Author Topic: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!  (Read 21513 times)

Thomas_Biskup

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Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!
« on: November 11, 2015, 10:58:47 PM »
Hi everyone!

The ADOM launch date on Steam has been set to the 16th of November, 8pm GMT+1 (11am US pacific time).

Please help us to make this a big success by supporting our Thunderclap campaign with your Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr accounts:
   http://thndr.me/GdsgXA

Read all the details about our final preparations at
   http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/2015/11/help-launching-adom-on-steam-release.html
and visit the Steam store page at
   http://store.steampowered.com/app/333300
   
Thanks for your continued support - we are trying our best to make this a great new step in the history of ADOM!

Axes High!
Thomas Biskup & Team ADOM

Krice

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Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!
« Reply #1 on: November 12, 2015, 12:07:19 PM »
When adom became commercial I didn't like it and I still don't like it. I can understand that some developers want money from games they make, but a roguelike is a strange game genre for that. Unless you really aim for commercial game from the start, but adom wasn't like that before. I like how roguelikes are so difficult to monetize that most people don't even try. You know, most game genres and game development in general was largely destroyed by commercial demands. We don't see a lot of interesting games from creative point of view, but only if developers think the game could make money. Sometimes you don't need much to achieve that goal.

getter77

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Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!
« Reply #2 on: November 12, 2015, 01:55:14 PM »
No, it isn't, as long evidenced by the entirely fine commercial resurgence of late that has surpassed the western business misfortunes of the 80's(Rogue itself had commercial adventures so...yeah) and 90's and that it has been going decently in Japan for decades now.  Any team on any project on this earth can avail funding as a handy resource to better leverage time---ADOM is/was no different.   Besides, it isn't like the standard free edition with an ample heap of fixes and additions to make it better than ever is going anywhere!

Overexhuberant commercial demands in the vein of short term thinking have greatly retarded and muddled progress in game development on the whole alongside technology in general due to not doing due diligence on both the scientific and artistic sides---but no, commercial projects in general have led to a bevy of excellent games of all stripes in the past several decades even still as not all fall prey to those extremes and market forces so pointedly.  Also:  Entirely irrelevant to ADOM's wranglings---as they are doing it well and in earnest.

Come on man, try for a bit of optimism here!   8)
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AgingMinotaur

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Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!
« Reply #3 on: November 12, 2015, 04:03:44 PM »
I certainly think ADOM can pull off making a buck (and deservedly so), given its relatively huge and loyal user base. Yet, I also see where Krice is coming from here. Personally, one of the things I like about RLs is how grand projects can emerge outside of the commercial ecosystem. Single developers and small teams sinking decades into making weird and complex games with little prospects for any kind of big revenue is certainly something that speaks to how resilient the genre seems to be against commercialism. And even if the ADOM resurrection is more or less a success from the outset, it's probably fair to point out that the game was already there before the campaign started, and that it may not be realistic to envision something like ADOM coming out of a company that has to take financial viability into account.

The discussion might merit its own thread, though, rather than emanating from some random flame against one of Thomas B's posts. Our anger is probably better directed further up the food chain :)

As always,
Minotauros
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akeley

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Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!
« Reply #4 on: November 12, 2015, 09:08:14 PM »
The discussion might merit its own thread

Well, go on then...make one! I tried to hint at "monetization vs creativity" angle quite a few times, with predictable (non)results, perhaps someone of your stature would have more luck. I find this subject both scary and fascinating and certainly looming large over the RL land.

Cannot hate on Mr Biskup making a well deserved $, for reasons already mentioned above...though  I have no real interest in this release. Its features are just not that exciting compared to the standard version. However, I hope he drops the Steam blinkers one day and releases ADOM elsewhere too and I will gladly buy it then, for it certainly is an amazing game.

Other reason why I welcome these news is also the fact that perhaps once this is all done here he will resume work on ADOM II, which is sort of strangely dwelling in some sort of limbo...it`s as if everyone forgot about it. But 2 ADOM > 1 ADOM, at least to my simple mind.

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Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!
« Reply #5 on: November 13, 2015, 01:40:57 AM »
That's really cool. Good work and congrats
Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day.
Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

Krice

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Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!
« Reply #6 on: November 19, 2015, 01:20:14 PM »
Cannot hate on Mr Biskup making a well deserved $

He didn't even deserve it, because ADOM is so much about D&D and Nethack. Not only that, I hate the way he brushed up ADOM from dust when crowd funding was becoming a thing. He did practically nothing, he even had help from those other guys working on the project.

I think even ADOM 2 was just a way to get interest back on ADOM. I was more interested about 2 than ADOM the commercial version.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2015, 01:23:19 PM by Krice »

Thomas_Biskup

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Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!
« Reply #7 on: November 19, 2015, 04:42:29 PM »
He didn't even deserve it, because ADOM is so much about D&D and Nethack. Not only that, I hate the way he brushed up ADOM from dust when crowd funding was becoming a thing. He did practically nothing, he even had help from those other guys working on the project.

LOL, you are such a sad delusional I-know-nothing-but-love-to-talk-shit person... back to your cellar, troll :-)

getter77

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Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!
« Reply #8 on: November 19, 2015, 08:46:09 PM »

He didn't even deserve it, because ADOM is so much about D&D and Nethack. Not only that, I hate the way he brushed up ADOM from dust when crowd funding was becoming a thing. He did practically nothing, he even had help from those other guys working on the project.

I think even ADOM 2 was just a way to get interest back on ADOM. I was more interested about 2 than ADOM the commercial version.


...The hell?  This is quite far afield of reality Krice---alongside a nasty side of vitriolic.   ???  Probably best to tone it way on down and/or not at all broach the subject all things considered.
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Krice

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Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!
« Reply #9 on: November 20, 2015, 08:23:00 AM »
Well, at least that's the way I see it. It's almost like Nethack developers would suddenly wake up and create a graphical version of Nethack, then release it on Steam. It's only money that makes you do that. But I guess in a way Nethack dev team is even worse, because they have never explained what they are doing - if anything. Mr. Biskup has been open about his lack of time for game development, and I guess that's why he concentrated on ADOM Commercial and not on ADOM 2 which would have been much more ambitious project.

Holsety

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Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!
« Reply #10 on: November 20, 2015, 10:10:54 AM »

He didn't even deserve it, because ADOM is so much about D&D and Nethack. Not only that, I hate the way he brushed up ADOM from dust when crowd funding was becoming a thing. He did practically nothing, he even had help from those other guys working on the project.

I think even ADOM 2 was just a way to get interest back on ADOM. I was more interested about 2 than ADOM the commercial version.


...The hell?  This is quite far afield of reality Krice---alongside a nasty side of vitriolic.   ???  Probably best to tone it way on down and/or not at all broach the subject all things considered.

Nasty or not, there's a kernel of truth in there. (Aside from the DnD talk, but that's Krice's pet peeve.)
Biskup DID kind of lay ADOM to rest around 2002 and start work on ADOM II sometime afterwards. Only "in recent years" (after the rise of kickstarter) did he revive ADOM as a commercial endeavor, giving normal access to backers and (later) paying customers. While sporadically releasing versions for free. [edit: If I'm wrong about any of this, please feel free to point it out. It's always possible I'm operating on misinformation.]

Of course Biskup has bills to pay and working on ADOM is a side thing for him, but I can see why taking a free game after 10ish years of radio silence and resuming updates IF you pay him can cause some people to question your motives and morals. Especially since previously his stance was "send me a postcard if you enjoy my game!".
The NotEye integration also gives the impression of being purely money-motivated (ie. if you want to make money on Steam, ASCII won't cut it; ToME4 already gets flak for being "super ugly").
Naturally it's his life and livelihood, I just don't feel like it's right to expect unanimous cheering each time he does something...

(Also, I think it's more worthwhile to fix misconceptions through dialogue than just go "hush now". If it's just a circlejerk you want you can just as easily move the entire forum to reddit lol)
« Last Edit: November 20, 2015, 10:13:36 AM by Holsety »
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getter77

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Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!
« Reply #11 on: November 20, 2015, 02:16:01 PM »
Well, there was this thing, which I prefer to see folks being civil and having a good time with my ire only aimed at damnable spam bots(literally just a thing right before this) versus entirely unprovoked personal attacks on a dev out of nowhere:

http://forums.roguetemple.com/index.php?topic=18.0

The "kernel" is there slightly, but in such a case, could've well stood to be just that even if reasoned extrapolation could be had to flesh it out to an actual point versus heaping on this other.   Biskup himself has clearly put in quite a lot of hours of archaeology/coding, ample organization efforts, and misc other tasks all while dealing with some serious body blows that life supplied him and his own along the way---it is a pretty low effort thing to just peruse back through the mists of some on the dev blog to dissuade the "did practically nothing" line which I especially shook my head at.

TL, DR:  Not so much "Shut up" as "Come on now"

It has always been equal parts adventure and misadventure when it comes to the development of ADOM and ADOM II in relatively modern times---endless communal "expectations", endless conspiracy theories, Biskup's seemingly endless font of work at his day/night job, the sideline non-ADOM P&P thing that looked like it might become something of a thing for awhile there, and so on.

When ADOM II dev actually started to get someplace, full of fury and inscrutable Java, it was the days of Alpha/Early Access that had started to gain traction---so he started to make some headway along those lines as opposed to waiting until however many more years it could well have taken to get it out there in a Complete, or even Beta, form.  Then Crowdfunding suddenly became something of a thing, even as a longshot as ADOM didn't do KS where all the real action was and continues to be(his locale wasn't expressly supported by KS in those days)---but the far, far lesser entity that was IndieGoGo(on which he is still, after all these years, probably one of the very few to actually come through on things especially for even the modest amount he raised).  With this, Biskup's TEAM, which I place special emphasis on as time and again there's this strange framing undercurrent I don't understand that this whole thing is solely Biskup as per the old days suddenly asking for money in exchange for doings things well beyond his old(and present) skillset, gained some funds to make actual headway on the technical backend, music, art, and so on needed to have ADOM roughly be all it can be.

Perhaps there's some alternate universe out there where Biskup arbitrarily decided to maintain postcardware and pay for all the team stuff entirely out of pocket via some sort of lotto win or treasure discovery---but this universe is the one we've got and it seems a silly thing to begrudge or smear the man on.  People can still flood his mailbox with postcards which would probably contribute a fair bit in their own right to motivating the project by putting even more of a tangible, human face to the playerbase.

The free updates are still a thing, with folks that chipped in simply getting to be victims of further testing and whatnot sooner than later---absolutely nothing weird about it as well as the fact that all the old editions are still pretty much there for anybody that fancies a jaunt back through time.  There's even Amiga builds, just because---absolutely nobody with any damn sense to cater entirely to sensible business doings as the driving force would dare to entertain such a notion.   ;D

NotEye is also more than meets the eye(Sorry Zeno, couldn't resist)---a pathway to the base inclusion of Tiles alongside the ASCII for Steam(and otherwise hopefully to come like GoG...) is only a portion of what it has come to be capable of doing....much of which improvements(Folks that buy into cool feature on things buying into a thing gaining cool features?  Seems legit) which can then be of benefit to the entire community of current and future projects came DIRECTLY from the funds/work for ADOM explicitly:

http://www.roguetemple.com/z/noteye/

In an age when most Roguelike "tools" meet a sad fate of languishing in a tech debt hell from which they can never quite get their heads above water on(libtcod and so, so many more), it is at least absolutely worth celebrating the ways and means which has allowed for at least one to stand a real chance at actually flourishing for the good of all.   8)

This isn't Reddit(never will be, thankfully---even if the Roguelikes/Roguelikedev subs are pretty nifty overall despite the constraints they have to function in within the sum of Reddit on the whole), and just for the sake of it since I half suspect aversions cast my own way given I somehow often seem to fall into the role of an odd ADOM and such reporter/bibliographer---Biskup, and his team, have yet to see so much of a thin damn dime from the likes of me, so this isn't like I'm trying to self-validate a premium purchase from years ago so much as clear the brackish mists which I so thoroughly don't understand why they continue to be a thing and reappear time and again when the general history is right there for all as it isn't like I'm supping from the esoteric(weird secret goings on is Nethack country for sure) here.

The "cheering" is mainly to do with one of the classic Roguelike devs managing to Do Something again---because as per the Demographics, surprise, most are either already dead and unable to further share their windows to the extraordinary with the world or are very much en route to that phase the same as most of the formative figures in the entire gaming sphere, industry or otherwise.  This whole crazy thing only has a couple decades under the belt, which in the sum of humanity's culturally historical doings is positively infant---so in my estimation rallying a bit around some general good bits(Release a thing that is better and works? Neat!) and making note of them for posterity is well in order.   The historically curmudgeonly streak is something of an odd quirk that Roguelike scene gained for itself(The Western line anyway) mainly in the Usenet days and flared up again in the modern times of the 'Roguelites impugning The Purity", but just because it is aged doesn't make it sacrosanct or worthy of enshrinement if it doesn't actually foster anything positive and/or lively going forward versus even just a tad of optimism/positivity and benefit of the doubt.
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Holsety

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Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!
« Reply #12 on: November 20, 2015, 03:14:53 PM »
Well damn, I wasn't expecting all that. Thanks for writing it all out, firstly.

You're right, it IS very easy to forget that Biskup's working with a team (who have to be paid), since Biskup is the guy who handles all the PR/communications (which is understandable). The official site even says;

Quote
Since 2012, after a 9 year hiatus, development has been resumed by Thomas Biskup on ADOM as well as its successor. ADOM Release 60 has been made available for public download.

...there's other people there too, but eh. Out of sight, out of mind?

As for the free updates: from the official site;
Quote
Q: What's the difference between the Free and Deluxe ADOM versions?
A: In general everything that was part of the original ADOM stays free. Plus all extra content added until the Steam release. Plus sound/music, interface and graphics. The Deluxe version contains all new features such as new game modes, extra gameplay customization, quality-of-life improvements etc. See below for a more detailed list:

Which is decidedly a different thing from ToME4's model which offers the same experience (eh) through the paid Steam version as that which you get from simply downloading it over at te4.org.

But what confuses me here is that both Steam Adom and Adom Free get the notEye graphical stuff; what's "held back" from Adom Free is customisation switches (ie. toggles and Free Starsign Selection).
If the notEye tileset was paid-only, I'd understand fully since I imagine that being something he's had to put much of his funding into (ie. paying for art and getting it integrated and whatnot). As-is I'm just confused at his choices (certainly global shared hi-scores is made easier by integrating Steamworks or something, but the rest...).
[disclaimer; this is just me being a greedy miser, since I care not for tiles but care much for options. Woe is me!]
Well, at least it's a generous model. I remember waiting for free releases while updates were still fresh and ongoing, and thinking I'd be missing out on all the "cool new content", like the Mist Elves and ratlings and what have you.

Regardless, it is helpful to be reminded of certain things, as I (for one) have a habit of selectively forgetting key factoids in order to tailor events to my pessimistic worldview.
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getter77

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Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!
« Reply #13 on: November 21, 2015, 02:25:48 AM »
-First point is the kind of generally sensible critique that I think would benefit the project and hopefully is a thing that happens moreso as relevant respective content continues to roll out---having a "Face" for a project whom the buck stops with is pretty commonplace.  That said, not quite so out of sight and mind so much as moreso aimed for now at newcomers and organizational groups seeking clarity as opposed to just delving the blog for X hours potentially:

http://www.adom.de/home/pressKit.html

-Different models and all that---I, for one, am not at all a fan of ToME4's approach of "online/connected" exclusive classes/content/etc as a grizzled fellow that just wants to heap all the files in a folder from a .zip or .rar and thumb my nose at needing a perpetual internet connection/inclusion in ongoing data metrics while availing of all the content that makes sense for a single player game.  Most are fine with it though, and theoretically he can always eventually "move" (at least some of) them to "offline" as more and more fresher such things happen as ultimately man can only comprehend so much DLC outside of those damn train simulators.

So too do I reckon it with ADOM's adventure on Steam---this is their first rodeo(Same with DarkGod---all have a seat at the grand battling table straight out of Valhalla!), feeling things out as they go and with the power of not being beholden to a publisher, any number of extra or presently unanticipated improvements may just well come about as they amble along.   Very little of the lot of this strikes me as hard and fast so much as aspects that can "flex" as things happen along the general roadmap and timeline of doings.   I think both project leads have demonstrated that, regardless of the ways and means Getting There, each believes in the project, the absolute playerbase, and the potential to craft something special and better than what has come before it as time and circumstance avails---they'd not cast their lot in with nor be seen as peers among the actually predatory and exploitative outfits that are out there the same as them on Steam actively fleecing folks of their precious time and finite funds.   Awkward is always awkward---but endearing enough to appreciate the path being charted not unlike a kid/kitten/puppy discovering the world around them while trying not to fall down the stairs in an unspectacular fashion.
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Krice

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Re: Support the ADOM launch on Steam - it's finally happening!
« Reply #14 on: November 21, 2015, 12:41:04 PM »
I'm sure I've said this before,  but you getter have a great gift of writing lots of text without any content or meaning. It's a skill, I would say.