Right now Team ADOM has started to test the server connection for ADOM Deluxe. Basically everyone registered for ADOM Deluxe (and that includes many many people from the crowd funding campaign) will receive a license key that will allow them to log into an ADOM community portal, synchronize high scores and achievements with that portal, even retrieve their local high scores after crashes and other things.
My personal favorite is the synchronized high score which includes log files and allows filtering and sorting according to many criteria. Whenever you finish a game (and have net access) ADOM will synchronize your high score with the server, entering it both into your personal server high score and the global high score list (if you qualify). I guess it will be fun to have one single global point of data collection. The same, BTW, will be done for achievements.
Naturally you will be able to play ADOM and ADOM Deluxe without network connection, too. It's just an optional add-on, not a requirement.
We are also trying to think of more cool stuff to do with the server (messaging, news, ...) but for now we need to finish the layout for the portal (it's still totally ugly).
Prerelease 15 probably most likely not yet include the server uplink as we still have to fiddle with quite a few things. But when p15 finally gets released (sorry for the long pause - but we had to work on tons of internal things to be able to pick up speed once more with other topics and I'm still not finished with the Lite RPG) we should be through with the majority of community based infrastructure (right now we are targeting mid-August). Additionally many of the things implemented internally are must-haves for our march on Steam, Gamersgate and others. So despite the current slowdown in releases it's worth it.
Read ya soon!
Currently that is the idea - one of several things to differentiate Deluxe from standard
ReplyDeleteAt first I was wondering how servers worked. I thought people meant like running around side by side and I wasn't really sure how that made sense.
ReplyDeleteHigh score competitions sound like a lot of fun, first I must figure out how to beat the game. lol
I can't wait for you 15 release, waiting for that freezing screen takes so long! xD
I paid $40 to get into the pre-release. Does tihs mean I have to pay more to get all of the features? What is the pay tier for Adom Deluxe and what will be in it that is not in regular Adom you get from the pre-release purchase?
ReplyDeleteCan't say for sure right now. Fact is that prerelease access is just prerelease access. I guess the name's clear enough ;-)
DeleteFor one thing the server sync is a Deluxe only feature.During the crowd funding campaign other things were discussed like e.g. point-based attribute distribution, star sign selection, etc.
Thomas,
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the things you mentioned, some of the main reasons so many people (including myself) play on servers are:
-No version compatability issues between savefiles. I login and play using windows at work and a Mac at home.
-The session is actually running on the server. So if my computer crashes, I can log back in no problem and not lose my game. Likewise, other players can spectate and you can have many people watching/ playing the same game.
Now I realize actually hosting games and savefiles on your server would probably be too expensive (at least if ADOM becomes a lot more popular again), but I was wondering if you had considered programming the ability to log in and play on private servers? i.e, if you select "connect to server", you could pick the main ADOM server by default, or get an option to log in to a private server. (by ip or hostname, or maybe autopopulated list of available servers?) At that point the local version of ADOM would act as a graphical frontend for the game being hosted on the server. (Server admins and users alike would be able to choose whether to just post high scores, or to allow savefile storage, or to allow complete hosting)
I don't know how easy or difficult this would be to implement (since you're already working on tge server code anyway), but seeing as this is how a large portion of the community plays ADOM I figure you may want to consider it. :)
This would be really great. I don't know if it's viable, but it would be great if it were done.
Delete