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Thread: Kicking off the Ultimate ADOM discussion

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  1. #1
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    Default Kicking off the Ultimate ADOM discussion

    Here you can find an initial content listing for topics I will discuss over the next weeks regarding the design and development of Ultimate ADOM: http://www.ancientdomainsofmystery.c...mate-adom.html
    Thomas Biskup
    ADOM & Ultimate ADOM Maintainer
    https://www.adom.de - https://www.ultimate-adom.com

  2. #2
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    All of this is nice, but one point is particularly pertinent... When you play ADOM, you have something amazing that is called the "bottomless backpack", which can hold hundreds of items if not thousands. Among those items, only a very few are useful. This is probably the only roguelike around with such a system. Having the possibility to recycle all the junk you find would be amazing. Maybe add a skill -- Crafting -- to be able to dismantle items into components and use them to improve other items.
    You feel excited. You die.

  3. #3
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    Sounds like Smithing.

  4. #4
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    Permanent rewards: how should permanent modifications be handled in the future in order to reduce the urge of grinding?
    Assuming permanent modifications refer to mainly stat modifications from eating corpses or training, i think it should be handled like this:
    Each character has a stat "aptitude" (replacing "potential maximums").
    The lower current stats compared to that aptitude, the bigger should be the gain from any eaten corpses or training you do.
    This way Trolls that start with STR 19 can readily train up to the average 25 that their race is supposed to have...

    Stats should also mainly change "on the go", depending on your actions - similarly to how you can easily train Mana; Garth training and herbs should get smaller
    effect for much smaller time investment (i.e. instead of requiring 6 herbs to get a guaranteed change, you would only need one - but the change is not guaranteed at all, and you'd only need one herb per like 1000 turns to maximize their effect).

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by SinsI View Post
    Assuming permanent modifications refer to mainly stat modifications from eating corpses or training
    I think perm modifications are supposed to be something permanently unlocked for all future chars (like Bugwill unlock).

    I am not sure how these can help with grind honestly.

    Precrown grind... If one can pass through artifact, that get's boring really fast -- always having preserver/BoW or one of new bloodsucker weapons waiting for you? Fine for one or two runs, but gets boring later.
    Same goes for passing equipment honestly -- some stuff is just too good for that (eternium weapon of devastation...)

    Stat grind... wasn't all potential changes about making races different, so did that got cancelled?

    I think perm progress work best if their unlock funny options/areas. If finishing Ordinary Chaos god was requirement to unlock chaos knight class most people would not object the idea(probably), same goes for optional areas.

    edit: I remembered... please do perma unlock of thieves guild. I don't care what requirements are but not doing pick pockets anymore would be an improvement.
    Last edited by Soirana; 01-25-2018 at 09:44 PM.
    So far rolled 15 casters with RoDS and shamelessly killed them within 200 turns. For eternium glory!
    (after 15 I stopped counting...)

  6. #6
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    I think perm progress work best if their unlock funny options/areas. If finishing Ordinary Chaos god was requirement to unlock chaos knight class most people would not object the idea(probably), same goes for optional areas.
    Tales of Maj'Eyal did a decent job with this.
    You started with a decent select of races and classes. As you played through the game, you could unlock more of each by completing specific tasks, quests or achievements.

    For example killing the Master of Dreadfell would unlock one of the undead races at random each time.
    Unlocking the Yeek race needed you to rescue a Yeek test subject from a laboratory.

    Some were a lot more challenging than others, but it generally gave you things that had more powerful abilities.
    Beating the game for example unlocked the Adventurer class (which was basically a blank slate class that let you fully customize instead of having pre-set skill trees).
    Unlocking the Marauder class needed you to do over 600 damage in a single hit as a Rogue or Shadowblade (basically you'd have to build up to one hell of a backstab).
    Meanwhile the Reaver class was unlocking by killing 1000 humanoids across all games you play.

    Stuff like that could be interesting. The only issue comes when people don't enjoy the base options you get. You have to make sure that the stuff you unlock is "different" not just "better". Otherwise a lot of those early runs just feel like a chore until you can get the more interesting unlocks.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dervi View Post
    All of this is nice, but one point is particularly pertinent... When you play ADOM, you have something amazing that is called the "bottomless backpack", which can hold hundreds of items if not thousands. Among those items, only a very few are useful. This is probably the only roguelike around with such a system. Having the possibility to recycle all the junk you find would be amazing. Maybe add a skill -- Crafting -- to be able to dismantle items into components and use them to improve other items.
    The arrival of our daughter wrecked my blogging time schedule but I really have several plans for that:
    • Ultimate ADOM will have crafting and it will be possible to turn items into raw materials.
    • Additionally I envision a kind of alchemy system that allows you to decompose items into its raw elements (fire, water, air, earth, mana like in ADOM Classic/Deluxe as the core elements and corruption as a new core element). Your character would store the elemental energy thus gained and will be able to use it to boost spells or item effects (using the energy up in the process).


    I'm also yet pondering whether Ultimate ADOM games still will have an almost unlimited inventory - especially for mobile this presents many UI problems and I'm not too sure if this really has been a good design choice. But I will cover that in a blog post, too.
    Thomas Biskup
    ADOM & Ultimate ADOM Maintainer
    https://www.adom.de - https://www.ultimate-adom.com

  8. #8
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    I personally like the (almost) unlimited inventory. It is true that long inventories can have UI problems, but limited inventories imply tons of micromanagement if one wants to play optimally, which is much more tedious than navigating a large inventory.

    In Ultima Underworld, a magnificent game, the limited inventory was the largest weakness in my view, as you spent a lot of time micromanaging. In DCSS, there are commands to kind of automate this micromanagement (marking places as stashes, navigating to stashes, etc.) which I find totally immersion-breaking. At that point, the game becomes a spreadsheet. This is OK in management games like Dwarf Fortress fortress mode, but in a roguelike I want to feel like an adventurer, not a manager.

    An interesting middle ground can be found in the TES saga: more or less large but not huge inventory, and the possibility of having a house with personal space to store items. This means that some decisions on what to take are needed, but they are not too overwhelming or tedious, and the house is a way to store the rest of the items that enhances immersion and is much more straightforward to manage than stashes.

  9. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by Al-Khwarizmi View Post
    An interesting middle ground can be found in the TES saga: more or less large but not huge inventory, and the possibility of having a house with personal space to store items. This means that some decisions on what to take are needed, but they are not too overwhelming or tedious, and the house is a way to store the rest of the items that enhances immersion and is much more straightforward to manage than stashes.
    Having a house in ADOM would be amazing ( or maybe even something bigger like restoring old fortress, populating it with companions and making it into a living place something akin to terraria). But a more simple thing for start would be the possibility to rent a home in villages.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Al-Khwarizmi View Post
    I personally like the (almost) unlimited inventory. It is true that long inventories can have UI problems, but limited inventories imply tons of micromanagement if one wants to play optimally, which is much more tedious than navigating a large inventory.

    In Ultima Underworld, a magnificent game, the limited inventory was the largest weakness in my view, as you spent a lot of time micromanaging. In DCSS, there are commands to kind of automate this micromanagement (marking places as stashes, navigating to stashes, etc.) which I find totally immersion-breaking. At that point, the game becomes a spreadsheet. This is OK in management games like Dwarf Fortress fortress mode, but in a roguelike I want to feel like an adventurer, not a manager.

    An interesting middle ground can be found in the TES saga: more or less large but not huge inventory, and the possibility of having a house with personal space to store items. This means that some decisions on what to take are needed, but they are not too overwhelming or tedious, and the house is a way to store the rest of the items that enhances immersion and is much more straightforward to manage than stashes.
    I actually enjoy the system used in the Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead -roguelike where each item has both weight and volume. System nicely enables the use of different kinds of clothing/backbags/holsters (more pockets/storage = more volume available) and models quite well differences between small/heavy and large/light objects (i.e. piece or metal = high weight, low volume --> requires strength but relatively easy to fit into backbag vs empy canister = low weight/high volume, light to carry but hard to fit elsewhere except keep it in hands).

    Best,
    Jebboh

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