Monday, December 1, 2014

Initial ADOM achievement implementation finished

Before going to bed I just wanted to let you know that I finished the initial ADOM achievement implementation a couple of minutes ago. There is some more fine-tuning to be done. Nonetheless we are going to start with 77 achievements to be unlocked on Steam.

And here's a sample screenshot of the second achievement I unlocked:

And as I write this I suddenly remember another batch of (not very complex) achievements I wanted to add and had forgotten about (gaining level 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50). I still need titles for that (something like "Wanderer", "Veteran", "Champion", "Hero", "Legend" and "Demiurge" maybe).

But now I need to sleep and will add these ones tomorrow ;-)


  1. Do you plan to add 'extremly hard to get' achievements like :
    -dive to 1000 floor without using teleportation
    -cast wish spell 10 times in 11 consecutive turns
    -finish the game with mage/crafter class without using spells
    -melee char without melee'ing
    -99 all stats in 60days


    1. Most of these suggestions won't be added for the reasons explained in I guess it basically comes down to "while these sound funny, they won't be fun and ruin achievement play as well as leading towards useless behavior in the game."

  2. Advice: never create an achievement that encourages doing something you don't want players to be doing! You may have worked a lot on ADOM in all of these years but know that achievements are the one and only thing that will determine what players will and won’t do in the game so exercise more care than you ever have when implementing them into ADOM.
    Achievement addiction is stronger than drugs and plays to the weakest components of the human mind.
    Don’t create any achievements that are based on chance events. You will drive players insane attempting to stage the event. On the other hand I would also discourage you from adding nonsense achievements such as dying for the first time because they add nothing to the game either.
    I would advise against any achievements even because they make anything than isn’t an achievement uninteresting and the urge to complete achievements once implemented becomes the only thing that measures any meaningful progress to the addict.
    I don’t see how they could possibly add any value to the game. Ask yourself that.
    “What will adding achievements add to ADOM other than conformity?”
    Only because it’s an option doesn’t mean you should implement.

    1. I totally agree for the reasons outlined in

      The sample achievement is one of the very few achievements violating the rules as it IMHO is a great example of the spirit of roguelike games. And as it will happen in any case it doesn't harm gameplay in any other aspect but serves nicely to introduce you to one of the basics of the genre ;-) (dying can be fun, too).

  3. There was a long blog post about achievements only a few days ago. According to that and the fact that the code is already written, there will be achievements, there won't be any impossible or very scummy achievements, and there won't be more achievements like "dying the first time". In addition, even though many players play because of achievements, not all of us do :)