After weeks of happiness and grief I am proud to announce ADOM Release 48 - already a big step forward in a quite obvious way as we have renamed the version numbering.
Everything right now is focussing on getting ADOM prepared and released on Steam as we all hope to thus establish a continued (permanent) existence for ADOM development. So let's review the strategy behind the changes:
Naming and Version Numbering
After having asked for opinions and having received them ADOM from now on will use the following version numbering scheme:
- The public display just will sport a release number (48 right now). That's the number of times we released a version of ADOM.
- Additionally there is an internal more classical version number (1.8.0 right now) that from now on will follow more stringent rules. The 1.8.0 currently BTW derives from the 1.20 we started with after the crowd funding campaign and the number of public releases we made. From now on it will follow the classical MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH scheme (major meaning truly sweeping new stages in the life of ADOM - Steam e.g. will be 2.0.0; minor meaning big feature additions not big enough to warrant a major change, usually incompatible in save files and patch being reserved for simple bug fix releases and truly minor additions).
- As a corollary the 'V' command (display version number) now has a true meaning as it shows both versions to interested parties.
The Steam UI Initiative
All our efforts around Steam right now focus on making ADOM easier to play, more accessible and more beautiful. Release 48 brings a lot of changes on both the ASCII side and the graphical sides, among them:
- tabbed character information displays
- context dependent command directly available for items in the backpack
- extended tutorial help
- comfortable walk commands for more advanced features ('w?' to explore unexplored locations, 'w>' and 'w<' to walk to stairs, 'wm' to attack the nearest enemy, 'wi' to walk to the nearest item stack, 'w_' to walk to a known altar and more)
- context menus when left clicking the PC and right clicking other positions with the mouse
- left clicking on a target position moves the PC to that point
- spell effects for the graphical mode
- lots of new sound effects
Next on the list are completely revised and beautiful information screens for the graphical mode. Look forward to the next couple of releases for that.
The move to SDL 2 now also makes us dream again of an iOS version and we even have looked into Xbox ;-)
Bux Fixed and Balancing Adjustments
There are many - see the change log. Most important probably are the nerved summoners which now hopefully are a lot more fun and revised breakage probabilities for missiles.
And more...
There has been a sweeping amount of changes as can be seen in the change log. Thus we consider R48 to be somewhat experimental - there surely will be new bugs and probably some instabilities we failed to find during our tests. Nonetheless we urgently seek your feedback as we want to progress towards the first Steam release as soon as possible.
Downloading ADOM R48
ADOM Release 48 is a release reserved for the prerelease testers. If you want to join that circle, please do so. All the others can find the download in the usual way.
Enjoy!
Thomas & Team ADOM
P.S.: Here are some demos of the next things we currently are planning, preparing and designing (all unfinished and prone to be heavily changed):
Fingers crossed that you avoid mobile until after the full ADOM release.
ReplyDeleteI get the following error under windows 7:
ReplyDeletehttp://sylph.me.uk/1.jpg
@Sylvia: please delete/rename the config-adom.noe file and try again. It seems to contain settings that are not working anymore.
ReplyDeleteA UI change aimed at new users: Make the default interaction with friendly NPCs to swap positions instead of attacking them.
ReplyDeleteNew players will not expect that the default interaction with friendly NPCs is to murder them. I can't think of another game in existence that does that as the default.
They can learn later as an advanced feature that they can murder people to go chaotic etc, they don't need to learn it in the very first town.
This will also make moving through towns for all players 1000% less annoying.
(Ignore this if you've already changed it in a recent prerelease :) )
Stark: It's already been changed. :)
ReplyDeleteTB: http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=3126 is a pretty serious bug that's making this version (mostly) unplayable.Hoping you notice and fix it soon!
Oh wow .. I'm absolutely drooling at those new pretty graphics. I never dreamed ADOM would look so .. dreamy. :) Even the theoretically simple main menu. Beautiful round icons to the left of each item.
ReplyDeleteNow I'll do my bit and make sure the Amiga version is still working well. (I'm almost certain I'm the only one who still plays around with that.) :)
Getting some really weird stat values with characters in this version. Two straight trolls w/ single-digit TO, and a High Elf thief with 1 LE. I can't imagine this is intentional, and I must assume something with this version is causing it. Any ideas?
ReplyDeleteTake a look here:
Deletehttp://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=3126#note20792
Fixed now for the next version. Looks like R49 will be a quick bugfix release, coming soon :)
We messed up quite a few things so R49 definitely is lurking around the corner. Probably one more day of bug fixing or so. Sorry for that but there were so many changes that it was somewhat inevitable for R49 to be kind of experimental ;-)
ReplyDeleteGreat! SDL 2 also means *technical* possibility of android version, and there are examples - mostly ports of classic games.
ReplyDelete