Survivors of Ragnarok

Killing Bugs (Alpha 26)

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 13:50:55 -0500

Zap! Zap! Zap! Here at French Rice Games one of our many jobs is to bring you bug fixes for unfinished games that need a lot of work in a relatively late manner. We could give you some boring details about life and only being being developed by two individuals who both are full-time students and have part time jobs… but we won’t bore you with all those boring bits. We’ll simply just copy and paste some wonderful patch notes you guys might find entertaining and continue on with development.

Added New tree that is part of the plant system.
Fixed Plants growth better managed.
Fixed Aggressive mob pathfinding.
Fixed Aggressive mob graphical glitches.

Alongside some minor bug fixes we are gearing up our combat system for use with equipment. Here’s what we have in mind.

SoR Stat System

Base Stats:

Vitality (health, ammount of food and sleep needed)
Strength (damage, and a few jobs.)
Endurance(base armor, length of time a dwarf can be starving or tired)
Willpower(Magical skill and defence)
Agility (Critical Hits, Acuracy and speed, some jobs)
Luck

These start out randomly between 10 and 15.
50% of the Exp given for every other task(skill usage) will be given to the Dwarfs main level.
The Dwarfs main level take 3x to 5x as much Exp to level up.
Base Stats increase with the dwarfs level, NOT by usage.
Base Stat Level Calculation: level = ((maxLevel + geneBonus + personalityBonus) /maxLevel)*dwarfLevel)
Static Values:
maxLevel = 1000
geneBonus = (0<->10)*20
personalityBonus = (100 if it is the dwarfs personality)

Personalities:

Energetic - Vitality
Hotheaded- Strength
Stubborn- Endurance
Reserved- Willpower
Lively- Agility
Perky- Luck

Each personality will increase a base stat improvement rate by about 10%.

Genetics:

Genes effect base stats by 0 to 10%.
A random value will be determined that will create a number between 0 and 5.
That value is the dwarfs gene for that particular stat.
The gene multiplied by 20 equals the bonus.

Skills:

Gatherer
Hunter
Woodsman
Miner
Carpenter
Smith
StoneCutter
Cook
BrewMaster
Tanner
(Comming soon, skills for each weapon class and type)

Skills level with usage following the function: (4*(x^3))/5Genes that control this function may be added later.

Equiptment Slots:

Head
Neck
Chest
Ring (left hand)
Ring (right hand)
Right Hand
Left Hand

As always don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Desura, IndieDB, Blogger, and Steam! You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!

Ragnarok Ecology 101 - Lamprospora Wild bioluminescence fungi....

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 10:14:00 -0500

Ragnarok Ecology 101 - Lamprospora

Wild bioluminescence fungi. Prefers to grow in dark moist areas of low elevation. At night Lamprospora blooms and emits a strong blue light.

Five Cubed

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 00:07:00 -0500

If you are reading this we can safely assume you have survived Ragnarok, alongside a new gregorian calendar year. Quite a lot to go through in just a few short days. Meanwhile in Midgard vegetation has been reported to have been propagating throughout the world. Which is quite lovely considering the real life Winter’s air.

Added Farming/Plant Life.
Added 9 Plants: Bamboo, Grapes, Bitterhumle(hops), Huskycap, Strawberry, Sugarcane, Tomato, Wheat, Grass.
Added 8 Consumables: Bamboo Planks, Grapes, Hops, Husky Caps, Strawberries, Sugar Cane, Tomatoes, Wheat Grain.
Changed Save games now properly reflect plant growth.
Changed Buildings now drop some of the materials that they were built with.
Fixed Resolution Menu and Game Menu now properly close when a selection is made.
Fixed Multi-tile buildings no longer keep tiles tagged as buildings when removed.

As always don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Desura, IndieDB, Blogger, and Steam! You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!

Ragnarok Report 11.15.12

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 11:08:24 -0500

Hope everyone has been enjoying Alpha 24, new pretty parallax and all. For those who own a Gamersgate copy your builds should now be up to date. We haven’t formally done an update post on Indiedb in quite some time so… so I figured we’d do something productive and not go watch the midnight release of Twilight tonight.

We decided on polishing up and working on the new dwarf UI. When you click the dwarf there would be this the compact version.

The items to the left would be his top 3 highest professions clicking the icon on the bottom left would pop up the full view for the dwarf UI.

Clicking on an equipable slot would open up a menu that would show all the available items in the players stockpile and/or weapon/armor/tool rack that can be equipped to said slot

The majority of the UI for activity zones has been completed and is pretty self explanatory.

As always don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Desura, IndieDB, Blogger, and Steam! You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!

Ice Day For An Update [Alpha 24]

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 04:28:00 -0500

Winter is coming men! Bring out those bear fur coats, brush off your moose leather boots, and let your body hair grow to shield yourself against the sharp winter air. Winter post-Ragnarok is not a place for the faint of heart.

Fortunately for everyone, along with their winter apparel we have a wonderful new build just in time as the Winter’s air makes its way.

Added Parallax layers.
Added Global water physics.
Added Grass now grows overtime on dirt.
Changed Dirt tiles now absorb water to prevent flooding.
Changed New cloud sprites and different types of clouds.
Changed Water now spawns throughout the map.
Added The parallax layers are now on the intro menu.

As always don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Desura, IndieDB, Blogger, and Steam! You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!

Ragnarok Report 11.5.12

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 07:35:29 -0500

So decided on polishing up and working on the new dwarf UI. When you click the dwarf there would be this the compact version.

The items to the left would be his top 3 highest professions clicking the icon on the bottom left would pop up the full view for the dwarf UI.

Clicking on an equipable slot would open up a menu that would show all the available items in the players stockpile and/or weapon/armor/tool rack that can be equipped to said slot

Ragnarok Report 10.25.12

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 12:40:31 -0400

Parallax In Action

Unfortunately the screenshot does not do the effect any justice…

This took MUCH longer than expected. However finally completed a...

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 16:43:35 -0400

This took MUCH longer than expected. However finally completed a parallax layer.

Ragnarok Report 10.14.12

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 21:44:09 -0400

Growing Grass

Ragnarok Report 10.11.12

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:29:00 -0400

Work In Progress Parallax Background.

Today YOU Learn.

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 21:18:00 -0400

Today you learned that 2 years ago this month Survivors of Ragnarok was conceived. Yes we are proud to say the very inception of SoR has hit a landmark 2 year development cycle. The project has evolved quite a lot and through the month of October we would will be sharing how much the game has changed since it’s initial development.

Survivors of Ragnarok was originally developed with the mobile market in mind. Under the pseudonym Project Dwarf we sought on creating a more accessible Dwarf Fortress.

As you can see from our atrocious mockup (and horrendous pixel-art) Project Dwarf was to stay fairly faithful to Dwarf Fortress. Within the next couple days of that mockup we would be ironing out design details and working on polishing out the art.

It was during a brainstorm meeting a week or so in pre-production that we had a radical idea to change the perspective of the game. We drew up a quick mockup of the concept and instantly loved the idea.

Initial engine work followed shortly after and if anyone was curious what the very first compile of SoR looked like… welll….

Mind blowingly incredible we know. Implementing what was in-game art at the time quickly followed and you can identify what was a screen of dirt rendered in the SoR client.

Fun development milestones at this time included rendering grass and sky.

Eventually after a few months of work we had implemented a very basic dwarf into the engine. In case you are wondering yes that was repurposed spelunky art that we used to quickly develop the pathfinding.

Finally after months of work we released a very crude tech demo we like to call Alpha 1, showing off basic dwarf pathfinding and building in-game.

We were very new to the industry (arguably still new even now) and we were quite proud of our work. Developing SoR has been a learning experience from the bottom up and we can’t thank our community enough for all the support they’ve given us (and understandably bad reviews). We really do read everyone’s comment and we are doing our best to fix up many of the issues you guys have with the game. Believe us, we want this game to be every bit as awesome as our community does and amateur development aside we have been working out non-dwarven butts off on fixes many of the issues and implementing new features into the game.

As always don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Desura, IndieDB, Blogger, and Steam! You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!

(Alpha) 23 Egnima

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 00:21:00 -0400

Morbidly obscure reference aside… Alpha 23!

An update so soon? That’s what happens when one sits on an update for quite some time. Literally we propped up a foot rest and relaxed and worked on Alpha 23 while Alpha 22 was comfortably underneath us.

And updates the game shall have for the next couple weeks. Deadlines for this years Indepedant Game Festival are due October 17th and we will be submitting Survivors of Ragnarok. So what can you guys expect by that time? Well….

Weapons and Armor.
Set up a good progression through trees(weapons) and create unique armor based on each mob.
Activity Zone.
Farming.
Plants with growth cycles.
Similar to mobs, in fact, the mob class might be usable here.
Fishing.
Dwarfs goto water sources and get fish.
Herding
Herd cows, chickens, etc..
Dwarf Zones
Home
Bedrooms
Party Rooms
… Profit?

Whether or not those goals will be achieved in time is a different story entirely. However what is finite is the amount of sleep we will have in the coming month; or rather the lack of sleep. We also have a much more instantly gratifying list below of features that have already been implemented. Oh yeah, Mac users the game works now.

Fixed Bug for Mac launch issues.
Fixed Bug that was causing crashes due to the new dwarf pathfinding.
Added New in game interface to modify resolution.
Removed The old preloader was removed.
Added preliminary code for clouds.
Implemented multi-block buildings.

Don’t forget the GamersGate IndieFort bundle is still going on! 27 awesome indie games all for one low low price. You only have a couple more days before the bundle comes to a close Octber 1st!

As always don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Desura, IndieDB, Blogger, and Steam! You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!

A Fort Night (Alpha 22)

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 02:03:00 -0400

If you haven’t heard by now there is a huge bundle going on at GamersGate. At least that’s what the word on the street is. If you are a little late to the party fortunately for everyone you still have 9 more days before the bundle is over!

There are literally a ton of great games in this bundle. Okay maybe not literally in terms of the colloquial British usage of ton. However literally two dozen incredible games.

What a coincidence look what game is in the Bundle? And how convenient a new update.

Added Settlers will join a healthy settlement.
Added Goblins will invade in groups at night.
Added Full save support.
Added In-game menu options for saving and loading games.
Changed New hot-keys Z -Inventory, X -Stockpiles, C -Activity Zones, V -Crafting, B -Information Panel.

As always don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Desura, IndieDB, Blogger, and Steam! You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!

http://www.indiefort.com

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 10:28:19 -0400

http://www.indiefort.com

Photo

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 20:27:32 -0400

Indie Fort Bundle

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 16:39:31 -0400

Indie Fort Bundle

Morning Reflection

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 01:04:57 -0400

Morning Reflection

A small dwarf in a big world.

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 10:15:35 -0400

A small dwarf in a big world.

PLANTary Anhilation

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:27:44 -0400

Bad puns aside we wanted to update everyone on all the new things we have been up to lately. We finally have our hands on an actual Mac so Mac users rejoice! We should have a proper working build next release.

We have a proper system to allow multi-tile buildings so all that wonderful art we had will be in-game.
As for this week we have a plethora of new and awesome plant life to populate the world.

Wheat

Strawberry

Sugarcane

Bamboo

Grape

Bitterhumle (Hops)

New Trees

These new flora should add a lot more life into the world and we can’t wait to implement them within the coming release.

As always don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Desura, IndieDB, Blogger, and Steam! You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!

Ragnarok Report 9.2.12

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 01:37:00 -0400

PLANTary Annihilation

Strawberry

Sugarcane

Bamboo

Grape