Have a great 2012!

Dear ADOM & JADE fans, friends & supporters: I am going to close this year on a happy and short note: JADE has been immense fun for me during 2011 and I intend to grow the game by leaps and bounds in 2012. More than 222.000 page hits since the release, more than 1.200 new friends on Facebook and hundreds of interesting discussions in the forums later I'm looking forward to an exciting and thrilling 2012 - the JADE year.

I wish all the best to all of you and now will spend the last hours of 2011 in Germany with great friends and my wonderful wife. Stay tuned - we'll meet again in 2012.

BTW, if you care about my detailed thoughts here you can find them.

View modes in JADE... who uses them?

I'm right now finishing the final details of the new 'look' mode in JADE. Due to a bug I remained in a peculiar view mode that is not activated by default. And then I wondered if anyone out there playing JADE is actually using that mode.

Questions regarding 21st century roguelike UIs

As a reaction to yesterdays post concerning JADE: The Ultimate Edition Darren Grey posted something very interesting (to me at least - and I have learned to at listen to Darren in the past couple of months ;-) ):

Merry Christmas to everyone who cares!

Just a short blog update today. I'd like to wish everyone out there celebrating Christmas some wonderful days with friends, families and loved ones - wherever you might be. To everyone else: Just have some wonderful days - we do :-) !

Oh, and BTW: I just posted some thoughts about JADE: The Ultimate Edition. Let me know what you think.


                              |                         _...._
                           \  _  /                    .::o:::::.
                            (\o/)                    .:::'''':o:.
                        ---  / \  ---                :o:_    _:::
                             >*<                     `:}_>()<_{:'
                            >0<@<                 @    `'//\\'`    @
                           >>>@<<*              @ #     //  \\     # @
                          >@>*<0<<<           __#_#____/'____'\____#_#__
                         >*>>@<<<@<<         [__________________________]
                        >@>>0<<<*<<@<         |=_- .-/\ /\ /\ /\--. =_-|
                       >*>>0<<@<<<@<<<        |-_= | \ \\ \\ \\ \ |-_=-|
                      >@>>*<<@<>*<<0<*<       |_=-=| / // // // / |_=-_|
        \*/          >0>>*<<@<>0><<*<@<<      |=_- |`-'`-'`-'`-'  |=_=-|
    ___\\U//___     >*>>@><0<<*>>@><*<0<<     | =_-| o          o |_==_|
    |\\ | | \\|    >@>>0<*<<0>>@<<0<<<*<@<    |=_- | !     (    ! |=-_=|
    | \\| | _(UU)_ >((*))_>0><*<0><@<<<0<*<  _|-,-=| !    ).    ! |-_-=|_
    |\ \| || / //||.*.*.*.|>>@<<*<<@>><0<<@</=-((=_| ! __(:')__ ! |=_==_-\
    |\\_|_|&&_// ||*.*.*.*|_\\db//__     (\_/)-=))-|/^\=^=^^=^=/^\| _=-_-_\
    """"|'.'.'.|~~|.*.*.*|     ____|_   =('.')=//   ,------------.
    jgs |'.'.'.|   ^^^^^^|____|>>>>>>|  ( ~~~ )/   (((((((())))))))
        ~~~~~~~~         '""""`------'  `w---w`     `------------' 




(thanks to this site for collecting the wonderful ASCII art I used above and thanks to jgs for creating it)


And BTW: You can still try to vote for JADE here - currently we lack a little bit behind (but not as much as I had feared comparing to much more completed games - thanks folks!).

Revised professional abilities for thieves

After yesterdays great suggestions on thieving abilities I have refined them somewhat. Here's the revised list (and BTW you still might want to vote JADE to the top as the favorite roguelike of the year on the right of this blog ;-) ):

Vote for JADE :-)

BTW if you care for JADE, already are enjoying JADE or would like to do me a small favor you might venture here and vote for JADE on the right side of the blog... thanks!

Working on professional abilities for thieves

Currently I am working on the professional abilities for thieves. Thieves will enjoy various (mostly non-statistical) advantages over the course of their level progression. Here we go:

Tuning the professional abilities of fighters

Given the amount of criticism to my first attempt at special abilities for fighters as described in todays previous post I'm trying harder :-) How about the following ability list for fighters:

Professional abilities for fighters and more

Here we go with the list of professional abilities for fighters. It is modified from the one posted yesterday for commoners due to a very good idea provided by KSennie that I liked so much that I implemented it right away (BTW, KSennie send me your real name for the JADE credits to creator(at)ancientdomainsofmystery.com and mention this): First level abilities now will be differentiated according to whether the given profession is your main profession (the one selected initially) or not (another one selected later on with multi-classing). The first level abilities for multi-classed professions are much weaker than the one for the main profession (so you get something but a lot less). For commoners this means that e.g. carrying capacity will be 200% standard when selecting commoner as a main profession and only 120% standard when selecting it as a later profession. So here we go with the abilities for fighters:

Balancing professional abilities

In todays post concerning professional abilities anoddlad and hugeowl raised interesting concerns regarding the fact that it might be extremely tempting to take at least one level of commoner in order to gain double carrying capacity. I agree. But...

Professional abilities coming to JADE...

To get some distraction from the "King of the Orcs" story arc (which currently is tedious to implement since it's nothing but hard content work) I allowed myself to get sidetracked once more. Right now I am implementing profession abilities in JADE.

Just to mention it: ADOM for the iPad

Since I'm slugging away on JADE and there are no fascinating new details about the progress I'd just like to mention that Jochen has been doing some amazing work on the iPad port of ADOM (especially the UI) and I truly start to believe that we will be able to have an ADOM version for the iPad in the foreseeable future. Just thought I'd mention it ;-)