July in review

To sum it up in one sentence: Wow, what a wild ride so far :-) !!!

Quite a few amazing things happened:

• I started the "Resurrect ADOM development" crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo. As of the moment of this writing we have collected $26.746, which is 55,72% of the total goal. With 29 days left it will be interesting to see if enough funds come together to produce an amazing new version of ADOM. Due to two power pledge drives we also managed to add 12 new corruptions, 13 new items and 4 new monsters to the list of things to be added beyond our initial plans. The greatest challenge for the remaining time is to raise awareness for the campaign even more - every small action (like the invitation to the virtual ADOM resurrection party via Facebook) show that there are dozens and dozens of people who are more than willing to pledge and still haven't noticed the campaign. Spreading the word via newsgroups, forums, blogs, Twitter and Facebook thus still is my top priority in order to reach the potentially thousands of ADOM fans out there that didn't keep in touch to closely over the years and thus are "lost potential".
• Behind the scenes we are preparing a new ADOM release (yes, that's ADOM, not ADOM II) that will hopefully help to raise awareness and get still more supporters into the fold. We hope to have it out at the weekend latest. As the ADOM release will work in some kind of reduced mode after August, 30th, I hope that folks will feel compelled to enter the crowd funding drive at the $25 level at least (which also is the reason for reducing functionality of the release after August, 30th - the $25 level gives you access to the prereleases of ADOM 1.2.0 and to me it doesn't seem fair having to pledge for something of which others can get a free version - but comments are welcome as usual ;-) ).
• ADOM II 0.3.0 also is nearing completion although I got slowed down by the crowd funding campaign (guys and gals, you probably have no idea about how much time this takes up... at least I hadn't). Right now I'm working on finishing the revised graphical look for the splash screens and main screen (Krys is finishing the final images right now and they look totally amazing) and next will be the musical scores by Lucas Dieguez and finally the new installer. Everything else planned for 0.3.0 will be postponed to 0.3.x to finally get the new missile combat stuff out for testing!
• Some statistics: The number of visitors to the blog increased by almost 50% due to the crowd funding campaign attention, while the advertising income decreased by 11% at the same time. Still enough to pay for my hosting costs and stuff but a surprise considering the vastly increased number of visits. Content too boring with all the talk about the crowd funding campaign :-) ?

So, what's planned for August? Three things will keep us busy:

1. Driving the ADOM crowd funding campaign. I really hope that we make the goal as so many people got invested emotionally and I'd by now hate to disappoint them all (as easy as it was in the beginning to say for me "well, let's Fate decide if there is a future for ADOM Classic"... it has stopped being easy). We are right now discussing the possibility of adding tile support to ADOM, so this might become the first major stretch goal to be announced.
2. Release ADOM Classic 1.2.0 Prerelease 1.
3. Release ADOM II 0.3.0.

Stay tuned... oh, and here is a small preview teaser of the new ADOM II main screen for basic mode:

And here's the sketch for expert mode:

As far as I am concerned ADOM II is going to be the most beautiful roguelike game ever :-)

And the splash screens also are pure fricking genius... but you'll see them when the new version is out.