Crowdfunding ADOM: The Resurrection - What you get, what I ask for

While I'm still fiddling with preparing a crowd funding campaign for ADOM: The Resurrection I'd like to elaborate on what goal I'm trying to reach, what I would provide in return and why I'm doing this now and at all.
Let me preface the explanations with a couple of comments on the context as recently I really got annoyed by some Reddit trolls that overshadowed some reasonable questions posed by interested people. Some observations regarding crowd funding ADOM:

• I failed to deliver a new version of ADOM in almost eight years. That's not because I don't care for ADOM but it's because I again and again failed to find enough time to restart ADOM. As can be seen by the fact that I also failed to deliver JADE / ADOM II in that time. Thinking for a moment it should be obvious that I have nothing to gain but a lot to lose by promising year by year that "now it's going to happen" - so it should be obvious that I didn't do that to fool anyone but rather I believed in being able to carry through. During the past eleven years I founded a company with three good friends that has grown to more than 65 people, I finally finished my Ph.D. (while working 50-70 hours weeks at growing said business), I got married and I bought a house. And I let myself be sidetracked by half a dozen of blogs and pen & paper RPG designs (see this, this and this among others). All that among other things - like real life. So I just underestimated the diversions I couldn't resist.
• Last year I finally rediscovered my focus and restarted work on ADOM II (JADE) which has been an immense pleasure and is going very well. More than 150 blog posts happened since then, around a dozen releases and ADOM II is growing at a steady pace. Slower than I hoped for but steady. And the latter part is important. 
• I also had to learn that life is very different when you are 40 (41 in a couple of days... good lord... I'm getting old) than when you are 25. Lots of more responsibility, lots of more work, very different life. All this takes its toll when trying to develop a complex game. Not that I am complaining - I love my life. So while I was sorry about not living up to my own expectations as far as ADOM and ADOM II were concerned I in the end felt there was nothing I could have done differently about it - except maybe announcing once too often that "this year something is going to happen". Oh well.

So why a fund raiser for ADOM now? And not for ADOM II?

Because the stars are right, my friends. The stars are right... and because I still care for ADOM.

Let me explain:

• Time has been (and still is) the limiting resource as far as ADOM is concerned. It's obvious and I'm not going to fall for that trick again by getting too excited or ambitious. ADOM II development is a lot more efficient and much easier - IMHO one hour spent on ADOM II equals about 10 hours spent on ADOM. That might explain why I now finally manage to make some steady progress on ADOM II... releasing the very first version was the most difficult thing... technically and psychologically.
• I never have stopped caring for ADOM and I ache at the thought of the bugs and problems still contained in it. It's still my baby and up to ADOM II it probably was the biggest and most ambitious software project I ever did.
• Sometimes I also wonder what would have happened if I had kept up ADOM development in some way - but that's gone and it was not possible.
• But I'd like to at least leave ADOM in a state that is good enough (and not somehow unfinished). And if more is possible (rekindling development) I'm all for it. But that's again dreaming. We'll see what's going to happen.
• I have gathered a team of amazing people (Jochen, compatriot in crime for half my life, Oneiros Dieguez who is doing amazing musical stuff for ADOM II and Krzysztof Dycha - who won the ADOM II design competition - and right now does amazing images for ADOM II) who will help to provide skills to move ADOM somewhat closer to 21st century. But all these people need to live, too. I just can't expect others to work hard for my dreams, I want to pay them.
• And here we are at a point in time where crowd funding is suddenly enjoying enormous popularity and might allow to buy the time required to do real development on ADOM.

Thus my thoughts are very simple: If I manage to gather enough funds that guarantee me that we'll be able to release a great new version of ADOM I'm willing to take the risks and the efforts. I'm not humble about the amount of funds for several reasons: After 13 years of cost estimation in software development I have a much better estimation for real costs than so long ago... and the project can only succeed with realistic expectations. Additionally I'm not going to (again) fall into the trap of enthusiastically promising things that realistically then can't happen.

So we'll now come to some conclusion in the topic of ADOM... and whatever it is, life will go on. Either with ADOM and ADOM II or just with ADOM II. It will be the final decision of the ADOM community. I'd prefer the first but I will as well accept the second - both are easily understandable. But for us this is the point where I honestly and seriously can say: After trying crowd funding we will have used up all realistic options (not the ones we might dream about) and that's a good way to come to some kind of closure. Either in success or failure.

IMPORTANT: Whatever the funding goal will be for the campaign this (IMHO) shouldn't concern the individual fan: The question for the individual IMHO should be:

Do you get enough in return for whatever amount of money you pledge? 

If you can answer "yes" to that, by all means pledge. If the answer is "no" please consider if you would like to pledge to say "thank you" for the work that went before. If the answer is "yes" please pledge. If the answer is "no" the upcoming campaign is not for you and that's perfectly ok. If interest is not high enough or the costs do not seem acceptable that's another way of drawing a line under ADOM. Despite a failing campaign there still might be an ADOM release - it just might be a lot less ambitious or it might cost money or...whatever. That's to be pondered when the campaign is over and the results are there. But there won't be any promises any more. That's for sure.


Now for the campaign details...

What do I ask for?

Right now I feel that I am going to ask for $60.000. A lot of money. But rekindling ADOM is a lot of work. We need to get back into code that we barely have touched for eight years, we have to fiddle with hundreds of bugs, port it to new systems, etc. And we are people that have day jobs - so we have become more expensive than fifteen years ago. While this might not make us the best ADOM developers business wise (we are not as cheap as we were during our student days) we are the most experienced team you can get and we haven proven that we can deliver if we have the time to do so. It's the only reality I can offer. Which leads us to the question:

What do you get for a pledge?

There are various pledge levels and even at the lowest level you will be part of the development process, get a steady stream of alpha releases to play with and thus will have many opportunities to shape the next version of ADOM. Higher pledge levels will provide access to limited editions of ADOM (with pledge-only PC races and classes, special artifacts and other goodies). There will be a "reverse postcard quest", special certificates and even the chance to win access to the source code (although that pledge is more of an inside joke and I doubt anyone will pay for it) or to be an invited guest for the next big ADOM and ADOM II release parties. Stretch goals include Android versions of ADOM, scripting and plugin extensions for user add-ons and at some final distant point the open sourcing of ADOM. Even later pretty serious community building instead of just believing in "Open it and they weill come". At very distant points. Most likely I will post more details about the pledge levels tomorrow or on Saturday. Between the major stretch goals there will be many minor stretch goals (like additional corruptions, new items and artifacts, etc.).

What do you specifically if the campaign is successful?

The planned minimum for the new release of ADOM (1.2.0) is:

• A stable release for all the major platforms (e.g. Windows, MacOS, Linux and iOS on iPad, for historically reasons probably also Amiga; maybe others) with decent installers. If you have wishes here (Android support is a stretch goal) voice them now.
• A version with as many bug fixes as we can manage. The bug lists here are the relevant ones. There are tons of bugs in them and many are a lot harder to fix than you might think at first glance. But we will be doing our best to produce the most stable version of ADOM ever.
• A release that will patch many balance issues and oversights. And it will add better handling for many special situations where the responses and messages of the game should be much better. For example there are issues with dozens of points covering messages that do not quite fit the very specific context. In many cases these fixes are just tedious but in some instances the answers are not that simple. Some such issues contain enough stuff to keep a developer occupied for a week or longer.
• A better user interface. There have been many UI innovations in other roguelike games over the years and some of them should get introduced into ADOM. We will have a community discussion to determine which innovations are most useful and needed.
• I'd like to add two new quest locations - no hint on the specific quests at this point but they will be related to unsolved mysteries.
• New items are planned: I'd like to add at least two dozen new items across the board, some inspired by ADOM II.
• New monsters are planned: Again a monster or two from ADOM II might be appropriate and I have some ideas for new races connected to new quests. All in all two dozen new monsters should show up.
• Two new player races will be added: Ratlings and Mist Elves. The former IMHO have been missing for a long time, the latter ones are added to fulfill a promise I gave about 11 years ago (Hi, Mario! Remember?). Both will only be available to folks who pledge a certain amount of money.
• Two new professions will be added: Duelists (as a complement to ratlings) and another one. We'll vote on the other one - should no clear decision be made it will be Pyromancers. The professions also only will be available if you pledge at a certain level.
• Some graphics (for the title screen, no tiles there), music and sound effects will be added.
• The manual will be revised and a high quality print manual also will become available. The ASCII manual will be supplemented by a beautiful PDF manual.

Then lots of stretch goals are planned. The campaign at first will only show the major stretch goal milestones and once one is reached I will add minor stretch goals (like an additional new corruption for every x units of funding).

Oh, and what about open sourcing ADOM? That also is a stretch goal (a very ambitious one - so don't hold your breath). I have explained dozens of times why I don't feel like "just" open sourcing ADOM. I won't get into that again.

So that's basically it. In summary ADOM 1.2.0 would be an evolutionary version trying to patch, fix and improve the details instead of totally redefining the game. Afterwards... we'll see. It depends on many factors, the success of the campaign being the most important.

Please feel free to ask all things that concern you in the comments section and I will try to explain my stance. I'll get back to the pledge levels and stretch goals soon. Right now I keep changing them thrice per day (or so) and that indicates that I'm not feeling secure enough to post them ;-)