add tons of exciting stuff for years to come... far beyond what still lies ahead of us in the context of the crowd funding campaign.

ADOM 1.2.0 Prerelease 17 is now available!

I am very proud to announce the availability of ADOM 1.2.0 Prerelease 17. As usual I am totally convinced that this is the best version of ADOM ever - but this time even more so in so many ways I am going to explain below.

Again a lot of special things have been added, particularly awesome are the first ADOM Sage enhancements being added to the game. This ticket lists all the details and Jochen has outdone himself keeping compatibility to ADOM Sage. Also totally cool is the new feature allowing you to play the game again and again without having to restart it or the new game end menu that makes it much easier and less error-prone to see all important information.

After installing the new version please keep the following things in mind:

• It is very important to remove the adom.kbd and adom.cfg files for some of the new features to work. If you have modified these files yourself, you should make a backup of them first.
• You can disable the "animation mode" by changing the following settings:
• Open the NotEye menu with "Ctrl+m"
• Open to the animations & scrolling menu: press "m" followed by "c"
• Change both "movement animation speed" and "auto-centering speed" to 10000
• You can disable the mouse scrolling:
• Open the NotEye menu with "Ctrl+m"
• Open to the animations & scrolling menu: press "m" followed by "c"
• Change the "manual scrolling speed" to 0

The prerelease is - as usual - only available for folks participating in the prerelease program of ADOM or those who donated to the crowd funding campaign. As usual it's available from the usual place.

ADOM 1.2.0 Prerelease 16 is out! (upgrade ASAP)

And just on the heels of ADOM 1.2.0p15 follows... ADOM 1.2.0 Prerelease 16 (see the change log). It fixes a serious bug when changing maps that we missed. Please upgrade as soon as possible!