Just to give a statement from my point of view:
There is quite a bit happening but it's game-wise right now really happening mostly in the province of graphics, sound and minor bug fixes and adjustments. Jochen, Zeno, Krys and Oneirons have put an amazing amount of energy into that area and I am totally happy and in love with the results. If you would like to see more work in another area that's perfectly valid but we had to have some project plan and like any project that is very complex things can get a bit unorderly once unexpected complications arise.
From my side there have been two unexpected complications:
- It takes me an eternity longer to write the god-damn ADOM Lite RPG compared to what I expected. And by now it has reached a state where it is draining my will to live, honestly. It must be done by October as otherwise I am going to run into tax-related funding issues and thus it must ship this year. But it has taken a lot more months than I ever expected. In retrospective it would have been much better to not collect the money for the RPG and waste time and energy writing it. Now that I have promised to do it I want it to be good enough - so there's one big issue. To finally get it finished I really decided to focus on nothing but writing it. So until it is finished I'm not going to write a single line of code for ADOM to not get distracted even more. Lesson #1: Never again would I promise rewards that are not directly related to the goal of a campaign.
- The second point is a personal issue. The first eight months of this year my mother has been having extremely serious health issues. She's 84 so that's not unexpected. But it has forced us to surrender her home (the old ADOM postcard address), move her to a are facility and get thousands of related things organized. This level has been totally unexpected even in January and from then on things declined dramatically. Putting extreme mental, emtional and time pressure on me. I am really blessed with my collaborators who have been moving many things forward in the most excellent manner even when I was not available.
All this doesn't help to fulfill your wishes immediately but you can feel assured that ADOM is the only not-job-related priority I have these days and I'm doing everything to not get distracted. ADOM II is one victim of this. Yes, I would have liked things to be different, but (1) and (2) above were unplanned or unexpected.
I just can ensure that once that god-damn ADOM Lite RPG finally is out of my way (and progress is finally becoming much better - end of October is yet another new date when I expect it to be finished) things will pick up again. Together with many other things which just need to get shipped (postcards, posters, etc.) as I want to do everything in one big batch.
And yes, I probably should communicate better. You are absolutely right. Sorry for that.
Thomas Biskup
ADOM & Ultimate ADOM Maintainer
https://www.adom.de - https://www.ultimate-adom.com