Kicking off Ultimate ADOM

Change is in the air, my dear friends... a new year is looming ahead of us and it is probably going to be the most exciting year ever for Team ADOM (although the crowdfunding and stuff have been extremely exciting). Now that we are basically done with all the crowdfunding stuff we are going to look into the future to see what it holds. And our main focus now will be getting Ultimate ADOM on the road. The past few months have been filled with experiments, design work and more (and there are more such months ahead of us... especially in the graphical and coding department) but now we are going to focus 80+% of our full-time ADOM development jobs on trying to create the ultimate roguelike fantasy gaming experience.

While we are working on the engine in the background I will start a series of blog posts in order to discuss basic assumptions of the next generation ADOM experience (read: sacred cows... how many are we going to slaughter in order to create something better?).

So far I have planned discussion for the following topics (and more probably will be added over time; last update: 2nd of March, 2018):

• Ultimate ADOM Product Line: "One game to rule them all" versus "As many variants as are needed to tell all interesting stories".
• Difficulty/Setting dials: Configuring ADOM explicitly (for your personal perfect enjoyment) and implicitly (to create platform-specific game variants).
• Senses in roguelike games: blindness, deafness, muting, being invisible - the pros and cons of these details.
• Item status: cursed/uncursed/blessed versus a much more advanced system.
• Item management: weight versus slots versus nothing at all?
• Hunger: should we feel it?
• Movement: diagonal movement versus straight movement.
• Internationalization: translating Ultimate ADOM into other languages.
• Item statistics: how many and which do we need when?
• Long actions: how important are actions that cause more than one turn to pass?
• Size: of items and monsters: do we care? And how much?
• Permanent rewards: how should permanent modifications be handled in the future in order to reduce the urge of grinding?
• Picking up and dropping items: Manually, automatically or a mix of it?
• Graphics: 2D versus 3D (and what's with ASCII)?
• Crafting: how would a smart and fun crafting system look like?
• Salvaging: what else can you do with items besides dropping, destroying, carrying or using them?
• Alchemy: Beyond potion recipes. How about salvaging items for their elemental energies and using those to buff spells, talents and other items?
• Modding: What's a good modding approach and how much do you want?
• Maps: Level sizes. How large is large enough?

These topics will not be covered in any particular order but rather as mood and need demand.

I intend to discuss these points here on the blog, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Reddit, on Steam and in our beloved forums (so: where ever you feel most comfortable). As soon as I start posting on the series I am looking forward to your opinions, ideas and feedback. The goal will be to question many of the core systems, subsystems and rules in ADOM in order to see if and how it could be improved in the future. All this while trying to keep the spirit of ADOM - we do not want to invent a completely new game that only carries the ADOM label with it. It should be recognizable and keep the beloved features that made ADOM what it is.

So stay tuned for more posts in the near future discussing actual content!

Axes high!

Merry Christmas 2017!

Merry Christmas, health, love, peace and happiness to you all!

Thomas Biskup & Team ADOM (Jochen, Krys, Lucas & Zeno)

Public ADOM 3.0.5 Steam release now available & Christmas sale

Hi everyone!

The public ADOM Deluxe 3.0.5 release on Steam is yet another important milestone for us as it concludes our work on the ADOM crowdfunding promises.

It's also the perfect time to get into the Deluxe game if you haven't done so yet as the Christmas sale offers the best discount (10%) you'll ever get.

Read about the details of the release here and consider buying it for your friends and loved ones. 2018 will be another exciting year for ADOM but more on that later.

For now we wish you a Merry Christmas, peace, love and happiness!

Thomas Biskup & Team ADOM (Jochen, Krys, Lucas & Zeno)

P.S.: As soon as Jochen returns from his vacation we also will release ADOM 3.0.5 on IndieDB (and our own download server) to the general public.

Call for Steam reviews

Hi everyone!

We are currently pretty happy with ADOM on Steam but there is one area where we would like to improve: Steam visibility and reception heavily depends on the number of positive reviews a game receives. Since we receive a lot more favorable comments (especially with recent releases) then new reviews we'd like to ask your for a favor:

If you enjoy ADOM on Steam and so far have not written a review please write an ADOM review (no matter how short or long)!

More positive reviews mean that ADOM gets more visibility which helps us in pushing it to more people.

Thanks a lot!

Oh, and speaking of visibility: Please help us by voting for ADOM as we are trying to become the Indie Game of the Year 2017 at IndieDB:



Thanks so much!

Announcing ADOM 3.0.5 as a prerelease and public Steam beta

Hi everyone!

We just released ADOM 3.0.5 to our prerelease testers... the most important new feature is the ability to delete highscore entries which became a necessity to allow people to remove highscores created through uncouth means before synchronizing them to Rogueleague.org. This now is possible.

All other bug fixes are documented as usual in the changelog. The prerelease is available from the same location as always.

IMPORTANT UPDATE (slight miscommunication between Jochen, who is doing the Steam deployments, and me ;-) ): ADOM 3.0.5 is already on Steam as a public beta. This page explains how to activate it.

Oh, and please vote for ADOM to become the Indie Game of the Year 2017 at IndieDB ;-) Thanks so much!

ADOM made the IndieDB Top 100 - now let's try to win!

Hi everyone!

Thanks for the brilliant support so far during the votes for Indie game of the Year 2017 at IndieDB. We managed to climb to the Top 100 - which is brilliant. And we are rated at position 11 at the time of this writing. Which also is awesome! Now let's see how far we can climb in the votes:

Procedure:

• Click on the link below.
• Click on the roguelike category on the page that opens.
• Vote for ADOM.
• Be included in our prayers and grateful thoughts ;-)

Some statistics for you:

• During 2017 we managed to release 14 (!) new versions of ADOM.
• We have added dozens of new quests, hundreds of new items and artifacts as well as many new monsters and other mechanisms.
• We have hugely revised the UI (user interface) to make the game a lot more accessible to new players.
• In the last six months alone we have processed 838 tickets (RFEs, bugs, etc.).
• We have published 40 blog postings and hundreds of other social media postings to inform and grow the community.
• We intend to finish all our crowdfunding promises by the end of this week.
• In doing so we have sent out thousands of physical rewards from the crowdfunding campaign into the world (ADOM Lite RPG, ADOM RPG boxes, postcards, code certificates and so much more).
• We just released the first beta version of our Rogueleague.org community server (http://rogueleague.org).
• We have managed to get funding in order to hopefully produce the ultimate next-generation roguelike experience: Ultimate ADOM.

So ADOM is more alive than ever! And now we need your voices to be heard in our quest to carry true roguelike gaming into the mainstream. Please vote for ADOM as your support means more to us than anything else!

ADOM 3.0.4 prerelease and Rogueleague.org server available now

Rogueleague.org

Hi everyone!

This prerelease hopefully will be the very final one before we publish a polished and complete (as far as our crowdfunding promises go) ADOM to Steam.

ADOM 3.0.4 again contains a number of bug fixes and minor enhancements as well as one major new feature: After registering you now can connect to our Rogueleague.org server to manage your global highscores (e.g. in competition to all the other ADOM players out there).

IMPORTANT: 

• If you own highscores achieved by cheating you might want to delete them. In the next couple of weeks we probably also add some kind of community-driven cheat detection and cheaters will be banned from the server. If cheating becomes excessive we might be forced to limit the server to Steam only (and only in connection with Steam accounts) which would be sad but necessary if people start ruining the idea of the server. So be honest and remain a good member of the ADOM tribe :-) !
• Connections to the global highscore server are only possible with ADOM Deluxe (and in a couple of days the Steam version). The pure ASCII version does not support this.
• Highscores are synchronized after you quit ADOM - only then they will show up on the server.
• You will need to register an account in order to be able to synchronize with the server.
• The global highscores probably will enhance the fun with challenge games a lot :-)
• Our Rogueleague.org server really is a version 0.1. We have tons of ideas on how to improve it, the layout and design needs a lot more work and we have extensive statistics planned and more - but all this takes time and we will on it step by step in the months to come. So please be patient with us :-)

Now all prerelease testers can go to the usual location and start having fun :-)

When you submit bugs or RFEs you now also can choose "Rogueleague.org" as a category in order to inspire us with your ideas of what would be great to have for a community portal - so let us know what you come up with :-)

Axes high!

Thomas Biskup & Team ADOM

ADOM 3.0.3 prerelease now available!

Hi everyone!

We are only one more small step away from the next huge Steam: ADOM 3.0.3 just has been released to our prerelease testers - it gain features a sizeable number of bug fixes and enhancements. Our impression is that the load of changes introduced with 3.0.0 now mostly has stabilized and that we now can do the next step to Steam.

The final major functionality not yet included is the global highscore server as we still are wrestling with some legal and data security details ("terms of use" and similar things need more attention than we anticipated - the world is truly a complicated one ;-) ). But it will be there very soon now...

If you are among the prerelease testers go to the usual location to enjoy the latest ADOM release.

Have fun playing!
Thomas & Team ADOM

P.S.: Help us win this baby here:

Vote for ADOM as Indie of the Year 2017

Hi everyone!

It's the time of the year again to vote... we'd really love to win the "Indie of the Year 2017" award over at IndieDB. Given the fact that recently we have been doing a number of major content releases we feel that after 26 years of ADOM development this year might be a good time to win it.

If you also think so please vote here: