While the release was technically finished last Tuesday our wonderful community, Garrett, and myself spent the better part of last week fixing a plethora of bugs. You would think adding trees and having the dwarfs cut it down would be straight forward? Unfortunately in Video Game Land implementing simple features like that tends to break your game.
Giant wooden & green strange towers that the natives call "Trees"
Brown hearty strong material known as "Wood" fall amongst the destruction of "Trees"
Dwarves have the ability to cut down "Trees"
"Tree" animation set added
New dwarf variation added; black dwarf cuts down trees and the white hair mines. *hints at upcoming jobs system*
Dwarf cutting animation added
Nuclear poof effect added
We wanted to give a special thanks to Stankor, Tacobuilder, Bombiscator, & Eternalist for taking time all last week in testing our build to get it to the state it's in now. Although you can freely blame them for all the bugs they didn't find in this build.
Just like any good relationship, we wanted to make it up to you guys for a prolonged two weeks of silence. Our good friend Thelordofpi has two copies of Starcraft 2 to give-away to you guys.
However, because our lack of creativity (and laziness) we couldn't think of a fun way to give it away to you guys.
So we thought, why don't we have you guys make a creative way to win? Tell us a joke, send us concept art, make a Minecraft level, create a video; just give us a reason to give you a copy of Starcraft 2. Submit your entries at: FrenchRiceGiveAway@gmail.com
The winners will be posted in next weeks news post.
While all this great progress towards our ultimate vision of the game we also wanted to inform our community we plan our having much more frequent and easier to install updates. Survivors of Ragnarok will be up on Desura which is not only exciting news for us but also should be great news for you guys.
Desura will allow us to quickly update any new features to the game immediately allowing us to quickly implement new features and allow the community to test them out immediately. This allows us to quickly find bugs and fix them faster which allows for quicker implementations of new features. We rarely begin adding new features unless the current one implemented is relatively bug free. Quicker feedback allows us to implement more features more frequently. Which is generally regarded as a good thing.
Speaking of generally good things. Silver is a fairly rare and valuable ore that we really hasn't been found by any of our dwarves yet... we really need to do something about that. Looks like it's time to rally the search time and have them embark on a new quest. Let's just hope they found those missing chickens...
As always don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, ModDB, IndieDB, and Blogger. You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!
I suppose we should update this thing every once in a while. While we have been busy trying to keep our community well informed about the development of Survivors of Ragnarök we failed in updating all our outlets for news. More specifically we have not updated our Blogger in quite some time.
We wanted to apologize for everyone who has been following our Blogger only to find very little in terms of update and news. This could not be far from the truth however. We are well into releasing Alpha 7 this week and have been working on adding new features within each release. We wanted to let those following our Blogger we will start updating it again frequently in line with the IndieDB and Tumblr news post.
We also wanted to formally announce to everyone following Blogger our new Survivors of Ragnarök site. http://survivorsofragnarok.com/
We haven't officially announced this outside of this Blogger post.
We hope you guys enjoy this long needed update!
Mar 6th, 201
Terrible Twos
I suppose we should just start the news post off with what everyone wants, the Alpha 2 download.
We would also like to note that we have brand new forums up for the community to use. Since the goblins decided to attack our previous forums we recently had changed forum engines so there is not a lot there at the moment. However we would like to point out that registered members of our forums will have early access to our bi-weekly builds the every other Tuesday. The previous group of members did a great job at finding some last minute bugs that we exterminated prior to release.
With that out of the way we'll cut straight to the list of features and bug fixes that have added since Alpha 1.
Alpha 2 Features:
Inventory added
Smooth camera implemented
The quick slot bar now highlights the active block
Changed the way dwarfs use ladders
Minor updates on pathfinding
Yummier dirt and grass tiles
Unfortunately somebody left the cage open prior to the release and the chicken escaped.... Fortunately we sent a Dwarf Scout team to search for that little rascal.
Alongside the Alpha 2 release we wanted spotlight some of amazing work the community has done.
Kieran88 has crafted a fantastic some pieces of artwork. We were very impressed by the works he's submitted. You can check all of them out under our image section.
Unfortunately since we changed forum engines we are unaware which one of our users forged this masterpiece. Even more unfortunate is that we have to point you the other way because the princess is in another castle.
And finally this incredible piece of pixel art done by Joeylucky226. We would love to point you to all the amazing work he has managed to churn out. The problem is after the goblins attacked our forum the gnomes decided to loot what was left after the attack... The good news is we still have chicken zombies.
There is a new episode of Pixel Pushers for your viewing pleasure as well this week.
We got a chance to talk to Kim from Zero Point Software; the team in charge of the fantastic game Interstellar Marines. The folks at Zero Point are a group of very talented individuals and if you haven't already we recommend you check out their game!
You can now also subscribe to Pixel Pushers on iTunes!
That's all the news and updates we could muster down from the Halls of Valhalla. We would like to end this news post with with our new bi-weekly segment we will be adding at the end of each new alpha release.
Dwarven Parenting
Until next time survivors, may Thors mighty hammer protect you.
As always don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Blogger.
Mar 9th, 2011
Alongside the goblin attacks and gnome looting we stated last week someone opened the cage prior to the release of Alpha 2 and all our chickens had escaped. This is uneggceptable and we will not stand for this!
We hand pecked the best dwarfs in the land to to form a search party. Our eggcellent team of elite dwarf scouts are on patrol scouring the ends of the earth to find our feathered friends.
As developers we will not simply sit back and scream fowl play (or possibly bad pluck)! One does not just simply lose 9,001 chickens.
Litterally 9,001....
This hatch-it job is simply insulting and disrespectful to us. Expect nothing less then a poultry update next week for Alpha 3 as consequences for such behavior! We will find the culprit behind this and he will be punished. Then and only then can we expect to put this whole situation to nest.
With that out of the way we wanted to announce that sometime today we will be live streaming working on Survivors of Ragnarök for 24 hours. Yes that is a full days worth of coding-pixel-pushing-shenanigans. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to get news of when the live stream will be up.
We would have loved to tell you earlier but it was an event planned by the community at our forums. Speaking of which, if you want to grab an early release of our public alpha don't forget to sign up for our forums. We release a new bi-weekly build every Tuesday for the community to test out and for us to do some last minute bug fixing.
As always don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Blogger. You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!
Mar 17, 2011
It's about that time again. That time every other week when Garrett and myself are up until the late hours doing last minute fixes, polishing everything up, and getting things together that need to be done. Oh yes its time for our bi-weekly updates, and all the frills and fluff that you've come to expect from a French Rice Games news post.
Alpha 3 was a substantial update from Alpha 2. While our dwarf scouts could not get all 9,001 chickens back for Alpha 3 they did however managed to snag 7 for this release. In fact it would probably be easier for you to chick out the code monkey's log on this one. (Okay we are done with the bad chicken puns)
Code Monkey Log
Chickens!
Zombies?
Menu added
Loading screen added
Survival mode
Ancient randomly generated terrain code active (should be fun updating this bit of code as development progresses)
Increased size of create mode
Garrett himself wanted to address a few things directly to the community as well.
I've been getting questions here and there from a lot of people wanting to know what I use to develop SoR and I'll have you know it's no big secret. So to address peoples questions and also to feel more involved with our news posts, I thought I would share some knowledge and provide a little insight to the fabulous world of a programmer. After all, I'm making this game for the fans, and sharing things like this is what makes development so much fun. Open development is my philosophy and I hope I can make these small articles a common thing in the future.
I use the latest version of Netbeans(it auto-updates for her pleasure) as my IDE. I did path-finding using my own varient on A* search, a varient on Dijkstra's algorithm. I use dreamweaver for the websites(even though I write them by hand, it's basically an expensive syntax-highlighter).
Genel and I both use Photoshop for 2d(I mainly use it when he forgot to resize something).
Other then that I'm really coding everything with the default Java libraries(Swing/SWT for graphics). It has been pretty difficult getting everything set up at first, but now we have a really steady work-flow for animations, effects, etc.
To go into more detail about path-finding, my method was sort of a strange variant of A* search, which is a varient of Dijkstra's algorithm. I think (and keep in mind I only have 'played' dwarf fortress) Toady (I think that's the guy who codes DF) uses the Greedy Best-First-Search, another variant on Dijkstra's algorithm that is faster, but doesn't give you the shortest path. (you ever notice you're dwarfs walking along walls?) I think that was very necessary for his game seeing as it was path-finding in three dimensions.
I hope you all enjoy the update!
-Garrett Colas
With that being said I assume you guys wanted the download link a while back in this news post...
As always we have a new episode of Pixel Pushers that comes along with our bi-weekly updates. We discuss the alpha 3 and a little indie game called Sarah's Run. Be sure to check it out.
Now if only iTunes would update their database....
That's all the news and updates we can squeeze out for you this week. If you haven't already don't forget to sign up on our forums and participate in daily discussion with us. We love hearing your feedback and want to continue to support you guys as much as you are supporting us. Remember you can get early access to the alpha builds just by signing up.
Fortunately for us logic and reasoning was brutally forced down our throats as an angry mob forced us to discontinue work on Modern Battles. Unfortunately for those looking forward to playing Modern Battles, the game itself has been put on hold indefinitely as we are tied to our desk chairs forced to develop Survivors of Ragnarok.
This week's alpha is fairly small in terms of features. The majority of the development went into
developing Modern Combat and building the framework for what would be a fairly substantial update coming Alpha 5. What is functional however is a fairly basic implementation of our task system. This
feature is still very primitive and there is quite a lot of bugs with the feature of this current moment. Our aim is to put some substance and function within the frame we built for Alpha 5. Currently this feature it is only implemented within survival mode.
While we have already received positive feedback about Alpha 4 from our forum members, we like to humble ourselves and believe this update is awful. I would like to formally blame Garrett as it was his idea for Modern Battles: Combat Warfare. So feel free to bombard his IndieDB profile page and
tell him how atrocious of an idea Modern Battles was.
As always don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Blogger. You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!
Apr 6, 2011
Fortunately for us logic and reasoning was brutally forced down our throats as an angry mob forced us to discontinue work on Modern Battles. Unfortunately for those looking forward to playing Modern Battles, the game itself has been put on hold indefinitely as we are tied to our desk chairs forced to develop Survivors of Ragnarok.
This week's alpha is fairly small in terms of features. The majority of the development went into
developing Modern Combat and building the framework for what would be a fairly substantial update coming Alpha 5. What is functional however is a fairly basic implementation of our task system. This
feature is still very primitive and there is quite a lot of bugs with the feature of this current moment. Our aim is to put some substance and function within the frame we built for Alpha 5. Currently this feature it is only implemented within survival mode.
While we have already received positive feedback about Alpha 4 from our forum members, we like to humble ourselves and believe this update is awful. I would like to formally blame Garrett as it was his idea for Modern Battles: Combat Warfare. So feel free to bombard his IndieDB profile page and
tell him how atrocious of an idea Modern Battles was.
As always don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Blogger. You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!
Apr 14, 2011
We at French Rice Games like to think we treat our relationship with the community as an actual, well... relationship. So when we get asked questions about pre-orders we like to think of it as something along the the same premise as getting down on one knee and asking you guys to marry us. Pre-orders not only entails the community to trust us enough that we will have a finished product, but it is also inversely has us committed to releasing a full game.
A lot of what it comes down to is all the fluff and free stuff you guys get prior to moving in with us and having to share living expenses. We not only want to prove to you guys that you are worth our time but also prove to ourselves that we are prepared to deliver once we happen pop the question.
So what are the kind of things we plan on doing to win your love? Well we do try and send you cute little texts in form of our weekly news post. Take you out every other week to new places with our bi-weekly updates. And occasionally even send you presents once in a while.
While we were not able to participate in the Potato Sack fun, we did manage to plan for some fun Portal related things. For those following us on Facebook and Twitter, most of you know we were giving away two free copies of Portal. We would like to formally announce the winners of our Portal give-away.
Congratulations to Thelordofpi and Sindriava!
So what's better then two copies of Portal? Giving away a copy of Portal 2! However like most relationships we aren't just giving you gifts for no reason. We want a little action for giving you guys nice things. Help us reach all together 500 Facebook likes and Twitter followers.
That's adding the amount of Facebook likes and Twitter followers to reach 500 in total. Once we hit 500 watch out for what to re-tweet and what to like and comment. Liking our Facebook status and re-tweeting will increase your chances of winning. So be sure to do both. For those who do not have a Facebook or Twitter account you will automatically be entered just by commenting on this news post.
As for now we hope you enjoy Alpha 5 when it comes out next week.
As always don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Blogger. You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!
April 29, 2011
Yes, we are fully aware that we missed last weeks news post. There was a small independently made game about solving spacial puzzles that came out last week that Garrett and Myself were preoccupied with. If you guys have not checked it out yet I would suggest Google searching this tiny indie game by the name of Portal 2.
Now this would be the time we would apologize for missing last weeks release, but you know what... We aren't going to apologize for a single thing. In fact if you have not yet played Portal 2 you should be apologizing to us.
Portal 2 was phenomenal enough to miss out on last weeks release and leaving you guys out of developer news for a week. Yeah that's right I said it, Portal 2 is a fantastic game made by a tiny independent studio known as Valve and should be played by everyone. Support small studios like Valve and grab yourself a copy of Portal 2.
Speaking of small Indie Studios, if you guys haven't checked out Breaking The Rules I would highly suggest you head on over to their corner IndieDB. BTR Studios has a very talented team underneath the hood of a very promising fighting game. I mean honestly how often do you get to see an indie fighting game? Let alone one on the PC.
With that out of the way we are very excited to bring you Alpha 5! With our task system being updated on a weekly basis Garrett has done a fantastic job really pushing the game forward. The task system now works with multiple dwarfs. It's a bit archaic at the moment with multiple dwarfs but expect a jobs system in later releases.
[We would also like to point out these respective classes belong to forum vets Eternalist and Tacobuilder.]
Task system now include buildings and consumables, all together with new animations.
Dwarf Party Survival
Inventory managment now has "stacks" for your items.
Added 2 extra dwarfs onto the game so players can test that out.
*5.01 BUGFIX
-Dwarfs that mined a block would put the wrong type of block into the inventory.
Less Poultry
[Oh also the Narwhal below is property of Bombasticator the Narwhal Overlord.]
Code Monkey Log:
It's been a busy few weeks for most college students and it was no different for me. Finals week is not a fun time for someone trying to please people on the Internet. That's my excuse for the delay on this update. At least good stuff was coded and even better stuff is planned for the future. Summer should be a good time to work, work, work.
This update added to the inventory management and allows for stacks of items. We also got the dwarfs to mine and build using the stockpiles of tiles in your inventory. A special treat to our fans is the introduction of a few more dwarfs to play around with, I'm hoping this will find any bugs left over in the process.
I wanna give a special thanks to our forum users for helping identify a real nasty bug that made the inventory add the wrong block then what was mined by the dwarfs.
With finals over I can finally concentrate. Some things in the works
-Garret Colas
We hope everyone enjoys Alpha 5. We really do appreciate all the feedback you have been giving us over the past couple months. Our next Alpha we want to add a feature that community wants to see for Alpha 6. So leave us comments or feel free to bombard our forums with what feature you want to see in our next Alpha. The most requested feature will hopefully make it in time for Alpha 6.
As always don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, ModDB, IndieDB, and Blogger. You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!
May 8, 2011
We wanted to take time out of our busy schedule and bring you guys a special Mother's Day greeting. Just because there are no Dwarven women doesn't mean we don't celebrate mothers day. We encourage you all to take time out of your day today and great your mother a Happy Mother's Day!
In fact feel free to make yourselves a Mothers day card with our SoR mother's day comics bellow. It's free and 100x better then anything you'll buy off of Hallmark. This is assuming of course you print it out on nice stationary paper.
We also have a new build up for you guys today as well. Garrett simply worked on optimizing the task system early this week and we figured we would let you guys bug test it. We still have a lot on our to do list; including canceling tasks, crafting system, audio implementation, and being able to save your stages. All of which we hope to get up and running by this month.
As another gift to you guys (well I guess only one of you), We wanted to congratulate Primzian Magdael in our Portal 2 give-away contest. Although this formal announcement fairly late, and anyone following us on Twitter and Facebook have probably already found out, we realize we had not yet formally announced the winner in a news post.
We wish everyone a Happy Mothers day and stay tuned later this week for our Alpha 6 release.
As always don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, ModDB, IndieDB, and Blogger. You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!
May 12, 2011
They sleep, yup. We added a new condition for Dwarf survival and that is the primal nature of resting. Although it still takes more skill to actually kill your little guys then keeping them alive. It is one more exhaustingly fun way to make them go away... for good. Purely under the basis of research of course.
Dwarfs now build in every direction around themselves
Still no chickens (?)
While there is still a lot of work and polish we need to do with beds and resting we are more then ready to start working on new features for Alpha 7. It's about time we start adding some type of plant life into the game anyway.
We will assume you guys are intelligent enough to understand the math below.
What would a French Rice Games news post be without fluff? In this case, serious fluff.
We wanted to take time to address a very serious issue. Since the case of The Cookie Caper, extortion seems to have reach an all time new high. Just take a look at this totally accurate graph pulled from real statistical figures and numbers.
As you can see A marks when the infamous Cookie Caper case began and the red line is a graphic representation of the amount of extortion happening within the Video Game Industry. As you can see there is a very clear and direct correlation.
Extortion was something we grew familiar with last week. Not in terms of extorting the media for coverage, no it was much more complex then that. We were extorted by the media! Worse yet a media site we work VERY VERY closely with.
Sometime around the 6th of May a fellow Mod/IndieDB employee decided to bribe us. With what you might ask? They handed us a tasty doughnut. Oh but not just any tasty doughnut, they handed us... a riceball.
While details are still sketchy about this event and an eye witness during the scene of the crime happen to have taken a photo of the crime in action.
Not only are we ashamed at the dwarf that took the bribe (who has now been identified and detained for questioning). We are also disappointed with the staff of Mod/IndieDB for allowing their staff members to extort our dwarves.
While the dwarf himself has is within our custody there is still the question of who was staff member that extorted our poor dwarf. With the power of technology we were able to zoom at the culprits face to reveal a startling realization...
That is one huge riceball and we can be bribed with riceballs. So hats off to the staff!
You just won our Tasty Seal of Approval.
As always don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, ModDB, IndieDB, and Blogger. You can now subscribe to our Pixel Pushers Podcast on iTunes!
