A late Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah or just plain wonderful days!

Hi community!

I'm shamefully late this year but Christmas was quicker here than expected. So I hope that you all already had a couple of wonderful days with friends and family and maybe are enjoying a couple more!

Sadly we didn't manage to get ADOM to Steam but our initial beta version yielded so much awesome feedback that we decide to take the time and fix things that needed fixing. Thus I currently would expect a mid-January release for ADOM on Steam. At least others seem to be late, too - I haven't seen any results from the IndieDB Indie of the Year contest so far (or I am too tired to find it).

I'm consoled by the fact that various postings seem to indicate that it is better to release a game during non-hot-spot times (like Christmas, contrary to my line of thinking).

That's enough babbling from me - I'm back to work on ADOM and hope that you enjoy the final days of the year!

Thomas

ADOM R53 now available... for Steam beta testers

Hi everyone!

This is new: The first ADOM release (R53, version 1.11.0) available on Steam first. Mostly this happens for two reasons:

• We want to get to Steam ASAP and thus need to receive as much feedback as soon as possible for that version.
• The build process is getting more and more involved and thus it takes more time to build all variants. Prerelease testers will be next, promise!

Regarding the Steam version:

• It's a closed beta available to everyone who donated $40 or more (in whatever partitioning) during our crowdfunding campaign.
• All such donors have received a Steam key that is available through the ADOM self service portal. Follow the instructions there to log in.
• I have created a new discussion group too discuss peculiarities regarding the Steam version.
• We would like to get as much feedback as possible - please use our ticket system for any bugs you find and for any improvements peculiar to Steam you might want to see.

This very first Steam version definitely has beta character:

• There probably will be many bugs as we changed tons of stuff in the past couple of weeks to improve the UI. Please report them as you find them!
• There probably are many things we could improve, especially for the general Steam populace and for an improved UI. Let us know about those, too.
• Here is the usual list of changes.

The real Steam release is going to happen when we feel that we have a very good first stable release. Lots of features didn't make it into the first Steam release (because that would delay it for even more weeks if not months) - see our advanced roadmap for those.

What we need: We are looking for all feedback we can get but some areas are of particular interest to us:

• We want to get as many suggestions as possible on what to improve to make the Steam launch a huge success (naturally).
• We would love to hear feedback on mouse-based play. What needs to be improved to make pure mouse-based play a better experience (we probably won't be able to all of that right away but we would like to cover the most important areas).
• Please try the new message buffer modes (adjustable by Ctrl-nm), the various display modes (Ctrl-nd), the tutorial mode, the various other game modes, ghosts, achievements, etc. We want to hear your experiences with that, too!
• And everything else you deem important.

We are on the verge of a new ADOM age and it's now or never... greatness or oblivion ;-)

Oh, and please do not forget to vote for ADOM as the game of the year at IndieDB!!!

And now get your Steam codes and start playing!

Now it's all or nothing: Vote for ADOM as roguelike of the year 2014!

We have made it into the final 100 at IndieDB - out of thousands of games. But now it's all or nothing: Please vote once more for ADOM so that we can take the title of roguelike of the year 2014:

http://www.indiedb.com/events/2014-indie-of-the-year-awards/top100

And please share the news and get everyone you know to vote!

Thanks so much. I'm now back to preparing R53...

The new ADOM title score

Don't miss out on the most awesome new title score of ADOM, devised by our sound wizard Lucas Dieguez.

And here are the lyrics by Lucas. Thanks so much to Robert Estep for helping to refine them!

Ancient valleys sorrounded by mountain sides

Trying hard to break free from eternal dark

Elder demons have risen to conquer us

Driving us off our lands 

Heroes, warriors and mages united fall

In the purple of chaos they meet their doom

Born to die in a battle to save us all

From the end of times

Yet the prophecies tell of a savior of sword, spell and might

From the Drakalor chain he would rise to free the land

Thus the world shall survive to the whim of 

The one to rule all...

Vote for ADOM as Indie Game of the Year at IndieDB

Hi everyone!

Please support ADOM by voting for it as Indie Game of the Year 2014 at IndieDB (just press the red button on the voting banner).

Initial ADOM achievement implementation finished

Before going to bed I just wanted to let you know that I finished the initial ADOM achievement implementation a couple of minutes ago. There is some more fine-tuning to be done. Nonetheless we are going to start with 77 achievements to be unlocked on Steam.

And here's a sample screenshot of the second achievement I unlocked:

And as I write this I suddenly remember another batch of (not very complex) achievements I wanted to add and had forgotten about (gaining level 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50). I still need titles for that (something like "Wanderer", "Veteran", "Champion", "Hero", "Legend" and "Demiurge" maybe).

But now I need to sleep and will add these ones tomorrow ;-)