Beef Row
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So Thomas Biskup is raising funds to try to get on a good financial ground to resume development of ADOM. At minimum enough to fix all those annoying bugs from 1.1.1, but potentially adding new races, sound, and new content in general. If enough money gets raised over and above his basic goal, the ADOM source code may even get released.

Figured this was a forum that might have some interest, as a lot of us here know our roguelikes. Considering how many hundreds of hours I've put into ADOM, and how many more I'd put in if there was even a 'basic bugfix' new release I'm certainly going to donate, though I do have some mixed feelings because I wish he'd just simply done a final bugfix release or when development stalled, or at least before starting on ADOM II.

Donations are through Indiegogo, which apparently takes your money immediately and refunds it later if the target amount isn't met, so be aware of that difference from Kickstarter. Link here:
[url= http://www.indiegogo.com/resurrect-adom-development] http://www.indiegogo.com/resurrect-adom-development

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Penumbra
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I was coming here to post the same thing! Kickstarter requires the creator to be inside the USA, so that's the reason for indiegogo. That, and the ~5% of backers that don't end up paying is avoided by taking the money first. It is kinda annoying, though.

I've never had a credit card refund through paypal before. Hopefully things will work out and it won't be an issue

Nillo
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This is wonderful, and entirely unexpected. I'll definitely mention this to my friends and donate as much as I can!

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“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the 'Ellie May,' a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”

Nillo
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Already a "1.2.0 prerelease" version of ADOM has been created: http://www.ancardia.com/download.html

The version seems to entirely consist of bug fixes, and removes some of the exploits such as the dragon gold exploit. Understandably, major changes to the game will only be made after the end of the funding campaign. Full changelog here.

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“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the 'Ellie May,' a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”

skell
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I am still very curious if someone will buy the Demigod reward.

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Nillo
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Well, the NDA on the source code rewards does put a bit of a damper on them. I don't think I would ever fork over that amount of cash for something if I wasn't allowed to do whatever I wanted with it.

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“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the 'Ellie May,' a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”

skell
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Then again if you have that much money that you can waste it to buy the sources, you might have enough funds to just breach the NDA and release it anyway.

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Trickster
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I'm a longtime roguelike player, and I don't like ADOM.

I love the goal of ADOM, and the personality of ADOM, and the work that has been put into it. But it has always been a mess and I don't expect it to improve with funding.

The problem with ADOM is that it has way, way, way too much stuff going on. As a result, there is little-to-no game balance. The development focused on adding more and more stuff before slowing down to balance the components that were already there, or even before first asking the question: "Should we really add this?"

The result is a mess that cannot be balanced. I remember in the old game you could even use a map command to change views and evade combat...frightfully silly stuff. As much as I want this project to succeed, I have very low expectations for it. That's the only reason I have not donated.

(Now, if this were a project to revive ZangbandTk...)

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Someone Else
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Wait, what is this command? I've never heard of it. It doesn't appear in the Improved Guidebook's list of bugs.

But the thing is - it doesn't need to be balanced. It's frightfully hard, and so sometimes you'll get lucky and not have as hard a time because you got some really good gear. Other times you'll not be so lucky. And if you learn where it's unbalanced, you'll do better - avoid the stuff that's too hard or scary.

Personally, it's my favourite roguelike, but to each their own.

Jatopian
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Have not played ADOM, but I've never liked severe unbalance in anything longer than e.g. Binding of Isaac.

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Trickster
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Someone Else wrote:
Wait, what is this command? I've never heard of it. It doesn't appear in the Improved Guidebook's list of bugs.

It's the '<' key on the overworld. It aborts combat and returns you to the larger map, which lets you basically travel anywhere with no danger.

That may not be in the game anymore, but for every thing like that they patch there's another mess somewhere else (unless ADOM's dev has changed significantly in recent years).

Someone Else wrote:
But the thing is - it doesn't need to be balanced. It's frightfully hard, and so sometimes you'll get lucky and not have as hard a time because you got some really good gear. Other times you'll not be so lucky. And if you learn where it's unbalanced, you'll do better - avoid the stuff that's too hard or scary.

That's not what I mean by "balance". By "balance" I mean, "not filled with dumb scumming tricks that make it twenty times easier to beat the game by doing stupid meta-game actions that don't make sense".

As much as I love Z, I have to admit vanilla Angband is the best-supported roguelike out there and the most reliable one to play. Every other variant seems to screw things up something fierce.

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Nillo
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Well, the Indiegogo page does mention that balance patches will be included in the project, which is good enough for me.

I've played ADOM thousands of times, and won the game with three different characters. It's a very old game, so it has some design problems that a newer game wouldn't have, but I am of the opinion that the problems could be fixed with more development time. Wizards and barbarians should be nerfed, and other classes should receive slight buffs. The casino needs to be made less profitable so it doesn't render any other gold bonuses irrelevant. Uberjackals should be fixed. As for new features, I'm mainly interested in the user interface improvements (autoexplore command, colored messages, etc).

The massive world and variety of creatures and characters has always been the draw of ADOM for me. As for other roguelikes, the only one that's caught my interest is Brogue, which is a very recent game. While ADOM focused on creating a large and interesting world to explore, Brogue has distilled the roguelike genre to its most basic elements. I've talked at length about Brogue before, and was surprised that it did not receive much attention from the Caravel crowd.

Anyway, I believe that there is a place for both games like ADOM and more simple games like Brogue in the roguelike genre. They're not competing with each other, but rather offer very different experiences for a roguelike player.

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“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the 'Ellie May,' a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”

Trickster
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Feh. I gave in and donated.

I hope they make the first extended goal, but I'm not optimistic. The funds seem to be slowing...

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Nillo
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I don't care for tilesets, but I think it's unfortunate that ratlings were chosen as a stretch goal that's unlikely to be reached, since those are a fairly important race in the lore of the ADOM world.

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“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the 'Ellie May,' a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”

Banjooie
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I think discussing stretch goals is amusing in the context of a project that doesn't look like it's going to make its /basic/ funding.

Beef Row
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Banjooie wrote:
I think discussing stretch goals is amusing in the context of a project that doesn't look like it's going to make its /basic/ funding.

It's made 76% of its funding in 76% of the days. I'd call it too close to call, not not going to make it. I think the hope is that the stretch goals might inspire people who REALLY REALLY *care* about tiles to donate, but yeah, I don't think that's going to be a big factor in whether it makes it or not.

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Nillo
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It is common for crowdfunding campaigns like this one to see a relatively high amount of pledges at the beginning and at the very end of the campaign, while not much funding is collected near the middle. It's quite possible that enthusiastic fans will upgrade their pledges if they notice that the ADOM project is at risk of being canceled.

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“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the 'Ellie May,' a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”

Nillo
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Good news - ADOM has reached its basic funding level with as many as 8 days left on the campaign! If you've been thinking about chipping in and getting one of the rewards, now is the time to make a decision.

The $60000 stretch goal doesn't look so hard to reach anymore. Considering how much funding was collected in the last few days, anything is possible. Spread the word! Think of the ratlings!

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“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the 'Ellie May,' a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”

Nillo
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The results are in. Total funds collected: $90,169

This means that the ADOM Resurrection will have (including, but not limited to):
-NotEye support
-Custom-made tileset by Krys
-Ratlings, mist elves, duelists, chaos knights
-Deluxe ADOM release on Steam and other digital platforms with casual options like restorable saves and extended character generation
-Achievements and global high scores
-The "Volcano Quest"
-The "Quest for Rolf"
-Three bonus quests that will be discussed with the community.

Additionally ADOM is now the most successful video game campaign on the IndieGoGo website, surpassing "Dark Potential's First Miniatures" which collected $89,849 funds. Impressive!

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“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the 'Ellie May,' a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”