ADOM: Resurrection IndieGoGo campaign

[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!

Can a classic Roguelike manage to liven back up proper after all these years with a 4 man team and $48K to get things well underway? I have no idea, but want to think so as this would bode quite well for the Roguelike world on the whole and other classic projects. I would imagine a "work boost" campaign of sorts for things in the land of Rephial could also lead to good things indeed.

[Magnate]

Angband development as work. Interesting thought.

[getter77]

Indeed, I've seen much hand wringing less so over "not knowing the answers" to various long simmering improvements in the works for Angband or any number of the active variants to just not having the "free" time needed to slog through it given how mature/giant the codebase is at this stage of things and so how much more involved it is to change and add things such that it plays nicely on the whole. The only other way comparable though in more of a roundabout/piecemeal way is to take a stab at a Bounty Board as has been done by Kornel over on Chaosforge for DoomRL and the rest of their own stable of projects.

[getter77]

Various bits of progress later the funding campaign is past the halfway mark with various power pledge goodies added: But the real news is a new pre-release version of ADOM for all to dig into.

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

Rather substantial list of platforms too---nice to see an end to the nigh 10 year release drought even if just a fraction of all the remains to get reckoned should the campaign be able to finish out deftly.

[Magnate]

Various bits of progress later the funding campaign is past the halfway mark with various power pledge goodies added: But the real news is a new pre-release version of ADOM for all to dig into.

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

Rather substantial list of platforms too---nice to see an end to the nigh 10 year release drought even if just a fraction of all the remains to get reckoned should the campaign be able to finish out deftly.

$28k raised already? We are missing a trick.

[LostTemplar]

Nice one, ADOM was my first roguelike.

[getter77]

http://www.ancardia.com/changelog.html Here's the changelog, it handles some of the nastier ones that've been haunting it all the while and a large smattering of utterly random things.

[getter77]

Minimum success achieved and stretch goals seem attainable(first in very nearly there!) at this rate with several days left---we're getting quite the ADOM improvement here fokls!

http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/2012/08/mwahahahaha-its-alive.html

[LostTemplar]

$55k crowd funding is impressive for 10 years old roguelike.

[getter77]

It is a mad rush of a cascade now folks 19 hours left on the clock as a few persons are throwing out $2,500 pledges on hitting mini-waypoints to help make more stretch goals a reality:

http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.com/2012/08/adom-crowd-funding-final-race-towards.html

Even after this posting it has already climbed past $68K---netting ADOM Deluxe and such.

[getter77]

Done at just past $90,000----thus setting all sorts of crowdfunding records.

Food for thought for all other Roguelike projects, especially all of the old guard of roughly comparable vintage.

[LostTemplar]

Angband is free project, so no need to fund, it goes by itself.

[kingvictory2003]

Angband is free project, so no need to fund, it goes by itself.

Agreed there, LostTemplar.

That's part of the spirit that I enjoy so much about roguelikes. All the people involved, especially the developers, are in it for the love of the game, and the community. NOT money.

I think donations out of pure good will are fine, but putting money into a roguelike to simply keep it going seems to go a bit against that spirit. Don't get me wrong--I've enjoyed my share of ADOM, fatal bugs and all, and I think Mr. Biskup made a very unique and enjoyable flavor of roguelike--but this whole money thing and the refusal to release the source code...it just seems a bit off, no?

For all who read this--I don't mean any of this as harsh criticism; it's simply my two coppers. I'll still be a fan of ADOM for all this, and will continue to hope it succeeds. That said, I still think Angband for the moment truly embodies the spirit of the ever-sought, never-attainable goal of perfection, free-to-play, and with very open and generally intelligible community discussion.

[Magnate]

Agreed there, LostTemplar.

That's part of the spirit that I enjoy so much about roguelikes. All the people involved, especially the developers, are in it for the love of the game, and the community. NOT money.

I think donations out of pure good will are fine, but putting money into a roguelike to simply keep it going seems to go a bit against that spirit. Don't get me wrong--I've enjoyed my share of ADOM, fatal bugs and all, and I think Mr. Biskup made a very unique and enjoyable flavor of roguelike--but this whole money thing and the refusal to release the source code...it just seems a bit off, no?

For all who read this--I don't mean any of this as harsh criticism; it's simply my two coppers. I'll still be a fan of ADOM for all this, and will continue to hope it succeeds. That said, I still think Angband for the moment truly embodies the spirit of the ever-sought, never-attainable goal of perfection, free-to-play, and with very open and generally intelligible community discussion.

I've been playing a lot of WoW this year. A couple of days ago there was a major patch (5.0.4) and a lot of add-ons stopped working. Updated versions are now trickling through. One of my favourite add-ons is called Carbonite, and today I went to check whether an update is imminent.

I learned something very interesting. In the early days of WoW, people could make money from charging for add-ons. The Carbonite team did this. After a while Blizzard stopped this, so the Carbonite team moved to a donation model instead (nobody can stop you receiving donations). They set up a sophisticated donation system: donors could vote on what they wanted the team to work on, and each dollar donated bought one vote.

They never implemented a single feature their donors voted for. They just pushed out band-aid updates whenever a WoW patch broke their add-on, and kept the money. As far as I know, they haven't refunded any donors, and there is no sign of any progress towards voted features. Don't get me wrong - it's an excellent add-on - but they were only in it for the money.

I've put very little time into Angband in the last six months - just a few merges and tweaks. If we were sitting on a pile of donations, I think I'd be obliged to feel bad about that, and I think it would put me off ever getting back into it. As it is, I'll probably get interested again sooner or later, and do some more work on it.

I hope Mr Biskup doesn't let his donors down.

[getter77]

While it is true Angband goes by itself, I see it primarily as a means of "time" moreso than just "money". It is an oft reckoned implication that many Roguelike devs, or honestly most game devs in general, are in it for "the game" and "community"---there are even the occasional success stories along these lines such as the ongoing Dwarf Fortress situation.

However, such general notions sort of muddle the reality of the situation---nobody can afford time to throw at things like a community and a game without having proper backing one way or another to engage in such pursuits. I mean, you could do it, but it would sooner or later peter out as the need for cash in other aspects of life would ultimately dwarf whatever willpower was being applied----a grinding burn-out of sorts not unlike the industry at large where folks get discarded as the latest jump into their place from a seemingly endless supply.

I want old(er) developers to keep developing their projects and projects in general----near as I can understand it much of development has not changed so tremendously since the 80's/90's such that they'd be persona non grata versus the young hotshots. Historically, it may have become a young person's game early on, but since the history itself is so young it simple must be malleable in turn.

As such, being they are at a different time in life versus the uni coder or other comparable folks, different needs and priorities come into play---so the solutions to keep things running being a bit unorthodox can't be that surprising.

It is not even about Biskup solely anymore---there's a 4 man team of the lot of them with their hands deep in this trying to make their mark and do right by all the donators...some of which went absolutely higher beyond any reasonable expectations of generosity.

Angband occupies something of an odd place in the general scheme of things and Roguelikes, even among other open source projects out there. The core notion is a solid one that many have drawn from for years after the fact, yet the implementations and realizations seem to always be left grasping and snatching at thin air versus grabbing a handful outside of bolts from the blue in recent times like Sil and perhaps a few others. All manner of things are ongoing, and getting there as they can as far as what I've seen in my time stalking this place more attentively, but there's something to be said when that particular condition persists for a very extended period of time without any burst of punctuated equilibrium.

Angband influenced a great many things years ago---there should not be a proper reason why it can't still/resume having that kind of important impact nor the same for ADOM. Quality is quality.

As to the issue of sitting on a pile of donations being off putting---the easiest answer is to not let such a thing be possible. One method would be a set limited number of Bounties to fund towards, reckoned in such a way, and specific tasks as that, as to not place undue pressure on folks at the helm of it yet also provide a nice extra kick of motivation.

Short version: ADOM did this thing and is primed on all indications to do really well going forward as a team, Angband folks, as opposed to Biskup's newly minted team, surely can find some good general ideas to apply from discernment of Biskup's crazed gamble after the fact such that, within doings and particular issues relative to it, "Angband" can also wrangle a bit better and more visibly than it has in a good while too.