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[AtomicTorch Studio]

CryoFall is a Sci-Fi multiplayer survival game set on a forgotten planet in a distant future. CryoFall features top down perspective with hand drawn 2D graphics.

Storyline

CryoFall offers you to take on a role of survivor of a spaceship crash, where you and dozens of other players find themselves on a forgotten planet. Players will have to discover the story of this planet, its dark secrets dwelling behind the closed doors of abandoned laboratories. To do so, they will need to travel through the uncharted lands with various biomes, all carefully hand-crafted by our designer. Together with dozens of other survivors the players can create their own cities, establish active economy, industry, or pillage what other survivors managed to put together.

Features

• Various stages of technological progress;
• Storyline elements discovered through exploration;
• Hand-crafted maps and locations;
• Complex crafting, industrial and farming systems;
• Extensive modding capabilities, including realtime code editing;
• In-house developed Renkei Engine™, allowing hundreds of players on the same server;
• The game is implemented as a mod for the engine and is fully open source;
• Wide range of player interactions and roles with meaningful specialization options;

CryoFall Meta facts

• Genre: Open world, Survival, Simulation
• Mode: Multiplayer, Cross platform multiplayer
• Planned server population: Up to 300 players.
• Setting: Sci-Fi
• Perspective: Top-down, "3/4" 2D view
• Platforms: Windows during alpha & beta, full support for Mac and Linux at release
• Game Engine: RenKei Engine (developed in-house)
• Programming Language: C#
• Modding: Fully supported, the game is entirely opensource, including all source code and asset files
• Availability: Steam and direct download from the company store
• Development started in 2015

Plans on release

CryoFall will initially be published on Windows systems, with later plans to be released on Linux, Mac and maybe even Consoles.

You can find more info on our site and don't forget to sign up for our mailing list to get important updates, such as when the game is released!

And you can find our Press Kit here.

About the devlog

We are going to share our developers' blogs with you as soon as some features are done. We already have a few of blogs posted on our site, so we will try to post a couple of entrances to sum up all the progress done before. And afterwards, when we catch up with the site, we'll be posting news simultaneously. Of course, if you guys request something we'll try to share that with you in our blog entries as well!

So, read on and subscribe to our news!

[AtomicTorch Studio]

Hey there friends! As I have mentioned before, we will post links to our previously published blog entries here to catch up with our site. So, down below you can find links to all the main Dev. Blog entries published so far:

CryoFall Dev.Blog #1 - What is “CryoFall”?
CryoFall Dev.Blog #2 - Weapons
CryoFall Dev.Blog #3 - Armor & Damage model
CryoFall Dev.Blog #4 - Inventory
CryoFall Dev.Blog #5 - Crafting
CryoFall Dev.Blog #6 - Building
CryoFall Dev.Blog #7 - Multiplayer
CryoFall Dev.Blog #8 - The World
CryoFall Dev.Blog #9 - Creatures
CryoFall Dev.Blog #10 - Industry

In our first ten dev blog entries we have reviewed all main mechanics of the game as well as presented some nice animations and first take on items and crafting in the game. Take a look at these entries to find out more!

[AtomicTorch Studio]

Our second part of the previously published dev. blogs tells about various specific parts of the game and shows off more interesting content that can be seen in the game!

CryoFall Dev.Blog #11 - Medical System
CryoFall Dev.Blog #12 - Progress report
CryoFall Dev.Blog #13 - World Editor
CryoFall Dev.Blog #14 - Closed Test Report
CryoFall Dev.Blog #15 - Oil Industry
CryoFall Dev.Blog #16 - Buildings!
CryoFall Dev.Blog #17 - Character Skills
CryoFall Dev.Blog #18 - Farming
CryoFall Dev.Blog #19 - Cooking
CryoFall Dev.Blog #20 - Production chains

With this second entry we have almost completely caught up with our previously published blogs and soon there will be live updates on what we’re doing and how! Follow the news on CryoFall developement and don’t forget to sign up for the updates!

[AtomicTorch Studio]

CryoFall Dev.Blog #21 - Environmental assets

Hey there!

Just a short one today. A small update on CryoFall visual content development and specifically environmental assets, decorations or just "props" as we call them.

If you were a part of our previous closed test you might have noticed quite a lot of different assets that made up one of the abandoned bases. Now, we continue working on those.

However, in this case the most interesting part is the fact that they aren't really just decorations - they do in fact have a very specific purpose in the game. And that is their radioactivity!

Besides cool rugged looks that our artist managed to depict quite well, they will also be emitting a substantial amount of radiation wherever they're placed. So, old laboratories or abandoned bunkers (with lots of loot) could be quite dangerous - beware!

Originally posted in our blog: https://atomictorch.com/Post/Id1183/CryoFall-DevBlog-21-Environmental-assets

[AtomicTorch Studio]

CryoFall Dev.Blog #22 - Status effects

Today we'd like to tell you more about character status effects!

It looks something like this in the game. Now, obviously you won't ever see madness like the above, at most I expect people to have 2-5 active status effects at any one time, but for the testing purposes I added most of the status effects that are available in the game just to show you how it looks

So, let's get into a bit more details about the stuff currently in the game. We can start with the negative status effects (or "debuffs"):

• Bleeding - This is probably one of the most common status effects in this type of games, so the explanation is unnecessary
  
• Broken leg - This one is also pretty self explanatory. You can use a splint to fix the broken bone and this will change the status effect into Splinted leg, which will heal after some time. You can't run with either of the two effects.
  
• Dazed - If you've been hit hard you will get this status effect for a few seconds. During that time you can't move or do anything else.
  
• Hunger - If your food meter goes all the way down you will get this status effect. It simply means that you are losing health slowly.
  
• Thirst - Similar to hunger, but the effects are more severe (as in real life).
  
• Nausea - If you eat something bad there's a chance to get this status effect. When that happens you can't eat or drink anything else for some time.
  
• Pain - This is quite an interesting one. You will get this effect as a consequence of some other effects and when you get hit. It doesn't do that much on it's own, but it indicates that "something is not right". Still, you can use some painkillers to completely remove it.
  
• Psi - Now it's getting interesting! There are some areas and creatures in the game that will have psi powers! This is as much as I can say right now!
  
• Radiation - This is the amount of accumulated radiation in your body. Essentially radiation poisoning or "dose". The higher the level the faster you will lose health.
  
• Toxins - Similar to radiation, but the source of the influence are toxins. Quickly use some anti-toxin meds!

There are obviously some positive effects, including:

• Energy rush - After drinking an energy drink or taking stimulants your fatigue recovery will be much higher and you can run for a very long distance without getting tired.
  
• Healing - This simply means that you are recovering your health. Usually as a result of using a healing item (such as medkit).

And finally there are some "neutral" effects that don't do anything by themselves, but affect other things:

• Drunk - This status has a bunch of different effects ranging from reduced pain to protection from psi.
  
• Medicine overuse - If you keep using meds non stop - eventually your body will tell you "Enough!". In game terms it is simply a measure to stop players from abusing the meds and giving them excessive advantage.
  
• Protection - From bleeding (by using blood coagulants), pain (by using painkillers), psi, radiation, toxins, etc. Essentially a protection from some influences.

And that's more or less it. Next time we will cover the actual items that help with those status effects (medicine). Don't forget to comment and share your opinion with us!

Originally posted in our blog: https://atomictorch.com/Post/Id1185/CryoFall-DevBlog-22-Status-effects

[Ayrik]

Wow, I've got a lot of reading ahead of me! Looks like a lot of fun. I'll try to read more so I can comment some more

[AtomicTorch Studio]

Wow, I've got a lot of reading ahead of me! Looks like a lot of fun. I'll try to read more so I can comment some more

And we'll keep those coming! So, stay tuned )

[AtomicTorch Studio]

CryoFall Dev.Blog #23 - Medical items

Today we'd like to continue with the topic of previous post and tell you more about the related features and mechanics.

To be specific - this time we'd like cover medical items in CryoFall. We've mentioned some of those items in some of our previous blog entries, but this time we have much more to show and talk about.

So, without further ado, here's a picture of some medical items currently used in the game:

As you can see there are numbers of different items from the basic herbs to a cutting edge anti-rad treatments and stimpacks. What are those for?

• Herbs are used as a basic remedy for the everyday simple needs.
  
• Concoction is a more advanced treatment used to restore health.
  
• Hemostatic and Bandage are your first priority needs when bleeding.
  
• First aid kit restores more health and removes some of the negative effects mentioned in our previous blog entry, like nausea, bleeding, etc.
  
• Splint is used to fix the broken bones. Of course, as we have told you before - running is not an option when your leg is broken.
  
• Painkillers are used just like in real life to remove the effects of pain - another negative you can get, when, say, your character's leg is broken.
  
• Stimpacks are used when you want to restore your health very fast. But be wary: overdosage of stimpacks will lead to addiction and other negative effects!

Now we're getting to the interesting part! As you know, CryoFall will have places with technogenic effects like Radiation or Toxic pollution. Of course you will need to treat those somehow. But this is much more difficult, taking into account how dangerous those effects can be.

So, there are two main types of medication for these ailments:

• Pre-exposure treatments - these are taken before the contact with polluted areas. They will drastically decrease the amount of exposure you will get while in the polluted area. There are Toxin pre-exposure treatment and Radiation pre-exposure treatment. What are they needed for? Well, those are needed to make you actually survive the contact with the pollution and make it out alive to get the next kind of medication!
  
• Emergency treatments - these are taken after your exposure to either radioactive or toxically polluted areas. Effects of being exposed to either kind of this pollution are rather long-lasting, and negating those will help your character to get better faster. And of course, he or she won't die and won't be shining in the dark after taking those meds.

As you can see, the medical aid system is finally getting into its finalized shape. It might be somewhat complicated, but as the game is quite realistic we wanted to make the ailments and their cure as close to reality as possible! Plus it just adds more depths to the game when you need to consider different consequences and possible course of action.

Originally posted in our blog: http://atomictorch.com/Post/Id1186/CryoFall-DevBlog-23-Medical-items

[AtomicTorch Studio]

CryoFall Dev.Blog #24 - Ambient Occlusion

Greetings, friends!

This will be a short update on a small, but widely-used feature! Today we've finally added a separate layer for Ambient Occlusion effect to the game, which should make most of the buildings and other static objects on the ground seem more realistic and having more depth.

Here's a screenshot of "before" and "after" the effect. As you can see - it makes quite a difference. Without the shadow it looks like the crates just float in midair.

Anyway, this is only the first features related to visual presentation that we are currently working on for the upcoming public release. Soon to come are shader effects, dynamic lighting and more!

As always, let us know what you think in the comments below or on the forums.

[AtomicTorch Studio]

CryoFall Dev.Blog #25 - Lighting system

Greetings friends!

Today we'd like to share with you our final big feature we've completed for CryoFall before the public release. And that is being the lighting system!

Do you remember our previously shared screenshots? Even though those looked rather nice (if I do say so myself), they were all taken during daytime - that's because they were taken before implementation of the lighting system. In fact, the image was rendered without any post effects or other visual changes. Thankfully, all of that is finally addressed!

With the lighting system addition, we can now positively state that there's now a working day\night cycle in the game as well. With that you can try sneaking up to people at night, and doing all sorts of interesting stuff! Or get eaten by wolves who quietly snuck up to you at night

What's more, the new system also fully supports dynamic and multi colored lighting. Now all the flares from guns shooting or electricity flecks are looking really cool, especially in the night!

And as the system allows for (and requires) night lights to maneuver around dangerous fauna, we've added torches, oil lamps and flashlights.

For those with eyes keen for detail, we want to notice that now, shadows are still something we need to work on, but those will be added to the game later on as well!

And with that we can conclude that yet another step was taken towards the first public version of the game, so stay tuned for our news updates and don't forget to share your opinion with us on the forums!

[AtomicTorch Studio]

CryoFall Dev.Blog #26 - Development Roadmap

Greetings, friends!

Today we would like to present you the CryoFall Development Roadmap! As we've always done with our blog, we want to make all of our ideas, planned features and information about current progress public.

Using this roadmap, you can vote on things you'd most like to see in the game sooner. With your input we will have better idea of what's important. Obviously it will go hand in hand with discussions on our forums. So you can create topics about any of the planned features to discuss them in greater details or offer your opinions. Stay tuned for the updates!

[AtomicTorch Studio]

CryoFall Dev.Blog #27 - Character Faces

Hey there, friends! Today we'd like to share our latest feature - face customization system. We know that everyone wants their character to be unique, or resembling themselves or just to be random and fun. Well, with this system done we can all have that, or at least try

Naturally, there are both male and female options available right now, and you'll be able to change your hair and other features as well. Currently though, the system doesn't allow changing the hair and skin color, but we will implement the color sliders on the next iteration of the system. But for now we're quite pleased with the current solution.

We've also taken into account various hats your hero might be wearing during the game - when that happens the facial system will "hide" the hair under the hat. And of course there's a randomizing function as well if you don't really want to get into that.

There are currently around 400 Male and Female faces that can be set with this system, thanks to our talented artist, who worked on all of those to make them look good and fun. Some of the options look just the right amount of silly

Anyways, that's it for this week's update, stay tuned for more news and don't forget to join our forums!

[AtomicTorch Studio]

CryoFall Dev.Blog #28 - More props

Hey there! Today we'd like to share with you another update on CryoFall development. We're progressing at a nice pace towards the first public release and besides the general mechanics we're also working on a number of visual candies to make the world more diverse in its presentation.

As you know, there are different climate zones in the game (biomes) and each will have different visual presentation and gameplay elements. So our first three props are craters, fallen space debris and even some kind of an aircraft or a shuttle after a crash (could that be your ship?). These props were designed with a futuristic, sci-fi nature of the game in mind, and we think they communicate that feel quite well.

Now, there are also a few more props for a more finished look of the landscape in temperate regions of the map. We've had a lot of trees done before, but after a couple of playtests it became clear that more details were needed to properly convey the "wilderness" feeling. And while the work on actual landscape is nowhere near finished (and will be continued after release) we have now added a few variations of tree stumps and fallen tree trunks among other things. Well, technically these are not props, because you can harvest them with your axe, but they do make the forest look much better.

Well, that's the gist of it for this week's update, we'll keep updating our blog with new entries, so stay tuned for more news!

[AtomicTorch Studio]

CryoFall Dev.Blog #29 - Land Claims

Friends, this week we've finally completed our work on a new and very important mechanic of land ownership in CryoFall.

This is hugely important for the future development of the game as it functions as a foundation for all planned additional features, but let's not get ahead of ourselves and start from the beginning!

As many of you know land claims or "base ownership" mechanics in other games help players control a certain territory on a map or a particular building to create a stable dwelling there. Usually, land claims also allow construction of advanced buildings and give you an opportunity to protect your loot behind solid walls. Basically, land claims are used for base ownership.

This is the most basic effect that land claims offer in CryoFall. There's much more to it, however.

In the very beginning you will have a rather small land claim which can function as a core of your base, but with its continuous upgrades and base expansion it will allow you to control larger and larger territory around it. It ensures that no other players can build anything in your claimed zone or deconstruct any of your existing buildings. As long as your land claim is there you can be sure that your base is protected from other players.

Of course, if they breach your defenses and walls and actually get to the land claim they can destroy it and with it remove the protected status from the entire base. It is absolutely essential to ensure that your landclaim is well protected.

Now, this all sounds good and all, but what if you are not online and some other players are snooping around your base with not the most friendly intentions in mind? We wanted to avoid situations of complete territory loss just because someone needed to finally get some sleep. That's why there's a "damaged" state for the land claim structure. If someone damaged your land claim significantly enough it won't be completely destroyed at once, instead there will be a time window when you can repair it and restore its full protection (or move you stuff away from such unfriendly neighbors). This protection timeout depends on the upgrade level of the land claim and increases with each level.

Of course, you can be the sole owner of everything that's built on the claimed territory, but you will also be able to manage permissions and allow your friends to interact with the objects there. There's a list of owners that you can manage for each land claim.

We believe that land claims in CryoFall have an incredible promise - groups of players can create cities and small towns, with walls to protect the land and a lot of good stuff hidden inside from the outside world, so that those, who prefer to take, rather than build, could have some fun as well (and by fun we mean raiding). Cities and isolated dwellings will further trade between the towns, shuttles will need protection and mercenaries to defend the cargo. And all of this will make the world of CryoFall even more immersive!

Anyways, that's it for today, soon you will able to try land claims on your own! Subscribe and stay tuned for the updates in our blog!

Don't forget, you can also follow our development roadmap here.

[Husenica]

Looks awesome and reminds me of old Fallout 1 & 2 

[agnasg]

The concept is really nice, I love it! But I have some issues with the way the land expansion will work

In the very beginning you will have a rather small land claim which can function as a core of your base

What if some very hostil neighbors start a continued campaign agaist my land? Are there some type of sanctuary in the core of my land? If my land is under heavy pressure, I can't continue my land expansion, how are you planning to balance this?

[AtomicTorch Studio]

The concept is really nice, I love it! But I have some issues with the way the land expansion will work

In the very beginning you will have a rather small land claim which can function as a core of your base

What if some very hostil neighbors start a continued campaign agaist my land? Are there some type of sanctuary in the core of my land? If my land is under heavy pressure, I can't continue my land expansion, how are you planning to balance this?

Well, we believe we've already stated our view on the matter: should someone start building around you aggressively you can either talk to them or be aggressive as well. We believe that there should be a healthy and competitive world rather than a simple attraction.

[AtomicTorch Studio]

Looks awesome and reminds me of old Fallout 1 & 2 

Hey, thanks for checking it out! We'll have more news on game's developement soon.

[AtomicTorch Studio]

CryoFall Dev.Blog #30 - Pre-launch preparations

Greetings!

CryoFall open alpha is approaching and we're making final preparations! We've decided to make the game completely free during the initial soft-launch period to gather player's feedback and continue improving the game before the release!

So, today we'd like to talk about some very interesting technical solutions that we've just finished implementing for the game backend and specifically - cloud game servers.

As you probably know, many online and multiplayer games quite often experience various issues on launch such as not being able to secure enough server resources (should there be too many players), latency bottlenecks, long waiting lists, etc. This mostly stems from the lack of ability to scale server infrastructure quickly to meet demand and management difficulties.

Naturally, we are a much smaller team and it is unlikely that we will see ten million players on launch, still, being a multiplayer game it is very important for us to be able to scale our servers easily. Consequently, doing it manually is simply out of the question.

Our approach for dealing with this problem is to use Docker containers and .NET Core running on cloud servers provided by Vultr!

How does it work? First and most important point is that we created a completely automated management solution that allows us to quickly deploy and manage any number of cloud server instances. Secondly, this will allow us to avoid any latency-related issues as well, as we can use cloud servers specifically from the regions where our players are actually located to provide the best connection speed and quality.

Here's the result of our first test deployment of cloud infrastructure:

And it took just a few minutes to deploy!

What's more, in the future this system will allow us to add player-owned servers for a very reasonable price - for those of you who might be interested to run your own world. We will manage the servers for you and provide technical support - including automatic updates and scheduled maintenance and backups to ensure the best experience. Naturally, you will be able to host any servers yourself too, even on your home computer.

For the soft-launch we will run only a couple of servers, most likely in North America. But from there we will be gradually increasing their number with the growth of the community as needed.

We were hoping to soft-launch CryoFall in January, but it looks like we will have to push it to February. There's still a lot of things to prepare for launch.

Anyway, stay tuned for more news and don't forget to join our forums and follow us on the usual social media: Facebook, Twitter, Reddit for all the important updates regarding launch!

Don't forget, you can also follow our development roadmap here.

Originally posted in our blog: http://atomictorch.com/Post/Id2193/CryoFall-DevBlog-30-Pre-launch-preparations

[AtomicTorch Studio]

CryoFall Dev.Blog #31 - Almost there


Greetings friends!

It's been awhile since we last posted an update on the progress of CryoFall development. That's because we were making the game ready for the open alpha. And today we're going to make several pleasant announcements. So, let's begin!

First of all, the game is practically ready for the open alpha, we have completed everything that we wanted to finish before public release. There are of course things that would need further improvements, but we will work on them during the Alpha stage, when you'll provide us with feedback on those features. Bottom line is - the game is now ready!

Secondly, we are now working on our backend systemand master server. And it, unfortunately, takes a bit more time than we would have liked. Still, good news is that all of our previous games will benefit from this update as well, including VoidExpanse. Plus, we are also updating VoidExpanse with all new bugfixes and improvements made over the course of several months based on your feedback and reports. We're also providing our modders with extended Modding API.

Lastly, and most importantly, we want to reiterate that during the open alpha stage, CryoFall will be fully accessible and available for everyone for Free on our website! We will soon publish a separate blog entry, explaining how you can download the CryoFall Alpha client and connect to one of our servers.

Thank you for following us and stay tuned for the updates!