The state of ADOM (long overdue update)

As I for more than two months fell for the oldest of mistakes (not talking to the community and fans out there) it now truly is time to restart communication about the state of ADOM. Reasons for not communicating are outlined at the bottom as the state of ADOM seems more important to me.

So what happened during the past couple of weeks?

Lucas has created a ton of new musical compositions that currently are being integrated into the game and will lift the audible experience we provide to a totally new level. Below you find a couple of links to samples (but please not that all of these pieces are copyrighted and no permission is given to use them elsewhere outside of ADOM - if you would like to enlist Lucas' skills get into contact with us and I'm sure we can work something out; just don't steal/pirate the hard work of others):

• Dark forge ("Steel Golem Walking"),
• Walking Tree Level ("Wooden Voices"),
• Small Cave ("Tiny Spaces"),
• Barbarian's Clearing ("The Barbarian's Nest"),
• for various caves with lots of enemies ("Outnumbered"),
• Unremarkable Dungeon ("Behind the Blank"),
• Library of Niltrias ("Browsing Dusty Tomes"),
• another dark and somber cave tune ("No light ahead"), 
• Minotaur Labyrinth ("The Shifting Nightmare", I totally love this one although I'm generally absolutely in love with Lucas' work),
• Dwarves Halls ("Halls of Battle"),
• Assassins Guild ("Death in the Air"),
• High Mountain Village ("No Good within these Walls"),
• a fine-tuned score for Terinyo
• and some beautiful special sounds for bosses (effect 1, effect 2)

Please also note that these pieces are samples, more work is happening on them every day and new pieces are underway, too. If you are as smitten by Lucas' work than I am I heartily recommend following Lucas on Twitter to get continuous updates and read what he currently is up to!

On the graphical side Krys has been very busy working on various graphical aspects of the game:

• First of all Krys has been adding themed dungeon tiles to the game (a major effort). I really think that the new tiles add a totally new dimension of flavor to the dungeons. Enjoy some of the following previews (there are more variants but we don't want to spoil everything ;-) ):

• Additionally Krys has been adding more details to the existing dungeon levels which can be seen in the following previews:

• One of the important internal (technical) additions Krys devised and Zeno implemented is that we now can have much larger tiles of which only parts will be displayed - but this allows for much nicer graphical enhancements that are less systematic:

• Due to the requirements of the new character generation process we also have been discussing and refining the various UI elements of ADOM (although that part still is work in progress). Here you can see a design study:

• Finally (in addition to constant detail changes and fiddling Krys is doing with existing artwork) he has polished the ADOM RPG cover a bit more (see old and new in comparison):

As with Lucas if you enjoy Krys' work follow Krys on Twitter and visit is own website to enjoy his marvelous talents!

The final image above leads me to a rather ugly topic: Basically I have done nothing with ADOM Lite RPG since my last post (for reasons outlined below - which don't really help). I'm going to post the unboxing video during the coming week and I have reserved the next Friday for a full day of ADOM RPG work in order to get things rolling again.

Finally, regarding my lack of communication: The reason is simple: Personal health issues. After my last post we went on vacation (and the time was great), returned to tons of day-to-day work (I spent a very busy week on a conference among other things) and then fell sick. First it seemed like a cold, then it appeared to be some kind of nasty virus and I was almost out of business for two complete weeks (getting antibiotics and stuff, which basically turned my brain into some soft mushy substance). Sadly after a week some symptoms returned and though I'm not totally sick I'm easily exhausted and tired and just get by with the usual daily chores and work. I have new doctor appointments but the whole state is totally frustrating as I lack the usual bubbly energy that drives me doing ADOM. For a moment I have wondered about general exhaustion, burnout or similar things but as I'm still functioning decently enough on all other levels I assume that it's more of a illness related problem that keeps my energy on a lower than normal level.

All this is not an excuse for not communicating but stopping communication is the first thing I usually do when I get sick (call it the "lone wolf syndrome"). So to improve things I have turned to creating routine... I now have a fixed appointment every sunday in my calendar as the minimum interval to post updates. Additionally I'm doing all I can to restore my usual health and energy (e.g. my food by now has completely changed to very healthy, I'm doing sports, seeing doctors again next week, etc.)

Due to these effects Jochen and Zeno mostly have been blocked as I was not available for extensions to the core engine. Zeno has done some work on our new moving dungeon parts, on integrating the new character generation process and other details, but that's where we no are going to restart. In the end it shows that ADOM almost has grown into a full day job and it becomes harder and harder to run this as a hobby. Which creates interesting questions for which I do not yet have the right answers (working on that, too).

So to summarize:

• I am sorry for once again disappointing your expectations. It's becoming a pattern but it somehow seems to mirror ADOM becoming bigger and bigger (once again) without right now being able to scale all resources appropriately (Krys and Lucas already are working full-time on ADOM, Zeno as much as his other responsibilities and interests allow and Jochen and I still have to treat this as a kind of hobby).
• Things now will pick up again, slowly at first and then faster. We are still 150% committed to ADOM. But at times bad things happen and throw you off track. Which was my case during the past two months. I'm happy to come back and look forward to better times.
• Our priority will be on releasing a new version ASAP. We might do another general test release first before we dare to do a Steam release (in order to now introduce major bugs on the paying community at Steam). But we understand that a new release should happen as soon as possible.

Feel free to ask whatever concerns you (preferably here in the comments so that I can respond for everyone).