The ADOM crowd funding campaign is over!

And it was a totally amazing, absolutely awesome resounding success. Much more than I ever dared to expect, much more than any troll ever believed possible and much more than one game designer can hope for. But we did it... and broke record after record.

(click here for the March of Triumph by Lucas Dieguez)

ADOM crowd funding: The finest hour has dawned...

Greetings everyone!

The last 24 hours of the ADOM crowd funding campaign have been nothing but a totally dreamy awesome superduper amazing campaignfest... we stormed five (!!!) stretch goals in a row unlocking everything from #4 to #8, made ADOM the most successful computer gaming project on Indiegogo ever (by a far margin) and now have something like 35 minutes to even make it the most successful gaming project ever and unlock stretch goal #9: three more epic community quests!!! If we make that, too I'll add in another free one map mini quest as the topping!

So in short summary (more later on when I manage to catch breath): Stretch goal #8 (two more epic community quests) has been unlocked during the night and we are in to the final race about stretch goal #9 and becoming the most successful gaming project ever on Indiegogo!

Is there enough air for yet another surprise?

(yes, we know that the +4 in the image is wrong - we right now only are at the +2 pledge level but as we never thought we'd get that far we didn't prepare an appropriate image ;-) )

ADOM crow funding: stretch goal #7 (Rolf) unlocked!

What can I say? Yes, the ADOM crowd funding campaign passed the $80,000 mark for stretch goal #7: Rolf Quest. Yes, this is surpassing all expectations and there are ten more hours left for more wonders. And yes, soon I'll be running out of stretch goal images ;-)

Ok, so here we are: A new extensive quest concerning the secrets of Rolf (and Rolf?) will be added to the game. Probably with some new artifacts and stuff thrown in... we'll see about that, too :-)

The next stretch goal #8 at $85,000 will add two more complex quests to the game. Theming and general direction will be decided with lots of community input in order to add content to missing dark spots in the game.

10 hours left... everything right now seems possible :-)

ADOM crowd funding: Twin mega legends grace the Ancardian sky!

You did it yet again! You are truly the best community ever! So we made the $72,500 in the ADOM crowd funding campaign, Jeff Royle cashed in his promise and *KABBOOOOOM* - $75,000 and stretch goal #6 has fallen: ADOM will get the volcano quest - a truly extensive and world shaking thing that will get all my love, creativity and  energy. I really hope that you will love it :-) Jeff is the second mortal to rise to the status of mega legend and he'll also receive some very special treat to immortalize him in the game. Things to be discussed later on ;-)

And that's not enough: We are still moving forward at tremendous speed: Although we still have $3,685 to go to unlock stretch goal #7 - the quest for Rolf, yet another extensive mega quest that will allow me to return to one of my oldest RPG characters (yeah, that's where Rolf comes from) - I'm pretty sure that we have a very good chance of making that goal, too. It's $284 per remaining hour but right now we are doing this easily... so let's see if yet another legendary story can be brought to a closure.

Awesome, awesome, awesome... beyond belief.

Just in case... yet another wonder happens and someone picks up the Demigod pledge level, here's the next stretch goal list (we have no graphics for that and I don't think it's realistic - but I wanted to mention them just in case):

• $110,000 will be the iPad version and five new mini quests,
• $120,000 will be the Android version and three more mega quests,
• $130,000 will see the ADOM Lite RPG converted into the true ADOM RPG and expanded to 128 pages full-color hardcover splendor - at no additional cost for all the folks who decided to pledge for the RPG! (at this level I probably would consider selling it later - but I'd add some special limited thing for all donors to make your version different from the one available later... something like 16 pages of unique art).

Ok, just to have it mentioned in case you manage to surprise me beyond my wildest dreams ;-)

Cheers
Thomas

ADOM crowd funding: A new mega legend has been born!!!

We just made $70,000 in the ADOM crowd funding campaign which means that ADOM will be getting an achievement system and highscore servers and stuff (strech goal #5). Andriy made true on his promise and I'm once more awed beyond any recognizable limit. This is mind-blowing. And the madness doesn't necessarily end... now we are in touching distance to the $75,000 if Jeff makes true on his equivalent promise and we reach $72,500.

Andriy thus will enter the newly available rank of mega legend and we'll work out some nice thing to immortalize him in the game (and beyond).

And we right now are but $1,513 away from $72,500 - about $85 per hour for the remaining 18 hours. Maybe James (Facebookers know) even might get his Rolf answers if yet another wonder happens. You never end being surprised :-)

Thanks for making this the most exciting 60 days of ADOM!

Oh, and one more thing: Three new micro quests now also will be added for free - cashing in on the promise I made!

ADOM crowd funding: The final race towards... stretch goals #5, #6 and #7?

Wow, wow, wow. I'll need to recover for days from the excitement. The ADOM crowd funding campaign is entering the very final hours - 27 to go at the time of this writing.

We made it yet again.

Stretch goal #4: Steam (& co.) support has been unlocked!

And now more exciting things are happening... that might allow us to get to the next stretch goal #5 (achievements & highscore server at $70,000) and even towards the $75,000 (stretch goal #6: the highly elaborate and detailed volcano quest). The following facts will make the remaining 27 hours a hell of an exciting race towards the end of the campaign:

1. Currently we are at $65,907, a mere $1,593 away from the magical $67,500. Andriy has put up a promise to donate another $2,500 if we make that margin so that he pushes us to the $70,000 stretch goal mark and will unlock stretch goal #5: achievements and the high score server. @Andriy: You'll get a very special extra in the game if we really manage that - promised! If we manage to pul this off I have promised to add an extra three mini quests to the game (one level maps with special challenges). So there's the possibility of getting a load of extras with $1,593 in pledges!
2. Jeff Royle just took up Andriy's generous offer and (read comment #8 here) offered to chime in an additional $2,500 if we manage to get to $70,000 in this way and then up to $72,500 by community pledges (my interpretation - Jeff, please correct me if I'm wrong - again, you won't be held responsible for that ;-) ). He'll in that case put us at the $75,000 mark. @Jeff: As for Andriy - if that is to happen something truly special will be added in-game for you, too.
3. Now that we have gotten to the $65,000 everyone who pledged at least $40 (no matter in what combination) will receive a free license for ADOM Deluxe!!! So far this leaves about 259 folks at the $10 and 426 people at the $25 level without a free license for ADOM Deluxe (the numbers are not exact as a number of them pledged more than once or upgraded behind the scenes but they are a good estimation). Now imagine this: If 259 people were to pledge an extra $30 (and you are not forced to upgrade to the RPG level if you don't want that) they'll get a free license and the roughly estimated $7,500 extra would put us even beyond stretch goal #6: The Rolf Quest (with the special pledges above added it)!!! And if the 426 people at the $25 level were to add another $15 (again without being required to buy the RPG) we'd have another $6,000 that might even unlock yet another two mega quests beyond the Rolf quest!!! How awesome is that? While I don't believe that this is very likely to happen it's totally amazing to see that there is a slim fighting chance to unlock stretch goals #6 and #7. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

I've already vowed to make the volcano quest very special - I'll now add that I'll make it a world shaking event if we get that far.

I'm not sure how I'm going to concentrate on real life today. All this is just remarkable beyond any means. Keep it up folks, you are truly

ADOM crowd funding: 37 hours and $1,078 to get some steam! (stretch goal #4)

Hi everyone!

So the final hours finally have begun and its less than 37 hours till the end of the ADOM crowd funding campaign (37 - my magic number :-) ). Currently $1,078 are missing to get us trying to have ADOM Deluxe on Steam, Gamersgate and Desura (and maybe others), the pace again has trickled down quite a bit but I'm more than happy as we achieved so much more than I ever expected - so this will be a glorious end in any case.

Two exciting things have happened:

One of the legend level donors - Andriy - just promised that he will donate $2,500 if the pledge level reaches $67,500 (see the image below with my marker). Now I wouldn't ever hold Andriy responsible for that promise but seeing that he is a legend level donor he surely is someone to be taken very seriously. Which raises the interesting question: Do we manage the $67,500? Because then we might have a pretty serious chance of getting to $70,000 - stretch goal #5 - which means an achievement system and global highscores :-) Exciting times. And try to see it like this: We'd need less than $97 per remaining hour to get there. Truly exciting times :-)

I'm still betting on making stretch goal #4 and then the work will start... this probably is one of my last posts here before the end of the campaign... as I'm watching exhausted and elated.

BTW, as the mini quest quest is running I'm happy to state that we actually scored one new mini quest. I'm not sure why I reported something different earlier but the latest fund balance from Indiegogo indicates that we scored $1,455 (easily surpassing the required $1,000 on August, 26th), $1,890 (sadly failing the required $2,000 on August 27th by a slight margin) and $3,269 (again failing the required $4,000 on August, 28th by a little more).

So here's the deal I offer as the hopefully second exciting thing to happen:

If we make the $67,500 and if Andriy really meant his promise seriously I'll add the two missed mini quests for free as we both times had amazing pledge levels and missed by only a little bit - and I will add a third one just for the sake of it! So that's the final and ultimate chance to procure more free content from the campaign. Wanna try your luck or get others to pledge? And you probably need to act fast as Andriy might need time to act, too :-)

Cheers
Thomas

P.S.: Sorry, Andriy, but that was just to tempting not to mention ;-) And if you don't do it I won't hold it against you - you already have pledged so much as a legend (and beyond) that I'm close to being totally ashamed :-)

ADOM crowd funding: Stretch goal #3 races & classes reached at $60,000!

Ok, we've done it again!

You now are going to see mist elves, ratlings, duelists and chaos knights as new races and classes in ADOM :-) Congratulations and thanks again for your awesomeness!

Now the next stretch goal #4 is an ADOM Deluxe variant of ADOM for Steam, Desura and Gamers Gate at $65,000? Sounds tough? But look at it like this: We only need to gather pledges at about $73 for each of the remaining 69 hours. That's possible and we had many days in the past two weeks where we easily got there. But does the campaign have enough steam left for Steam & Co.? We will see :-)

The ADOM: The Resurrection virtual party

Hi everyone!

On Facebook I already weeks ago announced the idea of having a virtual party if the ADOM crowd funding campaign is successful... now that we have succeeded the party will take place. Originally I had planned to start the party on August, 31st, 20pm, GMT+1 but many ADOM fans from the US brought to my attention that they would have to pass as that would put them off work due to timezone difference.

I feel sheepish for not having considered that, so I have decided to add a poll to the right. Please decide if the ADOM: The Resurrection virtual party should take place on either the 31st of August or the 1st of September (in any case it's at 20pm, GMT+1) and

Please also post suggestions about where to host the party in the comments (Reddit AMA, Google Hangout+, IRC, some forum, something else). I'll add another poll tomorrow for a quick decision :-)

Thanks!

Thomas

ADOM crowd funding: 3 days and $649 to go for new races and classes

Just a short update as I'm in a hurry this morning: The final three days are on and we have just $649 to go to get mist elves, ratlings, chaos knights and duelists. My guess would be that we'll manage this today :-)!

The exciting question will be if there is still enough steam left for a final rush to drive the pledge level to $65,000 for the Steam, Desura & Gamersgate integration :-) ? It will be a close one at best but let's see if yet another wonder is going to happen :-)

ADOM crowd funding: 4 days and $2,959 to go for new races and classes!

The very last days of the ADOM crowd funding campaign are upon us. We are getting closer to the $60,000 donation mark which will add mist elves, ratlings, chaos knights and duelists to the game. My current guess is that we are pretty likely to hit the mark but we won't get much farther without a new push in donations from "somewhere". Which is more than ok as the campaign surpassed my expectations and we are happy that new versions of ADOM are going to happen. And that ADOM II will benefit from it, too.

The mini quest quest yesterday resulted in but donations of $905 and thus failed to reach the $1,000 limit. So no new mini quest. Additionally the limit today rises to $2,000 so my personal guess is that it will be very hard to unlock mini quests - maybe also as a consequence of being very successful at reaching all possible donors in earlier fundraising phases.

Nonetheless all this is totally amazing - so thank you very much so far and let's have exciting final four days... maybe we'll get to the new races and classes ;-) And maybe even to the Steam level due to some last minute rush :-) ?

Cheers
Thomas

A glimpse at a past version of the ADOM RPG

The remaining (less than) five days of the ADOM crowd funding campaign offer the one and only chance to come into possession of the yet to be written ADOM Lite RPG - for a pledge of $40 (shipping included) you can get hold of a single copy, additional copies are available for $25. For $400 you can become the owner of a highly limited boxed set for ADOM, including the RPG, a hand-tuned d20, an extra manual for master classes and other stuff. See the campaign page for details.

The ADOM Lite RPG will never again be available once the campaign ends - neither as PDF nor as print. So the remaining five days are the one and only chance to become the owner of this highly limited collectors item for the ADOM afficionado.

ADOM crowd funding: 5 days and $3,394 left for new races and classes!

Hi everyone! Latest update while I finally find some more time to finish ADOM II 0.3.0: There are still almost five days left in the ADOM crowd funding campaign and we are moving closer to stretch goal #3: new races and classes.

If $3,394 in pledges are collected before the end of the campaign the following new races and classes will be added to ADOM (and as a consequence eventually also will find their way into ADOM II):

• Ratlings, beloved by many, finally will become a PC race, in all their glory.
• Mist elves, a new ephemeral elven race associated with white necromancy, will show up.
• Duelists, true master of fighting one on one, will introduce a new fighter variant.
• Chaos knights for the first time will introduce an option to side with corruption and spread ChAoS in the game.

Additionally the mini quest quest is running and for every $1,000 collected today a new mini quest will be added to ADOM. Already tomorrow unlocking new mini quests will become twice as difficult as by then $2,000 will be required to unlock a new mini quest.

I'll be back to working on ADOM II now hoping to be able to finish 0.3.0 before the end of the crowd funding campaign.

ADOM crowd funding: The mini quest quest

Hi everyone!

For the final five days of the ADOM crowd funding campaign I'm hereby announcing the

mini quest quest

Yes, the name is correct. The quest for mini quests. The quests already defined as stretch goals are complex quests (e.g. multi-level quests with interesting dependencies and secrets). To keep the momentum of the crowd funding campaign the mini quest quest is designed to allow for the addition of so-called (surprise!) mini quest.

A mini quest is defined as a quest that will add one new special map to the game, probably with new monsters, items or other special features to make for an interesting experience. Many of those will be added as side levels to existing dungeons, to further the chance of more variations in play. None of those mini quests will have non-local effects, e.g. they are just interesting and challenging extra locations to spice up the overall game.

How can mini quests be added to the free content of the game?

These are the rules:

• There are daily pledge level brackets defined which are used to count the number of mini quests gained.
• Pledge level brackets are $1,000 (for August, 26th), $2,000 (for August, 27th), $4,000 (for August, 28th), $8,000 (for August 29th) and $16,000 (for August, 30th - the final day of the campaign).
• For every full multiple of pledges of a specific bracket, one mini quest will be added to the game (in addition to whatever stretch goals might be unlocked).
• No more than 10 mini quests can be added for one single pledge level bracket. If enough donations are accumulated for a single bracket on a single day (example below), the next mini quests are figured out according to the next higher pledge level bracket (and so on).

Example: On August, 26th, a total of $3,248 are pledged. This would make for three free mini quests to be added (three multiples of the pledge level bracket defined for August, 26th, were donated). On August, 27th, someone pledges for the $50,000 demigod level. Additionally another $3,450 are pledged by other people for a total of $53,450 (yeah, dreaming here - that really would alter the future of ADOM ;-) ). First of all ten mini quests would be added as there is a maximum of ten multiples of $2,000 (the pledge level bracket for August, 27th). This leaves $33,450 in donations unaccounted for. They are handled according to the next higher pledge level bracket ($4,000 for August 28th) adding yet another eight new mini quests (eight additional multiples of the pledge level bracket of $4,000). A total of 18 (!) mini quests thus would be added to the game.

Yes, it's quite costly to get one free mini quest (but I guess, we'll see a couple nonetheless). That's because it's also quite a bit of dangerous work to add them to ADOM (it's complex and the code for that is pretty fiddly and ancient). And yes, it's worthwhile to pledge as much as possible early on :-) Later on less mini quests will be added.

Now go and get them!

Actually the power pledge drive #5: artifacts now is over!

Nobody noticed. Even I forgot to mention it. The final power pledge drive: artifacts is over.

Nonetheless it helped you to garner a lot of additional free content for the ADOM crowd funding campaign.

It started on August, 10th, at a donation level of $31,468 and accompanied us - unnoticed by many - until August, 24th. During that time a total of $23,270 were donated!!!

This brought us up to a donation level of $54,738 and now will bring a flood of artifacts (and also lots of new items) to ADOM: 46 new artifacts (!!!) as a direct result of the "one artifact per $500 pledges" rule, and an additional 32 for 16 multiples of $1,000 on one single day we managed to pass!!! The best day having been the 21st of August with more than $6,500 in donations on a single day! Absolutely awesome.

So there's 46 new artifacts and 32 new items coming your way for free!

As for the artifacts: ADOM in the future only will provide subsets of the total list of artifacts per game to make the game a bit more random and increase the difficulty of creating the perfect build for a winning character. Nobody said that ChAoS sleeps ;-)

Cheers
Thomas

ADOM stretch goal #2 unlocked: Awesome tile set for ADOM & ADOM II

Hoodyhoo! We just passed $55,000 on the final yards towards the end of the ADOM crowd funding campaign - which means that our artist, Krys, now is going to spend several months of his life working on the most beautiful tile set imaginable, to be used in both ADOM and as a foundation for the tile support in ADOM II (man, now I'm going to program tile support into ADOM II - never thought that would happen :-) - but love it!)

The next goal now is the $60,000 level which will unlock mist elves and ratlings as new races. Additionally you will get chaos knights and duelists as new professions... all of which means that these additions also will find their way into ADOM II if we reach them!

And - on the slim chance that this awesome dream manages to come that far - the $65,000 and $70,000 levels will unlock ADOM Deluxe (with free licenses for all donors or the $40 and above levels) for mainstream gaming sites like Steam, Desura and Gamersgate... and eventually will add an achievement system to ADOM as well as global highscore servers!

I'm really curious how this campaign still will manage to go as it already now has surpassed all my expectations... I can only repeat myself: You are the most awesome!!!

Where do ADOM fans lurk?

I really have been wondering about that question as day by day during the ADOM crowd funding campaign true ADOM fans (playing the game very frequently) show up stating: "Hey, I didn't even now that there is a crowd funding campaign running!". Which is frightening to me as we might have gathered so much more donations had we reached those people that ADOM's future already might be secure for many years to come.

So to improve on this I'd like to collect all the places where you know ADOM fans to be spending time and writing / reading stuff. Once the list is somewhat stable I'll add an extra page to this site to have a permanent page collecting the locations.

Off hands I can think of the following places:

The original newsgroup: rec.games.roguelike.adom (rec.games.roguelike.announce probably also makes sense)

My official ADOM forums.

The ADOM Wikipedia page (also in German).

The official ADOM blog.

Roguebasin

Temple of the Roguelike and specifically it forums for the big roguelikelikes and announcements.

As I'm not much of an IRC user there are probably IRC channels that are important. And probably many more message boards... and who knows what else. As I'm a bit in a hurry this morning I probably also forgot a few other places I frequent ;-) Let me know what else you can think of! No matter how large or small the location might be...

ADOM crowd funding: 6 days and $592 for the next stretch goal!

The awesomeness continues... we still have 6 days left until the ADOM crowd funding campaign ends and now only $592 separate us from allowing me to hire Krys for a prolonged amount of time to paint an awesome tile set, get even better music and also work on the tile set engine for ADOM II - yes, that's all included in the $592 we still need to puck up for stretch goal #2!

Afterwards we can start to wonder and hope for stretch goal #3 (mist elves, ratlings as new races; duelists and chaos knights as new classes) and stretch goal #4 (ADOM Deluxe on gaming sites like Steam, Desura and Gamersgate).

Six more days... almost enough to create a world ;-) More than enough to build the foundation for a new generation of awesome games!

Thomas Biskup
ADOM & ADOM II Maintainer
"The Creator" ;-)

ADOM crowd funding: 7 days and $2,467 to go...

...until we reach stretch goal #2: A hand-crafted tile set of amazing awesomeness for ADOM and ADOM II. Besides that we now have more than 1,000 funders (according to Indiegogo - I honestly have to admit that I didn't check the facts so far, so it also might be "1,000 fundings" depending on how they count).

EDIT: Wow, this is the first time this week that I'm up so early that it actually still shows the same number of days on the Indiegogo main page. Actually it's more like seven days...

I'm right now tired beyond belief. My time tracking sheet tells me that so far I have spent more than 140 hours on the crowd funding campaign alone (almost 18 full work days - try that with a more than full time job and some resemblance of private life during a period of 52 days) so the first thing I'll be doing at the weekend is "catching a lot of sleep".

Besides that I hope to get up a new video tonight... it's overdue. Keep your thumbs pressed and - please - continue spreading the word about the game. I continue to be amazed how many actual hard core fans haven't even heard about the campaign. Something that completely puzzles me in this digital information age but it's a mystery I probably won't manage to solve... so next to fall is the

ADOM crowd funding: 8 days and $3,902 left for awesome tiles

Hi everyone! Here's the next quick update regarding the ADOM crowd funding campaign:

1. The awesomeness continues. We have reached $51,098 in donations as the time of this writing. So the campaign is easily funded and all pledge rewards are guaranteed!
2. We are a mere $3,902 away from being able to hire Krys for a prolonged amount of time in order to create a truly beautiful tile set (stretch goal #2, see the picture of a demo tile set below that I keep reposting to make sure that everyone really has seen it ;-) ). Keep it going - this is my personal pet stretch goal as I am - as mentioned quite a number of time - totally in love with the stuff Krys is doing. And keep in mind: ADOM II also will benefit from it as I would be able to reuse the tile set - so you basically are funding two games at once (I promised to add tile support to ADOM II, too, if we reach the $55,000 stretch goal).
3. The final power pledge drive for this campaign (#5, artifacts) is running out tomorrow, midnight. The deal still is that one new artifact will be included for every $500 pledged over $31,468 (the donation sum when the power pledge drive started - see how far we have come). Already now 39 (!!!) new artifacts will be added to ADOM. Additionally - as two new standard items will get added for every day on which we surpass $1,000 in donations (multiples count) - another whopping load of standard items has come together - sadly I right now can't give you the exact number as Indiegogo once again updated the platform introducing new bugs... this time the funding overview page is broken (paging no longer works) and I can't check all the details. Customer support has been notified :-( But I'm pretty sure that another dozen or so normal items easily should have come together as a bonus.

Every day I keep being surprised about getting into contact with a surprising number of people who never before have heard about the campaign. So please continue spreading the word - especially now that the campaign is successful and all pledge rewards are guaranteed! You can

• tweet about the campaign on Twitter using the #ADOM tag,
• share the campaign on Facebook or Google+,
• blog about it,
• post about it on message boards and forums,
• notify journalists, other bloggers, online editors, etc. about the success of the campaign and
• generally talk to everyone about it.

The untouched potential still seems to be enormous so every help here is more than appreciated - especially since this is a wonderful way of providing more support to the campaign without pledging more money yourself ;-)

And here's the tile support demo image once more ;-)

ADOM crowd funding: Reaching for the stretch goals!

Now that ADOM has been successfully funded since this morning (22nd of August 2012, 02:03am GMT+1) we can focus on reaching as many stretch goals as possible.

Krys has provided this awesome stretch goal chart (which in a couple of minutes also will appear on the campaign pages):

Below you can find the more detailed explanations once again...

ADOM crowd funding: stretch goal #1 taken by storm!

Folks, I'm in love with you :-) The awesomeness continues and we are setting record after record and achievement after achievement with the ADOM crowd funding campaign:

• ADOM: The Resurrection got funded a bare 16 hours ago, nine days before the end of the campaign!
• ADOM: The Resurrection has been successfully funded a mere 15 hours ago.
• ADOM: The Resurrection is the highest successful game related campaign ever on Indiegogo!
• ADOM: The Resurrection is the highest funded roguelike game ever.
• And then the magic continued: A mere 15 hours later stretch goal #1 was taken by storm - ADOM now will get an integration with NotEye to enable tile support and allow the community to build tile sets. Thanks to Zeno for doing amazing groundwork with NotEye I'm very much looking forward to working together! As the time of this writing we are at $50,246 - another $2,246 in that short time! And as the power pledge drive: artifacts is still running until the 24 of August we by now must have collected something like 40+ new artifacts and dozens of additional items... I did not yet have time to check the statistics in this funding frenzy :-)

Now we are entering the next phase of the crowd funding campaign (almost nine days left - that's enough to the change the world ;-) ):

• The next stretch goal is the $55,000 mark which will allow us to hire Krys for an extended period of time to create the most beautiful roguelike tile set ever (my opinion, sorry to the "competition" ;-) )

• The best thing about it: The tile set will be usable for ADOM II, too. So effectively we now are collecting money to reach two goals at once - a beautiful tile set for ADOM and graphical tile sets for ADOM II. I promise to add graphical tile sets to ADOM if we pass the $55,000 level as I'm totally in love with the stuff Keys is doing. And combined with Lucas' audio magic will be as close to perfection as I can imagine ;-)

Ok, folks, let's continue this magic journey!

ADOM: Now let's build the future!

Once more:

ADOM: The Resurrection has been successfully funded on August 22nd, 2:03 am, GMT +1.

Awesome beyond words. Total coolness. Thank you so much!

And we still have almost nine days ahead of us!

MWAHAHAHAHA - it's alive!!!

(thanks to Jason Smith who provided the inspiration for this humble title :-) )

Folks, I am surprised, humbled, flattered, amazed, awed, elated, hysterical, happy, relieved, confirmed in my beliefs... and totaly exhausted. All at the same time.

What seemed unbelievable in the beginning due to all the negative feedback now has become reality... nine days ahead of time.

ADOM 1.2.0 has been successfully crowd funded.

Much faster than we ever anticipated. We do not even have a victory picture or something like that prepared as this came much sooner than we dared to hope. So you really caught us unaware!!!

Thank you so much to everyone out there for making the resurrection dream come true. This is one of the most exciting moments in my ADOM history and yet another of those unbeliebably crazy memories that accompany me throughout life up until to my final minutes. You are the most awesome and wonderful community any game designer can dream of and now ADOM will return... with a vengeance. I'll probably need a day or two (since right now it's mid-work week and an extremely busy one at that) to update the statistics for all the stuff that will be added. We'll do our very best to make the next ADOM release the very best ever.

And even better: The campaign is far from over! Now we can reach for the stretch goals. All this is a dream and I'll continue to dream until the end of August:

• At $50,000 we will have official tile support.
• At $55,000 we will have an absolutely awesome official tile set - the most beautiful ever.
• And at $65,000 we'll have a chance to get ADOM into the mainstream. At least a little.

But I'm rambling... thanks once more. I'll now break down and have a small comatose sleep before continuing the dream tomorrow!

ADOM crowd funding: 9,5 hours and $1,113 to go...

The final hours might be upon us... we still have 9,5 hours left and need "just" $1,113 more to successfully fund ADOM: The resurrection and gain a lot of free extras for the game by doing so. I think the last time I experienced so much tense and excitement with ADOM was during the final minutes before the release of ADOM 1.0.0 :-)

This might be the night to revive a dream :-)

Let's see if we really make it tonight...

Important issue regarding pledge upgrades :-^

I just received a question regarding the ADOM crowd funding campaign that really got me shuddering nervously... concerning pledge upgrades. It was brought to my attention that the instructions about upgrading might be misunderstandable. This issue only must concern you if you contacted me to as described to upgrade your pledge level. If you did not mail me to upgrade a pledge and/or don't paln to do so this posting is not for you!

Let me explain the potential misunderstanding with an example following the instructions under the link given above.

Example:

You already pledged $40 and intend to upgrade to $100.

Following the instructions given under the link above the correct way to upgrade is:

1. Send an email to creator(at)ancientdomainsofmystery.com. Your mail should have the title "ADOM pledge level upgrade" and contain the name under which you pledged and the upgrade you want to do. So far everyone seems to have done the right thing here!
2. After sending the mail simply go to Indiegogo and pledge without selecting any pledge level (the last option in the list). Enter the same information as when you first pledged and enter the additional pledge amount. Here is where the problem might occur... it would be correct to enter the extra amount of $60 (the difference between the old pledge level of $40 and the new target pledge level of $100). It would be wrong to enter $100 - as that would cause you to pledge a total of $140!
3. Soon after receiving your mail I will confirm both it and the new pledge and note down the higher level you desire. 
4. After the campaign ends successfully you will be rated at the final level you achieved.

Luckily there have been less than 40 upgrades so far and many of the email texts sent seem to indicate that the upgraders did the right thing. I hope that we did't have any or too many misunderstandings - it would be a shame at this point :-(

Also luckily most upgrades were moderate amounts and even if all of them had been incorrect we'd be able to sort it out afterwards - there just doesn't seem to be a way to do this during the campaign.

As a result: If you believe that you have made a mistake upgrading your pledge please email me once more with an email title of "ADOM pledge upgrade mistake" and try to explain the mistake. We'll sort it out and I'll refund the mispledged amount completely (which can be reconstructed from the actually submitted pledges and mail texts).

Man, that question really rattled me. Hopefully there is no serious problem. That's what you get for using a platform that doesn't officially support pledge upgrades :-(

ADOM crowd funding: 9 days and $3,114 left to go...

We are getting very very close and by now it's hard to believe that the ADOM crowd funding campaign still might fail. But it can still fail very well as we have to get another $3,114 donated... which is about $346 per remaining day.

More important though is that the power pledge drive: artifacts and the "let's get over with it campaign" both end on the 24th of August. And if we don't make the campaign goal within the next 12 hours a boss monster, artifacts, items and minions will be lost... so let's hope for an amazing end run tonight!

Oh yes, and this tuesday we managed to collect $2,609 so far... yet another amazing record for recent times! You are awesome beyond belief!!!

ADOM crowd funding: Let's get over with it!

Ok, today so far has been a totally awesome day for the ADOM crowd funding campaign: We had a new record pledge level for recent weeks, there is a new audio demo by Lucas Dieguez and the stretch goals have been announced. Now I'd like to try to get over with it by passing the $48,000 goal for successful funding as soon as possible.

In order to try this we'll be now doing a kind of Dutch (reverse) auction (only kind of):

• If the ADOM crowd funding campaign is successful within the next 24 hours (until 10:04am, August 22nd, GMT+1) I will add an extra special new boss monster with a special new map, 2 new artifacts, 4 new minion monsters for said boss and 16 new items that only will be recoverable on said special level.
• If the ADOM crowd funding campaign is successful between 10:05am, August 22nd, GMT+1 and 10:05am, August 23rd, GMT+1, one new artifact on a special new map, 2 new minion monsters and 8 new items recoverable only on that map will be added. And a note somewhere on that map saying "Away for treasure hunting. Will be back soon." (to explain the missing boss monster).
• If the ADOM crowd funding campaign is successful between 10:05am, August 23nd, GMT+1 and 10:05am, August 24th, GMT+1, 1 new minion monster and 4 new items recoverable only on that map will be added. And a note somewhere on that map saying "Gone for artifact creation."
• If the ADOM crowd funding campaign is successful between 10:05am, August 24th, GMT+1 and 23:59pm, August 24th, GMT+1, 1 new minion monster and 1 new item will be added as a wilderness encounter.

So if you have been waiting to donate, do it now - it will get you extra free content :-)

And remember that the power pledge drive: artifacts also still is running!

New audio track demo for the ADOM intro by Lucas Dieguez

Yet another update for today: Lucas sent me an audio track update for the planned intro for ADOM. He's worked a lot on the instruments and what not (I'm no musician, so sorry for lacking the proper words). I really really love it, hope you enjoy it, too!

If the ADOM crowd funding campaign is successfully funded we'll add exciting tracks for various special locations... I'm so much looking forward to that, too, so let's make it happen!

ADOM crowd funding: 10 days and $5,873 to go...

Another record in the end race towards the finish line of the ADOM crowd funding campaign: since my previous update folks from the most awesome community in the world have pledged another $2,841!!! Totally fricking awesome... keep it coming... we are so close to a goal of which so many people thought it would be impossible to reach and now it really just seems to be a matter of time - at least I pray for that!

So now we have to meet $587,30 per day to reach the basic funding goal and if we manage to collect $1,287.30 per remaining day ADOM will receive the most awesome tile set ever! Don't ask me about dreaming of an ADOM version for major gaming platforms and sustained development at $65,000 ;-) Ok, now I'm getting megalomaniac... let's meet the campaign goal and have a great virtual party!

ADOM crowd funding: stretch goals between $50,000 and $100,000

Now that we have entered the final count down of the ADOM: The Resurrection crowd funding campaign I'd like to explain all defined stretch goals and give you a brief look into my line of reasoning.

(kudos to Krys for this new awesome piece of art... he's doing such brilliant stuff - you want to reach the $55,000 stretch goal, believe me, as that would allow Krys to work for months on awesome artwork!)

ADOM crowd funding: 11 days and $8,714 to go...

Whew... this sunday was very weak as far as the ADOM crowd funding campaign is concerned - we barely made $480 (no new artifact today!). Which still is a nice sum but not enough to make the campaign successful.

I'll try to put up the final stretch goals tomorrow morning and hopefully we will have a cool new video to get more undecided people to pledge now. If we lose momentum I fear the worst as a failed campaign would mean that everything is gone (as I mentioned a couple of times). So we still have $792,18 per day to reach the minimum goal and $1428,55 per day to really be able to do a beautiful tile based version of ADOM Classic. Tense... and remember: the power pledge drive: artifacts is running for but four more days. If you tarry too long you will loose the chance to see more new artifacts and items in ADOM. It's now or never ;-)

ADOM crowd funding: 12 days and $9,179 to go...

Just a very brief update on the ADOM crowd funding campaign today as I'm working in a mad frenzy on finishing ADOM II 0.3.0 (so much left to be done to not make it too much of a rushed job):We had another pretty decent pledge day with saturday (although weaker than the previous days, only $844).  Thus we still need $9,179 during the 12 remaining days - which makes roughly $764.92 per day as a minimum.

ADOM crowd funding: 13 days and $10,023 to go...

Friday, 17th, was yet another good day for the ADOM crowd funding campaign... another $1,071 were donated which - due to the still running power pledge drive artifacts - nets another two artifacts and two more normal items! We now are getting to the closing line - $771 per day is the minimum to be donated to make the campaign a success (otherwise everything is lost!) and to be able to enjoy a beautiful tiled version of ADOM we need a total of $17,023 - tough but not impossible as it amount to $1,309.46 per day (for the past four days we have been close to that!)... so imagine... we might be able to get to the point where both ADOM and ADOM II will be able to sport beautiful tiles (as I would also use the tile set in ADOM II and - having to chance to use such a beautiful tile set - would set out to finish the UI abstraction for tiles in ADOM II). The final days will be interesting as the most striking answers will be unveiled:

• Will the ADOM crowd funding campaign be a resounding success or a total failure?
• Will ADOM and ADOM II receive beautiful tile sets?
• Will we by lucky chance even manage to surpass those goals and get more quests, a full-color RPG, new races and classes and much more? (I so far didn't dare to put up even more stretch goals as we have way to go - do you want to see my proposals for higher goals?).

Keep it coming, folks, the ADOM renaissance is near!