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 ;-)

Impressions from the upcoming immersive UI mode in JADE 0.2.3

This weekend I got sidetracked (as my JADE friends at Facebook could see live - feel free to follow me on Facebook or at Google+): I decided to implement an alternative full screen mode for the JADE UI to immerse players better in the environment. Mistakenly I believed that 30 minutes later I should be done with it...

More on ASCII symbols

Yesterday I asked for suggestions for ASCII symbols for armies and boats. Today I would like to refine the request as I have made a decision for armies and JADE now already contains different craft types.

Looking for ASCII symbol suggestions (and colors?)

After yesterdays great round of suggestions today I am looking for suggestions for the look of two things that did not exist in ADOM: Armies and ships.

Looking for a name for a new concept in JADE

I'm right now having fun with implementing armies for the "King of the Orcs" story arc in the upcoming JADE 0.2.3 release. While doing so I noticed that I need to add a new concept to maps in order to depict armies.

The first complex story arc: The King of the Orcs

Currently I am implementing the first complex story arc for JADE to show off what I am considering to be one of the hallmarks of future versions: complex, long-running stories that can influence your game in various ways depending on how you interact with them. Despite being spoilerish in many ways I would like to explain the basic setup based on the "King of the Orcs" story arc that will be introduced in JADE 0.2.3 and serve as an example for many more story arc types to come.

Tuning JADE...

Just a quick update: Over the weekend I have been toying a little bit with the performance of JADE. One of the criticisms of the recent releases was that the performance left a bit to be desired. Therefor I decided to insert a small period of performance tuning between standard development.

Wrestling with the JADE manual

Currently I feel that I hate writing the manual for JADE. Having much more fun programming JADE in one reason for that feeling. But not the only. So I have been wondering what's up and I have come to some conclusions.

JADE 0.2.2 has been released!

Directly on the heels of yesterdays JADE 0.2.1 release (read those release notes - they have the major things) I am sad having to announce that JADE 0.2.2 has been released. Some last minute changes broke  the game experience in major ways and this needed immediate fixing. Talk about releasing early and often ;-(

JADE 0.2.1 has been released!

Barely one week after releasing JADE 0.2.0 I am very happy to announce the followup release: JADE 0.2.1 is finished. The new release mostly is a bugfix release for JADE 0.2.0 with a few minor additions.

JADE 0.2.0 has been released!

After almost three months I'm proud to announce the release of JADE 0.2.0. This release marks a major and very important milestone for JADE in the quest to succeed ADOM.

Pimping thieves for JADE 0.2.0

JADE 0.2.0 offers a couple of new professions. Besides the fighters you by now are accustomed to JADE 0.2.0 will have tinkers, commoners and thieves as additional classes. A somewhat strange selection considering the fact that JADE 0.2.0 is supposed to be the first release of the "melee combat release cycle" (JADE 0.2.x). But it's befitting...

BitRock InstallBuilder donated - thanks!

This evening has been brightened by the kind donation of the wonderful folks at BitRock: They donated a free professional license of their BitRock InstallBuilder to further the development of JADE (& ADOM).

Working on JADE 0.2.0 again...

Hi folks! Just a quick update tonight since I am still recovering from a very bad cold which prevented me during the past week from doing almost anything. JADE as a consequence also has been set back quite a bit. Today was the first day where I once more managed to put quite a number of finishing touches to the upcoming 0.2.0 release. It won't be quite as complete as a consequence of my illness as I had hoped for but I will make up for that by resuming a much faster "release early, release often" release cycle once more with JADE 0.2.x.

I have other surprises waiting for you in the near future and preparing for those starting with tonight you will find a new "The History So far" and "The Mission" page on this website. Both will be refined over time to reflect the breathing and vivid nature of JADE.

Stay tuned for the next release!

My first JADE video: The new animation & trigger system in JADE 0.2.0

Boy, do I suck at creating YouTube videos. But what the heck... I wanted to give a quick impression of some of the features in the upcoming JADE 0.2.0 release and here is my first Youtube video showing off JADE features...

The trouble with notebook keyboards

Folks, I need your help and your feedback.

Over the past couple of days I felt more and more troubled about the keyboards mappings for JADE commands. The problem with "cursor up" being mapped to "yes" in confirmation questions is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Please give me some feedback on the following question:

Why is the next JADE release taking so long?

Those of you who have befriended me at Facebook or subscribed to my updates will know it, but since there are a lot of people out their who dislike Facebook I also felt it necessary to post an update here.

So: Why is the next release of JADE taking so long?

Introducing a whole new dimension of interaction...

Sometimes in programming there are very special moments. I just experienced one such moment. While working on the new construction system for JADE I suddenly noticed that all the ground work for complex interactions already exists in JADE (and I always thought I would need to implement that at some point). In the old (currently sadly down) blog I explained the function of so-called awarenesses.

Building things

While slugging away adding new cool content for the next release (scheduled for around mid-october) I today finally figured out how I want to include a system for building things in JADE. Given its event-based infrastructure it simply would be stupid to not add means for the player to build contraptions, walls, floors, etc. (in a kind of 2-D minecraft way). Here's what I have been thinking so far...

Food and starvation in JADE

JADE will follow the tracks of ADOM in many respects, also when concerning food. You will find various food items throughout the game including monster corpses that might provide harmful or beneficial effects. During the past couple of days I finished the starvation system for JADE and it's different from ADOM. I personally like it much better. Here we go...

Facebook subscriptions

As mentioned quite a number of times before I am happy to befriend ADOM & JADE fans on Facebook. Now Facebook seems to have a new kind of abonnement function which allows you to see the public updates of someone you are not befriended to. I'm offering this, too. So if you are an ADOM or JADE fan that would like to get updates on the details behind the scenes (especially of what I do with JADE) you can subscribe to my public posts.

But be warned: I use social networks with focus: You'll rarely find a private notice by me on Facebook. I don't use Facebook much for my personal friends and family and usually focus on ADOM & JADE. So if you are not really interested in ADOM and specifically in JADE as the successor of ADOM you won't get much out of following me on Facebook ;-)

It's all in the details: Adding shadows to JADE

While adding shadows as an undead type to JADE in the aftermath of the annoying hacker attack an interesting discussion sparked on Facebook around the capabilities of shadows. I'd like to share some of the details.

Back to normal: More undead to the game

Since the hacker incursion finally has been repelled I'm quickly trying to get back to the normal schedule. At the weekend I was interrupted adding shadows to the game (and ghosts and spectres being the next) which introduce attribute drain as a new special ability. This new ability opens up so much room for cool new items that all the PC to drain monster attributes (gauntlets of the shadow touch draining strength, vampiric blades draining toughness, weapons of sorrow draining charisma, etc.) that I love this new addition.

Talk to ya soon about game-related stuff again!

Forums survived the night... hacker attack finally repelled?

No new garbage appearing on the adom.de server overnight. Finally we might have managed to quench all the damage inflicted by the script kiddie attack. I'm picking up hope again and maybe soon things can return to normal... specifically I hope to recover the fun I had working on JADE in the past couple of weeks. Stay tuned...

Hacking aftermath: Forums down again :-(

And yet another hole found, data destroyed, files damaged and the forums down again. I wish I'd be able to get my hands on this cowardly hacker freak... he'd suffer some real pain :-(

I'm not sure when (or if) things will be back up soon - I'll make one more attempt to save stuff tonight but I'm slowly getting tired of reinstallating the forums. And reconfiguring them... which really is a pain in the ass with vBulletin due to the immense amount of features... configuring those just takes too long.

Oh well, dark times for ADOM and JADE. So much time and energy lost...

Update on the hacker attack: Forums back online

I'm slowly making progress. Here are the latest news and a plan for revenge...

News on the hacked website: Updating the forum software

Right now I am rebuilding the forums. In order to have a good feeling about that for the future I decided to invest in a new vBulletin software license for $175. As a consequence of that I also decided to add a new donation options via Moneybookers (see the support sidebar to the right).

Thanks for all current donators - part of your money thus was used for improving the official forums.

A later update will provide more information!

The ADOM website has been hacked...

...which means a bit of trouble:

• The ADOM blog has been deactivated for now.
• I will have to spend quite a bit of time to rebuild the corrupted files on the site (which is time I can't spend on JADE).
• I will need to decide whether to restore the old blog or not.

May the fingers of the fucking hacker be hung with rings of doom... lousy fucker. Die an unhappy death! And die it slow and painfully!! And rot for eternity in whatever hell you believe in!!! Or in the hell I believe in if you are an unbeliever... I promise you you will not enjoy it.

The current release plan for JADE

Janne Huotari asked on Facebook about the JADE release plan. Right now it is pretty simple and straightforward. Here we go:

More races and professions in the next JADE release

Tonight was productive. I added eight new PC races to JADE (dark elves, drakelings, gnomes, gray elves, high elves, hurthlings, trolls and orcs) as well as two new professions (thieves and commoners).

Now for the tedious part... adding all the new equipment sets for the new combinations. That's really boring... *yawn*

Statistics...

...it is interesting how they differ. Blogger reports 71.287 page views, FlagCounter 65.209 and Sitemeter 41.335. And when you click on the Sitemeter icon you see a total of 53.694. Oh well :-)

"Dont' believe in any statistics you haven't forged yourself."

Now I know where this is coming from :-)

In any case... thanks, folks, for the interest, the great discussions and the fantastic ideas. JADE is eternally indebted to your creativity!

Skeletons, zombies and other undead

This evening I finally finished the code for monster templates in JADE. It's now fully functional, has quote a number of bells and whistles (which already are being used) and was created to be able to add very flexible undead.

New feature in JADE: Templates for beings

Since this has worked exceedingly well for the new rumor system I'd today like to ask for ideas and input to enhance yet another new subsystem in JADE (and please continue to provide such fantastic rumor ideas). I'm right now finishing the new template system for beings.

New rumor system for JADE

This morning I finished the new rumor system for JADE. It will serve as one means to make the game and the story appear (and be ;-) ) a lot more dynamic.

A new story arc inspired by Tanith Lee

This morning I remembered a story I read as a child, written by Tanith Lee: Volkhavaar. To me it was a rather strange story, very different from the usual fantasy stuff  was reading at that time. Combined with the feature that the german issue sported a picture that later on reminded me of Elric, although vaster the differences between Volk, the slave and sorcerer/priest and Elric, the emperor and sorcerer, barely could be.

Water, acid, blood and lava in JADE

The next version of JADE will have yet another feature that never existed in ADOM (and would be quite hard to code): liquids that move around the map.

JADE surpasses ADOM... cloak-wise

As of today JADE (the next release actually) has more cloaks than ADOM. Even counting artifacts. So far I have added 15 new items to the next release and a lot more are coming. And they are a lot more fun than many of the magical items in ADOM... stay tuned!

Coming up: Death by water and heat

I just wanted to mention that - besides right now adding special abilities like being desolid, a flyer or aquatic which in turn will entail lots of exciting new items - I currently work on environmental effects in JADE. Prepare to drown in water, by mummified by the heat of the desert and other fun passtimes ;-)

JADE 0.1.4 released!

Here we go with the latest JADE release. JADE 0.1.4 is a bug fix release that fixes many issues from previous versions. Additionally the game itself should sport a very decent performance boost as I managed to optimize a couple of internal routines.

Since I mentioned it on Facebook...

...the 0.1.4 release of JADE will follow in the next couple of days to fix as many of bugs in JADE 0.1.3 as possible. And give me more time to do a really great content release for 0.1.5 ;-)

Have a good night!

Planning the next JADE release

Ok, here are the basic ideas for the next "content release" of JADE (the bugs so far in JADE 0.1.3 do not seem to warrant a quick new release so far, but a couple of hours are too early to tell ;-) ).

JADE 0.1.3 released

It has been done. After almost four weeks since the last release JADE 0.1.3 now is available. The longer period between releases is not a sign of my weakening resolve but rather a consequence of the mass of content added to JADE 0.1.3.

JADE 0.1.3 sneak preview

I just felt that I shouldn't limit such posts to Facebook. Here's a little sneak of JADE 0.1.3. I'm not sure if this screenshot means much to anyone besides me but here it is anyways.

What's your favorite roguelike feature?

Just tell me - what's your favorite roguelike game features - no matter whether it's in ADOM, Angband, Nethack or whatever (and please tell me the game, too). Just thinking about which cool things should go into JADE first in the time to come.

Thanks!

Size classes for items

JADE 0.1.3 will (among many other things) introduce size classes for some items. Specifically weapons and all wearable items (except for rings) will have a size class that modifiers its behavior.

Settlement attributes

After almost finishing the shopkeeper code for selling and buying stuff yesterday (more tests need to be done and there are a few item generation bugs) I used the time before breakfast to implement a new settlement attribute. The idea here is that in the end each settlement will be described by a set of attributes that modifies its general apearance, the way it works and the way how the inhabitants might act.

Thinking about JADE 0.1.3

From now on I would like to change the development mode for JADE (barring problems like the one for JADE 0.1.1).

JADE 0.1.2 has been released

I am still ashamed of the problem with JADE 0.1.1. Happily I managed to fix the crash problem and parallely could add another dozen of improvements to JADE. JADE 0.1.2 thus should work on all supported systems and sets a new record: two JADE releases on one day (even if I have to admit that the first one could have used some more care).

JADE 0.1.1 crashing...

Hi everyone! I just wanted to post a quick note that sadly JADE 0.1.1 runs absolutely stable for me under my Mac system as far as the often reported crash directly after skill selection goes :-( I'm very sorry for the problem but I guess we will be going to have JADE 0.1.2 at some point today :-(

Announcing JADE 0.1.1

It's there, folks. Two versions in two weeks. Hopefully this will silence the doubting ones ;-)

The completeness of JADE

Since I continue to be surprised a little about some questions like "Why is there no gold in the game?", "Why did you miss this bug or that bug?", "Why is there so little content?" I just wanted to remind folks of what I wrote a couple of weeks ago here and here.

I dreamed of the JADE SFX & animation system...

By which I mean the system required in order to visualize spell effects (bolts, missiles, explosions) and other missiles. JADE currently does not yet have any code infrastructure for that but tonight I really envisioned it while sleeping. Sometimes I am amazed - I love my subconscious for doing my work while I rest ;-). Here we go with some details:

Blog improvements

Today I noticed some minor shortcomings in this first version of the blog. Here we go with the latest improvements:

Metered points in JADE 0.1.1

During breakfast I today picked up issue 208 from the JADE project management tool and implemented. JADE from now on will have a nice meter display for the current state of your hit points and power points that gradually shifts towards red when things get tight.

Lots of minor bugs fixed...

Whew, I just finished a bug fixing sprint... about 15-20 bugs from the official bug database were hopefully fixed this evening. I need to test many of them in more details but most were so easy to fix that I could do it while watching TV. JADE 0.1.1. is coming along nicely.

More on the upcoming weapon skills

My last post about the upcoming weapon skills generated quite a few exciting ideas that I implemented right away. Here we go with the most recent additions to JADE 0.1.1:

Upcoming for JADE 0.1.1: Weapon skills

Today I started finishing the weapon skill system for JADE (it has been prepared for years but some important parts still were missing). Here is a screenshot of the preliminary version:

Added versions and categories to the JADE issue manager

I just wanted to note that the JADE project management system now contains versions and categories, something I overlooked somehow before releasing 0.1.0. And after we have cleaned up the remains of yesterdays birthday party and I have looked through all the cool presents I am itching to work on JADE 0.1.1.

JADE Countdown: Zero

JADE is coming...