ADOM II 0.3.1 released!

I'm happy to announce the release of ADOM II 0.3.1. As a Christmas gift to myself I decided to work on ADOM II for a couple of days and it has been a nice change of pace compared to ADOM Classic. ADOM Classic is a mountain of detail and content with a somewhat arcane, baroque copy&paste C-based API. ADOM II is a youthful and brash re-imagination of the game, still with a serious lack as far as content goes but with an incredible promise for the future (as far as I am concerned). And a wonderful architecture and API that I'm so much looking forward to to toy with extensively.

ADOM 1.2.0p5 released (Ho Ho Ho Ho!)

We are happy to announce the public release of ADOM 1.2.0p5 - one of the slightly older closed prereleases of the ongoing ADOM development due to the success of our crowd funding campaign.

ADOM II 0.3.0 released! (Merry Christmas!)

I'm proud to announce the release of ADOM II 0.3.0. While this new version is not as complete as I wanted it to be (missing a general compiler, extensive testing and many details for new players) I didn't want to let it sit on my hard drive after neglecting it for almost three months (the ADOM crowd funding campaign cost more time than I expected ;-) ). So here we go with new stuff and changes...

ADOM: The Resurrection among top 12 Indiegogo gaming campaigns of 2012

Hi everyone!

I just got notified that ADOM (not surprisingly - given the blazing success you made possible) is ranked among the top 12 Indiegogo gaming campaigns of 2012! Place #2 as far as I can see as Starforge managed to surpass the success of ADOM: The Resurrection by about 50% - phantastic, it has been an amazing year so far and I expect 2013 to become a truly awesome year for ADOM with at least two major public releases (1.2.0 and 2.0.0) as well as ADOM Deluxe with Steam integration and more.

IMPORTANT: For now you still can vote for ADOM to become #1 as Roguelike Game of the Year 2012 - please do so if you haven't voted yet ;-)

Ok, I'm now back to work...

Cheers
Thomas

Vote for ADOM (or ADOM II) as Roguelike of the Year 2012

The new poll is up and you can further the development, visibility and future of ADOM by voting for it as the Roguelike of the Year 2012 (at least we made the best resurrection in my book ;-) ). Use the sidebar on the right of the linked website to vote and thus help preparing ADOM to get onto Steam and other platforms - we need as much publicity as possible to turn the resurrection into a perpetual event ;-)

Thanks a lot!
Thomas Biskup
ADOM & ADOM II Maintainer

ADOM: The True Resurrection - Prerelease 7 now available

Greetings everyone! Last night we released ADOM 1.2.0p7 (prerelease 7) and I am very excited about this release for several reasons:

• It's the biggest prerelease so far. 114 (!) issues have been tackled for it, many stopping loopholes and varous scumming tactics. The game probably will be quite a bit harder (especially at later levels) and I am pretty sure that we will need to do a couple of more prereleases to rebalance the game but IMHO it's worth it.
• It's probably a highly experimental release: Concerning the sweeping amount of changes I'm almost 100% certain that quite a number of ugly new bugs will pop up. But that's the nature of prerelease: test early, suffer early ;-) Please play the prerelease, try out things and post bug reports and RFE whenever you stumble upon a problem. The next thing on my list is a bug killing spree for p8 (plus probably the integration of a couple of the virtual donor rewards - we'll have to see about that ;-) ).
• The initial implementation for Mist Elves and Ratlings is in. There surely is a lot to finetune and I'm looking forward to feedback in that respect, too!

As usual the prerelease is available to all donors of Adventurer level and up (Seeker donors excluded) through the ADOM self service portal. And here's the impressive changelog for ADOM 1.2.0 p7...

ADOM: The True Resurrection - Summary of days 5 and 6

In one sentence: I fixed a ton of bugs and implemented another ton of RFEs. Which has both satiated my initial appetite for that and helped a lot getting back into intricate ADOM code details. Man, you really notice that ADOM was initially written in a time period when refactoring was not yet well known. OTOH things are improving and I'll for now switch to adding new stuff once more - ratlings and mist elves, here we come! Follow me on Facebook and Twitter if you want the detailed updates.

ADOM: The True Resurrection - Summary of day #4

Unexpectedly today was an amazingly productive day given the fact that I did not have that much time to work on ADOM. Too many things happened to summarize all stuff in detail but the short form is: I started to work on all open bugs and requests for enhancement in the official ADOM issue management system and I tackled quite a few today. Lots of balancing stuff, etc.

ADOM: The True Resurrection - Summary of Day #3

Hi everyone!

Just a quick summary:

• Chaos knights have been fully implemented. 
• Two new endings have been added. 
• More tax and billing stuff has been tackled.
• And last but not least: ADOM 1.2.0p6 has been released! Go to the ADOM Self Service Portal, log in and follow the usual link to download and play it!

Sadly tomorrow is a normal workday, so I'll not have any more updates...

ADOM: The True Resurrection - Summary of day #2

Ok, yesterdays day #2 did not quite end in success. I failed to finish chaos knights (to hope for that was a bit optimistic in any case) but I got a lot done. I also progressed in tax and billing issues. Today chaos knights definitely will be finished and we'll try to do a new prerelease tonight so that you can wet your fingers on the new stuff.

Oh yes... and I released another five versions of the ADOM self service portals as minor wrinkles, bugs and difficulties keep popping up. By now more than 80% of the donors have provided feedback regarding their virtual rewards... so hurry onwards to avoid belonging to the 20% who don't get their deserved rewards - less than four days left!

Cheers
Thomas

If you want to follow ADOM development closely...

...you should either befriend my on Facebook (you are welcome!) or follow me on Twitter! As major parts of December are reserved for ADOM development I'm posting there with high frequency!

Urgent update regarding ADOM:The Resurrection donor feedback!

Proceed to http://www.indiegogo.com/resurrect-adom-development/x/784375?c=activity and read todays' updates (both of them). NOW! THANKS!

The challenges for the true resurrection, day 2

Ok, folks, today I'll be going to tackle

• more tax and billing issues (hopefully less than 30 minutes)
• chaos knights (I hope to complete them today since I already started on them a couple of weeks ago)
• maybe a little work on mist elves if I'm fast with chaos knights

Should be more than enough for one day. Wish me luck ;-) !

Regarding Mist Elves

Since yesterday I have given Mist Elves (one of the new races to show up in ADOM) quite some more thought. Up to now I just had some basic ideas... things now are getting more specific. Here's what I got so far...

ADOM: The True Resurrection - Summary of day #1

A long day slowly ends... here's what I have achieved in day #1:

• I have caught up with all mail based support requests and answered something like 60 mails.
• I have released at least six new versions of the ADOM self service portal, adding lots of explanations and - most importantly - fixing the character encoding problem.
• I have added two minor but neat new tweaks to the self service portal: It displays both how statues and boss monsters would show up in the game allowing you to check your input.
• I have manually processed a lot of password requests with the self service portal (so much for self service - it seems that most of the problems happen with eastern european mail addresses, russian ones in particular).
• Contractual details for the ADOM GPL licensing exception for NotEye have been specified and requested from my lawyer.
• Handled some tiring billing and taxation stuff (more to come).
• Caught up with many interesting threads in the forums. As a side note I rediscovered a neat "work in progress" picture by Krys showing off some more of the new monsters - personally I'm totally in love how all this works out. But if you want something different you will be able to do that, too. The way NotEye integrates into ADOM will allow both to exchange individual tiles as well as how rendering works in general by changing the underlying algorithm with a little LUA programming. This really is going to be neat. Jochen, Zeno and Lucas are working on the sound system right now, too, and I really like how things are shaping up. Here's the picture:

That's it for today. For me a great first day of ADOM! As tomorrow is one of two work days I'll spend at the company and giving a lecture about project managament at the Fachhochschule Südwestfalen you most likely won't see much action tomorrow. Wednesday will be the first programming day and I hope to get large parts of Chaos Knights done. But we'll see... there are some nitpicky details that could turn out to take a lot more effort than I right now hope for ;-)

If you are a donor - please head immediately to the self service portal to pick up your virtual rewards... less than seven days remaining!

Just to mention it...

...as I missed out on the regular monthly summaries for the past couple of months: Content and advertising income are coupled (which is not surprising). Right now advertising income for this blog is down the drain (which is not really a problem after the success of the crowd funding campaign). Nonetheless it will be interesting to see how much it can rise in a month of hectic activity and hopefully lots of content... which I want December to be.

Just thought I'd mention it...

Updates to the ADOM self service portal

In order to answer a few more questions and help those people who seem to have problems with their passwords I have added a couple of things to the ADOM self service portal:

1. There are more explanations on the login screen. Read them carefully if you are confused.
2. When you request a password the on-screen response will be more detailed in order to tackle a few special cases that I so far had to process manually.
3. Anyone who is allowed to specify a magical statue now can see how his text and description will appear in the game (when logged in). Please check your descriptions as there were some questions about the correct format. The portal now displays how your input will appear in the game. If it doesn't seem to be correct please adjust the text.

And some repeated clarifications:

1. If you are a 'Questor' level donor (or above): Address verification will be handled separately. Don't care about that detail right now.
2. If you are a 'Seeker'-only level donor: You are not expected to do anything right now.
3. If you receive some virtual rewards be sure to pick them up at the ADOM self service portal as soon as possible. Time for that runs out on the 10th of December.

Thanks a lot for your patience. I'm now off to answer the remaining mail requests for help... and then I hopefully finally will be able to work on the other administrative stuff to be then hopefully finally able to program... so much for the rock star life of a solo game designer ;-)

And so it truly begins...

As announced elsewhere I have managed to free most of December by taking a month of unpaid holiday (sabbatical, whatever you like to call it)... mostly. Here's what I plan to do.

Donors: Act NOW!

Dear ADOM: The Resurrection crowd funding campaign donors!

December has come and most of December I will spend on adding as much stuff as possible to get all the crowd funding rewards handled. Except for the Fridays and two other days I'm completely freed from work (having taken an unpaid holiday). But to be able to successfully implement the stuff promised in the campaign I need your help: Please specify your rewards on the ADOM: The Resurrection self service portal.

In order to allow me to implement all the stuff promised in time I need your feedback before the 10th of December, midnight (German time). I will not accept any later submissions thus resulting into the forfeiture of the rewards (and no payback). While this might sound hard I - to be honest - was shocked to discover that but 22.39% of the donors so far have provided feedback (at the time of this writing)!!! Have a look for yourself - I added a new statistics display to the self service portal (at the bottom of the login page).

So please specify your rewards before the 10th of December!

Thanks a lot :-) 

Specifying ADOM: The Resurrection donor rewards

After a lot of fiddly detail work I have set up a new web application: The ADOM: The Resurrection self service portal provides two important functions for all donors from the ADOM: The Resurrection crowd funding campaign:

1. Donors can request a password via the "Request password feature" on the self service portal (just follow the instructions).
2. Donors can use their email address and the acquired password to log into the application and specify details about their rewards.

Important: Please not that Seeker level donors right now are excluded from the site and will be added once I come closer to finishing the ADOM Lite RPG. I'll get you updated about that.

Please use the application as soon as possible to define your specific virtual rewards (e.g. the artifacts, boss monsters, donor names, etc.) as I intend to start using the entered data around the 10th of December to implement the requests into ADOM. I'll post several warnings about it so there should be ample time.

If you find bugs in the application or have questions regarding its use please post them in the comments here and I'll try to answer them for everyone. Enjoy!

Click here to proceed to the self service portal!

I'm really fed up...

...with the woes of post processing the ADOM: The Resurrection campaign. Indiegogo is totally unsuited to offer any support in that respect and if you have content-rich pledge goals that require interaction with donors no package out there really seems to help - especially if suggested content needs to be turned into program code.

ADOM 1.2.0 prerelease 5 now available!

Greetings everyone!

We are happy to announce the release of ADOM 1.2.0 prerelease 5!

Note that this release is only available to donors of the ADOM: The Resurrection campaign of Wanderer level and above (Seekers excluded, thanks for asking ;-) ). It is available under the URL you received with the same login data as before.

p5 is a bugfix release removing some old and new problems. Barring any major problems with p5 p6 should be the next major update introducing at least one new profession (Chaos Knights) and quite a bit of new stuff (full plate armor, some more heavy weaponry, new artifacts, etc.).

Here's the list of changes...

ADOM: The Resurrection update - The state of things

Yet another update from all the stuff going on behind the scenes of ADOM: The Resurrection...

ADOM: The Resurrection - The project flowchart

Today I finally spent another couple of hours to reorganize and finish the flowchart for the ADOM: The Resurrection project. Here it is in its full glory.

ADOM: The Resurrection update

Hi everyone!

Although things took much longer than planned finally everything seems to be falling into place. Here's the most important list of updates...

Background stories for Chaos Knights

Hi everyone! Call for suggestions!

Right now I'm working on Chaos Knights for ADOM (as a PC class that is). I'm considering to do special background stories for them (as for barbarians). Ideas are welcome and then I'll decide. Please post them here for everyone to consider and include intended effects!

ADOM: The Resurrection prerelease 1.2.0p4 now available!

Finally the time has come... due to Jochens tireless efforts we just managed to upload all the prerelease variants of ADOM 1.2.0 prerelease 4. This is the very first closed prerelease for donors of the ADOM: The Resurrection crowfunding campaign who donated for the Wanderer+ levels (Seeker donors excluded - something I am cursed having to explain endlessly ;-) ).

Graphical ADOM teaser...

While the NotEye integration is getting along nicely (although there are still a number of fiddly details to be resolved) I'd also like to point to a small preview from Krys about what we can expect for the graphics.

Twitter interaction during ADOM Classic development

Just to let everyone know: I will try to tweet a lot more than I am accustomed to. As many ADOM fans have become Facebook friends (and if you aren't yet, you are welcome to apply for a connection ;-) ) many more seem to avoid Facebook (which I can understand very well for many reasons) - thus I have decided to try using Twitter a lot more for ADOM development than I'm used to. If you'd love to get a close connection to the pulse of actual ADOM Classic development you might try following me on Twitter, too. And retweet interesting tidbits to help kindling the ADOM flame the cord funding campaign managed to start :-)

Cheers
Thomas "still suffering from a cold" Biskup

Update on ADOM: The Resurrection

Just a quick update after a week of silence...

Clockwork birds

Hi everyone! Lucas already is working on cool new soundtracks for ADOM and he's sent me a nice piece for a kind of steampunk side venture, maybe related to the casino level. Enjoy the clockwork bird.

Crowdfunding & taxes: Lessons learned so far

Disclaimer: I'm not a tax accountant, I have only my own limited understanding of the German tax system (which might be wrong in places) and I advise anyone to confer with a professional tax accountant of their country of origin if serious advice about crowd funding and taxes is required. Nonetheless here's what I learned so far regarding crowd funding and taxes in Germany...

The 'ADOM: The Resurrection' postprocessing woes

Wow, I really underestimated the effort for postprocessing all the pledge levels from the ADOM: The Resurrection crowdfunding campaign. Every troll out there deserves to get treated with a week or two of "crowdfunding postprocessing work". An accountant's dream... a programmer's nightmare. This week I'm double-checking all pledge levels I have noted down and it seems that a lot of people either forgot to send an email when upgrading their pledges (so I didn't notice) or the emails got lost for whatever reason. At least that accounts for about 95% of my pains. Then there are some folks who made a mistake due to the UI design of Indiegogo which is more easily corrected. And there were some special wishes I promised to fulfill. All in all it probably means yet another week of my time being spent on spreadsheets ;-)

Now for something important: There already have been a couple of mail accounts that no longer seem to work. Which means that I no longer can get into contact with the relevant persons... if you by now did not receive one or more mails regarding your pledge level from me there probably is a problem. I sent one mail per reward level for which you are eligible to.... (standard level from the original campaign, seeker, mega-legend).

Now for something else important: Some folks failed to add the shipping cost for the Master Thief level. I'll be getting back to you and we'll have to adjust your pledge for that.

Now for something also important: I did not send out any mails regarding the free ADOM Deluxe license (because I still need to sum up all pledges per user at some point). If you pledged $40 or more (in whatever combination) you definitely are going to receive a free ADOM Deluxe license. No need to ask. Thanks a lot!

:-)

ADOM: The Resurrection update

Hi folks! Quick update... I'm still doing preparatory work...

The final public prerelease: ADOM 1.2.0p3 is out!

As if you didn't know by now ;-) Jochen was much faster in updating than I and I guess I need to give him write access to the blog to prevent us from getting out of sync ;-)

Answering ATR party questions

On September, 1st, we celebrated the ADOM: The Resurrection virtual party on IRC. You can find the complete logs here, additionally a lot of questions were directed at me that I'm going to try answering in this blog post. So, warning ahead: This is going to be quite long :-) You can find the collected questions here. I have taken the liberty to omit separate answers to some questions that were included in other earlier questions and hopefully didn't forget anything important.

Trolls everywhere...

While it was nice to see that the ADOM trolls truly are a meaningless minority (IMHO proven by the extraordinary support out there in favor of the campaign) it's sometimes also a kind of relief to see that others suffer from their particular ilk of trolls, too. Here's a great story about a kind of Raspberry Pi troll that Jochen pointed me to. Even if in this case it's more or less a money-grabbing troll. But I find the story hilarious and thus had to share it.

Preliminary thoughts on the ADOM Lite RPG

Just some thoughts as part of the ADOM: The Resurrection project (the one with the least dependencies) is already moving. I have been putting some thoughts into the ADOM Lite RPG. Here's a short summary:

Planning ADOM 1.2.0+

Greetings everyone! After ending the ADOM: The Resurrection crowd funding campaign with a blazing success, after having a nice ADOM: The Resurrection virtual party and after getting some rest from the campaign I'm starting this week to setup the new project (as the many changes and the additions during the campaign completely wrecked our old plan ;-) ). Here's an overview of things to happen first...

ADOM: The Resurrection virtual party

Folks following me on Facebook already knew about it but I'd naturally like to invite everyone else, too. On Saturday, 1st of September, at 7pm UTC (9pm my time) we are going to hold a virtual ADOM: The Resurrection party on IRC.

Here you can find all the instructions... love to meet you all and party!

Thanks to Leon Planken, Tapani Harkila, Anders Andersson and Juha Suvanto for preparing and supporting this. I'm sadly as much of an IRC dummy as I was nine years or so ago when I last did an interview round on IRC. But I'm really looking forward to this and hope that we'll all be having a lot of fun!!!

See ya in about 20 hours... Thomas. Still exhausted ;-)

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 :-(