Wow... time once more seems to be running out faster than last year... I have no idea where the past two months have gone and I'm already booked till mid-April. So let's have a short look at February as far as ADOM and ADOM II go...
Jochen has done quite a bit more work on ADOM and iADOM (ADOM for the iPad). We are juggling the idea of running an Indiegogo.com crowd funding event to take into account all the time that still needs to go into finishing that version... so many more bugs to fix and maybe even some minor new features to add, which is very hard when you are having a real life, work and other interests. Money means we would be able to spend more time on the game (maybe effectively buying us out of day to day business for some moments ;-) ) to be able to release ADOM 1.2.0 as soon as possible.
The ADOM II design competition ended and Ravenmore now is working on a finalized submission.
I'm still working feverishly on ADOM II but I once more failed to get finished as there are so many minor things to do. Right now I'm working on finishing monks which is quite tedious as they have so many special abilities that need to be implemented on a by case base. Then I finally need to clean up and complete the King of the Orcs story arc and ADOM II 0.2.3 will be ready. Or would you prefer a sooner release with an unfinished King of the Orcs story arc? Let me know!
As far as the website goes I'm pretty happy. As in January the new advertisements once more paid for all the costs I have for keeping both this blog and the www.adom.de site up. Income even increased by 10% (still making up a negligible real world amount but nonetheless...) which is a healthy trend I'd love to see continue ;-)
March is the month that must see the next ADOM II release... hopefully I will finish it enough. April then should be the release for the first version of ADOM II Deluxe and ADOM II 0.3.0 as well - I'm seriously committed to focussing just on the major features mentioned in the release plan as well as on fixing bugs to reduce the lag due to side treks.
So thanks for another month of feedback, support and love... Axes high and hope to yes you soon in Ancardia!
The Official Blog for ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Personally, I'm not worried whether the storyline is complete... No chance I'll survive to finish it.
ReplyDeletesooner release is what i'd say. release early release often release happy. you are the best computer dude ever thomas!!! thou shalt not mock the creator!!
ReplyDeletei would love to grind a monk to immortality as soon as possible. So an "unfinished orc quest release" would make me a happy panda :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for all your amazing work Thomas :)
I would prefer a King of the Orcs release, i think it may help get feedback on how the system works and would be very enjoyable
ReplyDeleteAlso when the next version is up is when we can pay for the deluxe version "get the game forever" version right?
My preference has always been fewer but bigger releases, as long as we get plenty of blog updates in the meantime :)
ReplyDeleteBut from a rational argument point of view, I'm expecting the King of Orcs storyline to be reasonably buggy (only because we've never done anything dynamic like this before!). Having players able to bugtest a fully completed storyline would help a lot in making fixes.
Also thinking it might be best to still get the first story Arc out with the rest, you want as many things nailed down and well-wrought prior to the first Deluxe release so as to have it make as nice a splash as possible.
ReplyDeleteWell, you know what I'm going to say :) I, of course, prefer the incomplete release as soon as possible. It's not like we lose anything, you can make another release with the full KotO storyline later. And you'll get feedback about the new classes, bugfixes, etc. "Release early, release often" is win/win for everyone.
ReplyDeleteAlso, remember that we're currently still playing a release where inventory items disappear! A release now would probably not be a step backwards in terms of stability.
A sooner release with an unfinished King of the Orcs story arc, please :)
ReplyDeleteI'de say sooner release aswell. So many new stuff I wanna try out.
ReplyDeleteI had a quick question about ad clicking aswell. Is there a limited amount of clicks from one computer or IP adress? Because I try to click on the adds as much possible a day but wonder if the advertisers only count one click from a computer per day?... I try to computer hop at school atleast a couple times a day to help out just in case this is the case :)
On the one hand, releasing an unfinished version helps us find and point out bugs. On the other hand, it seems like there are still a lot of game balance issues to deal with (the near-impossibility of reaching dungeon level 10) and until all that is done, few of us are going to play a release without more storyline to make it interesting, and so you'll get less help about needed bugfixes. So I say wait until you've gotten things done.
ReplyDeleteI think you should release new versions often. This will let us hunt for bugs using the most up to date version while you work on the next. I also think it may be a good idea to make a kind of "bug hunter version" that gives access to a menu allowing the player to edit stats and levels or summon items or monsters. This would expedite the debugging process by solving the issue of requiring to navigate a naturally difficult game just to test one thing.
ReplyDelete