For those of you wondering about what "very soon" might mean:
- The official process defined by Valve for Steam is that you have to do a multitude of things to prepare a game for Steam (e.g. build the shop site, do some legal stuff, etc.). Nothing of that is earth shattering and so many people before us succeeded but it took a while nonetheless (mostly at the end of 2014, but one final missing piece just was finished tonight).
- Now we have submitted this version to Valve (the owners of Steam) for review.
- As soon as we receive clearance (hopefully) we are free to go and we then probably will release ADOM really soon. The final barrier will be the question if any other huge release takes place on the same day or if we get shell-shocked by some impending sale.
- If Valve discovers problems with our final build we naturally will have to fix them and resubmit the build.
So that's the final bit of uncertainty before we finally can go live on Steam. Keep your thumbs pressed and wish us all the best.
Many have been wondering about the long silence, too. A few words about that (as it's in the worst of tradition for ADOM to fall into a kind of hibernation for a while):
- We all still (or again) are doing the work on ADOM in our free time (as the funds for financed work on ADOM from crowd funding have been used up by now). Thus everyone needs to earn his money for a living before being able to work on ADOM.
- In that regard I have been the major blocker for ADOM progress in 2015: My day job involves being one of the CEOs of QuinScape GmbH, a German IT company, which I partially own.
- 2015 so far has been a truly marvelous and awesome record-breaking year for QuinScape: We have grown by leaps and bounds and now are closing in on having 100 employees, more than half of which I am responsible for. This has entailed lots of real life work as we had to learn a lot of new things about organizing a growing company, evolving our culture while retaining out soul, integrating all the awesome new people we hired this year, etc. Thus 2015 for me has been an unexpectedly busy year (and take that from a person being accustomed to doing his PhD as a hobby, working on half a dozen projects in parallel, etc.). If I ever was close to a burnout it probably was during 2015, also as a consequence of all the emotional trouble in 2014.
- In consequence I just lacked the time and creative energy to work much on ADOM and delayed my awesome compatriots in Team ADOM again and again.
- I'm now very optimistic that the worst is over and we again will pick up speed.
While waiting for Valve's clearance I'm now putting the finishing touches on ADOM Lite RPG, too, and I still hope to ship the RPG rules before Christmas. Again this depends on the success of several prerequisite tasks:
- I need to complete the final editing run.
- I quickly need to collect updated addresses from all donors (Don't fret: You will be contacted and get a chance to check your ADOM RPG Lite rewards, update and confirm your addresses, etc.).
- Lulu (which I will be using for printing) needs to be fast enough to print and ship the RPG books to me (postcards and stuff also will be handled at that point).
I'm now pushing for this really hard as I want to get the heavy load of all the physical crowdfunding rewards from my shoulders and restart my true love: Programming ADOM and adding new features (did I mention "items of legend" as a totally new feature planned for ADOM?).
So wish me luck for not failing again. I'll try to be more present again in all media. But this time it has been a close one...
Thank you for all your hard work! I'll be buying it the second it's released
ReplyDeleteHome stretch---I look forward to the day when the DevState page is freshly painted even moreso green and the next leg of the ADOM Resurrection journey can begin in earnest with the Steam and Lite aspects finally situated. Exciting times!
ReplyDeleteThanks for hard work Thomas! Can't wait to hold ADOM RPG Lite. :D
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely the same here! I think my address has actually changed in the meantime -- will PM :D
DeleteQuestion: does being in the $10 or $25 donor level actually get you a copy of the game? I think I kind of assumed it would, but now that I revisit the campaign page I notice none of the tiers say you get the for-pay version.
ReplyDeleteIt's cool if there won't be any steam keys distributed, just want to know if it's something I should expect or not! Thanks!
A Steam key by now has been distributed to all donors of the $40+ level. $10 do and $25 do not apply though. See http://www.adom.de/the-resurrection/index.html for details.
DeleteJust out of interest as many are asking the same question, does this mean that $10 and $25 tier donors WILL get access to the finished public release for free, but not the Steam release? I was under the impression that donors were buying into the game via its Windows .exe distribution and that Steam access was a seperate product which we received if we donated enough in total?
DeleteThanks Thomas for the update.
ReplyDeleteThis is very nice that finally we will be able to see Adom on Steam, but what about other features (and stretch goals) from campaign?
ReplyDeleteThey are next on the list. During the past couple of months (besides being low on time) we were pretty hesitant to add major new stuff as we were working very hard to have a very stable version. As soon as we are on Steam we will resume adding new features and the focus will be totally on finally fulfilling all the promises yet open.
DeleteI also soon will provide a specific milestone plan for that in our issue database. Steam in itself was just a lot more challenging than we all ever expected.
Thank you for your answer. One last question which bothers me - any plans (specific or not, distant or soon) for Adom 2 aka JADE? Any chance it will get a tiny bit of love and attention it deserve?
DeleteGood luck with Steam release!
As per my recollection, it is just a matter of getting ADOM fully situated first, then applying as many of the general gains forward as is handy for ADOM 2, then taking it from there while seeing how the commercial winds fare for Steam ADOM and whatnot. All good things in due time, and the timeline still forming in the mists ahead in other words---plenty cause for overall optimism.
DeleteI'm a Adom lite RPG backer, so I have one copy coming, but is it possible to order more if you are a backer? I gladly pay with paypal or direct bank transfer for extra copies.
ReplyDeleteWoohoo! What a great milestone, and so much hard work to get here. Congratulations! Fingers crossed for the big Steam release, and looking forward to the next milestones in their turn.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up about the RPG. I've moved thousands of kilometers away from the address I used back in 2012 (three times).
ReplyDelete