WARNING! Informative News Post Ahead

Here at French Rice Games we pride ourselves in developing THE BEST city-building-survival-management chicken simulator in the world. However it has come to our attention that we rarely post anything informative about Survivors of Ragnarok. 99.9% of the time our posts have been about bad puns, lame jokes, or our monthly post simply stating how awesome our chickens are.

So we decided as our first true corporate decision for world domination we would take more time to do some truly informative news post. We have 100% trust in our CEO and self-appointed ruler of the world that this is the best course of action to take to world domination.

So please, enjoy this slightly more informative then usual post about features to expect from Survivors of Ragnarok.

Multiple Selection

One problematic issue that arises is how the game handles multiple objects on a single tile. Each tile is broken up into 3 categories; buildings, consumables, and combat.

When multiple tasks are assigned Dwarfs complete them based on priority. The highest priority action for a dwarf is combat, followed by consumables, and finally buildings.




When a tile has multiple objects in a single category the bottom interface changes and each object is grouped in the appropriate category.



And yes this means that good old Dwarf Fortress stockpiling will be implemented.

Jobs and Stats

Implementing a proper UI to effectively display jobs and stats presents some interesting challenges. You need to balance aesthetics with a functional design while constantly fighting the temptation to simply make a spreadsheet.

Health and Energy

The red bar represents how much health a dwarf has (pretty self-explanatory what health is). The yellow bar represents energy; the amount of tasks a dwarf can complete.

Needs

All dwarfs have three main Needs, thirst, hunger, and sleep. Each with a degenerating state; Satisfied, desires, and needs.

Trades and Professions

Trades:
All professions are categorized into trades; labor, construction, academics, arts, and combat.

Professions:
When a trade is selected it will display all the available jobs within the selected trade.
The top icons represents the professions; Woodcutting, mining, farming, and fishing (its suppose to be a piece of cut salmon OKAY! some of the icons need to be reworked).

The bottom icons represents what skill level each profession is and the bar to the right represents the progress in leveling the profession skill level.


Novice, Proficient, Skilled, Expert, Master, Legendary



A dwarf may have more then one job active at a time. However taking more then one job inhibits the leveling progression of both jobs.

A dwarf that has one job has 100% leveling progression, if he takes two jobs the progress for both is 50%, 3 jobs the progress for both is 33%, etc.

There is still a lot of features in terms of UI let alone game-play elements that need implementing. As well as many features we want to share but aren't yet ready to (like that icon that looks like an M for instance). We can't wait to share more features and plans we have for Survivors of Ragnarok as we get further into development.

I mean, I'm sure I can give a whole in-depth article about our randomly generated caves, tombs, and dungeons and the types of creatures you can expect to see populating these dark dangerous areas. However it has little to no substance when we don't even have a proper dwarf inventory implemented yet.



Oh yeah for those who haven't heard the news yet; Dual wielding shields confirmed.



We hope you guys check out Alpha 10 when it comes out, and we hope you guys continue to support us when pre-orders are available. Kay, turns out pre-orders are available already, we'll have a proper news post about what to expect later this week. So here is a pig.


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!

Back In Black!

Some pretty sexy and exciting news (besides fresh coat of paint we applied over this news post)! We have an authorized working build of Survivors of Ragnarok on Desura! Yup it's every bit of awesome as it sounds! Although it might just be us that are absolutely ecstatic.

"But what does this mean for me," you ask? Well it's just one step closer to becoming a proper legitimate Indie company capable of asking vast amounts of money from you in order to further our goals of world domination.




if only the Desura version looked that cool....

Yup for the low low starting price of $1,999.99 you can pre-order yourself a copy of Survivors of Ragnarok that comes with the DLC for the other 35% of the single-player campaign!

But don't worry we'll make sure your properly treated to post-release support in form of map packs and more single-player campaigns for just $149.99 a piece! Oh yes how the greed of a single small indie company can manifest into an unquenchable money hungry giant.

If you guys have not gotten a chance to try out Survivors of Ragnarok - Alpha 9.2 what would be a more perfect time then now? I will just conveniently leave a link to our Desura page below.

SURVIVORS OF RAGNARÖK DESURA

We are hard at work with Alpha 10 and we can't wait to have it in your hands next week!

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



In case someone's sarcasm meter is not working and wondering why we are selling the game for $1999.99... we are not.

3x3 = 9

It turns out we're pretty bad at trying to get our game to work with outside API's. For the last couple days we've been sitting on Alpha 9 working on getting our Public Alpha's to be released on Desura. Unfortunately we fail at making the game work with the system. Fortunately the guys at Desura are vastly more intelligent and savvy then we could ever be and have helped us out tremendously.



Well after days of pain-staking work and bug fixes we have a combat system implement. It's fairly basic at the moment and we still haven't set up a dwarf inventory (you guys are stuck with duel wielding dwarf until next update) but it gets the job done in terms of slaughtering countless hordes of cute chickens.

SURVIVORS OF RAGNARÖK - ALPHA 9

 ==================

Alpha 9 updates

==================

-Added combat system.

-Added combat animations for dwarf.

-Added support for .OGG files.

-Changed chickens now spawn in survival mode.

-Changed right-clicking chickens will have them get hunted by a "hunter" dwarf.

*9.01 Update

 -Added red haired dwarf.

 -Added chicken falling animation.

 -Added new icons for lumber and planks. 

Things to implement:

A classier way of highlighting mobs that are targeted. As of this current build, when a mob is targeted to be attacked it uses the same red opaque tile that we use for deleting blocks. What we need to implement is something a little much more aesthetically pleasing. Unfortunately we wish we had the creativity and skills needed to show such a concept. All we have is a chicken with some sort of sword that seems to defy the laws of physics above it.


It's a shame that we can't even apply simple physics on objects like swords in our game.

While we are on the subject of aesthetically pleasing things we need to give our trees the same treatment.



Dwarven Inventory.



Finally we really need to start implementing some small UI features that we've been holding off on for the greater sake and excuse of spending our resources on much more important features. (I believe we are long overdue for a system to cancel tasks issued by the player)

These are just some things for us to think of going into our next update, as well as some things to look forward to.

Because we still haven't run out of these things here's some more Starcraft 2 Contest entries to for you guys to enjoy. This is by Pascal Hoogt with some great mock-ups of a dwarven abode.



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

Preparing For War (Mini Update)

I figured I would take a break from our usual elaborate and whimsical posts to bring you guys a quick little peak of some animations I've been working on all week. Don't worry though, we will have our usual lavish news posts later this week along with a sexy new build for you guys to get your hands on.







While it's lacking in chicken puns and fowl jokes (see what I did there?), it should hopefully be eye candy for many of you. For the minority that does not see why combat animation of cute little dwarf dual wield swords is not aesthetically pleasing I can assure you that you are either blind or enraged that the receiving end could potentially be a chicken.

So here is another entertaining Starcraft 2 entry by Carter Ellsworth for those few that did not enjoy the above animations.



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