35 responses so far ↓

• 1 Travis Prue // Mar 23, 2008 at 11:39 pm

  DOWNLOADING NOW! :D:D:D:D:D:D::D:DD *explodes* <_<

• 2 Flaterectomy // Mar 23, 2008 at 11:56 pm

  It’s great to see things in motion! And /great/ things they are indeed. That city, the whole world… That’s just enormous! The slow movement through the city, that was because of its size?

  In any case, I’m getting more and more excited about JADE.

• 3 jipostus // Mar 24, 2008 at 12:17 am

  *Camps out for the first release* 8D

• 4 theotherhiveking // Mar 24, 2008 at 1:00 am

  cool, but you need to eat! WHERES THE FOOD!!!!

  btw, human cities need to be a llot smaller.

• 5 deadlover // Mar 24, 2008 at 1:02 am

  QUITE impressive. The release of this video shows that while a lot still has to be done, a lot of ground has been covered all ready. Can’t wait for any sort of playable release:D

• 6 tekknej // Mar 24, 2008 at 1:51 am

  bah, extend yer engine now if it will be harder later….

• 7 warheart // Mar 24, 2008 at 1:54 am

  Downloading atm, can’t wait to watch it

• 8 Scienceman123 // Mar 24, 2008 at 3:52 am

  Video doesn’t work for me. It’s just a black screen.

• 9 moppit // Mar 24, 2008 at 4:09 am

  Thank you Herr Biskup.

• 10 Nearsighted // Mar 24, 2008 at 9:06 am

  Scienceman123, I haven’t tried the video myself yet, but perhaps you’re missing a codec?

• 11 Daemon // Mar 24, 2008 at 10:09 am

  The video was really cool. I showed many gameplay features that really made me want to play the game.

  I think, however, that there are a few things that need fixing (IMO, anyway):

  1) The size of the human cities. The one in the video was ENORMOUSLY huge. It’ll be really
  hard navigating in one if the size isn’t changed.

  2) The time spent in wilderness. I mean, a troll, for example, will die to old age if he spends long times in wilderness. A few minutes in real world will be a few years in the game’s wilderness. That’ll be really irritating for a player.

  Also, I think you shouln’t make the dungeons scrolling. They’ll not be simple anymore, and simpliness is fun.

  - Thiregan

• 12 Sanshouuo // Mar 24, 2008 at 11:23 am

  ^^

  Well, I agree the cities need fixing. Too huge? I don’t know, but at least some organisation please. Streets and buildings doors towards them. Probably some city elements like castle, palace, chourch, area where is clearly rich people living as well as slum.

• 13 vdweller // Mar 24, 2008 at 1:25 pm

  Dear Thomas,

  No matter how many people whine and scream about releasing a version in a short matter of time, don’t listen to them.

  Sorry people, I know I sound like a jerk, but constantly crying about an imminent release is *not* excactly the way to show Thomas that you respect the tremendous amount of effort that is called *programming*. If Thomas starts thinking of a release (which he mentioned already) this will perhaps distract him from more “technical” issues which, in the long term, will make the first release (and the full program itself) far more stable and enjoyable.

  So IMHO, Thomas, you should really concentrate on the “hard parts” rather than trying to crudely tidy things up just in order to hastily make a first release.

  Sorry again for that post.

• 14 ethaniel // Mar 24, 2008 at 3:23 pm

  :’( i feel so touched
  we’ve been waiting for soooooo long. thank you biskup. i’ll have to agree for the towns as far organization. should look more like a normal town… old town used to be circle forming walls and stuff… the world is fine for me because i think pc’s wont die that easy of starvation or walking
  thanks again buddy

• 15 ethaniel // Mar 24, 2008 at 3:25 pm

  oh! btw Scienceman123 try to run it in normal WMP. it worked for me without codecs… it doesnt seem to be divx or something hence the size of it.

  ps: how do i quote or reply a message?

• 16 jt // Mar 24, 2008 at 4:05 pm

  Nice video. How about an audio commentary the next time?

  I noticed that the tunnel exit in JADE is represented by a “>” character whereas it is a “<” in ADOM. Bug?

• 17 Nehor // Mar 24, 2008 at 5:43 pm

  I support a quick release: a released version will be a source of motivation (not to mention joy for us.)

  Also, I LIKE the large towns and wilderness. IMHO it adds to the fun of a game. You are a troll - well, learn to stay in your area (or work with teleportation if it’s implemented.) You are in a city - well you’ll have to get used to the idea that there will always be something that you missed. Almost every game that’s out there you can finish 100%. The people are calling for a change!

• 18 Mandor // Mar 24, 2008 at 7:11 pm

  Stats on the left instead of bottom is so… unADoMish.

• 19 Scienceman123 // Mar 24, 2008 at 9:48 pm

  It works now. Maybe it was a corrupt download.

• 20 Jim // Mar 24, 2008 at 11:17 pm

  What a fantastic video! I love the way the wilderness looks, and the huge town too (although I share the concern about playability).

  As for getting a release out.. well, you obviously have a lot of infrastructure already, likely enough to make a playable game. I see nothing wrong with using it to flesh out some actual story/gameplay for an early release.

  I mean, if at some point you find the current structure insufficient for adding content, you can always expand it is necessary, right?

• 21 Nearsighted // Mar 24, 2008 at 11:50 pm

  Audio commentary — brilliant, jt!

• 22 Marek14 // Mar 25, 2008 at 8:55 am

  Loved the video I noticed two things there - first, when monsters noticed you, the message notices %o - I assume that %o is a bug.
  The second thing is that when you leave the dungeon, the message reads “You enter the Ancardia.” Is there any specific reason for “the”? It’s not normally used in English with proper names, with some weird exceptions, like “The Haag”.

  I like the big cities. They are manageable, as long as there is a way to reliably find what you want to find. Maps, street numbers printed on the doors, etc.

  Is the global world map wrap-around with torus topology, as is common in RPGs? At the maximum zoom, it looked like that to me.

  Final question (a bit more philosophical): Where do you stand on issue of tradition vs. innovation? Is it ok to make suggestions that don’t correspond to conventions of Tolkienish mythos (like a water-breathing race of dwarves forging in the submerged volcanos, or partially photosynthetising humans who lose HP if they spend too long in darkness)?

  I’m asking because Tolkien was the person who singlehandedly set up many of the conventions used in today’s fantasy, and I’m afraid that people are afraid to disagree with him nowadays My philosophy is that great men exist to be surpassed, not merely revered

• 23 brog // Mar 25, 2008 at 12:55 pm

  >The second thing is that when you leave the
  > dungeon, the message reads “You enter the
  > Ancardia.” Is there any specific reason for
  > “the”? It’s not normally used in English with
  > proper names, with some weird exceptions,
  > like “The Haag”.

  Dude, obviously he just hasn’t got around to putting in exceptions for proper names. This is a minor cosmetic issue, not something you need to bother with at such an early stage. If I were him, I’d spend my time working on the major systems first, and do minor stuff like fixing up grammar when I’m having an off day and not feeling like getting into anything complicated.

• 24 Marek14 // Mar 25, 2008 at 3:39 pm

  It can be a programming bug or even a language mistake. But if there is a chance, however small, that it IS a bug that went unnoticed, then I call it. What possible disadvantages it can have to call attention to it?

• 25 Pushpabon // Mar 25, 2008 at 4:10 pm

  Nice video. Next time can you please zip or rar with moderate to maximum compression these videos where you record a static desktop/jade because they compress extremely well. This video went down to 1.14 MB in winrar. It’s probably not worth encoding with a ‘real’ codec though, because the image will get blurry unless you crank up the bitrate and then it’d take tons of space.

• 26 The Independent Gaming Source // Mar 26, 2008 at 2:07 am

  […] Biskup has released some screenshots and a video of JADE, the sequel to his popular roguelike, Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM). While the video […]

• 27 5318008 // Mar 26, 2008 at 5:57 am

  Re: dying of old age while exploring the wilderness, the easiest fix is to introduce some sort of transport system.

  It could be something as simple as “ye olde horse and cart departing from the shanty town of Backwater to Scumhive village” to a regularly departing merchant caravan bound for the capitol. These would carry you through the wilderness on a preset route much faster than you just walking, and you could have the option of getting off at any point to explore that bit of the wilderness or to take your own detour.

  You might also have the option of walking back on the road again, in the hopes that a passing cart/caravan would give you a ride.

  All this would either be for a price or in exchange for your protection during the journey.

• 28 蓝风 // Mar 26, 2008 at 8:47 am

  I, for one, really really like that you are doing big cities. That’s very visionary, and something that (IMHO) should be taken even to graphical games. Hopefully, if the system works out well that you are setting up, other people will take the hint. The trick is, of course, to actually infuse life into each of those buildings. Is that even something you are considering? Maybe with new releases (similar to Dwarf Fortress) new areas are unlocked, or new quests? (like MMORPGs) Anyways, looking really great.

  One other comment: if it were possible to design the game in such a way that if a graphical wizard came along and wanted to set tiles to your game (like DF or Nethack), would that be possible being that your game is built in Java? I don’t know if you’d want to release your game like that, but I know that rogue-likes are devilishly hard enough, without dealing with the ASCII barrier that a lot of people would have.

• 29 Jaromir83 // Mar 26, 2008 at 5:40 pm

  that´s for sure-no scrolling dungeons please. rather 50 small/1 screen tiers than 5 large/scrolling. that´s what was perfect about ADOM.

• 30 Newmooon // Mar 27, 2008 at 3:07 pm

  I think that big cities are a good thing, but it is really necessary that they are various or something organised (you have to avoid big cities if they were only a lot of houses with always the same distance between them), keep it various (or random )

  For the wilderness problem I think that is something normal and realistic that a character can spent some years only traveling, have you ever heard of a man who traveled all the world in a few minutes. Moving in wilderness must take a lot of character-time. I think that is good as you have done right now.

  And last but not least I think that dungeons should be scrollable, it is complexity that gives realism and playability to the game.
  The best thing you can do (maybe in the future) is allowing the player to decide how big he wants to generate the world-dungeons when you generate the entire world.

  Anyway you’ve done an excellent work. Releasing a playable copy may allow you to receive a lot of bug reports and feedback, on the other side working without releasing can make Jade a better game.
  wilderness not good

• 31 Constantine Solo // Mar 28, 2008 at 1:41 am

  That’s great. I’m really loving this new website. I think with the old one I was checking maybe once a month and I’d usually find no update. Now, I check every few days and find new information about a very anticipated game for me.

  I must say, I like the size of you city. A suggestion for you is to remember that cities exist in the societies and geographies that spawn them. So whilst some cities might be massive administrative and economic centers like Constantinople; most would be completely different, depending on conditions such as accessibility by enemies, geography and so forth. For example, the closer you get to border regions the more cities resemble fortresses than population centers, the more towns get raided, that kind of thing.

  Oh yeah, I like scrolling dungeons too. Who wants to be constricted?

• 32 Creaphis // Mar 29, 2008 at 6:08 pm

  It looks like there are two definite camps here. One group supports the massive overworld, the ludicrously huge cities, the larger dungeon levels, etc. The other group feels that these technical achievements may have gone too far, and change the feel of Adom significantly. I’m definitely a member of the second camp.

  Yes, there is something to be said for massive game worlds that can keep you occupied indefinitely, but this isn’t Adom anymore. Adom could be completed. Adom could be fully explored, with every side quest completed and every treasure discovered. Now, the world is too large to travel, and cities are too large to explore. Perhaps beginning Adom players feel that the Drakalor chain is sprawling in the same way, but as a veteran of the game, I’ve learned to explore and conquer the entire Drakalor chain, giving the game a sort of… cozy feel. This is a comfortable feeling that Jade in its current state can never have. I expect Jade will be an excellent game in its own right, but is likely to alienate many current Adom experts.

  Aside from that issue, here are some nit-picky concerns:
  1. The player doesn’t really need more text to read when in the middle of a battle. There should be a setting so that the weapon of a monster is only listed when it’s unusual or powerful.
  2. The new placement of statistics makes it harder to monitor HP when fighting.
  3. Considering that you’re changing most of the game significantly, I feel that you should also write a new dungeon-level-generation algorithm or at least modify the existing one. The standard ways that hallways connect to rooms in Adom feel tired in this new environment.

• 33 Daemon // Mar 30, 2008 at 9:48 am

  I think moving in wilderness should take a lot of “player time” too. It is kinda weird when you spend a few real time minutes in wilderness and in game time it’s a few years.

  - Daemon

• 34 kapsi // Apr 3, 2008 at 1:11 pm

  The video compressed to under 800 kB, interesting.

  As for the game, running around the map may be fun but I’d rather quality over quantity.

• 35 vikkilea // Apr 7, 2008 at 5:52 pm

  I like it, I can’t wait to get my hands on a beta version.

  I like the size of the towns and the idea that the game is a vast sprawl with what seems to be no end. Maybe in each room in a city can be a person with a small problem or quest? I would like to go through and carry out tasks for NCPs as a way for variation and leveling up. This can compliment the main storyline, so that the game does have an ending.

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