PC Steam
Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Role-playing (RPG), Strategy, Turn-based strategy (TBS), Tactical, Adventure, IndieNodrog's Fortress
V1.54 Deeper Steam Integrations
- Your progress stored in the settings file is now more tightly integrated with Steam's Stats and will be updated with Steam's data about your play.
- This new data stored to Steam is used to unlock hardcore and populate Story Achievements in the Main Menu. This should allow your progress in the game to persist between updates in case the settings file is overwritten or becomes corrupted.
UI
- Hardcore mode button is now visible by default but may remain inactive until your Stats are loaded from Steam. It will become interact-able only if you have completed the Story.
- Hardcore Stats will now appear in the Story Achievements. Completing Nodrog's Fortress in Hardcore will add an additional golden highlight around the Archmage you were victorious with.
Hardcore Mode Released
- Added unlockable Hardcore story mode. You must have completed the Story this option to appear. Good luck!
- Fog effects were significantly reduced across all levels. You're welcome, Kantsche.
UI:
- Story Mode button will now display "Continue" if there is a game in progress.
- I removed the popup displaying the name of the current music track (it just wasn't it, ya know?).
- The wrong Story avatar sprite was being displayed in the dialogue boxes. This should be fixed.
Fixes:
- AI only Matches were broken! They should now progress as intended until completion.
- Various Story dialogue typos and other errors have been touched up.
- Completing the Story with a given Archmage was not being shown under the Archmage Victories section of the Story Achievements on the Main Menu. This should be fixed.
V1.52 Free Cam Update + UI & QoL Fixes
- Character Indicator's Icons are now rendering on the correct layer and won't clip terrain.
- The Options Menu has been updated with new camera options and has been cleaned up visually.
New Options include Camera Movement and Rotational Speed Sliders as well as Toggles to invert Camera Rotations.
- Team Controller UI shows the correct text for the new Camera Controls.
- The Game Guide screen has been cleaned up and updated with new control info.
[Cameras]
- The Free Look Camera has been added and is now the Default Camera.
- The last Camera the User selected is saved between Matches.
[Controls]
- The Free Look Camera introduced the need for new controls!
WASD (and Arrow) keys control Movement Forward, Backward, and Strafing
Space & Shift keys control Movement Up and Down
R & F keys control Vertical Rotation
Q & E keys control Horizontal Rotation
Moving the Mouse while Holding RMB will look around the Map.
Clicking RMB will focus the camera on the Map Tile under the Mouse.
- Rotations can be inverted in the Options Menu.
[Gameplay]
- Reflect was not working with projectiles. This has been fixed.
[Graphics]
- Holy Armor's color was made more transparent so stacking the Effect won't completely hide the Character it is on (hopefully).
- Reflect's FX got a visual pass to make it stand out from similar effects like Holy Armor and the issues with it rendering incorrectly were fixed.
V1.51 QoL and Balance
- Skeleton's Exploder ability now affects ALL nearby Characters regardless of affiliation.
[Story Mode/Tutorial]
- The Exit Match Button text was being set incorrectly on Match completion. This silly bug should be fixed.
- The Master no longer repeats certain lines during her initial Tutorial instructions.
[Multiplayer]
- PVP Rank calculation now reliably includes all Victories and should make rising in the ranks less punishing/confusing. (Before they were only added if your Win count was greater than your Losses).
[Survival]
- Survival Matches where you kill Shin now count as a Win. This is again, to make Online Ranking less brutal, but also because Survival in general is brutal enough...
[Server]
- Minor UI updates.
V1.5 Minor QoL and Bug Fix Update
- Fixed a bug at the end a Multiplayer Match would cause a Null Ref. Error that Disconnected the User and made the Public Match Screen's buttons unusable.
[QoL]
- Added a Button to quickly return to the Main Menu in Quick Match Mode's Setup UI.
- The hexagon Tile Highlights that show a Character's Team now fade faster.
[Balancing Changes]
- Multiple Teams in Survival Mode will face enhanced Difficulty with more Enemies in each Wave.
Nodrog's Fortress Story Mode Release
- This release enables the long awaited Story Mode! Gather Companions and Allies as you uncover the mysteries of the Sacred Crystal and the cruel fate the Prince is about to unleash across the Realm.
- Try to get your Best Time! Beat your High Score! Get on the Steam Leaderboards!
- Can you beat it with all the Archmages?
- If you fail, you may Continue, though your Final Score will be affected as the Timer will continue as well!
- Unlock the Credits by completing the Story for a Special Musical Finale from Jaguardini...
[Multiplayer Notes]
- Players can no longer Forfeit in Multiplayer. Handling Forfeits and passing on the Host's responsibilities has been quite a difficult problem. I apologize for any confusion or failed matches!
[Known Issues]
- Though largely resolved, Online Matches can still end with a Sync Error despite many strides to combat the Demon(s) that could be causing them. Each player involved in a Sync error is given a free point for the trouble as I continue to gather data and find the weak links in the deterministic chain.
Story Mode Release Date
Nodrog's Fortress - The Tournament of Power will soon be unleashed...
The time has come to test The World, its People, and their Wisdom.
I invite you to test your mettle and explore a place between places as you, The Apprentice, follows destiny to the Ultimate Truth of Reality. Unlock the mysteries of the Sacred Crystal and the mysterious force that binds it!
The Story Mode is a difficult series of battles more intense than the last. You will accumulate Allies and Companions to aid you as you fight to the top. The grueling battles take place over 9 Levels, including 2 Secret Levels that can only be unlocked by the most skilled Archmages. The Story also includes unique dialogue for each Archmage Class available to the Player, offering unique perspectives into the world of Nodrog's Fortress.
Jump into Nodrog's now to get ready!
Battle the AI or set up Pass and Play in Quickmatch
- or -
Bring a friend and challenge each other and others from around the world in Multiplayer. The servers are open for battle and its a great place to learn against worthy opponents.
[Recent Update Notes]
A couple days ago the game was updated to include all the Balance Changes and Bug Fixes that have been done over the course of developing the Story Mode to get everything locked in mechanically. The state of the game has never been better and I will continue updating and improving the experience and options available based on all your feedback. Keep it coming! We can make this game even greater than it already is together!
FX Update
After fixing an issue that was 100Xing my build times, I decided to celebrate, and move a bunch of fixes out the door that were planned to be released with the Story Mode; the relief and joy of restoring rapid deployments and my ability to address issues quickly couldn't be passed up and we should be back on a faster update schedule. Please enjoy! I hope you like the changes. Let me know if you encounter any bugs or have any feature requests![Improvements / Bug Fixes]
- Sync Error fix caused by a Vector3 used in FX spawning.
- Stand Ground and Seek and Destroy do not autocomplete unless a valid target is found.
- Targeting FX now displays an execution progress bar.
- Major performance gains from edits to text rendering and from standardizing shader usage/optimizing render layers.
- Major overhaul of the Soundscape to eliminate reused audio and create more consistency across Ability types.
- Dialogue box overhaul, including new chatter audio.
- Creatures immune to Physical Damage (Bunnies) are no longer damaged from force reactions.
- Mace has been buffed to 4 Damage and 3 Force Damage.
- The Assassin's AI no longer stacks poison blades anytime it has the Stamina, making them a bit more dangerous as they will better utilize their other Special Abilities.
- The Summoner adds Haste to their Spell List.
- Story Progress UI added to Main Menu.
- More sounds were added to Stupid Mode. Wait, there's a Stupid Mode?
[Custom Host]
- A Server build of the game is included in the streaming assets folder with instructions on how to host your own server.
[Final Story Pre-Release Update]
- The Story is done and is in the final testing phases. We will be announcing the release date soon!
[Known Issues]
- Online Matches can still end with a Sync Error despite many strides to combat the Demon(s) that could be causing them, though it has been some time since I have seen them. Each player involved in a Sync error is given a free point for the trouble as I continue to gather data and find the weak links in the deterministic chain.
V1.5 QoL Pre-Story Release
Please see the list of changes and known issues below.
[Improvements / Bug Fixes]
- Rendering Performance has been improved thanks to a new Map Tile shader and other Render Pipeline optimizations. The warnings in known issues have been greatly mitigated, but the suggestions will still be helpful if you see any slowdowns.
- More Options to Toggle various Map FX have been added to the Settings. These should moderately improve performance if disabled.
- Targeting Animations now display the Name of the Ability and the Team Info of the Character executing the Ability.
- Map Objects now fade if the Camera is near (an old feature, resurrected).
- Achievements display a Popup on the center right side of the screen when triggered (this should be handled by Steam, but our implementation to connect with Steam is known to have issues with this so it was time to just make our own).
- All unlocked Achievements are now displayed on the Main Menu.
- Online, only players that have a non-zero score are shown on the Leaderboards and Friends Online no longer incorrectly includes the player's name in its list.
- Various UI tweaks, including better text shadows globally.
[Known Issues]
- It sounds strange but improvements to the Online Stats and Leaderboards have caused an issue where they may take some time to load, or not load at all. Return to the Main Menu and Log Back in if you experience this bug. That usually fixes the issue.
- Online Matches can still end with a Sync Error despite many strides to combat the Sync Demon(s) that could be causing them. Each player involved in a Sync error is given a free point for the trouble as I continue to gather data and find the weak links in the deterministic chain. In this networking pass we squashed 2 Demon Spawn, furthering the crusade of eradication.
- Though rendering performance should be greatly improved with this patch, be sure to try disabling the Shadows and Real-time Lighting options if you have any performance issues, as many lower end PCs are still more render-bound than limited by their CPU. Aside from that, you may still experience slowdowns on weaker hardware as there is a lot going on in each simulation step, especially in Survival Matches or Matches with a high number of spawned Characters (32+).
Nodrog's Fortress V1.5 Story OMEN
[QoL Improvements]
- Reeds and other Map Objects that Hide Characters now fade to reveal the Character if they should not be hidden to the Player (Party Member or Ally).
- Tile Labels now show [Invalid Target] if the Map Tile cannot be targeted by the chosen Ability and will also warn you if a Character Target far away as well.
- Minor Network UI Cleanup ~ Removed some unused objects, scaled things around a bit, etc.
[Fixes]
- The calculation of Ability ranges and other functions that required an area of tiles were over-writing the same area list, causing artifacts in how Abilities executed and how their available ranges displayed during assignment. This major issue has been fixed!
- Owing in no small part to the fix above, when selecting an Ability or Highlighting an Ability Button, the correct range is now highlighted by the Map Visualizer, taking move actions into account. This limited the tiles you could target for certain abilities.
- Text on Tile Highlights is properly deactivated after moving the mouse away from its parent Map Tile.
- If the Player selected an Ability that targeted a Map Tile, the Action Menu instantly selected a target Map Tile if one existed under the clicked Ability Button, preventing the Player from properly targeting the chosen Ability.
- Ability Ranges and other functions that required an area of tiles were over-writing the same list, causing artifacts in how Abilities executed and how their available ranges displayed during assignment. This major issue has been fixed!
- Tool Tips were preventing Buttons from being clicked! Ray casting on the UI Canvas they live on as well as their individual interactions with Ray casting were all deactivated to prevent this silly issue from popping up again.
- Chat in Multiplayer covered up the Companion Selection Menu when the Match Setup UI was in certain configurations. Chat has been moved out of its own Canvas and into the Network UI Canvas to better integrate it around the other Multiplayer UI.
- Various changes were put in place to further prevent Sync errors during Online Matches (see below for more in Known Issues).
[Known Issues]
- Online Matches can still end with a Sync Error despite many strides to combat the Demon(s) that could be causing them. Each player involved in a Sync error is given a free point for the trouble as I continue to gather data and find the weak links in the deterministic chain.
- Active Time Frame Durations are are dynamically set to match ~30fps for the simulation regardless of the actual framerate, but you may still experience slowdowns on weaker hardware as there is a lot going on in each simulation step, especially in Survival Matches or Matches with a high number of spawned Characters. It appears we are largely render bound moving forward with this release, so be sure to try disabling the Shadows and Real-time Lighting options if you have any performance issues.