ADOM 2013 & 2014

Hi everyone! This is going to be my "end of the year" posting where I'd like to reflect on the past twelve months and ponder the planned activities (relating to ADOM) for 2014, so this is going to be a bit longish. It's also the final time to remind everyone that the last minutes of the "Roguelike of the Year 2013" competition are running and you can do us (Team ADOM) a favor by voting for ADOM at http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.fr/2013/12/request-for-votes-ascii-dreams.html (which has problems with mobile browsers - use desktop mode please). And please note that the competition has been reset - so if you already voted, please vote again!

Unboxing the ADOM Lite RPG Test Print

Hoodyhoo! The test print just arrived in the mail. ulu was really quick given the fact that it was Christmas and all (although I paid premium for Express shipping). I'm very impressed. So you now can find the unboxing video for the test print run down below. And the latest update on the state of the RPG.

ADOM takes the lead as Roguelike of the Year 2013...

…even if it's by the tiny margin of five votes :-) Thanks, folks, for this awesome Christmas gift :-) Team ADOM now is praying for the wonder of holding the first position until the end of the competition. So keep pouring that love towards ADOM - you are the most awesome community imaginable :-) !!!

And if you can't vote with your mobile device, follow these hints.

Merry Christmas!

Dear ADOM community, I wish you all the merriest of Christmas Days (even if you happen to follow some other religion or no religion at all - enjoy life to the fullest in any case ;-) ).

Thanks for your support during easier and harder times, your belief in the game and the vision for it. We will be doing everything to make the resurrection of ADOM something very long lasting!

Also special thanks to Team ADOM - my valiant compatriots in the resurrection:

• Jochen Terstiege for being a programming master mind who day by day manages to restore my belief in the potential for longevity in the ADOM code a bit more (and you should see the ideas we are discussing right now for 2014 - but that's an issue for my 31st of December blog post ;-) ),
• Krzysztof Dycha, who gave ADOM a visual identity and continues to amaze us every day with neat new graphical design ideas,
• Lucas Dieguez, who has given ADOM a voice and an audible identity and has a slew of cute tricks up his sleeves that we will introduce on you - the community - over the next prereleases to come, 
• Zeno Rogue, without whom it probably not would have been possible to actually provide a graphical interface for ADOM - his work on NotEye is just marvelous (and thanks to Darren Grey for coming up with the initial idea before the crowd funding campaign - see what you have done ;-) ).

But the biggest thanks have to go to the thousands and thousands of ADOM fans out there. Your support continues to amaze us every day and the game would be nothing without you. We are grateful for all the tiny fun moments you provide us with, all the feedback and enthusiasm and the endless stream of support - keep on hacking ;-) !

And if you want to gift us for Christmas - vote for ADOM to become the Roguelike of the Year 2013 (no registration required, but note that the blog and the poll to the right have problems with mobile browsers - you need to switch to desktop mode)

Edit (15:42): And here's a small Christmas gift from Team ADOM, composed by Lucas - a cool Mad Minstrel song. The first one with an actual voice in it - be patient, it's about 80MB in size! Enjoy! Edit (15:58): And here's the MP3 version for download provided by Jochen ;-)

P.S.: For those missing information about ADOM II - yes, the game with continue. But for now the resurrection of ADOM has prime attention as it might drive everything else for a very long time!

The final version of the ADOM map

One part of the rewards of the crowd funding campaign was he creation of a beautiful map of the Drakalor Chain. Here is the (hopefully) final version of the map - if you find any more mistakes, please let us know!

BTW you also might want to vote for ADOM to become the Roguelike of the Year 2013: http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/2013/12/save-puppies-and-vote-for-adom-as.html

Save puppies and vote for ADOM as the Roguelike of the Year 2013

As many of you might know by now: The Roguelike of the Year 2013 competition 2013 is running and we really would love to win. In order to be able to add more quests to save puppies… and maybe even kitten ;-) Or whatever. But Team ADOM would love to win.

We believe that ADOM has been the roguelike with the most compelling progress in 2013 and in 2014 we want to take Steam by storm - so we need all the support we can get!

Please for vote for ADOM at  http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.fr/2013/12/request-for-votes-ascii-dreams.html - no registration required!

Please note: The Roguelike of the year poll is *not* visable on the blog if you're using a smartphone to get internet access. You have to change your phone to "desktop mode" in order to see it and vote. To change this with an Android you need to press "options" then select "desktop mode" and reload the page. Not sure about Windows or IOS.

And please also note:

• You can vote for more than one game. If you voted for ADOM II but not for ADOM, we'd be grateful to get your vote for ADOM, too, as features from ADOM will spill over into ADOM II.
• Please vote now as the competition is strong and we need every vote.
• Spread the word - so many ADOM fans do not seem to know about this thing. We need to get the word out.

Thanks a lot! 

(hopefully - that would be the coolest Christmas gift I could imagine - even if we only will know by the beginning of next year)

Crowd proofreading for the ADOM Lite RPG?

As I mentioned in another post I dearly want to finish ADOM Lite RPG this year… as the year is sadly pretty short by now I have been wondering if I should be doing a crowd proofreading approach. I could do one blog post per double page and collect feedback in the comments.

What do you think?

Speeding up the completion of the ADOM Lite RPG

Just a thought and a revelation that occurred to me… Lulu seems to have upped the number of pages a printed book with saddle stick binding (or I missed something in the first place). As a result one way of speeding up my attempts at finishing this book will be to increase the page count… for free.

Writing less is more difficult than writing more and so I'm going to use the number of pages that the book needs without trying excessive optimization and rules shortenings to get the book out as soon as possible.

Thus each donor who is eligible for a copy of the ADOM Lite RPG will receive rather 68 or 72 pages instead of the originally envisioned 64 pages. This will make the game a better and more complete game and additionally will speed ip my final fine-tuning (and I e.g. can add more tables of content… right now I only have a standard TOC, but there needs to be one for the many tables, one for the sidebars and probably a glossary, too). All in all the book should be better because of this.

Test print run for the ADOM Lite RPG started

Hi everyone!

Just a quick update on the status of the ADOM Lite RPG: Despite being late once again I really want to finish it this year. Although it's not yet 100% done I now have ordered a first print from Lulu to check the correctness of the basic layout. I plan to order the full batch on December, 31st, latest and then the next steps to finally fulfill the orders will be tackled.

As a side note I want to get that project done till the end of the year to finally resume programming on ADOM at full speed to at all the content promised and not yet there. This will be my best Christmas gift if it works out as I am so much looking forward to finally being back with the team.

Here's the current cover design (wraparound cover) as a teaser:

BTW, we still need all the help we can get to vote ADOM to be the Roguelike of the Year 2013 - please vote for the game if you haven't done so far on the right side of the linked blog post (click on this red blog text to get to the voting page). Right now it's standing 920 (28%) : 1007 (30%) of the votes in favor of TOME but given the speed of the past few days I guess that ADOM has a decent chance of making it. And we (Team ADOM, the game, the community) need all the publicity we can get to raise awareness for the upcoming Steam campaign in order to get ADOM green lighted and hopefully lay the foundation for a long term resurrection! Thanks for your support!

Call to arms: Vote for ADOM as the Roguelike of the Year 2013!

Dear ADOM community! Once more the time has come to vote for the Roguelike of the Year 2013! Never before has your support been as important as this year because we really need the publicity and visibility that can be gained by winning this award as we are marching towards getting ADOM to Steam (behind the scenes preparations of various kinds are on the way).

So if you are happy with the tremendous amount of changes and new stuff brought to ADOM since the resurrection and if you want to see more of it coming and if you like the public release of ADOM 1.2.0p20 please go towards the voting booth (on the right side of the linked blog post) and vote for ADOM!

(and yes: If you vote for ADOM II despite the silence this year I wouldn't mind either - but it's ADOM that needs your help)

Thanks a lot! And if you know other places where ADOM fans might lurk - please post a link to this blog entry or the direct voting blog entry to get as many people involved as possible!

Playing the new ADOM

Hi everyone! I just wanted to point you to Silfirs amazing series of new "Let's Play the New ADOM" videos. I totally love them and I believe they show quite a bit of what the new ADOM is about (although there s so much more to discover and yet so much more to come in the next months).

Enjoy…

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

The magic of ADOM

Hi everyone! Today was yet another of those days when Jochen, Krys and Zeno really surprise (nay, overwhelm) me with their ingenuity. They have been fiddling with the magic stuff for a while now but today I saw the first animated results… and personally I'm blown away.

While I have been convinced for a while now that ADOM currently sports the most beautiful tile set of all roguelike games IMHO it now starts to have the most beautiful magic animations, too.

Look below…