59 responses so far ↓

• 1 kimme // Feb 24, 2008 at 3:36 pm

  This looks interesting. I’m eagerly awaiting the release of this JADE game.

• 2 JMobius // Feb 24, 2008 at 3:36 pm

  I love it. The world looks beautiful.

  I have one concern, regarding the text in the item screen. I think continual mention of the attacker’s weapon will get redundant very quickly. Unless there is a particular reason the PC needs to know what weapon they are being opposed by, I hope that part is made a little more terse.

• 3 yisk // Feb 24, 2008 at 5:20 pm

  It is possible to make more than two lines of the comment above? It sometimes bothers to pass. Also it would be good to make allocation by different colors of keywords (hits, misses, fails to hurt, deflect, shrug off), etc.

• 4 rho // Feb 24, 2008 at 5:43 pm

  The bit that most catches my eye is the skills. New “diplomacy” skill, linked to charisma. Hurrah for charisma not being entirely useless in JADE!

• 5 varoennauraa // Feb 24, 2008 at 5:50 pm

  Hi! Nice to see Jade is finally taking a shape. I’m already holding my breath. I’m the kind of nuts that visited the Adom-site every day since beginning to see if there was a new version.

  Is it possible to somehow freshen the map generator a bit? Every roguelike game have always had pretty similar generators that makes similar empty halls that have corridors between them(for the exeption of Nethacks Gnomish Mines). I have allways dreamt of a roguelike that could generate a little variation. Perhaps to make a room that has a naighbouring room, and a door between? Or even group of rooms that looks like appartment. Furniture, no? But still I’m very happy what we allready have though!

• 6 Grendel // Feb 24, 2008 at 6:49 pm

  /me cant help noticing that the new blog appears at roughly the same time as a new Duke nukem forever trailer….

• 7 Jaromir83 // Feb 24, 2008 at 8:23 pm

  I think Yisk´s idea about different colour highlights in text is really good one. How about green number of damage delivered by PC to monster and red number of hitpoints taken by monster after hurting PC? That would make orientation in the output text more pleasant I think. Please consider it Thomas, thanks:)

  PS: Screenshots look VERY promising, can´t wait for first playable beta (if you plan to release something like that)

• 8 King Moila // Feb 24, 2008 at 11:02 pm

  I hope there will be maps in this game. I mean maps to be obtained (via trade, looting, magic). It would be nice if you wouldn’t always have to explore everything by yourself… and it would be logical that people made maps by themselves.

• 9 Popov // Feb 24, 2008 at 11:41 pm

  damn. JADE outshines my expectations with every screenshot/news posted. I’m keeping my fingers crossed cause it looks like a hell of a good game. cheers , TB!

• 10 Sempoo // Feb 25, 2008 at 12:37 am

  Maps - yes, but maps should not be perfectly precise - they’d rather be drafts, like maps of World in medieval ages e.g. That could be interesting, when PC goes somewhere, but the map is not perfectly the same as real uncovered land!

  And one more, I think - important thing: the Startup Game Screen. It totally lacks proper design. SGS should look more professional.

  Hail Be Thee!

• 11 Sradac // Feb 25, 2008 at 12:55 am

  One thing i’ve been wondering especially after seeing these screens, does JADE take place in Arcadia as well? If so is it possible to stumble across the draklor chain?> Oooh that’d be cool comming across Terinyo after the hero from ADOM has been gone for years to see whats changed.

• 12 Marek14 // Feb 25, 2008 at 7:11 am

  I play ADOM with ADOMSage, which (among other things) has the color-coding of messages, and I must say that it really looks much better if the important messages “jump out”.

  I am also wondering about the comment lines. How much of the layout is simply a tradition? Would it be possible, for example, to have a special message window that would display past messages, with an option to autoscroll through messages if more than two lines are displayed at once, with the understanding that the player will read the whole thing in the message window? (Or not - at his own peril.)

  Another thing which strikes me are the monster messages in jade6.jpg. If I read it correctly, the monsters (like goblin warrior) had one weapon equipped, yet they attacked you twice, once with the weapon and once without it (with their off hand, I suppose)? Does the PC have the same capability?

  Finally, will there be eventually possibility to suggest more skills? (Like, say, Entomology for making better use of insects and spiders? )

• 13 admin // Feb 25, 2008 at 7:58 am

  Just a few quick responses (I need to get up the forums pretty quickly):

  The map generation code is completely pluggable so that over time there will be different map generation algorithms especially for dungeons. Right now there are maze and standard dungeon generators and a multitude of generators for various city/town/village layouts. More are to come.

  As for the UI and message display - there is a lot that can and will be added. But not for the initial release since that’s tedious work and I want to finish some likeness of a game. But feel assured - the whole UI is very pluggable and extensible.

  And yes, JADE will take place in Ancardia (which is the world where ADOM is staged). And I have plans for adding a modified version of the Drakalor Chain, but that also won’t be in the initial releases because it requires quite a bit of work. But it will definitely happen at some point because it will be so much fun to revisit the Drakalor Chain a few hundred (or thousand?) years after the events in ADOM.

  As for attacking twice… yes, the PC can do that too because the code for both the monster and the PC is the same. But right now I would consider automatically attacking with both hands still to be a bug that needs improvement Those are the rough edges of the current code…

  And the startup screen Hey, I’m no designer - now you now why the game won’t become image intensive

  The new discussion boards also will add a ticket/bug/project management feature… see ya.

• 14 deadlover // Feb 25, 2008 at 2:15 pm

  whoa. can’t wait for the beta(or alpha or whatever the first playable version will be:) ). However, I would also like to voice my support for a bigger text box at the top. When fighting many monsters at once or monsters with many attacks (say, 11-attacks-per-turn white worms) people can lose sight of when a turn ends and another begins and it’s really confusing.

• 15 Subconscious // Feb 25, 2008 at 2:18 pm

  Heya. Just some points that came in mind. So, I dont think that showing the weapon in message lines - Could be good to see enemy’s visible equipment when using (l)ook command…
  and
  Also it would be interesting for gameplay that mostly you should learn your skills from people around you. Starting adventurer shouldn’t know everything…
  and
  Is there any way to “win” JADE? I mean does it end at some point? Well of course when you die but… Having somekind of goal makes the game more interesting than just running around killing goblins and stuff. :]

  Keep it up!

• 16 Subconscious // Feb 25, 2008 at 2:20 pm

  Some bad typos there

• 17 Mandor // Feb 25, 2008 at 6:07 pm

  Something completely different: can you make JADE minimize to systray? Kinda offtopic but important for me.

• 18 rickoveriii // Feb 25, 2008 at 7:39 pm

  I can’t wait until you set the forums up - I’ve been resisting heaping comments and suggestions on you since your first entry. Just want to say that it looks great and I currently can’t go more than 4 hours without checking the blog - it’s beginning to interfere with my sleep schedule.

  Obligatory suggestion: I hope the talents system in Jade is more involved than it was in ADOM.

• 19 Sithun // Feb 25, 2008 at 9:02 pm

  I could consider to try and make a design for the menu. Mostly for fun, and then see what you and everyone else thinks.

• 20 Xaoc // Feb 26, 2008 at 9:14 am

  In Thomas We Trust!

• 21 Gatonegro // Feb 26, 2008 at 12:42 pm

  These screenshots look very promising… I see that I’ll be burning most of my free (and non free. ) time on JADE…

  Regarding the starting game screen, I disagree with the comments posted above — I think that JADE should follow ADOM tradition and have an ASCII-only start screen. So many nice things can be done with ASCII characters and still look good, and it wouldn’t conflict as much with the rest of the visual aspect of the game.

  I’d like to see more variety in map design too. Especially, I would love to see that maps betray functionality… That is, a set of chambers that are obviously a temple, or a forum, or military barracks. This would add a lot of flavour to the game.

  About the text messages showing the weapon the monsters use: I believe that it is important information, but it is enough to display it on the first attack (or whenever the monster changes weapons), i.e.: “The goblin attacks you with a club. The goblin hits you. The goblin attacks you again and hits you.”

  Colours would also be nice, of course, but they can wait. Less dense text, on the other hand, would be very nice, especially for repetitive messages. Why not summarize to “The white dragon hits you six times. The white dragon breathes fire at you three times.” ?

  Anyway, great work, Thomas! I’m really expectant of the first release of JADE.

• 22 jazz // Feb 26, 2008 at 3:39 pm

  Is it anyhow related to jarog/insomnia?
  http://jarog.sourceforge.net/insomnia-screenshots.html

  They look much alike, ihmo.

• 23 DarrenGrey // Feb 26, 2008 at 5:50 pm

  Whee! So excited! I really can’t wait to get my hands on JADE and start exploring that huge world! A video would be really great to see.

• 24 Triton // Feb 26, 2008 at 9:12 pm

  They look great! One thing I would really like to see implemented are multiscreen dungeons as in ones that take up more than one screen per level. This would be a great way to utilize the zoom option in the subterrain as well as outside.

• 25 Nearsighted // Feb 27, 2008 at 9:10 am

  Exceptional job, Thomas, as always. It’s so nice to see proof that you aren’t dead. I really hope some more information fills that status bar docked at the left of the game screen. It looks sort of odd big, gray and empty. ADOM’s bar was filled with just the right amount of text and managed to seamlessly merge itself with the game.

  If I may ask, do you have any intentions of allowing the color (of the display) to be altered?

• 26 Sanshouuo // Feb 27, 2008 at 10:26 am

  Screenshots looks promising, but I agree that the starting screen should follow ADOM style.

  Great work.

• 27 Sempoo // Feb 27, 2008 at 2:39 pm

  Gatonegro wrote: “Regarding the starting game screen, I disagree with the comments posted above — I think that JADE should follow ADOM tradition and have an ASCII-only start screen. So many nice things can be done with ASCII characters and still look good, and it wouldn’t conflict as much with the rest of the visual aspect of the game.”

  I agree in 100% with above!

  ASCII has its own deep feeling, do not lose it - playing ASCII game is like playing real RPG wih friends. It simply strongly excites imagination.

• 28 electric_wizard // Feb 27, 2008 at 4:14 pm

  Colour coded messages is a great idea if you ask me, although admittedly not important enough to be a priority. Might be nice if it were possible to select the level of detail you got in your messages as well.

  I like the idea of improving the ‘look’ command as well so you could see how creatures are armed and attired. You could maybe include actions as well so you could see what the creatures are doing too. Could add an additional strategic element.

  While we’re on the ASCII vs bitmap debate my vote will always be with ASCII. I can’t tell you how relieved I was when I read that JADE would be ASCII. At the time there were loads of crummy tile based rogue-likes coming out and put bluntly they all sucked. Hurray for making letters hit each other!

• 29 Sithun // Feb 27, 2008 at 4:51 pm

  Amen, electric_wizard. Amen.

• 30 yisk // Feb 27, 2008 at 5:42 pm

  but there is too small number of different english letters.. Bitmap icons helps to evade this problem.

• 31 Popov // Feb 27, 2008 at 9:22 pm

  visk- that’s what you’ve got different colours for. Electric Wizzo’s right!

• 32 Rick // Feb 28, 2008 at 2:49 am

  It’s beginning to look a lot like Dwarf Fortress…

• 33 Nearsighted // Feb 28, 2008 at 4:40 am

  Agreed. As far as ASCII-based games go, ADOM had gorgeous graphics. Personally, after growing acclimated to my surroundings, I could recognize everything at a glance. See? More than enough symbols.
  Although ASCII does, without question, impose a ceiling on the number of individual entities you can create without using duplicate identifiers.
  Still, though, I feel that it’s not only the “retro” choice, but the wise choice as well.

  I suppose I’ll follow suit and also state that I really feel that the main screen would do well to remain ASCII. When you’re playing a game like ADOM or JADE, you tend to become involved in your surroundings in a way that almost betrays reality; you become your character. I feel that some goofy(no offense, Thomas ; )) main menu screen will be counter-effective in providing that experience.
  If, however, you decide to keep it, I would advise utilizing the dedicated fans you’ve created to help. Ever considered a contest?

• 34 electric_wizard // Feb 28, 2008 at 10:07 am

  Actually, I think visk raises an interesting point. Because of the complexity of ADOM (and JADE) the number of available letters in ENGLISH is slightly restrictive (pools that look like bee hives, gems that look like willo-wisps etc).

  It could be really cool to introduce interesting characters & symbols from other languages. Having said that, I don’t know much about character encoding, so I wouldn’t know how difficult it would be to actually do.

  Either way, I still say tiles suck.

• 35 electric_wizard // Feb 28, 2008 at 11:31 am

  Back to the topic of screen shots, I just noticed something. Early JADE screens showed an interesting lighting effect, making the area the player can see lighter than than the areas that are simply remembered. I rather liked the idea but it seems to have gone the way of the Dodo in the new pics.

  Here’s a couple of examples of the effect in action:
  http://www.adom.de/jade/screenshots/003/map4.jpg
  http://www.adom.de/jade/screenshots/003/map3.jpg

• 36 Sithun // Feb 28, 2008 at 12:32 pm

  I dont think thats so much of a problem, since if you look thru a font, you will see that they all have a crapload of different letters available. Since jade wont be a dos-game, i dont think it will be restriced to standard letters as much as adom is.

• 37 Morko // Feb 28, 2008 at 12:32 pm

  There are many thousands of symbols that UTF-8 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utf_8 ) can represent. Java uses UTF-16 but basically, the point is same: it can represent thousands of different characters. Of course bitmaps can numerically represent more symbols than UTF-8 (or UTF-16), but for example, it is not very accessible (eg. for blind people). Plus of course, bitmaps are much more tedious to create and process, and IMO much uglier. Not to mention that bitmaps are not easily scalable (in a pretty way).

  Basically, bitmaps have too many drawbacks compared to characters to be viable choice. If we start going into graphical debate, in these days, one would rather watch properly created detailed 3d-objects than small ugly 16×16 bitmaps. Or just read letters and let imagination fly.

• 38 electric_wizard // Feb 28, 2008 at 12:51 pm

  Strictly speaking if you’re using ASCII then I think you only have 94 displayable characters to choose from.

  If however it’s a Windows font then I think you get 256, which when combined with different colours is probably ample.

  That said, I still think it would be cool to include a few Arabic & Hebrew characters, perhaps for particularly powerfully or unique NPCs.

• 39 yisk // Feb 28, 2008 at 12:57 pm

  In ADOM to each letter there corresponded the certain group of monsters. Various colors of identical letters mean subspecies of the same kinds (for example, a cat, a tiger, a lion). It is visible, that the Creator from shortage of letters has already begun fineer distribution: blue-green letters mean goblins, yellowy-brown - gnolls. It’s pretty bad. )

  I suggest to enter simple icons for each kind of monsters, and subspecies besides to vary on color. There can be even three-dimensional ones then the game screen will look as a chessboard.) The same concerns also to background.

• 40 Nearsighted // Feb 28, 2008 at 1:48 pm

  Yisk, graphic tiles have been suggested for ADOM numerous times since it’s inception, and Thomas seemed pretty interested in the concept long ago. The artist interested apparently mentioned at the suggestion of doing the art his or her self. Things just didn’t seem to work out, and since, TB appears to be pretty skeptical of people offering that level of tribute.

  If he was, hypothetically, to take JADE down that road, it wouldn’t likely be his own art. That said, someone would probably have to provide a huge sample of tiles to even have a chance of catching his interest. In short, it’s pretty unlikely. Though that’s just my opinion…

• 41 Subconscious // Feb 28, 2008 at 8:29 pm

  Not really. The game MUST remain 2D at any cost. 3D would make it slower when and it wouldn’t be roguelike anymore. There is still some letters mr. Biskup didn’t use in adom at all, and some colors he didn’t use with certain letters - We might be lucky to see *new* kind of monsters in JADE.

  ASCII for the win!

  And BTW, could be good to have edit/delete functions in this area. It sucks when you have noticed that you have made some bad mistages and stuff.

• 42 Squeak // Feb 28, 2008 at 11:59 pm

  Hah, I finally found out how to register so I can post comments! Anyway, I think JADE is looking great. I visited the site very often and after about a year of nothing new on the site I started thinking you would never get back to JADE but when I looked again near Christmas I saw a new post on the site. I think the colored-text idea is worth doing, but as electric_wizard said, it can wait. The start-up screen you have with the animation is nice, too. Start-up screens never really mattered to me, though.

• 43 yisk // Feb 29, 2008 at 8:38 am

  For what JADE to be roguelike if it will be better than Rogue and can independently begin new generation of “jadelike-games”? The three-dimensional image of symbols will not brake game, it not argument.

  I think the main problem that creation of three- or bidimentional pictures responsible and labour-intensive process + it is necessary to adapt for it a game code.

• 44 electric_wizard // Feb 29, 2008 at 9:51 am

  ADOM is one of the best and most detailed computer games ever made. Do you think it could possibly have reached the level it has today if every single monster had to be drawn as a bitmap or rendered in 3D? It’s ridiculously time consuming and completely pointless for a game that is all about strategy.

  There are a million and one features I’d love to see in JADE and every second spent working on unnecessary graphical ‘improvements’ is time that could be spent improving the GAMEPLAY!

• 45 Marek14 // Feb 29, 2008 at 9:54 am

  How about unicode? More specifically, I’m thinking of letters with various diacritics/accent marks, which are standardly included.

  For example, you could have normal elementals denoted by E, and some terrible demonic elementals by Ě (they have horns).
  Boy, I sure hope it will show right in the comments

  Plus, doesn’t the standard format include cyrilics and Greek alphabet? While not everyone knows his cyrilics, Greek alphabet is still a part of basic education, isn’t it?

  Another possibility is to have blinking characters that would blink by themselves (not just change every turn like karmics in ADOM). The simple “blinks” would be two-colored characters, or characters that would blink between accented/non-accented variant.

  Another idea: how about an option to switch the color display to various settings? I.e.:

  0 - Basic setting, colors indicate specific types.
  1 - Alignment setting, colors are dark grey - chaotics, light grey - neutrals, white - lawfuls, red - unknown alignment.
  2 - Combat setting, color-coded injury status

  You could change between those without consuming game time, of course.

• 46 yisk // Feb 29, 2008 at 10:27 am

  П Ж Л Ф Ш Ч Б - do you see it?

  Letters of other languages is a good variant, but I am afraid of problems with correct display of these symbols in the different computers.

  “Я” - unrusty monster =)

• 47 Nearsighted // Feb 29, 2008 at 1:27 pm

  Some very good points, here. I can’t wait for the forum.

  “For what JADE to be roguelike if it will be better than Rogue and can independently begin new generation of “jadelike-games”?”

  If a simulation of 3D is all you need for that, then we’re forgetting about a plethora of nethack frontends, including Falcon’s Eye…

  On a side note, are anyone else’s comments “awaiting moderation”? Are my posts even visible?

• 48 Marek14 // Mar 1, 2008 at 8:26 am

  Another idea would be to have “blinking” characters representing invisible monsters when you have “see invisible”. In ADOM, after all, you DO know whether a particular monster is invisible or not, right?

• 49 Laukku // Mar 1, 2008 at 11:27 am

  The PC is a hill dwarf and starts in a *human* city?

  AFAIK Java supports more than 16 colours, so e.g. we could simply have “light brown” and “dark brown” to tell apart by sight gnolls and large gnolls. And IIRC TB has said in the old website that JADE supports different display modes, so you could easily write one.

  And one thing I’d like to know, o Mr Biskup: How many and what kind of features are you planning to add before releasing the first version?:-) I won’t mind if it has only 20, or even 15, different monsters at first…

• 50 anfeir // Mar 3, 2008 at 7:46 am

  yisk // Feb 27, 2008 at 5:42 pm

  “but there is too small number of different english letters.. Bitmap icons helps to evade this problem.”

  Note that it is much more easy to distinguish one letter from another letter than one low-sized monster picture from another one…. especially if you have lots of these small monster pictures. You begin to stare into these pixels and try to find out that pixel is different

• 51 Jaromir83 // Mar 3, 2008 at 10:20 am

  Sempoo and others are right, starting screen does not look good. I believe some of us fans would provide more proper graphics for it, even text-only startup from ADOM was better (more stylish, fitting to the game). But I believe it could be changed in final version of JADE, this one is OK for beta+no multiscreen dungeons please, ADOM was prefect in this, rather 50 small 1screen dungeon levels than 5 huge with the need of scrolling, thanks:)

• 52 anfeir // Mar 3, 2008 at 3:33 pm

  Why do you so like Adom’s starting screen? There were lots of not game-related data like internet links, bug report links, etc.
  And imho, donations in the 1st line of the menu looks a bit strange
  I’d like to see Generate, Restore, Quit and maybe Help options the most prominent or even the single in the menu. Although i understand the creator wishes to place a donations link first, its rather ok.

• 53 Jaromir83 // Mar 3, 2008 at 5:46 pm

  I believe startup screen doesn´t matter so much, just can´t wait to play THE game.

• 54 anfeir // Mar 4, 2008 at 7:39 am

  Yes, I hope Thomas won’t disappear for another several years with it :)))

• 55 Dougy // Mar 5, 2008 at 1:35 am

  Thanks TB, it looks fantastic! I am one of the many people rather excited about this.

  By the sounds of things - it seems it will eventually be possible for people to create their own UI for JADE. Is that right?

  If that’s the case, then if people really want icons/ASCII/coloured font, then they can make it themselves.

• 56 electric_wizard // Mar 5, 2008 at 1:58 pm

  Looking at the zoomed out map, it would seem that the wolds JADE creates feature continents and islands. Does this mean boats and possibly a sailing skill? I certainly hope so, because wherever you find boats you find PIRATES!

• 57 Nezur // Mar 5, 2008 at 8:37 pm

  Arrr, pirates! Now that would be nice.

• 58 Newmooon // Mar 31, 2008 at 11:03 am

  Color vairations in the message seems a good idea.

  I’m a professional designer and if you need some draw, logo ,button, anything I can do, simply ask me and I’ll be glad to contribute to Jade. Feel free to ask for everything I love ADOM and I love also JADE
  But I think that a roguelike game and its starting game screen should be in ascii as it was in ADOM. Maybe the starting screen could be an image but the game must have letters. Images have a lot of limitations that letters don’t have.
  Letters make imagination works to complete and draw all the environment and the animations. If you insert tiles and images you have to draw carefully environment (two water tiles “==” ar no longer a river they look very bad toghether) and draw animations and details and a lot more (I’ve tried it with some projects and it really sucks). And however a game with tiles it will be never as good as a 3d oblivion. Roguelike game must use letters, letters are Roguelike’s power.

  I hope there will not be a final goal in JADE or however I hope there will be a way to disable it. I like traveling killing and skilling without having a main quest to complete.

  The repetitive messages should be summarized if completely repetitive. If you have something like “The goblin attack you, The goblin fail to hurt you” it’s ok. But sometimes if you get envolved in jackal pack you want to know only the final result of all the jackals “Some jackals hit you (5 times) and some miss you (2 times). The goblin hit you (2 times).”

  I’ really hope you’ll find a way to include more characters in JADE or maybe different fonts or size for characters (avoid tiles!).

• 59 Hacktor // Apr 15, 2008 at 1:15 pm

  Sweet Just love it

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