Quick hints & quest dialogs

Hi everyone!

While we continue working on the next release busily I'd like to demonstrate a few things that have been added since my last report:

• ADOM now has quest dialogs to make it harder to miss new quests. (Additionally - but not shown in the video below - the quests have been made somewhat more extensive in their descriptions and the quest status screen offers a few more details. Also not shown is the dialog announcing the completion of a quest... oh, and completing quests now most of the time yields a few extra experience points).
• ADOM now has a quick hint system. ADOM shows a kind of ASCII tooltip in some situations to indicate which commands might be particularly helpful. The tooltips show up only a limited number of times (10 by default, but that is configurable).

See the video below to get an impression of these features:

Additionally we have been working on many other things:

• Krys continues to animate monster by monster - a couple of dozen still are left but we are getting to 100% coverage.
• Zeno is very busy catching up with the many ASCII enhancements and also has started tackling some long-requested features for the graphical mode, Most important IMHO here is the ability to scale much better to different screen resolutions.
• We have added more improvements to mouse controls. Shooting now is just a single left-click onto an enemy (but you can change it to double clicks by configuration).
• I have progressed with the Rolf and volcano quest (but there's still quite a bit to do).
• And there have been tons of other details (like being able to skip (more) with the mouse, new tiles for location entries on the wilderness with easier to discern entries, etc.).

If all goes well I'm hoping for a prerelease version by end of next week (but ASCII only) for our prerelease texters and from there we'll progress to the Steam release. And afterwards we will finally be able to enjoy the benefits of our new GIT based development pipeline by releasing much more often.

Stay tuned!

Tackling the new quests & maps for ADOM

Part of the crowd funding results have been quite a few new quests (and maps) to be added. Five of the quests have been explicitly labeled as "quests that will be created with the community" but as usual I would like to use a combination of comment feedback & ideas mixed with my own decisions to create the final implementations.

The long tail

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.

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!

ADOM crowd funding: stretch goals between $50,000 and $100,000

Now that we have entered the final count down of the ADOM: The Resurrection crowd funding campaign I'd like to explain all defined stretch goals and give you a brief look into my line of reasoning.

(kudos to Krys for this new awesome piece of art... he's doing such brilliant stuff - you want to reach the $55,000 stretch goal, believe me, as that would allow Krys to work for months on awesome artwork!)