Thank you ADOM: by gut

[gut]

Once upon a time, in a land right here and now, I made an abundance of interface mistakes when using
computer applications and games. I would then whine like a baby and blame the program(er): "Whaaa,
it should have prompted me." To make matters worse, most programs actually played this "are you sure
you want to..." hand-holding game of weakness with me, and thus coddled me like a spoiled brat. They
made me weak, they made me lazy, and they are undoubtedly the source of my horribly limited
intelligence.

The sad thing is, this is actually a vicious cycle. See, the MOST tech savvy users were the ones
attracted to technology in the ancient times... in the seventies. A time when programmers used
punchcards, like MEN should. Any type of interface that has the word 'punch' in it is manly, and is
showing hardware and software who is boss. So whenever anything from an array to a zener diode
started feeling frisky, all it had to do was look at the PUNCH card that was sliding into its reader
slot and then the situation was all like "You see all this byte-kicking going on over here? Now shut
up."

We have steadily regressed though. As more unlikely tech enthusiasts are being lured to computers by
the fiendish temptations of facebook and angry birds, the pressure upon programs to anticipate and
compensate for their inevitible mistakes is unrivaled. Unfortunately, it is partly due to this
advancement in programming, this zealous error-catching storm of insanity, that leads users into
greater depths of stupidity. Programs are nearing the point at which they will be rolling their data
structures and twiddling their control handles while having to deal with us. Twittering (going to
work this word in as many times as possible) at our molasses-in-wintertime speed and club-fingered
neanderthal key bashing.

Program updating: "You won't remember, just let me." Closing a program unexpectedly: "That was
prolly your ham finger, am I right? I'll just ignore that then." Saving progress as you work: "You
will forget, then whine like always... jusT alLoW mE To dO iT FoR yoU, UsEr." How long before
programs realize the whole process would be much more efficient by dropping users entirely? Would it
be so difficult for a competent programmer to write a program that could dynamically write its own
programs to load porn, post on facebook, or play flashgames? I think not.

This is why I love adom. Like a twitchy piano teacher with a yard stick, adom teaches one to hit the
right notes. Or ELSE. Whether it was magic missiling myself in a corridor, inexplicably hitting the
'Qy' combination for no reason, holding the 'a' button for 1/10th of a second too long, thus
'a'pplying 'a'lchemy to two potions and blasting myself into the afterlife, or just knuckle-headedly
clicking the 'x' on my application window when I wanted to minimize it. I learned that keypress
mistakes WILL KILL YOU. In my panic riddled post-adom state of keypress grandmastery, I can now
snootily look down my snoot at the crawl players who actually implimented a command sequence to the
extent of 'ctrl-x yes {enter}' to protect themselves from such mistakes. The fools. How will they
ever learn if not by anguish induced face palms?

Furthermore, adom taught me more than just caution and precision, it taught me life wasn't fair. Of
course I knew it already, from the news and such, but nothing really drives home the feeling of
teeth-gritting injustice like playing adom for two years and then one day your most promising
character ever has a chance meeting with a ki-rin on their way out of the rift. Now that
is a lesson in 'why do I even try' that nothing can match. For your amusement and undoubted
nostalgia, here are some other examples of adom's approach to teaching fairness lessons: Descend a
staircase, you die. Don an unidentified item, you die. Walk on a tile, any tile, at any time, IT IS
A TRAP YOUDIE. I could go on for hours, but you already know all this. This is adom and this is the
world.

Take for instance the antelope that gets eaten while crossing the alligator infested river in
drought season. It didn't get eaten because it was the slowest, it didn't get eaten because it was
the least brave or had a poor work ethic. It wasn't sick and it wasn't old. It got eaten because the
universe decided to screw it, and that is all there is to it. Truth be told, the antelope didn't
even have to be crossing a river to die that day, a meteor could have gotten it just as easily at
any time, and it WOULD HAVE too if the alligator had missed. This is what adom has taught me. There
IS such a thing as being doomed and running out of luck, this is fact.

I now have perspective enough to take any unfair occurance life throws at me in stride, and to
expect more of the same, especially sequentially. If my text editor were to start randomly deleting
the pages as I type this, it wouldn't bother nor surprise me in the slightest. I already anticipate
for my editor to start doing exactly that any time now. Just because it has never previously done
that means nothing. Nothing. I make saves the same as I would in a game of adom, every 15 seconds on
the dot, because I know if I don't, the text will immediately be eaten by said lurking program bug,
or a power outage simultaneously timed with a laptop battery failure would get it... or something.
All the universe needs is an excuse, a loophole big enough to lasso an ant by the leg, if you allow
it that, you're dead.

Let the universe try to kill my dog. Just let it try. I only take him for walks at night now, so as
to avoid what little vehicle traffic there was, and I always carry him in my arms as I walk. No
snakes can bite him and no birds of prey could carry him off, as I also have him tied to me via his
leash. This is quite uncomfortable for both the dog and myself, as he weighs about 40 pounds, and
his leash is just a braided rusty old tire tread wire, but adom has taught me that this is all
necessary. Dogs have unwaivering faith in their abilities as fighters, and since I live in
appalachia, there is a chance that a bear could attack at any moment. The only chance my dog has to
escape a bear is if he is being pushed by a fleeing cowardly human. The universe will never eat my
dog, nor squish him via meteor, as I live within panic-fleeing distance of a sturdy and reliable
coal mine. Take THAT universe. Ha, ha ha. Ha...

Anyway, back to adom thanking. You see, it made me smarter. Not smart, mind you, just smarter. From
the first time it crashes (which shouldn't take long), you start learning. You first learn to search
out and deal with hidden folders and files, which will come in handy for the rest of your days
dealing with unruly software. What better way for a program to encourage a user to learn the ins and
outs of their operating system than to disable their game until they learn? Very sneaky adom

Also, I am certain that this is adom's way of saving the faint of heart from getting involved in
something with which they clearly have no business. In adom's opinion, what is to come should be
reserved for only the nerdy and masochistic of heart, so this is adom's acid test. If you can't
perservere through this, there are many other interesting things on the web. It's like adom is
saying "Here is your chance to escape, angry birds are twittering (ho) in the distance. You have no
one to blame but yourself if you stay."

[gut]

Well, if you stay, you will soon begin learn adom's second lesson: configuration file editing. If
you weren't comfortable with editing these, you will be, unless you really enjoy the question
system, which for a noob would equal about 11 questions per 3 minutes, with 1 minute being devoted
to playing (dying) and the other 2 minutes used for said question system. The avalanche of deaths
will introduce the new player to their 3rd acquired talent: savescumming (much better than treasure
hunter, with better prerequisites). Other programs have savescumming built-in and do not even scold
or ridicule the player for using it, which makes for lazy and egotistical users. The adom player
will be properly whipped into shape by now though, and they will, at this point, travel one of two
routes, both equally retarded. One is to learn to beat the game without heavy (or any) use of
savescumming. This road will take you about 5 years to travel, and there are many bumps along the
way, and there are many gorgons along the way, and there are many revenants along the way, and there
are many doppleganger kings along the way, etc... The other route is the one I personally chose, to
learn the art of batch files (or worse, a scripting language) to automate your dying/reviving
process. To these brave idiots, permadeath will become just another half-forgotten word, like
'integrity' or whatever.

Sometimes it is not enough to simply savescum one's way to victory, some have a need for yet more
information. This is adom's 4th level of education: memory. Who reading this right now can not
recite a page worth of herb growth patterns on the spot? Who reading this can not tell me which does
more damage, an eternium two hander or an eternium halberd. I have done some unofficial calculations
and arived at this ballpark figure: I have a solid gigabyte of adom information in my head. Granted,
most of it ranges from partially to entirely wrong, BUT IT IS THERE. This is not even a natural
thing for me, and I suspect that this memory space has been created in much the same fashion that a
steroid user creates an unnatural quantity of muscle mass, by pumping themselves full of foreign
substances to the point of near-bursting. Better still, I think that for every bit of adom
information I forget, that is a byte of grey matter memory that is freed, and so can now be used for
other things. With all that I've forgotten about adom in just the past year, I should be able to
memorize encyclopedias by the dozen now

So with some victories in hand, a strongly built memory for things that will do one no good in life,
and keypressing grandmastery under belt, one naturally seeks out the affiliation of other
masochists, so as to impress them with the quantity of pain they have endured. We call these groups
'forums', 'channels', 'asylums', and such, but they are all pretty much the same thing. They are
adom's 5th level of teaching: incentive.

I personally was a computer literate person before being involved in the adom community (as one
would rather have to be, having gone through some electronics courses and started using the internet
around 1994 ), BUT there was much technology I never used because I didn't have the incentive. I
rarely participated in usenet or forums, prefering to only lurk. I only used temporary (disposable)
email accounts, as I never did web business or communication. I never used screen or voice recording
software, as there was a learning curve and I'm shy and have a horribly thick hillbilly accent. I
never had a desire to learn any HTML, or put up even a simple web page. I never had an incentive to
try my hand at any scripting language (I still suck at programming, but I CAN read small bits of
code now, which is a lot more than I could previously). I tried irc again because of adom (and grey
posting a preconfigured binary ). I tried putty because of adom, and it still boggles my mind that
I can play adom on a computer in finland while people in canada, new zealand, etc... watch me. I
tried linux for the first time because of adom. I successfully installed and used a virtual machine
on my computer for the first time because of adom. I could probably list more, but the point is, if
not for chatting with fellow obsessive compulsive, heavily accented, masochistic nerds I would
probably not have braved up enough to try as many new things as I did, or at least not as soon. How
many others have I heard mention that adom was the incentive for them to learn some reversing or
programming or such? Well, two, but I imagine not everyone chimes in...

Well, I am sleepy now. I wanted to write a short joke thing for giggles, but like all the stuff I
start writing, it turns into a 10,000 participant strong bad grammar festival with spelling errors
showing up as the guests of honor. I am not using the spellchecker on this, as I am afraid of it, so
just skim over the mistakes.

Please feel free to chime in with your own adom thank-you's below. Goodnight.

(P.S. har, it turns out there were actually 12956 characters in this party )

[Silfir]

chatting with fellow obsessive compulsive, heavily accented, masochistic nerds

I'm not that heavily accented, am I?

[grobblewobble]

I like how much variety there is. It seems that every ADOM game is different, offers its own challenges.

Also thanks to ADOM I can't see capital letters without seeing monsters.

[Silfir]

I should add that in addition to much of what gut enumerated, ADOM taught me English. Well, as far as it uses actual English and not mystery words like "nograin".

[JellySlayer]

Well, if you stay, you will soon begin learn adom's second lesson: configuration file editing. If
you weren't comfortable with editing these, you will be, unless you really enjoy the question
system, which for a noob would equal about 11 questions per 3 minutes, with 1 minute being devoted
to playing (dying) and the other 2 minutes used for said question system.

I actually played for years without editing the .cfg files. It threw me off when I finally turned off the question system, because I had trained myself to generate a character in about 3 seconds, and removing the letter F from the g-space-s-m-d-l-f sequence (the alternate g-space-f-f-f-f-f-Shift-Q was unaffected) meant that I'd always end up accidentally taking affinity to knives. Even now, I only use very minimal adjustments to the .cfg file.

Who reading this can not tell me which does
more damage, an eternium two hander or an eternium halberd.

Bloody dagger and a crystal tower shield? Most 2-handed weapons are YASD fodder, although I do make exceptions for the RCT and the ToTRR.

[anon123]

holding the 'a' button for 1/10th of a second too long, thus
'a'pplying 'a'lchemy to two potions and blasting myself into the afterlife

That used to be my favorite way to dispose of wizard PCs with unsatisfactory stats. If Learning or Mana weren't where I wanted, I'd just hold A until the screen flashed black Now I just Shift+Q so that my hiscore (which since I'm not a very good player, never holds anything of interest, so I clean it somewhat often as a superstition) may only hold "real" deaths.

or just knuckle-headedly
clicking the 'x' on my application window when I wanted to minimize it.

Thankfully that does nothing in winbeta4. Sage users seem to be not so lucky, but there's a program called NoClose that will disable the close button for any window.

One is to learn to beat the game without heavy (or any) use of
savescumming. This road will take you about 5 years to travel, and there are many bumps along the
way, and there are many gorgons along the way, and there are many revenants along the way, and there
are many doppleganger kings along the way, etc... The other route is the one I personally chose, to
learn the art of batch files (or worse, a scripting language) to automate your dying/reviving
process. To these brave idiots, permadeath will become just another half-forgotten word, like
'integrity' or whatever.

Absolutely true. After reading this paragraph I feel like you've watched my every movement ever since I found the game I still have the batch files I wrote and many old SVGs in a backup of what is my very first ADOM directory. There are none from the early days when I thought the ID was the CoC, and having skimmed the Guidebook, I wondered where those altars and pools were (none of this prevented me from having fun, and I feel reading spoilers uh, spoiled that feeling a bit), but yes from where I started reading more carefully, and actually got to Dwarftown, or at least got close.

I should add that in addition to much of what gut enumerated, ADOM taught me English. Well, as far as it uses actual English and not mystery words like "nograin".

I also second this. ADOM taught me a truckload of vocabulary. Having this knowledge of words at a time where I was still studying the language (I still am now, but at college level, while I found the game when I was 13) was exceptionally useful, and generally, it always pays off to have it.

On a sidenote, "glibbery" is another word I've managed to find in any English dictionary. For some reason I believe it refers to something warm and gelatinous.

I actually played for years without editing the .cfg files. It threw me off when I finally turned off the question system

I really liked the question system when I was a newbie. I remember I used to actually pick answers according to how I would act in the situations presented (if that were possible, obviously), rather than how the Guidebook's spoiler said I should to increase a particular stat. Oh, old times. Nowadays, I still make extensive use of it (although in the latter fashion).

The only things I've changed in my config are the Base_Delay_Factor, Show_Experience and auto-pickup, a blessing I actually "discovered" pretty recently. (I guess I knew about it in the past, but never liking that feature in NetHack, I chose to keep it turned off. However, for my current playstyle, auto-pickup is now situationally useful, considering it doesn't use an extra turn to act.)

[Silfir]

... "glibbery" isn't in dictionaries? I found it in several online ones just now. Though I have to add that the German "glibbrig" or "glibberig" is basically the same word, so I never had to look it up; I just assumed it meant what I thought it meant.

The real mystery to me is: What makes the fire giants so glibbery? The word doesn't ordinarily imply that something is warm at all in German; it's something gelatinous and slippery.

Incidentally, knowing just what meat in the game tastes "glibbery" proves that I'm just as far off the deep end as gut.

[anon123]

... "glibbery" isn't in dictionaries? I found it in several online ones just now.

I swear I couldn't find it when I looked not so long ago... or maybe that was "glibberish"...

Well, at least my supposition was partially correct

[MITZE]

. . . when I first saw the title for this topic, I thought this was going to be a I'm-leaving-the-community-thanks-for-all-the-good-times kind of topic, for some strange reason.

I am relieved to be proven wrong.