ADOM II 0.2.4 has been released!

Ok folks, I'm proud to present ADOM II 0.2.4. It has been another two months since the last release but from now on I'm really sworn to "release early, release often" as testing 0.2.4 has been a bitch and I sadly expect quite a number of bugs to be found in the next couple of days as the changes and additions have been sweeping... to say it carefully. Additionally I'm taking a big risk as I currently do not have access to a Windows system and couldn't test under that OS and I was too tired to fiddle together a quick access closed beta test from the outside. So I finally decided to release... and promise to release 0.2.5 very very soon if anything major is found. Which is somewhat likely to happen. But now for the good stuff...

ADOM II 0.2.4 really is another big step on the way to a full version. We still are in the early stages of ADOM II but among my favorites of this release are

• hopefully a fix for the Windows 7 problems in full screen mode,
• the full 'King of the Orcs' story arc (although lots of stuff could and will be added over time),
• armies, sieges and large scales fights with armies,
• corruptions,
• new keyboard options and persistent user settings,
• the many many bug fixes.

The King of the Orcs story arc probably is the most interesting new thing - it has lots of details and there is so much room for enhancement. Although I feel like adding hundreds of details to that I'm now bent to getting ADOM II more feature complete before once more delving into story details. Thus I refer the interested reader to the still valid roadmap.

Here are the details of the 0.2.4 release:

* Added a fix for the full screen mode problems in conjunction with Windows 7 and Aero

  (thanks to Jochen Terstiege for finding the solution!). Fixes issue 859.

* Completely revised the hunger and satiation system to finally get rid of being eternally overfed, being

  able to travel reasonable distances and at the same time feel hunger in dungeons. Fixed issues 661 and

  867 along the way.

* Added a message buffer display.

* Added configurable key bindings (custom, ADOM Classic, ADOM II, JADE).

* All user settings now are persisted. No more need to configure them again for each game (RFE 184).

* Removed a couple of user settings that didn't seem to get used. Should someone ask for them I will add them again.

* Implemented corruptions included the 18 corruptions known from ADOM (with a few slight modifications).

* Added a corruption display via '\'.

* Added story lines which might initiate automatic corruption.

* Enhanced the Chaos Gate and its interaction with the world.

* '>' and '<' have been separated as commands to once more work line in ADOM (issue 802).

* Added 12 new monsters.

* Added 8 new items.

* Added one new undead template.

* Added abominations and jellies as a new racial type.

* Added the ability to smash doors for monsters.

* Added army encounters.

* Added named items.

* Added fortune cookies.

* Dungeon levels now contain more gold.

* Activated random special areas for dungeons (which had been implemented for months but somehow I forgot

  to activate them).

* Changed the character generation sequence so that the name is entered pretty late.

* You now can leave an encounter with '<' as soon as no more hostile beings are around you.

* The ruffians supporting shopkeepers now are more of a challenge.

* Removed commands to display outdated internal information and outdated TO DOs.

* Added a computer memory display to the statistics area in order to get a better idea about memory

  consumption out there and to locate the occasional "hang" bug.

* Added levers as a generic abstraction to the game (which can be used for wonderful effects in the 

  future and now are used in one decent puzzle).

* Improved the usage of the screen space for textual displays and fixed issue 791 and 847 while doing that.

* Dungeon levels on average have become a bit smaller to simplify play. 

* Kite shields, heater shields and tower shields now inhibit monks.

* Balanced cloaks of invisibility by increasing the hunger rate of the wearer quite a bit.

* Implemented orcish armies that are summoned and organized by Fnuk, king of the orcs.

* Improved pickaxes (RFE 670).

* Improved the effectiveness of the healing skill greatly.

* Increased the natural healing rate for higher level characters.

* Increased the hunger rate for using artifacts.

* Implemented the detect item status skill (issues 550, 621).

* 'Disarm traps' now is easier to learn for thieves.

* Reduced the burrowing power of ants (issue 629).

* Greatly improved the cooperation in hives and made them somewhat more aggressive (issue 629).

* Revised the size based modifiers for melee weapons (tuning them down a little bit).

* Critical hits now only apply the extra damage _after_ overcoming PV thus reducing the lethality of

  criticals quite a bit (especially also against the PC).

* Critical hits against the PC now are less likely.

* Reduced level scaling for monsters quite a bit.

* Introduced armor penetrating and armor damaging hits to the combat engine.

* Implemented the two-weapon combat skill and made it meaningful.

* Reduced the DV bonus provided by weapon skills when multi-wielding weapons.

* The 'u'se command now can be utilized to both use items and other features found in the game world

  (thus making the 'h'andle command of ADOM Classic unnecessary therefore furthering a simpler user interface).

* Hobgoblin leaders and chieftains now are a little less dangerous.

* Fixed the internal handling of tools that might be destroyed by using them.

* Fixed a problem with aging (beings didn't age naturally at all).

* Added an FAQ entry concerning gray screens under Linux (issue 669).

* Added attribute training due to athletics, level and profession.

* Greatly reduced wilderness encounter likelihoods due to bad fate (issue 795).

* Size now factors into attempts to disarm.

* Adjusted the configuration options for the message display area height from 1 to 5 to 1 to 10.

* Speed now is modified by size (larger monsters are slower, smaller beings are faster).

* Added colored messages to "hate events" (see the next item).

* Made the effects of extremely low charisma and appearance scores more obvious, see the

  previous item (issue 807).

* Animals no longer drop items.

* Adjusted the tactics skill to lessen its might and alter the bonus (RFE 814).

* Added black orcs as a race.

* Applying the tactics skill now directly allows to change the tactics settings instead

  of displaying instructions on how to do so (RFE 811).

* Improved the code for newly created undead (when created by killing other beings)

  so that they have more plausible goals.

* Decreased the frequency of gauntlets of peace (issue 952).

* Reduced the severity of attribute draining attacks.

* Fixed a problem with keyboard code mappings (issue 347).

* Fixed a critical endless loop that probably has plagued the game for a very long time (issue 436).

  Thanks for everyone involved and provided such great help!

* Fixed a problem with village entry points (issue 567).

* Fixed a problem with monsters failing to attack the PC while he was standing in a wall (issue 584).

* Fixed the inability of monsters to attack the invisible PC (issue 586).

* Fixed problems with dropping unwanted items in shops (issue 593).

* Fixed problems with the way shop restocking worked (issue 644).

* Fixed hunger related speed problems (issue 655).

* Fixed shop type duplicates (issue 685).

* Fixed mindless undead in that they no longer can train their weapon skills (issue 778).

* Fixed the problem of monsters following the PC across stairs even if they can't see him/her (issue 787).

* Fixed a problem with too many monsters from an encounter wandering off into the wilderness (issue 794).

* Fixed the names for cursed and blessed potions of water (issue 797).

* Fixed the problem of being able to kick at spaces where once a door has been (issue 801).

* Fixed scrolls that could be used upon themselves (issue 806).

* Fixed the incorrect capitalization of warrior monks and warrior nuns during

  character generation (issue 808).

* Fixed a critical bug in power point regeneration that probably also messed up hit point regeneration.

  Both need to be closely monitored for strange effects.

* Fixed the abort button of the error dialog.

* Fixed the missing food store in Terinyo (issue 809).

* Fixed a rare internal crash problem (issue 812).

* Fixed an unintentional means of escaping wilderness encounters (issue 815). Added the ability to

  leave wilderness encounters by pressing '<' after all enemies have been defeated.

* Fixed a typo in the history (issue 816).

* Fixed a problem with item messages during mouse based movement (issue 818).

* Fixed blessed scrolls of identify (issue 819).

* Fixed scrolls of item destruction (issues 822, 872).

* Fixed the direction hints of the wizened old man (issues 825, 913).

* Fixed various problems with equipping or using paid and unpaid items from shops (issues 828, 892, 901, 

  927, 940, 949). 

  Rewrote quite a bit of the shop code.

* Fixed a problem with a certain type of scroll (issue 829, 868, 899).

* Fixed the problem of to-hit modifiers from melee weapons applying to all equipped weapons (issue 830).

* Fixed a problem with special effects being applied to dead victims (issue 832).

* Fixed the singular/plural terminology for dipping and reading (issue 833).

* Fixed the item description order when modifying them for several cases (issue 834).

* Fixed the problem of undead not being immune to poison (issue 835).

* Fixed a description problem with the tremendous blow dealt by barbarians (issue 837).

* Slightly increased the likelihood for non-medium items being found (issue 838).

* Fixed the generation of random items in shops (issue 840).

* Increased the likelihood of iron rations and standard rations (issue 842).

* Reduced the likelihood of "fiddling with door" messages greatly (issue 844).

* Fixed a singular/plural word translation problem (issues 845, 849).

* Fixed the problem of (not) auto-identifying hand wear (issue 846). Boots now also

  auto-identify.

* Fixed yet another root cause for disappearing monsters while switching levels (issue 850).

* Fixed the problem of automatically attacking other beings when moving to a target position by

  mouse click (issue 853).

* Fixed the level 10 abilities of fighters (issue 854).

* Fixed various problems with exchanging positions (raised by issue 856).

* Fixed the problems with unreachable dungeons (issue 866).

* Fixed various problems with monster descriptions (issue 871). Fixed a generic problem that in many

  cases just omitted descriptions for female specimen.

* Fixed corpse drops for undead (issue 873).

* Fixed excessive item identification (issue raised by "not a bug issue" 874).

* Fixed the auto-search ability of thieves (issue 875).

* Fixed a rare serialization problem (issue 876, 898).

* Fixed the problem with excessive shop restocking (issue 879).

* Fixed textual problems in scrolls of identification (issue 893).

* Fixed a problem with attacks (like mighty blow) still occasionally happening at a distance (issue 894).

* Fixed problems with stairs being generated in tension rooms (issue 896).

* Fixed a major problem with innate abilities (like invisibility) - they mostly didn't work... (issue 897)

* Fixed the fighter DV malus negation ability (issue 907).

* Fixed a problem with the look mode (issue 914).

* Fixed a problem with encounter cleanups (issue 915).

* Fixed a problem with shopkeepers locking themselves out (issue 917).

* Fixed several unequippable items (issue 923).

* Fixed the fighter dodge bonus to DV (again issue 923).

* Fixed blessed scrolls of magic mapping (again issue 923).

* Fixed a problem with Alt+Enter during more prompts (issue 934).

* Fixed a wording problem in items with "of" and "and" (issue 936).

* Fixed a problem with dying giant bees (issue 942).

* Fixed an NPE problem with the look mode (issue 947).

* Fixed a problem with a non-appearing chaos gate (issue 948).

* Fixed a catastrophic bug with SFX and intrinsic handling... many probably never worked correctly (issue 953).

* Fixed a problem with item skill bonusses - they were not taken into account at all!

* Fixed a typo in the FAQ.

* Fixed excessive "drop/fall" messages when disarming opponents.

* Fixed a crash when the PC got turned into a shadow.

* Fixed a problem with food rarities that caused many things to be too rare.

* Fixed a problem with hill orc encounters - they erroneously used the standard orcish race instead of the new hill orc

  race introduced in ADOM II 0.2.3!

* Fixed a problem with the text content display - the last line was always missing.

* Shopkeepers no longer greet summoned ruffians as customers.

* Fixed a singular/plural problem with furs.

* Fixed a typo when being overfed.

* Fixed a damage problem with the second claw attack of brown bears.

And here's the download link.