Game News ADOM: Resurrection IndieGoGo Campaign

[getter77]

Tags: Ancient Domains of Mystery

http://www.indiegogo.com/resurrect-adom-development

"Sadly, although ADOM was highly polished, it was left in an unfinished state. Bugs, loopholes and other problems have been identified over the years, but I never had the resources to fix them. I believe I’ve found just the team of experienced, enthusiastic developers and artists to pick up where I left off and make ADOM something truly epic.

DEATH OR GLORY - I NEED YOUR HELP!

If this Indiegogo campaign is successful in reaching the funding goal, you will see a new release of ADOM, version 1.2.0. Here are some of the things you can expect:

-New stable releases for all supported platforms (Windows, Linux, MacOS, Amiga, NetBSD, FreeBSD; Android and iPad/iOS are going to be stretch goals). Operating systems have evolved since 2002 and compatibility is becoming a serious issue.
-Bug fixes for every bug we can find
-Game balance patches
-More elaborate interaction for many things that are currently only handled superficially
-UI improvements to bring ADOM up-to-date with the progress the roguelike genre has made, to be decided upon based on recommendations of players in the forums (e.g. colored message, some kind of auto-exploration and others)
-A series of magical statues distributed across the dungeons
-A roster of new named random boss monsters with special powers
-Exciting new graphics for the title screen and some quest-related events
-Audio for sound effects and music for the game areas and important events
-A freshly revised manual

Honestly, I have very high hopes for ADOM. I’m keeping this campaign modest, but I have big ideas in case we surpass the goal. I‘ll be announcing the stretch goals later in the campaign, but let me give you a taste of what I have in mind. I‘m thinking at least two new races and classes, builds for Android and iOS, a scripting module for user extensions, and finally, the release of the ADOM source code as open source, with community management, building, and training included."

60 day campaign. $48,000 sought. 4 people making up Biskup's Development Adventuring Party. Endless drama amidst a highly amusing $50K pledge level and rumblings of a proper open sourcing coming with some distant stretch goal. Thomas Biskup getting mauled by a dragon in his imagination on video.

Yep, this has the making of a fine crowdfunding campaign. Here's to wondering if other classic Roguelike developers will take another crack at things if this is successful.

 

[laclongquan]

Let's see if it finally make me install this highly acclaimed game around these places.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

It makes me regret that I spent 16 potato that I got from selling two musical albums on a kebab and peanuts. Well, not really. I really enjoyed that kebab and I still feel the mood improvement after eating it yesterday.

 

[Albers]

$48,000 for a patch to a 15 year old game.

 

[Konjad]

What the fuck are they going to do with that money, seriously. Even Prosper's kickstarter is more reasonable.

 

[PorkaMorka]

What the fuck are they going to do with that money, seriously. Even Prosper's kickstarter is more reasonable.

Basically, the developer feels that he is a big shot now and he deserves to be paid that much for the time he will put in coding this patch.

Seriously, he basically said as much.

 

[zeitgeist]

What's going to happen with JADE/ADOM 2? Another fundraising campaign? Parallel development "for free"? Being neglected in favor of this? Something else?

 

[Konjad]

It will be funny if he gets that $50000, makes that patch and then starts rising $50000 again for the next patch.

 

[getter77]

What's going to happen with JADE/ADOM 2? Another fundraising campaign? Parallel development "for free"? Being neglected in favor of this? Something else?

Ongoing pretty much the same as it has been, since Biskup is the one doing the heavy lifting programming wise with ADOM II whereas this Jochen fellow will be doing much of it for ADOM just like he has been with Biskup doing a bit but mainly marshaling the team and getting everything squared away with integration, with the Deluxe edition(some extras, ADOM II in general still being free) still becoming a thing via Alpha funding once it gets a bit further and all the rebranding stuff from the original JADE completed----next major ADOM II release somewhere in the next couple weeks bringing Ranged Combat and other misc things since last time. Art/UI and Sound guy are also working on ADOM II, so much will probably carry over.

That said, Biskup has said that depending on if this funding drive for the original ADOM is successful that it might be another avenue going forward for ADOM II somehow or another, but no specifics and honestly probably too soon to speculate.

 

[mondblut]

Drop me a note when ADOM is no longer about killing alphabet.

 

[laclongquan]

Drop me a note when ADOM is no longer about killing alphabet.

 

[Palikka]

From the RPS article comments

ADOM-Maintainer says:

Right now we are discussing to dom something about graphical tile support. But that’s not part of the basic campaign (which can’t be really changed that now it has started and our work efforts have been estimated). But it might be an interesting stretch goal.

So, 50k for patch and another 50k for tileset?

 

[Stabwound]

The amount asked for seems way out of line for what is promised to be delivered: a single bug patch that might fix any number of existing bugs and graphical title screen along with sound effects (I never asked for this). You could probably pay someone $48,000 to recreate ADOM from the ground up.

There isn't even a single bit of new content promised in this update other than the donator custom items, which no one will care about other than the donators themselves. The easiest possible new content, new character races, is pushed into stretch goals beyond $48,000. What would it take to implement a new race; an hour or two? Anything that I'd personally be interested in is pushed into stretch goals. New content, etc.

Also lame as hell is the iPad port as a stretch goal. Again, no one asked for this.

On the upside, this really is just a donation drive; the release will be free to everyone regardless of whether you donated or not. Thank fuck he got talked out of doing donator-only DLC, which he'd planned up until like 2 days before the campaign launched.

 

[Licaon_Kter]

meh... he should of made the fund-raising for Adom2 and be done with it, Adom1 is perfect already damit

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I hope he'll make it. ADOM was one of my favourite cRPGs ever.

 

[thesheeep]

Gotta love that German accent.
And the game truly is nice!

But with games like ToME around that offer great gameplay* and music and graphics, it is hard to motivate myself giving money to ADOM.
* Seriously, I'd never imagined one could make a game as smooth as that with f*cking Python!

 

[Johannes]

You could probably pay someone $48,000 to recreate ADOM from the ground up.

Sure you could pay for it. But they wouldn't likely accomplish much

There isn't even a single bit of new content promised in this update other than the donator custom items, which no one will care about other than the donators themselves.

Redding is teh hard

-More elaborate interaction for many things that are currently only handled superficially
-A series of magical statues distributed across the dungeons
-A roster of new named random boss monsters with special powers

Dunno what the statues would actually do though.


Balance patching would be really nice though. Cut out some of the easiest exploits and change some encounters slightly, the game becomes much more interesting. For example change it so that no monster has the habit of standing still if in the dark, make the Karmic Wyrm see invisible, allow teleporting in Air Temple and have the Master Summoner teleport around constantly...

Sure, I don't see how they'd use all the money just for a relatively simple patch, but then again the man has spent thousands of hours coding the game free back in the day, so it's hard to be mad at him by any means.

 

[spectre]

Gone are the days when TB used to work for postcards only. They grow up so fast, them kids.

 

[Stabwound]

Sure you could pay for it. But they wouldn't likely accomplish much


Redding is teh hard

-More elaborate interaction for many things that are currently only handled superficially
-A series of magical statues distributed across the dungeons
-A roster of new named random boss monsters with special powers

Dunno what the statues would actually do though.

Yeah, superficial donator rewards really make for great new content. Actual new quests and playable characters are pushed into stretch goal ideas; they're not even planned as of yet.

The best thing promised so far is the UI improvements, but yeah bug fixes and balance fixes would be nice. There are a bunch of exploits that should be patched up: casino scumming by jamming down keyboard button, ring of weakness exploit, etc.

 

[Johannes]

Oh, I didn't notice they were actually donator rewards. But nevertheless it's not a bad idea to have more monster variety like that, it's an improvement to the game even if just a small one.


And those I wouldn't consider exploits at all. Tomas must've realized that the casino gives more than it takes, you're supposed to get endless cash there.
RoWe isn't that bad either, it's not that powerful in the end and sickness/starvation training with herbs is much more prevalent and powerful while relying on the same base mechanism. Maybe that should be changed but it's not an exploit as it is.

Piety scumming, dragon doubling, aggroing the casinokeeper without alerting guards, pacifying rooms with doors and worms, protecting the D50 levers with monster summoning and doors, digging into shops and kicking the merchandise out... Those are exploits.

 

[Johannes]

Oh and the stretch goals:
http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/2012/07/pondering-stretch-goals-for.html

I encourage everyone here to vote in the poll.


Why he cannot include the races, classes and corruptions in the basic amount I don't get really. Yeah ADOM is made of really messy code at this point and blah blah, but how hard can it be? Even if it'd take days (yea right) it'd be easily doable with the 48k.

New quests are of course potentially cool, but what I'm doubtful about is if they'll offer too much rewards - to me there's just the right amount of content before the Fire Temple, in order to give you tools to beat the ACW but not enough to easily overkill it, it'd be bad to disrupt that balance. Total beginner-level quest like comparable to puppy cave (which doesn't give as lasting rewards as the druid or elder quests) could be ok though. You could always add more endgame stuff, that's actually hard to beat but doesn't overpower too much - bitchy locations similar to minotaur maze maybe, which is a real challenge but doesn't reward you very much beyond the satisfaction of overcoming that difficulty.

Global high scores and challenge games are kinda moot since they already exist! Sure you could make them official and host them on ADOM website, but man that work's already done. Though well, you could always improve and you should when you have that kind of money to dump on it, you should.

And for the fucking tablet ports, really, if he wants to make them go for it, THEN charge money by selling it there for a miniature sum. Don't involve that shit with a patch for the COMPUTERS.
Also the ports seem like the most work intensive thing on the list by far.


Damn now I'm kinda annoyed, why won't he just include all this shit (sans ports) in for the base expense ?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I'm not sure about tiles. I suspect it could be risky.
Tiles could be crappy or something.

 

[Stabwound]

Oh, I didn't notice they were actually donator rewards. But nevertheless it's not a bad idea to have more monster variety like that, it's an improvement to the game even if just a small one.


And those I wouldn't consider exploits at all. Tomas must've realized that the casino gives more than it takes, you're supposed to get endless cash there.
RoWe isn't that bad either, it's not that powerful in the end and sickness/starvation training with herbs is much more prevalent and powerful while relying on the same base mechanism. Maybe that should be changed but it's not an exploit as it is.

Piety scumming, dragon doubling, aggroing the casinokeeper without alerting guards, pacifying rooms with doors and worms, protecting the D50 levers with monster summoning and doors, digging into shops and kicking the merchandise out... Those are exploits.

I haven't played ADOM in forever so I'm going off of memories of when I played it heavily 10+ years ago. I don't remember some of those exploits you listed. Anyway, I think the oversight to the Casino is that it is an endless money machine with no drawback at all. Yeah, it might be intended that you always win more than you lose, but it's kind of dumb that you can stick a pencil in your keyboard to jam down the button and gamble for endless time. Doing so makes everything happen in 1 turn, so there is no corruption gained or food lost. That part can't really be intended, in my opinion.

He won't include any of the good stuff in the base goals because he's seeing successful kickstarters with their stretch goals and getting $$$$$ signs in his eyes. The funniest part is that he's been talking about iAdom iPad port for years, and everyone always tells him that it's pointless and we didn't ask for this. Now he finally has someone actually working on the iPad port. Look at the results of that stretch goal poll: iPad port is the lowest voted for by far, with Android port not far behind. No one wants to play a roguelike on a fucking tablet. It's just awkward as hell.

It would take so little effort to add things like new PC races/classes and new corruptions. He's going to be doing alpha releases for donators so it's not like they'll go untested either.

He's just milking the shit out of the campaign as much as possible.

Funny how he was going to do a Reddit AMA and then decided not to due to "lack of interest" when he "only" got about 30 responses. An AMA that kicked off well on reddit would have given him a huge amount of exposure, but whatever.

 

[getter77]

Past halfway in both respects, a pre-release candidate has been released into the wilds for nigh all to partake in for a variety of operating systems---even grizzled old Amiga vets and newfangled Raspberry Pi folks:

http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/2012/08/adom-120-prerelease-1-now-available.html

No changelog at all really just yet, Biskup and friends pretty well rushed on it to get it out today.

 

[Gozma]

I mean... Crawl is pretty much ADOM minus garbage (plus some other garbage).

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I mean... Crawl is pretty much ADOM minus garbage (plus some other garbage).

Are you who I think you are?

 

[getter77]

Log ahoy:

- Issue 9 - Choosing the skilled talent crashes the game
- Issue 10 - Dropping unIDed metal ingots can crash game
- Issue 11 - Killing corrupting monsters that stand behind other monsters with mindcraft crashes the game
- Issue 25 - Several bugs can crop up during play due integer wrap-rounds
- Issue 69 - it was possible to decrease the number of game turns
- Issue 95 - Circle kick bug allows you to kick indefinately
- Issue 97 - Dipping gold into a potion of exchange causes a crash
- Issue 99 - Chatting to Thrundarr while corrupted results in a game crash
- Issue 100 - Invalid bonuses for Good Learner and Great Learner skills
- Issue 106 - It is possible to rob some shops unnoticed in broad daylight and in front of the shopkeeper
- Issue 107 - Background corruption only increases once, on day 90
- Issue 109 - Berserking monsters behave oddly and can lead to an annoying crash
- Issue 111 - Dragons are able to replicate gold
- Issue 113 - The 'n'ame command can be used to detect invisible monsters
- Issue 117 - Wizards not charging wands after all
- Issue 119 - Fireproof blankets don't function properly while doomed
- Issue 120 - The unicorn starsign makes it easier to change alignment
- Issue 122 - Kicking walls with extremely low strength produces hilarious death
- Issue 128 - Walking against a wall with monsters nearby allow for free regeneration of HP and PP
- Issue 129 - Approximately half of the game's artifacts are currently unavailable
- Issue 134 - Artifact Grod does not grant a critical hit bonus
- Issue 135 - You always fall at least once when entering the rift
- Issue 138 - The formula for potential stat gain is bugged
- Issue 139 - "dwarven weaponmaster" and "dwarven mystic" are now flagged as "unique" monsters
- Issue 148 - The Allow_Default_Name = true flag in the .cfg can either result in a crash or a strange, exploitable effect
- Issue 203 - ADOM crashing during character creation on a 64-bit machine
- Issue 711 - Starvation tolerance for farmer class not working correctly
- Issue 712 - Slow Poison is far too good
- Issue 713 - Dipping fluff ball into water: game crashes if there is no room for the Gremlins to spawn
- Issue 714 - Spell learning chance mixed up for arcane and clerical spells
- Issue 715 - Only every other inventory item is considered for destruction
- Issue 717 - Berserking monsters don't kill themselves any more
- Issue 723 - (Greater) karmic vaults seem to end up getting filled with goblins instead of ancient karmic dragons
- Issue 726 - The "Drop items in a comfortable way" command regularly drops the wrong items if used on too many items stacks of the same type
- Issue 727 - If you kill a creature using a potion of cure corruption (and other potions), you don't get any experience
- Issue 728 - Eating some corpses can result in a 'your muscles bulge' message without any strength gains
- Issue 729 - Applying concentration skill while stunned
- Issue 740 - There are a few ways that cause the game to unfairly and irrevocably crash
- Issue 741 - Some words are missing in the talents screen (e.g. "encounters" for Scout)
- Issue 744 - Having enough stacks of scrolls of item destruction as your sole inventory and reading one will crash the game
- Issue 745 - PC gets experience from door traps that triggered by monsters
- Issue 749 - Mad Minstrel songs don't display properly
- Issue 750 - Wrong alignment message when reading tracts
- Issue 751 - PCs with high swimming skill use more energy to move while in water than PCs without it
- Issue 752 - Monsters don't leave any of the guaranteed artifacts when sacced or transformed
- Issue 754 - Certain skills can be successfully 'a'pplied under nonsensical circumstances
- Issue 765 - Answering no to "Really attack/backstab the -foo-? [y/N]", reduces the energy cost of the PC's following action
- Issue 766 - Some items in the game have no plural form to display when the PC owns more than one
- Issue 790 - the "Justifier" artifact is completely useless to priests, despite the fact they can be crowned with it
- Issue 823 - Monsters give double xp when invisible even if the player can see invisible
- Issue 848 - Under certain circumstances, owing money to a shopkeeper (or reversed) can trigger some bugs
- Issue 851 - Illusionary wall bugs: Monsters standing in those walls can't be hit by non-bouncing bolt spells
- Issue 857 - Prayer can both help and punish you at the same time
- Issue 925 - The PC can receive a DV bonus worth half what he'd get from fighting unarmed, but *only* if the *right* hand slot is free
- Issue 950 - There are a few bugs regarding 'n'aming monsters
- Issue 1109 - Reading spellbooks can make them shift place in your inventory
- Issue 1122 - Abusable overflow when entering the character name on MS-DOS

Partially fixed:

- Issue 716 : an uncountable number of typos have been fixed
- Issue 735 : There are several ways to make an ADOM game unwinnable
- Issue 743 : around 55 "illogical messages" were fixed
- Issue 882 : the PC is able to illogically perform several actions while stuck in webs. The webs themselves also have some quirks

Additionally many bugs encountered while refacturing and reviewing the code were fixed. They don't have separate tickets.