Hell... It's About Time.

Long story short:
Exams + Productivity = Two weeks of no update.

With that being said we have had a lot of great comments on our last news post. With exams out of the way we have been hard at work progressing through code and pixel. Garrett has done an outstanding job with implementing drinking animations as a dwarf approaches a water source and more importantly making sure the game doesn't crash when a dwarf reaches a water source.


AI and Path-Finding - Indie DB

So what does it mean for our little guys to interdependently  be able to find water, play through their animation, and not have the game crash doing all the above? It opens up the doors for a plethora of actions and tasks our dwarves will be able to accomplish. Everything from finding food, creating structures, and following orders given by the players.

All of this technical stuff is great and everything, but what's the point of progressing the game further without some fluff?

We did not forget about the mission you were tasked with in our last post, and we were definitely ecstatic about all the comments we received. We have been hard at work making request-bot work(and boy did it work), to make just about every entry we acquired a reality.

irpwnu2 :
"To defeat AAA we need flying DJs with lazor turntables"



Mecha :
[Insert Epic Duck Robot Here]
"This. Only the two guys driving it are ducks. Possibly the HyperDucks, I don't have a license but Dan does. Stupid wings for hands.. or .. wings for wings I suppose.."



njordy :
"Mario will come, jump on his head and AAA will die.
So all the mushroom kingdom will be safe again! (There are mushroom people in here, don't say I can't name it mushroom kingdom D: )
Go, go!
Good luck in the progress. And (if you haven't done it already) try to test the pathfinding for bugs, or we can have dwarves running into lava pits.
Oh, do you by any chance plan to make an way to dig "into" the screen. (Like DF, but instead of you viewing it from upside, you view it from the side. =) )"



sporeos :
"summon Ifrit...? Throw a diamond pickaxe at his head!? send him to oblvion? AHHH"



the_chuck_norris :
"I think Chuck Norris should show up and roundhouse kick him into a third dimension, wait.... fourth, no make it sixth dimension. OR A FILTHY baseline comes on and he gets dirty and leaves SCORE"



TheGameSquid :
"It may seem kind of standard, but of course he would need to be taken out by cannons mounted on the towers of the fortress. Explosives always fit with Dwarves, because it helps to portray them as brash, brutal fellows that enjoy using considerable force without thinking too much about it first. And the cannons would fit into their entire metalworking background too. Plus, explosives may well come unto play into the game as a way to clear large parts of cavern systems, quarries, etc.

Either that, or Dwarves flying on giant hawks to assault AAA's ship! The Hawk-Riders will then use cunning tactics such as dropping large rocks on AAA or crashing into the ship to defeat him!

Or you could always use the Wiggles. THEY'LL KNOW WHAT TO DO!"



tim-bo-jay :
"Tiger Sharks...after the Ragnarok Terrence the Tiger was all alone, all his fellow Tigers had been wiped out, and so had his Tiger wife. One night he gave up on life and threw himself into the ocean to be eaten by Sharks, only to find the same thing had happened to the Sharks! Gwen the Shark had been left all to herself and was far too depressed to eat a WHOLE Tiger so after having a bit of a nibble on his leg they settled down for a good old chin-wag. It turned out Tigers and Sharks could be the best of friends if they weren't trying to eat each other and Gwen and Terrence hit it off! A few months later the first litter of half Tiger half Sharks were born, Borris, Horris and Dorris! Alas AAA in all his evil ways decided the story of Terrence and Gwen was far too silly for a video game and had them killed! As for the 3 Tiger Sharks, he planned to use them in some low budget crappy First Person Shooter, but one day they escaped! And now they have dedicated their lives to avenging their parents death! *DUN DUN DAAAAA!*
A story by Timbo - Age 23 :-)

So yeah...Tiger Sharks.."



Tomasi :
"AAA can only be defeated by the combined ingenuity and cunning of all the dwarfs.

Therefore I propose that a crack team of elite dwarfs be assembled:

A Master Engineer to design cannons and a rocket to be shot up at AAA.
A Master Alchemist to make firebombs (shot out of the cannons) and rocketfuel.
A Dwarven Beast Tamer to fill the rocket with nasty warbeasts like ferocious vampire rabbits, berserk kobolds, destructive gremlins, and rabid dogs.
A Dark Shaman Dwarf to summon evil spirits and also open a pit to Hell to send AAA back from whence he came.

Once launched, the rocket will impact with AAA's flying chariot as it is bombarded by the cannons and harassed by the demonic spirits. A door/hatch on the rocket will open, causing all of the nasty beasts to pour out and surround AAA and start destroying everything. Beaten and beleaguered, the ship with AAA in it will fall into the pit, and be swallowed up as it is closed forever.

How's that?"



With request-bot in utter shambles, we hope you guys are happy for breaking the poor thing. With the looming threat of AAA it's time to act now. We need you guys to vote for your favorite entries. Eternal glory is what awaits the winner. The Halls of Valhalla will forever sing praise and wonder of the mortal who defeated AAA.



Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Moddb, IndieDB, and Blogger.

Making Things Go Boom!

Look at that, seems like we are in the Top 100.  We really want to thank you guys for all your support. There are plans to do something special for the community for helping us get to the Top 100. Keep an eye sometime within the next couple days for a news post on that. We couldn't have done it without you, literally. All the positive feedback we have been receiving is what keeps us working through the late hours of the night to make a game for you guys.



First off, we have some exciting technical news to share. Our programmer, Garrett Colas, has managed to make some huge progress in coding for our game.  After more then three weeks of work we finally have path-finding working. Path-finding is a huge step for us and we are very happy to have it fully functional.



Now for the fun stuff. Now that we are in the Top 100, we now need to work 5 times as hard to earn every single vote we get. Getting to the Top 100 was one thing, trying to win best upcoming indie game is a whole different league. We are not going to be playing with blocks to try and make you guys a tower again. No things are much more serious now. It's time to find a way to blow things up.

This isn't playtime anymore, it's business.



Name: AAA
Gender: Unknown (Probably Male)
Origin: Unknown (Probably Hell)
Age: Unknown (Probably 28)

There are two things certain however. AAA's appearance came shortly after the the Top 100 have been announced and that AAA wishes to 404 our game off the face of the internet!

This is a call to arms men (and women)! We need your help to stop AAA from the complete destruction of our game!

[center]THE MISSION:[/center]
We need the creative collective of the community to to help us find a way to destroy him before he eradicates us. Giant robot, Godzilla, army of jet-pack monkeys, your imagination is your only limit. We will be running all submissions through the Request-bot and you guys are in charge of voting for the one that will obliterate him to the 3rd dimension.




Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Moddb, IndieDB, and Blogger.

Meet Request-Bot

Our IndieDB Indie of the Year 2010 promotion was a huge success and we would like to personally thank you guys for all the great feedback we have been receiving. Our biggest and most request feature seems to be multiplayer implementation. Garrett and I have actually have been considering this for quite some time, and you guys wanting to have a feature like that in-game just sealed the deal for us.

As we have said we would like to not just ask for your votes but want to earn them as well. So we've gathered up all the requests and put them through our very expensive and very high-tech Request-Bot and this is what it has managed to pump out.

TheGameSquid
"Also, my wish for this game would be a Myconid race. Every Dwarf/Dungeon/Mining based games needs enemies that look like 'Shrooms!"

Our Request-Bot had a fun time "processing" this request. After a couple hours of churning out dinosaurs, multicolored blobs, and at one point started writing out an essay of the Superstring Theory; we finally got what we wanted out of the Request-Bot.



TheShadowMG:
"yeah a tower for new dacula's castle" 

We assume you meant Dracula. Lucky for you TheShadowMG we caught the mistake before we ran it through the our Request-Bot and fixed your spelling error. If you however meant Dacula, Georgia then we apologize for it and will run another pass as "Dacula's Castle".


ANtY93: 
"I want this game to be like wiggles" 

We admit we had no idea what that was. Thankfully we did not pay over $65,000 on a machine that did not know what it was. 



Scyth:
"Some drills would be nice. And maybe a few giant robots, y'know"

Just who the hell do you think I am? The Request-Bot however knows who the hell you are Scyth. Row Row Fight the Power!



I believe that was all the requests we had for our IndieDB 2010 promotion. We meant it when we said, we would work for your votes! There is still a little more time left before Phase 1 is over so don't forget to vote before they close the polls.

Luckily for you guys though we do have our own ideas of what we want in our game as well. Much like Dwarf Fortress's classical guitar score we managed to create what is to be one of many songs for our games soundtrack.


Intro Music - Indie DB

We really would like to thank the community once again for all the comments we have been receiving about the game. There is still something we need to figure out however. What would you guys like to see from us if we made it to the top 50?

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Moddb, IndieDB, and Blogger.

Here at French Rice Games we like to believe that our game Survivors of Ragnarök is pretty special. Not because it's obvious we are pouring our heart and soul into crafting what we think will be a fun and enjoyable game, but also because we are biased to believing a game we are making is going to be special. With that said the IndieDB Indie of the Year 2010 awards are swiftly approaching and instead of asking you to vote for us like every other developer, we want to work for your vote!

We want the community to ask us what they want in the game. This could be anything from Jetpacks to Dinosaurs to Robot-Zombies, the only limit is your imagination. We want to not only create the game of our dreams, but potentially create the game of yours. If we hit the Top 50 we want to thank you guys for your support and do something special. What are we going to do you may ask? Once again we want you, the community, to decide!

Tumblr here is your mission: 

We want to know what in your wildest dreams would you like to see most in game to earn your vote, and what would you like to see us do if we reach the Top 50? With this in mind we would like to leave you with some fun art to look at as you dig through the deepest caverns of your mind. Make us proud!

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Survivors of Ragnarok

We are proud to say that French Rice Game's Survivor of Ragnarok IndieDB profile is now active. Here we will be updating the community with anything new regarding any games we are developing.



Survivors of Ragnarok is a city-building survival game inspired by the legendary Dwarf Fortress. Our main goal is to make a more accessible game that still has the spirit and depth of Dwarf Fortress. We aim at creating an engaging, addicting, and fun gameplay experience.

We have created some mockup's of what we envision our game our game when it is fully completed. There is still a lot of work we must do before we get a build that is fun to play.







We would love to hear your thoughts and critiques. Whether it be gameplay suggestions, art suggestions, coding, or anything. We believe that creating a game for the community is just as important as creating a game for yourself. What would a game be if nobody was playing?

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Moddb, IndieDB, and Blogger.