Happy Fall, everyone!

As many of you may already know, Stone Story RPG has been in development for over six years. What started as a solo project by Gabriel "standardcombo" Santos has since grown into an ambitious award-winning game that explores the unique spaces of incremental gameplay and ASCII animation.

It's been a long journey to this point, and we're still not done! We've got plenty more in store for the game and we can't thank our players enough for helping us every step of the way.

That's why we're calling on you to nominate us for the "Labor of Love" award in the 2020 Steam Awards. We hope that you'll show the game the same support you've given it all these years.

And if you haven't yet picked the game up, now's your chance! For the Autumn Sale, Stone Story RPG will be 20% off, so grab it and embark on your ASCII-animated adventure.

-SSRPG Team

Thank you once again to everyone who participated in StoneJam 3! Our players made so many cool submissions, and we’re constantly impressed at how creative our community can get with Stonescript. We received all sorts of neat creations, including cosmetics, minigames, pets, and UI tools.

We hope to see more of you join us for the next StoneJam. Until then, take a look at the fantastic work done by our community:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8lGAz7QIy4
You can download the scripts here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Uhun00tbt5J3zHDmamF1HH7uvVfGZfvY?usp=sharing

In order to make use of Stonescript in-game, you must have the Mind Stone unlocked.

Another StoneJam has come and gone, and we've received so many wonderful submissions! From cosmetics to combat scripts to UI features, players have continued to explore what is possible in StoneScript.

Join standardcombo as he goes through over a dozen unique scripts created by members of our community. (Unable to join the stream? Don’t worry! It’ll be recorded and uploaded afterwards.)



-SSRPG Team

Join the Stone Story community as we kick off November with the return of Stone Story RPG’s jam event!

Over the past few months, we’ve added a vast array of new features to Stonescript, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in Stone Story. Take part in StoneJam 3 and show off your creations!

You can find a full list of changes to Stonescript at the bottom of this announcement.

Stonescript is a scripting language built into Stone Story RPG, used for modifying the character's AI. Easy to use yet powerful, scripts can be as simple as automating potions if your health gets low or optimizing combat to super-human levels.

Stonescript can also be used to manipulate a number of in-game elements, like the UI or player cosmetics. Put your avatar in a flying mecha, give them a fancy hat, or create a dynamic healthbar!

If you’ve not yet explored the Mind Stone or need a refresher, check out the Stonescript tutorial we’ve written up here: https://stonestoryrpg.com/stonescript

With each new update we continue to expand what's possible with Stonescript. We want to see what YOU can create! Some of the projects that people have made with Stonescript include:

• Minigames
  
• Combat scripts
  
• Animated pets and cosmetics
  
• Custom UI elements

Collaborations between participants are more than welcome.






For StoneJam 3, all participants will receive a secret reward given out at the end of the Jam! We're also introducing an optional theme that you can use as inspiration for your projects.

Our favorite submissions will be invited to be an official addition to the game, allowing players to activate your script with a simple “import” command.

Submissions will be judged based on the following categories: Useful, Beautiful, Stability, or Epic.

StoneJam 3's Theme is: Into the Unknown

StoneJam 3 will take place from now to Monday, November 9th. You’ll have all of that time to create and submit your scripts on our Discord server.

StoneJam 3 will be hosted on our community Discord server. You'll need to have the @stonejam role, which you can get by going to the #commands channel and typing !stonejam.

Two new channels will be created for this event. Use #stonejam3-discuss for all discussion about the jam and reserve #stonejam3-submit for submitting entries.

Submission rules:

1. Inside your scripts, at the beginning of each file include:
- Name/nickname of author or multiple names if multiple authors
- Version number of the script
- Instructions on how to use it

2. Drop your script into #stonejam3-submit, along with screenshots and/or gifs of your entry in action.

3. If a single entry involves multiple interdependent scripts, put them into a zip.

4. Submit different entries separately.

5. You can submit scripts created prior to the jam, as long as the jam week is used for meaningfully improving them.

To see a full list of all possible functions, commands, and variables: https://stonestoryrpg.com/stonescript/manual.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR6QYxdGV9M
Introduction to Stonescript - This writeup gives you an overview of Stonescript's functionality, including variables, commands, and operators: https://stonestoryrpg.com/stonescript

Modding Guide - This walkthrough shows you how to import external scripts into the game. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2003221477
Video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5v-NS9o4yc
Follow-along Reference: https://stonestoryrpg.com/ascii_tutorial.html

All ASCII characters currently available to use in-game: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/597668520888762388/683419636204699676/AvailableGlyphs.txt

Hex for all enchantment colors:
Cyan: #02e5ff Yellow: #ffff62 Green: #32da5a Blue: #0063ff Red: #ff2222

List of valid ?loc:
rocky, deadwood, cave, shroom, haunted, crypt, bronze, icy, temple, nagaraja
There have been several changes to Stonescript over the past few months. All new additions have been added to the Stonescript manual, but they are compiled here for ease of viewing:

• Used to organize values and objects into a single variable
  
• E.g. Headphones that generate notes (by link2_thepast) - https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/597668520888762388/769777336471388210/Headphones.txt

• Values that persist when you leave a location or turn the game off. Exists separately from your primary save, so import scripts can access storage independently.
  
• E.g. Recording goals or achievements such as High Score or Times Played.

• Numbers that represent a foe’s current state and the number of frames in the current state
  
• E.g.
  ?foe.state = 2
  what to do in state 2

• The screen's position in-game, as an index that increses when the player reaches the right-side and it slides over.
  
• E.g.
  >`0,0,Screen index = @screen.i@

• Prevents/Restores weapon loadouts from being saved or recalled with input keys.

• The number of buffs (positive effects) on the player / the foe being targeted.
  
• E.g. Can be used to trigger a loadout swap when an enemy reaches a certain number of buffs.

• A composite of information about all buffs/debuffs on the player/enemy.
  
• E.g.
  ?buffs.count > 0
  >`0,1,Player buffs = @buffs.string@

• Returns true if it's possible to activate item abilities. False otherwise.
  
• E.g.
  ?item.CanActivate()
  equip Bardiche
  activate R

• Returns the remaining cooldown time (in frames) for a given ability.
  
• E.g.
  ?foe = boss & item.GetCooldown("bardiche") <= 0
  equip bardiche
  activate R

• Takes two string parameters and returns true if they are exactly the same. Returns false otherwise. Case sensitive.
  
• E.g.
  var a = "foo"
  ?string.Equals(a, "foo")
  >The strings are equal
  :
  >They are NOT equal
  (The strings are equal in this case. string.Equals() evaluates to true)

• The total "Gear Points" of your inventory, calculated from item star levels and enchantment bonuses.
  
• E.g.
  >My gear points = @totalgp@

Have you seen Stone Story RPG and thought to yourself “How on earth does this game play?” Well, find out for yourself with the new Stone Story Demo!

Dive into a dark and mysterious world of stunning ASCII animation and unique gameplay inspired by incrementals, idles, and clickers. From combat to crafting to looting, your natural curiosity will be your greatest tool as you delve into the game and discover there's more beneath its deceptively simple surface.

Head to the game’s Steam page and download the demo:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/603390/Stone_Story_RPG/

After you’ve played through the demo, get the game for 20% off during Steam’s Halloween Sale and dive right into our 2x Loot Event!

The spirits of the Dark World have become most festive!

From now until November 2nd Stone Story RPG will be running a 2x Loot Event. Complete runs in the Haunted Halls to earn this extra loot (which also includes 2x Lost Item drops).



If you missed out on Challenge Event III and don’t yet possess the titanic Blade of the Fallen God, now’s your chance to find it in Delta Treasures! If you already wield Pallas’s imposing weapon, you may find a curious addition during this event…

(For the duration of the Halloween Event, Pallas will drop two treasures. Delta Treasures dropped from Pallas have double the chance of dropping Lost Items.)

To scripters, artists, and modders of all types: StoneJam returns!

From November 3rd (start of day) to November 9th (end of day), we will be hosting StoneJam 3. The jam will take place on our Discord server, where you can share progress with fellow players, get scripting help, and join in on the community chat.

The goal of the jam is to create scripts in Stone Story RPG’s built-in scripting language, StoneScript. There are no restrictions to what you make, but it must be written in Stonescript.

Additionally, themes will be revealed when StoneJam 3 starts! These themes are meant to help guide or inspire your creations and we encourage all participants to make good use of them.

Stonescript is a robust, yet accessible language that can be used in a wide variety of ways. We’ve had our players mod in pets, create custom cosmetics, optimize combat, or fill out the game’s UI with extra toolsets. There are lots of different ways to approach Stonescript!

• If you are new to Stonescript, we recommend reading through the Stonescript tutorial: https://stonestoryrpg.com/stonescript/
  
• If you would like to animate or create ASCII art with Stonescript, check out the ASCII animation tutorial hosted by the game’s creator, standardcombo:
  
  
  
• If you would like to dive deeper into the game’s mechanics, read up on the Stonescript Manual: https://stonestoryrpg.com/stonescript/manual.html

Take a look at some of the amazing creations that our community has made using Stonescript:

Come see how the ASCII magic gets made and join standardcombo on his Twitch stream for a hands-on tutorial behind the principles of ASCII animation. Pick up tips and tricks that went into creating Stone Story RPG’s unique artstyle. (Unable to join the stream? Don’t worry! It’ll be recorded and uploaded afterwards.)



You can also follow alongside the process with this handy guide: https://stonestoryrpg.com/ascii_tutorial.html

As a reminder, we’ve got a couple events to look forward to: the Halloween Loot Event on October 24th, and StoneJam 3 on November 3!

-SSRPG Team

From his earthen tomb emerges the Fallen God, the once-feared-now-flayed titan, Pallas. His impenetrable skin long since peeled away by the giant spider Bolesh, replaced by patient vindictiveness.

Your arrival and evident thirst for loot presents a unique opportunity. A gift is forged! Will you take the Blade and embrace its power?



From October 10th until October 18th, Stone Story RPG will be running a 20% discount as well as our third Challenge Event - The Titan’s Trial. All players who participate in this event will receive The Blade of the Fallen God, a powerful Lost Item that further deepens your arsenal’s synergy.

1. Begin the trial by visiting Pallas to wield the sword.
   
   
2. Activate the Blade's power to defeat foes. Earn a Smite buff for each foe defeated this way.
   
   
3. Change to weapons that apply debuffs. While you have Smite buffs, each time you apply a debuff extra damage is dealt and progress is made on the reward.

Explore possible combinations with other items and bring utter devastation to your enemies. At the end of the event, depending on your progress, you’ll receive an accordingly upgraded Bashing Shield as a reward. (Edit: To clarify some confusion, if you are unable to participate in the event, don't worry! The Lost Items promoted through Challenge Event III will simply be added to existing loot tables after it finishes, so you can grab them in-game once the event is done.)



In addition to the new Lost Item and Challenge Event, this update also brings:

• Updated loot tables for all locations in order to provide rewards more aligned with time invested.
  
• Heavy balance changes to Caves of Fear, Mushroom Forest, Temple and Rocky Plateau.
  
• Changes to the stats for Swords and Crossbows as well as some abilities.
  
• A massive boost to Fire Runes.
  
• New player-created Stonescript mods.
  
• Over a dozen new Stonescript commands.

For the full list of additions and changes, please refer to the official Steam forum post: https://steamcommunity.com/app/603390/discussions/0/2974023280305497523/

But that’s not all! After the end of Challenge Event III we’ll quickly be jumping into this year’s Halloween Event. Much like last year’s, you can expect some seasonally spooky changes to come to the Dark World, with plenty of treats to go along with those tricks.

Following that, in early November we’ll be hosting our third StoneJam! Create awesome ASCII art or flex your programming muscles and start thinking about Stonescript projects.

Still figuring out how the language works? We’ve written up a Stonescript tutorial to help you get started! Check it out here: https://stonestoryrpg.com/stonescript/intro_tutorial.html



Several cycles have passed since you last heard news from the floating city. Now, another missive has found its way down from Acropolis. What awaits from the metropolis above the clouds?



We continue to be impressed and astounded by the fantastic artwork our community has put out. Not only have we received some wonderful fanart of Stone Story RPG, we’ve also got several people in the community working within the ASCII and ANSI mediums!

It truly is inspiring to see text art getting the love it deserves, and we’re happy to share these amazing pieces with all of you. These were some of our favorites from the Discord community, but there are plenty more works that these ASCII art wizards have cooked up. Stop by the server to check them out!

-SSRPG Team

by Skarrdix



by Flanbi



by link2_thepast



by Agerak



by Rossil Fuel



by Matthew Barber



by Mind Stone Thief



by Tai

Has it been weeks? Months? What is time? Well, quite a bit of it has passed since our last update!

Like all of you, the ongoing pandemic has affected our daily lives and livelihood. Just like time blended together, so did our work, and it became harder to separate our regular responsibilities from Stone Story RPG.

As a result, development cadence and routine were heavily disrupted. We still managed to get some work done on the game, but it took a bit of time to reevaluate our situation and change gears to get the project moving at a steady pace again.

First, we’ll start off with some tangible changes to the game. If you’re interested in a deeper devlog, keep reading after!

• All the locations in Stone Story RPG have been reworked and rebalanced. Basic enemy and boss stats were adjusted to provide a spread of duration with loot quality proportional to the amount of time each location takes to clear.
  
  
• The choice of where to place enchantments on your weapons is now more fair.
  
  
• Treasure drop rates have been changed to better accommodate the difficulty balances and the inclusion of Offline Farming.
  
  
• A new Challenge Event approaches! The fearsome blade of the Fallen God, Pallas, the Skinless will make an appearance later this month. Master its terrible power and reign supreme over your foes with your martial prowess. Challenge Event III begins on October 10th.

Now that business is out of the way, we’d like to talk with all of you about how we’ve been working on the game over these last several weeks.

Much of our efforts over the past couple months have involved revisiting every location to tweak and adjust their difficulties. Through the lens of data-driven design, location balance’s priority was to hit the right feel for optimization of the core gameplay loop and, ultimately, resource gathering.

(If you’d like to get an idea of how we balanced values, you can take a look at this enemy data template we used here.)

As we worked on balancing Stone Story, we tackled the effect that the treasure limit has on the core gameplay loop. As far as over a year ago before Early Access, players would consistently report that treasure limits were too low. They wanted to leave the game farming for longer periods of time and collect loot proportional to that time without having to intervene every few hours or hack the memory to allow more treasures.

When your game is built around optimization and grinding, it's a continuous effort to figure out what the solutions are that go beyond simply raising a given limit. Granted, hoarding is an inherent part of progression/loot-based game but we were interested in giving that hoarding more dimensionality.



Offline Farming was a large part of the solution. When combined with this current balance rework on duration and loot tables, the solution for treasure limit takes its form. You can farm a larger location and collect higher quality 400 treasures, or farm a fast location for just a few hours and collect lower quality 400 treasures. The total quality gathered is proportional to the time invested.

Instrumental to this process has been one of our community members, DarkLucifer69. He’s used his deep knowledge of the game as a longtime tester and collaborator to help achieve the right feel for weapon values, enemy stats, and the resulting clear times.

The clear times are sure to be different per player, and so it's up to each person to figure out which location works best for them. Now there is more choice and that's always the goal.


Aside from balance changes, we took some time to reevaluate the development pipeline with the current circumstances and have come away with a solution that we feel works best.

Up to now, we were engineering-focused, placing priority on further fleshing out Stonescript in order to better support incoming needs for the Quest System. Gene, who we hired to develop Stonescript and its systems, has done a great job of implementing a multitude of systems and mechanics.

However, by placing that as our priority we ended up bottlenecking development on the narrative side of the Quest System. Henry, our resident Narrative Designer, had already laid down the foundations for the story arcs and general content flow, but the way the production pipeline was set up, we were waiting on systems to get fully situated before we tried to actually put the quests into the game.



The resulting state of limbo dragged things around until we realized that by putting the narrative content first, we could triage our systemic needs and work them in piece-by-piece as the story content came in quest-by-quest. We’d been gating development with Stonescript milestones when really it should have been more holistic, similar to our approach with the Challenge Events.

We’ve still got a long road ahead of us, but we’re confident in both our team and you, our players. Your feedback and support have been utterly crucial to the health and success of the project. Great games aren’t built in a vacuum, and we’re thankful that we get to share our work with all of you.

If you’ve read this far: Thank you! As always, we invite anyone interested to join our community on Discord and be a part of the development with us. We hope to see you on October 10th for the next Challenge Event.

After that? Well, you’ll find out soon enough.

-SSRPG Team

July 29th marked the sixth year of Stone Story RPG being in development! It really is incredible how far this game has come, from its beginnings as the brainchild of standardcombo to an award-winning game in its first year of Early Access.




As a small team working on a passion project in our (limited) spare time, our goal has been to stay true to a specific vision. That often meant delaying features, spending more time on others, and figuring out how to navigate the quagmire that is indie development and self-publishing.

Despite it all, we’ve never conceded on what we believe Stone Story is and should be. An auto-RPG built on idle mechanics with an ASCII artstyle is something that we recognize is incredibly niche.

However! Our amazing players have proven to us that people want that niche to be filled. Early Access has gone on longer than we anticipated, but the support of our players since we launched into EA nearly a year ago has helped us refine Stone Story in extremely valuable ways.

With our community’s help, we’ve expanded Stonescript, designed and implemented Lost Items (which got its name from our players!), fleshed out new mechanics, and polished game balance to ensure that Stone Story RPG is the best it can be.

One such requested feature from our Discord community was Offline Farming, which we’ve now launched onto the live branch with today’s update.


Key to incremental/idle design is the ability to stockpile resources. Up until now, players have had to leave the game running in the background in order to farm. No longer! Offline farming allows you to loop through locations and farm loot even while the game is closed.

This addition should help both new players and veterans alike, whether you’re trying to overcome a difficult location or finding the best way to optimize your runs.




So where is Stone Story’s development at right now?

We’ve decided to take a small break from events. Events were a nice way to test out various mechanics, but now we want to focus primarily on getting the Quest System up and running as soon as possible. They will most certainly make a return, however! The systems they helped establish are now simply part of the game, meaning we can approach further design options with them in mind.

The upside of being in Early Access is that we have the freedom to pivot development should priorities change (which they have!). We took stock of where the game was at and determined a number of essential tasks, such as bug squashing and quality-of-life improvements.

With those out of the way, our full attention is now on expanding story-based content for Stone Story RPG.




Much of our time lately has been spent on further developing the Quest System. The work thus far has been to establish the framework, as the Quest System was built entirely within Stonescript.

Designing around Stone Story RPG’s in-game scripting language ensures a high degree of modularity, which will be incredibly important for when we eventually work in user-generated content (UGC).

Players will have access to three quests at any given time, which can be broken down into two categories: Basic and Epic. Basic quests typically involve some kind of tracked task, like “Kill X Fire Foes” or “Craft X Basic Swords”. After a quest is completed, a timer kicks in that will tick down until the next quest takes its place.



However, once in a while you may have an Epic Quest pop in! Epic Quests are vignettes that take you on standalone adventures where you’ll meet new characters and uncover new mysteries in the Dark World. This is where the modular design philosophy really shines.

For example, in one of the Epic Quests, “Ascension”, players will cross paths with an escaped Pusher trying to make their way up to Acropolis. Several modular systems were developed using Stonescript, including dialogue boxes, animation and location layouts, event triggers, and quest rewards to name a few.

The modularity means that once UGC is live, players will be able to create custom quests with an easy-to-use established framework. Everything you’ll see in Epic Quests you’ll be able to create yourselves!



---

We can’t thank you guys enough for supporting us. We’re extremely lucky to have dedicated players who have been and continue to be there with us every step of the way!

As always, we welcome anyone and everyone to stop by the Discord server and be part of the active effort to help the game's development-- http://discord.gg/StoneStoryRPG

For the the full release notes on the current patch (v2.18.3), please visit: https://stonestoryrpg.com/releasenotes/

-SSRPG Team