ADOM: Resurrection via IndieGoGo (~$90K funded, 1.2.0p4 private update out)

[getter77]

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

After a a lot of discussion and preparation today is the day to throw the dice of Fate and see where they fall: Just seconds ago I activated the crowd funding campaign for resurrecting ADOM development on Indiegogo. Now please: if you ever loved ADOM and/or still love it - go there and pledge to get some of the cool rewards and help ADOM to step into the 21st century. Or at least spread the word! Now is the time!

The campaign will run for a total of 60 days as many fans already indicated that they right now aren't able to pledge as much as they'd like to and since times are pretty tough in many places I hope that the 60 day limit can help.

I also hope that the "Kickstarter vs. Indiegogo" discussion really is moot. My impression during the last days and weeks was that having access to a great community always seemed to be most important, far more than the actual crowd funding platform - and as far as I am concerned the ADOM community is the greatest of them all!

So if you care(d) for ADOM, please

    -pledge as soon as possible. It seems to be highly important for crowd funding campaigns to get a great initial momentum and this also helps in getting featured on the front page of Indiegogo! You can upgrade your pledges later so there is no (?) reason to wait ;-)
    -spread the word about the campaign and the link to the campaign. Talk to friends and family, blog, tweet, etc. Share this on Facebook, post on newsgroups and mailing lists and raise as much ruckus as possible to mobilize everyone who ever cared for ADOM and enjoyed playing it. (But don't annoy people ;-) )

I really really really hope that we make the campaign goal (and if we make it that we make it as soon as possible) as the true fun will begin with the planned stretch goals (new races, new classes, new corruptions, new items, new monsters, new artifacts, new quests [dare I say words like Scroll of Omnipotence or Red Rooster Inn]?), the ADOM pen & paper RPG, iPad and Android ports, an extendable and scriptable version of ADOM, more elaborate character generation options and maybe even open sourcing ADOM. And so much more I don't want to talk about right away... So let's have a go at it!

60 days for $48,000 for Biskup's 4 man team to pull a resurrection----I think this has got a shot!  

[Darren Grey]

It's got $1k in about an hour, so that's a good start.  I've chipped in a fair bit myself (hurrah for the strong pound!)

[Nachtfischer]

I'm in, too. Would be great to see some polish on an "ancient" roguelike.

[Skeletor]

Donation on the way.. and thanks Getter for the heads up.

[XLambda]

Go Thomas Hopefully the campaign is successful!

[Holsety]

What the fuck does he need $48,000 for?

[getter77]

4 Man team with art/UI concerns, sound concerns, wrangling a variety of platforms, and all the coding needed to fix insane bugs and add new bits of content.   In other words, a fair bit I'd reckon----and an easier target to hit in theory than the initial estimate of $60K

[guest509]

  Oh is this an expansion of the original ADOM? This is not for ADOM II?

EDIT: HA! If you pledge $50k he'll print and bind the source code and bring it to you personally. Then he'll hang out with you for a week. That's awesome...if I had a bunch of spare money to toss around I'd do it for the lols.

[getter77]

Indeed, this is ADOM moving forward once again picking up from early in the milennium while ADOM II also continues to move forward in a general sort of parallel with some overlapping I'm sure-----probably the next big Alpha series of ADOM II will be released sometime soon in July even with all this to now spice up the mix.

[Holsety]

If he makes the amount, he'll also release the source code for ADOM. If he doesn't...

IMO spending any amount of money on a "sound guy" is a complete waste.
Dwarf Fortress, LambdaRogue... I always get the version without sound, to save on space and because I know I'm going to mute it anyway...

Anyway, good on him, but I've gotten sick and tired of this ludicrous crowdfunding fad.
I'm very happy for all the people who have money to spend on projects that may or may not turn out how they imagine they will turn out (or even see completion at all). I, for one, wouldn't put one damn penny into any project that doesn't show a gameplay video at least.

Call me cruel, but I'm just waiting for all the crowdfunded games to finally release and turn out to be shit, just so I can continue being a cynical dick to people who've blindly thrown their money at [youtube video of guy explaining how the big bad industry won't let him make THE BEST GAME EVER].

As for THIS particular project, it's never going to happen.*
I doubt he'll be getting any money out of people who don't know ADOM.

I wouldn't feel the need to be such a negative asshole if it wasn't for all of you reacting so damn positively to this news. Not even surprise, just outright acceptance. Why?

_{*I'll write these words down on a piece of paper and eat them if I'm wrong.}

[Darren Grey]

This is a bit different from other crowdsourcing campaigns because not only are there many gameplay videos available, there's a whole completable and immensely enjoyable game that thousands have been playing for years.

I agree that it'll struggle though - it's a high target, and though it's had a strong start that's mostly from the hardcore fans.  Maintaining momentum will be very difficult, in spite of Notch's tweet (which doesn't seem to have had a major effect so far anyway).  Thomas seems to be relying on the idea of many of the old fans (of which there were hundreds of thousands) coming out of the woodwork to throw a few dollars in.  I'm not sure that'll happen so easily when so much time has passed.

Why the positivity?  Because we love ADOM    I remember the excitement I got when each gamma was coming out.  This is like that times a thousand!  And if it doesn't get funded I get my money back, so though it'll be disappointing I'll not be losing out financially.  If it does work and my money goes towards TB then great - he deserves it for all the joy I've had from ADOM in the last 14 years.  Plus I do trust him to deliver on his promises.  I understand the cynicism, but in this case I take him very seriously.  It's something he's been talking about for a while (which is why it's no surprise), and in spite of the years of no ADOM releases he's never dismissed the idea of picking it up again.

[Darren Grey]

But we should link to the other thread.

And for completeness this thread should link back as well.

[Krice]

Why the positivity?  Because we love ADOM

I think die hard fans are willing to give their money, but is this really the way developers should act? I mean, it wasn't really nice from Biskup to forget ADOM for years with some critical bugs and only now when people are willing to pay he is thinking to continue development. It just isn't right. But what the hell, if fans are crazy enough to pay for that, you know.

[Sykafoo]

Just as a further note... Rock Paper Shotgun wrote an article on this thing too... so that's going to be a huge deal for ADOM's chances here. Just saying!

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/07/03/roguelike-resurrection-adom-seeks-funding/

[Holsety]

And I won’t get into the “open versus closed” source discussion here ;-) That has been done a couple of times in other places (once again) a lot of times. But the highest stretch goal is to release ADOM as open source. I personally doubt we’ll get there but it will have to be seen… exciting times and scale effects on Internet are something hard to guess beforehand.

I like how he continues to hold his source code hostage. I like how it's "the highest stretch goal". Classy.