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[ElectricThunder]

The classic topic of valid details and passion:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52397

The mission statement: http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/p/mission.html

Every adventurer needs a mission and as JADE is my personal adventure here is my mission with JADE:

To build the most flexible and most interesting single-player computer fantasy roleplaying game ever.

What does this mean?

JADE is all about flexibility. I strongly believe that the replayability of a game is highly determined by the flexibility it allows in the ways a player can approach the game. Specifically for JADE this means that

large parts of the game are randomly created anew each time you start to play. This minimzes repetitiveness and maximizes replay value as each game will be different from the last.
random parts and predetermined events are used in a healthy mixture. This provides for a familiar game background that people can share, defines fix points that can be used as goals for the individual player and permits players to evolve different strategies.
highly different approaches to tackling the game exist. In the end you will be able to use a combat-heavy approach, try your luck with skillful approaches, engage in intense magical studies or try all at once. Additionally you can try to make heavy use of resources for building stuff or simply try to move ahead as fast as possible Whatever your personal preference... JADE should offer a venue to experience it to the fullest.

JADE should be interesting. This means that there should be surprises lurking around every corner and I want to have enough content that people after years of playing still will be able to discover new stuff and be amazed by the depth of the game. The venerable game Wasteland here is my deepest source of inspiration - never have I seen a game that was as detailed and as imaginative, especially for its tiny size compared to todays games.
At the same time JADE should not fall into the trap of other overly complex games that require weeks of hard learning before you can get anywhere. While in my humble opinion it's perfectly ok to require years to master and win a game, you effortlessly should be able to enjoy the early game and have more than enough alternatives ahead of you to avoid any kind of frustration.

One side aspect of "interest" to me is that JADE must be a roguelike game. The most compelling feature (besides randomness) of roguelike games for me is permadeath - when your character dies, he's dead and (usually) won't come back. Especially not just because you might be able to restore an older save point in the game. Permadeath adds a peculiar edge to a game where the player has reason to fear for his character with each new challenge... this is vastly different from the endless repetitiveness so prevalent in many modern game "designs" (IMHO repetitiveness not design but rather anti-design - if you force your players to repeat certain parts of a game again and again without any real new challenge this is boredom and not good design... try harder!).

JADE is single player. I yet have to see a decent multi-player design for roguelike games and also am not much of a fan of MMORPGs so JADE is for all you out there who feel like me. You should be able to play JADE all on your own and get endless hours of entertainment out of it.

JADE is a fantasy game. I love fantasy, I breathe fantasy and I very strongly believe in a coherent, strong and unified background story that helps to ground the player in the game. No chainsaws here (except maybe if at some point a time trip gets implemented ;-) ).

JADE is a roleplaying game and as such it is all about the main character which means that you should be able to build a highly detailed character if you so are inclined. On the other hand the design challenge here is to find a way that allows casual players to quickly get into the game without being overwhelmed by miniscule details.

So here we go... this is what drives me in my quest with JADE. If you share these ideals and like these goals maybe we'll together manage to make JADE the most successful computer RPG ever... but that would be the sugar coating on the cake and not a goal in itself ;-)

See ya in Ancardia - Axes high!

Recently though, as in today:

http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/2011/11/jade-020-has-been-released.html

After almost three months I'm proud to announce the release of JADE 0.2.0. This release marks a major and very important milestone for JADE in the quest to succeed ADOM.
JADE 0.2.0 is the first JADE release that I dare to call a "real game". It's still pretty limited when comparing it to ADOM content-wise but the rate of advancement is amazing to me (almost 20.000 lines of pure Java code added in 10 weeks, not counting comments and other stuff - I'll post an interesting statistic concerning that, soon). Additionally JADE 0.2.0 sports a number of features that already lift it above and beyond ADOM as those things would be pretty hard to add to ADOM. So here are the highlights of the 0.2.0 release, the detailed list comes next:

Quests that provide a "winning condition"
Addition of all the races from ADOM plus three new classes (tinkers, thieves and commoners besides fighters)
Multi-classing (yeah - very cool once more classes are there)
A construction and processing system that allows many modifications to the environment (and can be trivially extended once ideas start flowing from the community)
Many many new interaction means with the environment
About 100 new base item types as well as more than two dozen new monsters
Liquids, environmental effects, many new powers and abilities, an animation system, etc. pp.

From now on progress will be have on the content side and I hope to achieve the level of detail of ADOM in about nine months (that would make for a release of JADE 1.0.0 around my next birthday - we'll see if I am unrealistic or will manage to pull the trick).

Have fun, enjoy the game and provide feedback (I'm itching for ideas on how many things should interact and I am looking forward to proposals for interesting construction plans for things).

Besides now going back to the "release early, release often" strategy I started in JADE 0.1.0 I now will focus on fixing bugs you might discover (there has been so much new stuff that I fear there will be some ugly things I missed) as well on a little something that goes by the name of "JADE: The Ultimate Edition". I will keep you posted!

The full and proper changelog is such that it would blot out the sun, so if you like rockin' and rollin on the scroll wheel or page down key for a spell then by all means have at it.

You may be wondering: "Ultimate Edition: Say what?" Nobody by Biskup knows for sure, but he's gone and hinted at it apparently prior to going into the details----short version is that it would likely lesson the "eccentricities" of potential JAVA woes:

http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/2011/11/bitrock-installbuilder-donated-thanks.html

One of the ideas behind JADE:TU is to provide an offline version of JADE that requires neither Internet access nor Java Web Start with all its various difficulties to run on your system. A good installer builder is a very important tool on the road towards that goal and I'm more than happy that I now will be able to study the details of the BitRock InstallBuilder in order to use it for future JADE:TU builds.

What I like best is that one tool now will allow me to build installers across multiple platforms (especially Windows, Linux and the Mac which should cover about 99.8% of the market) and that it no longer will be necessary to understand the details of having to install Java and all that.

Really though, it all comes down to the fact that there's Questing afoot, variety to be had, leaps of improvement made since the first public early beta doings, and it is now possible to actually beat the thing---something of a historically "difficult" thing to do in ADOM proper.

It'll damn sure be interesting to see where this crazy ride of a "vaporware" project goes between now and Biskup's next birthday---easily one of the craziest overall things in the history of video games.

 

[Mejilan]

This is still alive?!
I was obsessed with ADOM 14 or so years ago, but stopped following it and JADE around 12 or so years ago, thinking that they were mostly dead projects!

Impressive...

 

[Emitan]

I hope someone who has to use DCSS's tiles interface because they can't remember hotkeys can play this.

EDIT: Drowned in the overworld while starving. Great...

 

[Tain]

I'm so glad this is still getting worked on. I'll probably wait for whenever it actually does surpass ADOM. Could be a long time, but that doesn't bother me.

 

[ElFly]

Hahaha, amazed that JADE is still making progress.

Good job, Biskup. I'll keep waiting for the sequel to the great ADOM.

 

[ElectricThunder]

Biskup also seems to have rigged together a video a little while back heading into this latest release sampling about in his animation system doings that will get quite a bit beyond ADOM:

http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/2011/10/my-first-jade-video-new-animation.html

Boy, do I suck at creating YouTube videos. But what the heck... I wanted to give a quick impression of some of the features in the upcoming JADE 0.2.0 release and here is my first Youtube video showing off JADE features...
What you get to see is a pimped tinker troll using

a number of fire rubies
blessed and cursed sacks of mana powder and
the new imbue skill

in order to lay out a nice pattern, ignite a mana powder fuse and finally explode the fire rubies immolating the shop at the target point.

There are still a number of bugs in the demo version I use (notice them?) but I'm working on that. The animations themselves might not seem to exciting but for me the important thing is not so much the graphical aspect but rather that I now have

a generic animation infrastructure for balls, waves, rays, missiles and whatever else shapes I can think of,
a trigger system for magical and mundane effects,
an infrastructure for propagating events,
a rendering pipeline for much better ASCII animations (I just need to implement more fun things now)
and a reaction system to such events.

This basically ends the long sidetrack I started weeks ago with liquids. The next tasks for JADE are to implement a lot more monsters, fix bugs from the project management tool and then get 0.2.0 released after some more testing. And then we'll be back to release early, release often.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cg-098ayV0

 

[ElectricThunder]

The....briefly...awaited hotfix patch of sorts that is 0.2.1 has arrived:

Barely one week after releasing JADE 0.2.0 I am very happy to announce the followup release: JADE 0.2.1 is finished. The new release mostly is a bugfix release for JADE 0.2.0 with a few minor additions.
Being mostly a bugfix release the major reason for an upgrade naturally that lots of things now work more correctly (or at all). The extensive list below contains all the details. Major new additions include a lot of finetuning for food consumption, starting power and skill points. Additionally drakelings now are playable. Oh, and corpses have been added to the game. And special effects for eating them ;-)

Besides these minor additions and major balance modifications here's the list of changes for JADE 0.2.1:

* Added two new item types.
* Added the 'confused' condition.
* Added corpses and special effects for corpses.
* Added a mandatory maze level to the caves of Chaos.
* Improved the skill dialog for raising skills (RFE 509).
* Improved the chances of finding something when searching (RFE 513).
* Adjusted hunger in the wilderness: the survival skill now greatly reduces time based
hunger effects in the wilderness, specific regions (e.g. forest or desert) modify the
effectiveness of the survival skill (RFE 490, 517).
* Provide extra weapon skill levels in the beginning.
* Increased starting hit points.
* Increased the nutrition value of items.
* Reduced the price for food.
* Several interactions (like kicking) now automatically select a single existing target (RFE 484, 488).
* The message for kicking an open door now longer enforces a (more) prompt.
* Added a message to wells.
* Unpaid items no longer stack (if not generated as a stack right away) in order to fix issue 487.
Additionally unpaid items no longer can be split when dropping them to prevent another shop
inventory bug (issue 534).
* Adjusted the danger level of dungeons (it now grows more slowly).
* Now JADE grants a lot more skill points when advancing a level but skills get a lot more costly
if the skill level by far surpasses the character level.
* Greatly increased the wilderness healing rate (RFE 529).
* 'a' now only displays the actually usable skills, 'A' displays all skills and allows to raise them
(RFE 530).
* Added alternate line colors to the weapon skill dialog. Fixed some of the headline underlinings in
that dialog.
* Added the alternating color scheme to other dialogs like the inventory, the stuff list, the skill
dialog, etc.
* Added a means to kick through secret doors (RFE 542).
* Fixed the problem with huge and gargantuan items no longer appearing in lists (issues 432, 575).
Affected small characters in combination with large items, too.
* Fixed the bug with endless raw meat supplies (raw meat didn't get consumed when eaten, issue 510).
Additionally various races are now more detailed in their meaning about raw meat (issue 494).
* Fixed the frequency of cursed items by reducing that status a little more (issue 420).
* Fixed weapons of heroism (probably already in an earlier version, issue 439).
* Fixed the naming for sized boots (issue 441).
* Fixed find weakness skill handling (issue 453).
* Fixed a problem with locked door interaction messages (issue 482).
* Fixed a problem with being able to select invalid directions (issue 483, 512).
* Fixed drakelings being unplayable due to a last minute change on my part (issue 485).
* Fixed the dungeon name of the classical ADOM dungeon (issue 486).
* Fixed the problem with unpurchased items stacking with purchased items (issue 487).
* Fixed the experience point rewards for monsters (issues 311, 489).
* Fixed current attack handling for necklaces of protection from touch attacks (issue 493).
* Fixed a problem with concurrent item modification exceptions (issue 495).
* Fixed the NPE when trying to build something with C-p (issue 497).
* Fixed the problem of elven skeletons breaking parts of the game (issues 492, 498).
* Fixed various NPEs in the help menu (issue 500, 555).
* Reduced the digging power of ants (issue 501).
* Fixed the missing hive mentality of ants and bees (issue 501).
* Fixed the broken strength drain message of shadows (issue 502).
* Fixed the wrong leather apron name (issue 503).
* Fixed a typo in the introduction (issue 506).
* Fixed a problem with internal events that occurred too often (issue 514).
* Fixed a problem with being unable to pay shopkeeper if the carried amount of gold
is exactly equal to the debt owed (issue 516).
* Fixed an item copy/comparison bug when equipping/unequipping items (issues 480, 481, 504, 507, 520, 546, 554).
* Fixed a food typo (issue 518).
* Fixed the problem of non-moving villagers (issues 427, 519).
* Fixed a typo for honey (issue 523).
* Fixed a gnollish race typo (issue 524).
* Fixed a rumor typo (issue 525).
* Fixed kicking while in water (issue 527).
* Fixed the problem of stairs being generated in tension rooms (issue 535).
* Fixed problems with giant bees not attacking anyone (issue 536).
* Fixed the non-sensical key mapping for "y" during "Really...?" questions (issues 174, 538).
* Fixed a problem with the shopkeeper message concerning the consumption of unpaid
items (issue 539).
* Fixed imbuing item stacks (issue 548).
* Fixed incredibly hard to find secret doors (issue 551).
* Fixed the problem of being lucky increasing your critical hit chance to 99+ (issue 558).
* Fixed yet another place which caused cursed starting equipment in the stuff list (issue 564).
* Fixed various endless loop problems arising from an enormous time advancement for the PC
(issues 386, 436, 565).
* Fixed a giant bee hive typo (issue 566).
* Fixed a death message typo (issue 568).
* Fixed the problem of illegally sized tools still being usable (issue 572).
* Fixed two problems with monsters disappearing/crashing the game in mazes (issues 574,
* Fixed the plural of brass rings (issue 576).
* Fixed a problem with rings of damage not visibly changing the weapon damage (tough internally
the damage calculation was adjusted correctly; issue 577). Fixed the same problem for rings of
slaying.
* Fixed a problem of being able to hear messages across different maps (issue 578).
* Fixed a problem with forest being generated in Terinyo (it should have been trees).
* Fixed a problem that might cause houses to be build mixed with trees and other things.
* Fixed a problem with experience point handling for advancement (reaching the minimum required
number was not sufficient to advance, issue 553).
* Fixed gelee royal (which didn't nourish the eater).
* Fixed the problems of initial items in the stuff list not being of the correct size.
* Fixed a problem in the equality comparison of rings of slaying.
* Fixed a problem with singular and plural messages on altars.

Besides, hey, Confusion, playable Drakelings, and eating folk for fun and/or profit are rather nice gains.

Edit: Turned out there was a bit of a whiff to it, so now JADE 0.2.2 is the new thing:

* Fixed a major bug with corpse rotting that caused a message to appear
on every step (issue 587).
* Fixed a major problem with passage of time (time got distorted by a
calculation error that was in the game since JADE 0.0.1 - amazing;
another bugfix now made it visible).
* Removed a bit of debugging output that might have caused a slowdown in some places.
* Fixed the probability of orc corpses being generated (it still was 100%).
* Adjusted some other corpse generation probabilities.
* Fixed the handling of monsters following the PC which slowed down movement on the
world map immensely (after the passage of time bug mentioned above was fixed).
* The display is now immediately updated when a corpse lying on the ground rots away.

That's how it goes with the whole "release early and often" thing, but this IS meant to be the best way to ferret this stuff out ahead of time so that's that.

 

[ElectricThunder]

http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/

Well now, it all comes back into focus again with v0.2.3---but now the project is being repurposed into ADOM II: Legends of Ancardia as opposed to calling it JADE, which is/was the engine itself. This is the first leg of that, which will be complete in time for the first commercial Deluxe release somewhere in maybe the not incredibly distant future----said release is probably the best time for somebody, or at least somebody better than me, to make a new thread or I'd guess a mod at least editing the title to reflect things better with the new name.

I shall bold thy goodies, as I happen to see them---for being quite a long time since the last release and still not on the major v0.3.x generation, quite a good haul overall despite wonkiness:

Finally, after endless hard work (by myself and very supportive prerelease testers) ADOM II 0.2.3 has been released. For those who have been following JADE development but missed out a little bit of history: ADOM II: Legends of Ancardia is the rebranded JADE. JADE (Java-based Ancient Domains Engine) remains the engine under the hood but the game from now on is called ADOM II.

ADOM II 0.2.3 is just a stop between two places on a very long road. I got sidetracked so often that I decided to release 0.2.3 now instead of trying to finish some still unpolished features (e.g. the King of the Orcs story arc is not yet working, armies can't be seen, etc.). Nonetheless so much time had passed since the last release that I now had to deliver the new version. There's an awesome amount of new features in the game and I expect a few bugs, so it's time to test!

Thanks to the wonderful support from the community we had a very arduous test weekend - but finally I will be able to sleep for more than four hours in a row after many days of intense last minute testing


Thanks to Emil Atras, Andrew Christensen, Nicholi Croghan, Robert Estep, Eric Fedrowisch, Brandon MacClanahan, Frieder Mielke, Carlos Gómez Rodríguez, Ben Sayer and Randall Wolgast for spending a long saturday evening (and night - at least according to German time) with me during the ADOM II 0.2.3 prerelease test and being very helpful in making sure that the release provided not too many nasty surprises. Special thanks to Carlos for helping me in discovering two particularly nasty keyboard listener bugs. Thanks to Ben Sayers for finding one of the most ugly regression bugs that continued to haunt ADOM II. Thanks to the others for finding various other annoying and showstopping bugs which then could be fixed quickly due to their insights and support! Additional thanks to Robert Estep, Rafael Grycner and Iivari Lauri for helping out when I decided to completely rewrite the item identification system minutes before the planned release.

Any bugs left in the game are solely my fault - and particularly big problems surely result from my last minute changes. Without the help of the folks mentioned above the release would have been quite different.

So now for the good stuff: The following list provides an overview about the multitude of new features:


* Started rebranding 'JADE' to 'ADOM II: Legends of Ancardia'.
The UI has not yet been changed much but most names and messages have been altered.
* Lots of performance tuning. JADE once more is _really_ fast (issue 397 among others).
* Added an immersive full screen mode (press "Alt Enter" to (de)activate it).
* Added a 'l'ook command. The mode allows to page through monsters and "interesting" things to learn more about the points of interest. Mouse support also has been added by explaining things over which the mouse hovers.
* Added 'Ctrl-s' command to display the highscore during the game.
* Added a 'T'actics command to change the tactical combat settings. Added tactics. The tactics skill now also influences game play.
* 'x' no longer displays the required experience points, only 'Alt-x' now does that (one binding seemed to be enough). Instead 'x' no activates extra-ordinary abilities (e.g. profession specific abilities or abilities provided by special items or circumstances).
* Added the barbarian profession.
* Added double left-clicking on known map tiles in order to move the PC to the position in question.
* Added color-coded messages.
* Added monster memories.
* Added scrolls.
* Added 45 new items.
* Added 25 new monsters.
* Added 2 new diseases.
* Added the 'r'ead command.
* Added item type filtering to the item list displays (RFE 590).
* Added armies to the world map.
* Added crafts to the world map.
* Added five types of ships.
* Added five new construction plans (for the five new types of ships).
* Construction plans now display in detail why they work out or what is missing.
* Executing a plan with variable yield positions now only offers the possible directions
to choose from.
* Added the ability of seaworthiness.
* Added the sailing skill.
* Added familiars.
* Added aging.
* Added true berserkering.
* Added booze effects and drunkness.
* Added an infrastructure for priority based decision making for monsters in order to allow much more flexible actions.
* Added dozens of wilderness encounters.
* Added the version history for JADE 0.2.2.
* The encounter levels for large beings have been increases slightly causing them to appear slightly later.
* Average encounter levels have been decreased slightly.
* The burden level of a being now influences hunger effects.
* It's now possible to exchange positions with other beings.
* Experience gains now are displayed on the message area.
* Added wasteland as a new terrain type.
* Added colored underlinings to represent the relationship of a monster towards the PC
(nothing = enemy, green = friend, light gray = neutral).
* Added professional abilities to each profession.
* Fine tuned the legibility of the inventory screen (does anyone notice or care?).
* You now get more hungry in dungeons.
* High level weapon skills now need more marks.
* Increased the deadliness of attribute deterioration.
* Undead now are destroyed and not killed.
* Added another visual indication for near death status by coloring the map background in
more and more red.
* Treasures now come in different sizes (RFE 616).
* Redesigned the death screen.
* Actually activated being lucky, very lucky, cursed and doomed.
* Implemented a sliding luck scale. Added more situations in which luck is important.
* Enhanced the speed with which one recovers from being starved when eating
nutritious food.
* Items now can be seriously damaged.
* Settlements no longer include random locked or trapped doors in buildings.
* Features (like forges, altars, etc.) on the map now abort the various walk modes. Some features (like trees) are marked as boring and do not abort walk mode.
* Saved games now contain information about the last time when the game was played. Restoring a game will show that information.
* Updated the copyright notices.
* Refined the skill cost calculation so that very high level skills get gradually more and more costly, independent of the character level.
* Added mouse wheel support for scrolling through texts.
* Activated text anti-aliassing hopefully thus improving the display quality on various systems.
* The visible area on the display now is highlighted without needing to do special configurations via the 'View' menu.
* Revised the highscore display.
* Shopkeepers now also handle more complex unpaid item usages than just eating or drinking.
* Shopkeepers now also at high levels remain more dangerous.
* Swamps now are even more dangerous.
* Cloaks now auto-identify.
* Removed the following command bindings in order to both simplify the UI and the immersive UI mode \Aa About JADE... (now only available via menu)
* Refactored the internal package structure for all ASCII UI components for more clarity.
* Added a simpler starter dungeon (issue 695).
* The shield DV no longer is applied if the being wielding the shield is paralyzed, blind or sleeping.
* Added profession based experience penalties for multi-classing several professions (some like monks are not very well suited for multi-classing).
* 'a' now only shows the actually usable skills (RFE 653).
* Invisible beings now get attacked.
* Improved the legibility of the weapon skill display.
* Removed the log4j dependency to reduce the download size for the game even more.
* Fixed the problem of monsters only becoming hostile once hit (they now are more likely to be hostile
right away; issues 181, 342, 399).
* Swimming now works (issue 229).
* Fixed the unaging ability so that to now works correctly.
* Changed the experience screen (\Ax) to now use ASCII mode (issue 298).
* Fixed food scarcity (issue 531).
* Fixed excessive whitespace in item descriptions (issue 579).
* Fixed a NPE when shopkeepers are moved to the wilderness (issue 580).
* Fixed all problems with rotting food (issue 589).
* Fixed several bugs related to shopkeepers guarding or leaving shops as well as with customers
entering or exiting (issue 594).
* Fixed problems with reselling stacks of unpaid items (issues 598, 673).
* Fixed the problem of walk search not aborting when something is found (issue 599).
* Fixed a missing text (issue 600).
* Fixed the slow speed of shopkeepers (issue 603).
* Fixed the regression with concurrent modifications (issue 605) once more.
* Fixed the problem of being presented with the option to kick at empty spaces (issue 608).
* Fixed a problem with more prompts interrupting the drop process (issue 611).
* Fixed a problem with dungeons being generated on otherwise boring locations (issue 617).
* Fixed the problem of athletics based stat increases not displaying immediately (issue 619).
* Fixed a problem with dropping stacks in shops (issue 620).
* Fixed the lack of drowning when waiting in water (issue 622).
* Fixed duplicate "of" suffixes (issue 623).
* Corpses now are only generated in dungeon shops and evil settlement shops (issue 624).
* Starvation now picks up a lot of speed when you are "almost starved" (issue 627).
* Fixed a gauntlet typo (issue 630).
* Inhabitants of a settlement now are much more likely to help each other and react to attacks (issue 631).
* Fixed some problems with the dungeon selection for the chaos gate destruction quest (issue 632).
* Fixed a crash when changing levels (issue 635).
* Fixed a problem with paralysis not wearing off correctly (issue 638).
* Fixed a problem with weapon hit modifiers being applied to kick attacks (issue 642).
* Fixed one more place which might generate corpse with null status (issue 643).
* Fixed a problem with some item types when dropping them on an altar (issue 645).
* Fixed a chat typo (issue 656).
* Fixed various typos (issues 654, 667).
* Fixed various problems with not being able to remove items from internal lists (issues 607, 613, 668).
* Fixed problems when equipping items (issues 651, 673).
* Fixed an issue with arrival messages (issues 674, 675).
* Fixed a problem when shattering statues with kicks (issue 676).
* Fixed problems with dropping items (issue 682).
* Fixed some typos during character creation (issue 686).
* Fixed duplicate requirement listings in construction plans (issue 687).
* Fine tuned effects of negative social stats (issue 693).
* Fixed yet another problem with monsters being generated with attribute values of less than 1 (and thus dying instantly, issue 694).
* Fixed a problem with armor appearing for sale in food stores (issue 696).
* Fixed a problem with paying for eaten food in shops (issue 764).
* Fixed some texts in the wizened old man quest (issue 780).
* Fixed the known status of bags of the tinkers (issue 781).
* Fixed the problem of "high level" races for "low level undead" (issue 783).
* Fixed the missing equipment for dark elven commoners (issue 785).
* Fixed the problem of unidentified starting equipment (issue 788).
* Fixed a problem with excessive damage caused by large (and larger) weapons (issue 789). The modifiers got applied twice instead of just once.
* Fixed a crash for some construction plans (issue 792).
* Fixed yet another way of items not showing up when trying to drop them (issue 793).
* Fixed an ambiguity with potions of water (issue 798).
* Fixed a typo in scrolls of balance (issue 803).
* Fixed the "but found nothing" message when "walk searching".
* Fixed a problem with location events occurring before it was checked whether entering
the location works at all.
* Fixed a typo in the credits.
* Fixed a problem with centering the map after window size alterations.
* Fixed a potential endless loop problem in map based awareness checks.
* Fixed a rumor typo.
* Fixed problems with being asleep or confused.
* Fixed a display update problem after executing a construction plan successfully.
* Fixed a problem with erratic walk mode aborts.
* Fixed a problem with base skill costs (they were based on the score and not the skill
level which lead to being penalized for high attribute bonusses).
* Fixed a perception problem with sound and speech.
* Fixed yet another reason where %m was not expanded to the material of an item.
* Fixed several bugs related to cloaks of the wanderer.


Some things nonetheless still need work: The special abilities of tinkers are still completely broken, the king of the orcs story arc needs to be finished, the results from the ADOM II design competition need to be integrated into the game, etc. But nonetheless you should find version 0.2.3 of ADOM II: Legends of Ancardia a much more enjoyable game than previous releases.

Additionally I am now going to implement new release cycles: Finally I will start to live "release early, release often" - whenever a handful of interesting new features have been added, a new release will happen. Depending on my time schedule you can expect new releases every one to four weeks if everything works out as planned. This should be much better for feedback, stability and innovation and hopefully will give me more time to sleep peacefully ;-)

Now enjoy the new release and let me know what you think... in the comments to this blog, in the forums and in the bug and issue tracker.

 

[Bukana]

Why did I think this was a Jade Empire's sequel :/.

 

[Emitan]

I hope someone who has to use DCSS's tiles interface because they can't remember hotkeys can play this.

EDIT: Drowned in the overworld while starving. Great...

It's funny, I made that post in November and now I refuse to play anything but the console version of DCSS

 

[ElectricThunder]

Well now, nice little flurry of activity and updates here!

First up: A slice of a sample track for the ingame music that is being worked on diligently by the apparently rather talented Lucas Dieguez

http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/2012/05/excerpt-from-soundtrack-for-adom-ii.html

Next, Thomas Biskup sat down with the folks on the Roguelike Radio Podcast and went over a broad spectrum of recent and forthcoming doings:

http://roguelikeradio.blogspot.com/2012/05/episode-33-interview-with-thomas-biskup.html

Topics discussed include:
- ADOM and ADOM II (formerly known as JADE)
- What got Thomas into roguelikes and development
- Rogue, D&D, Nethack and other influences
- Mixing random generation and predesigned content and structure
- Story and setting in ADOM
- Plans for ADOM II
- What's now happening with ADOM
- Community contributions, activities and challenges
- Mysteries left in the game and the closed source debate
- What sparked Thomas back into ADOM II development
- Upcoming IndieGoGo funding campaign
- The postcard quest (Thomas likes postcards sent to him at Zu den Tannen 5, D-58456, Witten, Germany)

The big bit though, is ADOM II reaching version 0.2.6 over a crazed weekend period! 0.2.5 was just a hotfix or so, with 0.2.4 being the long awaited big one and 0.2.6 also being mainly fixes but solid ones at that. Niftier bits in bold:

0.2.4

Ok folks, I'm proud to present ADOM II 0.2.4. It has been another two months since the last release but from now on I'm really sworn to "release early, release often" as testing 0.2.4 has been a bitch and I sadly expect quite a number of bugs to be found in the next couple of days as the changes and additions have been sweeping... to say it carefully. Additionally I'm taking a big risk as I currently do not have access to a Windows system and couldn't test under that OS and I was too tired to fiddle together a quick access closed beta test from the outside. So I finally decided to release... and promise to release 0.2.5 very very soon if anything major is found. Which is somewhat likely to happen. But now for the good stuff...

ADOM II 0.2.4 really is another big step on the way to a full version. We still are in the early stages of ADOM II but among my favorites of this release are

hopefully a fix for the Windows 7 problems in full screen mode,
the full 'King of the Orcs' story arc (although lots of stuff could and will be added over time),
armies, sieges and large scales fights with armies,
corruptions,
new keyboard options and persistent user settings,
the many many bug fixes.

The King of the Orcs story arc probably is the most interesting new thing - it has lots of details and there is so much room for enhancement. Although I feel like adding hundreds of details to that I'm now bent to getting ADOM II more feature complete before once more delving into story details. Thus I refer the interested reader to the still valid roadmap.

* Added a fix for the full screen mode problems in conjunction with Windows 7 and Aero
(thanks to Jochen Terstiege for finding the solution!). Fixes issue 859.
* Completely revised the hunger and satiation system to finally get rid of being eternally overfed, being able to travel reasonable distances and at the same time feel hunger in dungeons. Fixed issues 661 and 867 along the way.
* Added a message buffer display.
* Added configurable key bindings (custom, ADOM Classic, ADOM II, JADE).
* All user settings now are persisted. No more need to configure them again for each game (RFE 184).
* Removed a couple of user settings that didn't seem to get used. Should someone ask for them I will add them again.
* Implemented corruptions included the 18 corruptions known from ADOM (with a few slight modifications).
* Added a corruption display via '\'.
* Added story lines which might initiate automatic corruption.
* Enhanced the Chaos Gate and its interaction with the world.
* '>' and '<' have been separated as commands to once more work line in ADOM (issue 802).
* Added 12 new monsters.
* Added 8 new items.
* Added one new undead template.
* Added abominations and jellies as a new racial type.
* Added the ability to smash doors for monsters.
* Added army encounters.
* Added named items.
* Added fortune cookies.
* Dungeon levels now contain more gold.
* Activated random special areas for dungeons (which had been implemented for months but somehow I forgotto activate them).
* Changed the character generation sequence so that the name is entered pretty late.
* You now can leave an encounter with '<' as soon as no more hostile beings are around you.
* The ruffians supporting shopkeepers now are more of a challenge.
* Removed commands to display outdated internal information and outdated TO DOs.
* Added a computer memory display to the statistics area in order to get a better idea about memory consumption out there and to locate the occasional "hang" bug.
* Added levers as a generic abstraction to the game (which can be used for wonderful effects in the future and now are used in one decent puzzle).
* Improved the usage of the screen space for textual displays and fixed issue 791 and 847 while doing that.
* Dungeon levels on average have become a bit smaller to simplify play.
* Kite shields, heater shields and tower shields now inhibit monks.
* Balanced cloaks of invisibility by increasing the hunger rate of the wearer quite a bit.
* Implemented orcish armies that are summoned and organized by Fnuk, king of the orcs.
* Improved pickaxes (RFE 670).
* Improved the effectiveness of the healing skill greatly.
* Increased the natural healing rate for higher level characters.
* Increased the hunger rate for using artifacts.
* Implemented the detect item status skill (issues 550, 621).
* 'Disarm traps' now is easier to learn for thieves.
* Reduced the burrowing power of ants (issue 629).
* Greatly improved the cooperation in hives and made them somewhat more aggressive (issue 629).
* Revised the size based modifiers for melee weapons (tuning them down a little bit).
* Critical hits now only apply the extra damage _after_ overcoming PV thus reducing the lethality of criticals quite a bit (especially also against the PC).
* Critical hits against the PC now are less likely.
* Reduced level scaling for monsters quite a bit.
* Introduced armor penetrating and armor damaging hits to the combat engine.
* Implemented the two-weapon combat skill and made it meaningful.
* Reduced the DV bonus provided by weapon skills when multi-wielding weapons.
* The 'u'se command now can be utilized to both use items and other features found in the game world (thus making the 'h'andle command of ADOM Classic unnecessary therefore furthering a simpler user interface).
* Hobgoblin leaders and chieftains now are a little less dangerous.
* Fixed the internal handling of tools that might be destroyed by using them.
* Fixed a problem with aging (beings didn't age naturally at all).
* Added an FAQ entry concerning gray screens under Linux (issue 669).
* Added attribute training due to athletics, level and profession.
* Greatly reduced wilderness encounter likelihoods due to bad fate (issue 795).
* Size now factors into attempts to disarm.
* Adjusted the configuration options for the message display area height from 1 to 5 to 1 to 10.
* Speed now is modified by size (larger monsters are slower, smaller beings are faster).
* Added colored messages to "hate events" (see the next item).
* Made the effects of extremely low charisma and appearance scores more obvious, see the previous item (issue 807).
* Animals no longer drop items.
* Adjusted the tactics skill to lessen its might and alter the bonus (RFE 814).
* Added black orcs as a race.
* Applying the tactics skill now directly allows to change the tactics settings instead
of displaying instructions on how to do so (RFE 811).
* Improved the code for newly created undead (when created by killing other beings)
so that they have more plausible goals.
* Decreased the frequency of gauntlets of peace (issue 952).
* Reduced the severity of attribute draining attacks.
* Fixed a problem with keyboard code mappings (issue 347).
* Fixed a critical endless loop that probably has plagued the game for a very long time (issue 436). Thanks for everyone involved and provided such great help!
* Fixed a problem with village entry points (issue 567).
* Fixed a problem with monsters failing to attack the PC while he was standing in a wall (issue 584).
* Fixed the inability of monsters to attack the invisible PC (issue 586).
* Fixed problems with dropping unwanted items in shops (issue 593).
* Fixed problems with the way shop restocking worked (issue 644).
* Fixed hunger related speed problems (issue 655).
* Fixed shop type duplicates (issue 685).
* Fixed mindless undead in that they no longer can train their weapon skills (issue 778).
* Fixed the problem of monsters following the PC across stairs even if they can't see him/her (issue 787).
* Fixed a problem with too many monsters from an encounter wandering off into the wilderness (issue 794).
* Fixed the names for cursed and blessed potions of water (issue 797).
* Fixed the problem of being able to kick at spaces where once a door has been (issue 801).
* Fixed scrolls that could be used upon themselves (issue 806).
* Fixed the incorrect capitalization of warrior monks and warrior nuns during
character generation (issue 808).
* Fixed a critical bug in power point regeneration that probably also messed up hit point regeneration. Both need to be closely monitored for strange effects.
* Fixed the abort button of the error dialog.
* Fixed the missing food store in Terinyo (issue 809).
* Fixed a rare internal crash problem (issue 812).
* Fixed an unintentional means of escaping wilderness encounters (issue 815). Added the ability to leave wilderness encounters by pressing '<' after all enemies have been defeated.
* Fixed a typo in the history (issue 816).
* Fixed a problem with item messages during mouse based movement (issue 818).
* Fixed blessed scrolls of identify (issue 819).
* Fixed scrolls of item destruction (issues 822, 872).
* Fixed the direction hints of the wizened old man (issues 825, 913).
* Fixed various problems with equipping or using paid and unpaid items from shops (issues 828, 892, 901, 927, 940, 949). Rewrote quite a bit of the shop code.
* Fixed a problem with a certain type of scroll (issue 829, 868, 899).
* Fixed the problem of to-hit modifiers from melee weapons applying to all equipped weapons (issue 830).
* Fixed a problem with special effects being applied to dead victims (issue 832).
* Fixed the singular/plural terminology for dipping and reading (issue 833).
* Fixed the item description order when modifying them for several cases (issue 834).
* Fixed the problem of undead not being immune to poison (issue 835).
* Fixed a description problem with the tremendous blow dealt by barbarians (issue 837).
* Slightly increased the likelihood for non-medium items being found (issue 838).
* Fixed the generation of random items in shops (issue 840).
* Increased the likelihood of iron rations and standard rations (issue 842).
* Reduced the likelihood of "fiddling with door" messages greatly (issue 844).
* Fixed a singular/plural word translation problem (issues 845, 849).
* Fixed the problem of (not) auto-identifying hand wear (issue 846). Boots now also
auto-identify.
* Fixed yet another root cause for disappearing monsters while switching levels (issue 850).
* Fixed the problem of automatically attacking other beings when moving to a target position by mouse click (issue 853).
* Fixed the level 10 abilities of fighters (issue 854).
* Fixed various problems with exchanging positions (raised by issue 856).
* Fixed the problems with unreachable dungeons (issue 866).
* Fixed various problems with monster descriptions (issue 871). Fixed a generic problem that in many
cases just omitted descriptions for female specimen.
* Fixed corpse drops for undead (issue 873).
* Fixed excessive item identification (issue raised by "not a bug issue" 874).
* Fixed the auto-search ability of thieves (issue 875).
* Fixed a rare serialization problem (issue 876, 898).
* Fixed the problem with excessive shop restocking (issue 879).
* Fixed textual problems in scrolls of identification (issue 893).
* Fixed a problem with attacks (like mighty blow) still occasionally happening at a distance (issue 894).
* Fixed problems with stairs being generated in tension rooms (issue 896).
* Fixed a major problem with innate abilities (like invisibility) - they mostly didn't work... (issue 897)
* Fixed the fighter DV malus negation ability (issue 907).
* Fixed a problem with the look mode (issue 914).
* Fixed a problem with encounter cleanups (issue 915).
* Fixed a problem with shopkeepers locking themselves out (issue 917).
* Fixed several unequippable items (issue 923).
* Fixed the fighter dodge bonus to DV (again issue 923).
* Fixed blessed scrolls of magic mapping (again issue 923).
* Fixed a problem with Alt+Enter during more prompts (issue 934).
* Fixed a wording problem in items with "of" and "and" (issue 936).
* Fixed a problem with dying giant bees (issue 942).
* Fixed an NPE problem with the look mode (issue 947).
* Fixed a problem with a non-appearing chaos gate (issue 948).
* Fixed a catastrophic bug with SFX and intrinsic handling... many probably never worked correctly (issue 953).
* Fixed a problem with item skill bonusses - they were not taken into account at all!
* Fixed a typo in the FAQ.
* Fixed excessive "drop/fall" messages when disarming opponents.
* Fixed a crash when the PC got turned into a shadow.
* Fixed a problem with food rarities that caused many things to be too rare.
* Fixed a problem with hill orc encounters - they erroneously used the standard orcish race instead of the new hill orcrace introduced in ADOM II 0.2.3!
* Fixed a problem with the text content display - the last line was always missing.
* Shopkeepers no longer greet summoned ruffians as customers.
* Fixed a singular/plural problem with furs.
* Fixed a typo when being overfed.
* Fixed a damage problem with the second claw attack of brown bears.

0.2.6

"Reease early, release often" now is fully underway. I hereby set a new world record by announcing the third release of ADOM II (0.2.6) in one weekend.

And before anyone complains about lack of quality control - the policy so far was to collect all the bugs for weeks and then release a new version. The new pace really to me feels like a great improvement as the number of critical bugs despite the huge load of changes is going back quickly and 0.2.6 now really should be immensely playable. At least I hope so. And if I still missed bugs we'll see 0.2.7 in a day or two... in any case that's how I envisioned the original roadmap before getting sidetracked with featuritis

* Added a new logical sense to the game to enhance the precision of messages.
* Added message when an illegal key sequence is entered. That should help to debug some of the unavailable key sequences in foreign language keyboard layouts (like issue 347) and might help when using the commands incorrectly.
* Character names now have a minimum length of two characters to allow for names like "Ed", "Ug", "Og" and others.
* Added information about the current user settings to the error traces in order to simplify debugging.
* Mountains in wilderness encounters no longer are hard to climb.
* Increased the probability of special rooms for dungeons.
* Fixed several bugs related to killing beings and dropping stuff (issues 956, 964, 980).
* Fixed a problem with the generation of certain uniques (issue 957).
* Fixed a problem with scrolls of identify (issue 958).
* Fixed broken monster frequencies - non random monsters suddenly could be encountered randomly (issue 659).
* Shields now identify when being equipped (issue 960).
* Improved the handling of climbing sets - it's no longer necessary to equip a climbing set in order to be able to traverse mountains (issue 961).
* Adjusted the generic recovery message (issue 962).
* Hitpoint recovery in water has been greatly reduced when not in a seaworthy craft or an aquatic being (issue 962).
* Adjusted very high nutrition values a bit downwards to prevent being overfed too fast (issue 963).
* Fixed a problem with getting too overfed (issue 966).
* Fixed various problems with the new keybindings (issues 967, 968, 971, 972, 973, 981, 982, 984).
* Fixed a problem with the creation of the startup files (issue 970).
* Fixed an army related bug (issue 975).
* Fixed en endless loop problem related to the 'Detect item status' skill (issue 976).
* Fixed a regression with stair generation in tension rooms (issue 979).
* Fixed the width of the skill window (issue 985).
* Fixed a nasty endless loop with monsters that dynamically grow stronger in relation to the PC.
* Fixed a typo with hill orc chieftains.
* Fixed a null pointer problem when advancing beings without a profession.
* Fixed the missing mapping of '5' to wait in the new ADOM II keybindings.
* Removed some console debugging output.

Probably....going to be some more rush releases in the near future to get everything cleaned up for the big jump to the 0.3.x generation and the full rebranding to ADOM II instead of JADE and the Deluxe stuff----lots of good stuff squared away now though as far as the foundations!

 

[ElectricThunder]

Perhaps the final clean-up release before the next big stage begins, v0.2.7

I'm happy to announce the release of ADOM II 0.2.7. It has been 13 days since the last release and maybe this number will prove to be a lucky one. Again I fixed many bugs and worked on some balance issues. Additionally I added some minor details to the game. I really hope that no more major bugs will pop up as I'd really one to start working on ADOM II 0.3.0 - but that only makes sense if the current release track finally is stable enough. I actually played this release many hours and did not encounter any more bugs - which doesn't mean anything but at least I'm hopeful ;-)

Below you will find the detailed list of changes:

* Professions in the statistics display now are sorted alphabetically. Additionally the main profession now is marked with an asterisk.
* Enhanced the difficulty of wielding two weapons.
* Changed the message buffer display so that the latest entries are at the bottom. Additionally the display will start with its display at the bottom.
* Addd automated tests to ADOM II (not that you are going to notice when playing except maybe by encountering a bug or two less). The tests are not very far ranging right now though.
* Removed the dynamic danger level scaling of dungeon levels (RFE 998). Danger levels now only can be based due to story influences, not by getting more experienced.
* Added better margins to the display areas.
* Adjusted an area description.
* Natural attacks no longer are modified by negative strength modifiers.
* Finally fixed foreign keyboard layout problems (issue 347).
* Fixed silent sales refusals (issue 965; maybe already got fixed on the way to ADOM II 0.2.6).
* Fixed a food consumption problem (760).
* Fixed a murderous bug in distance calculation (issues 349, 975).
* Fixed a problem with dropping sets of items (which also wreaked havoc when picking up more than one item at a time). (issue 988, 1009, 1044, 1047)
* Fixed the "remote melee attack" bug (issue 991).
* Fixed yet another crash bug when trying to remove items from the inventory of killed beings (issue 992).
* Fixed the new critical hit rules (issue 993).
* Fixed climbing for low mountains (issue 994).
* Fixed summoning powers (they didn't cost enough power points) (issue 997).
* Rewrote parts of the map switching code which should fix some more obscure problems (e.g. issue 999).
* Fixed problems with item list errors when monsters got killed (issues 1005, 1035, 1037, 1041).
* Fixed a problem with auto-cursing items (issue 1006).
* Improved the handling of key bindings when mapping errors occur (issue 1007). ADOM II now tries to restore the bindings to the 'ADOM II' bindings.
* Fixed a missing dictionary entry (issue 1008).
* Fixed excessive area attacks of monsters (issue 1010).
* Adjusted nutrition values for tiny, small and medium beings (issue 1012).
* Fixed a position problem while switching levels (issue 1015).
* Fixed negative damage ratings for beings (issue 1017).
* Implemented colored messages for summoned monsters (issue 1018).
* Fixed the missing 'Y' input opportunity for confirmation questions (issue 1022).
* Fixed a problem with the rumor based chat code (issues 1023, 1034).
* Fixed a rare crash bug in undead creation that probably also should influence monster deaths (issue 1029).
* Fixed scrolls of dark prediction (issue 1030).
* Fixed encounter distances for ambushes (issue 1031).
* Fixed a problem with ambushes on the Fnuk Level (issue 1032).
* Increased the frequency of scrolls of identify and potions of water (issue 1036).
* Fixed repetitive level messages (issue 1040).
* Fixed a missing dictionary entry (issue 1043).
* Fixed a problem with random monster generation (issue 1045).
* Fixed a problem with hunger calculation when using artifacts (issue 1049).
* Fixed a grammar problem with attack types (issue 1051).
* Fixed the incorrect plural of loin clothes.
* Fixed missing issues from the credits.
* Fixed various boots that missed a material type.
* Fixed kick damage modifying circumstances (kick attacks were calculated once and never changed).
* Fixed a special message area on the final level of the Fnuk dungeon.

From here, the big show entails at least in part:

0.2.7 will not yet have an installer based setup as that would take another day or three and I'd prefer to release a new version as many many more bugs have been fixed and I hope to stabilize the 0.2.x line.

That's my prerequisite for starting development on 0.3.x and for now the major features planned for 0.3.0 are the following ones:

-missile combat
-many new items: missile weapons, missiles and thrown items
-monsters using missiles
-the new layout for the main screen and the splash screen (including the logo from the ADOM II design competition - the final version is gorgeous)
-soundtrack support including the sounds done by Oneiros Dieguez
-an installer based setup using the Bitrock Installbuilder (no more Java Web Start with all its ugly bugs)
-a faster startup time
-Java 7 as the base line for development

Thus I'd expect to need at least four weeks for ADOM II 0.3.0, despite "release early, release often" ;-)

Times are good NeoGAF folk, good for those that enjoy sprawling RPGS of all sorts in the merry land of PC and beyond.

Edit: Welp:

Although I originally intended to start working on ADOM II 0.3.0 today one more game breaker has shown up. As I do not like to have such bugs out in the open I fixed that one and added another couple of enhancements to the game. How's that for "release early, release often" ;-) ? I hereby declare my way of developing to have changed successfully.

So without further distractions here's the latest list of changes to the game:

* Added 'I' as a command to display the stuff list directly (RFE 1065).
* Fixed a problem with ability propagation from the environment (issue 1000).
* Fixed the deadliness of violent retching (somewhat) (issue 1054).
* Fixed the wording for touch attacks (issue 1056).
* Improved the speech of the wizened old man (issue 1057).
* Fixed a typo with great swords (issue 1058).
* Fixed some of the level scaling for dungeons (issue 1059).
* Fixed a problem with item filtering (issue 1060).
* Fixed a grammar problem when detecting item statuses (issue 1063).
* Fixed a problem with racial subtypes (issue 1064).
* Fixed the description of cave tigers (issue 1067).
* Fixed a problem with beings failing to switch a level due to crowded space (issue 1068).
* Reduced the frequency of gauntlets of peace.
* Fixed a problem with crafts being unable to travel through normal water.