Savage's 12th Anniversary

[Daemon]

It is that time again, when delusional devs foolishly expect everything to go smoothly and nothing to ever need fixing again: the annual patch. It's always a great opportunity. Everything that should have been done months ago is now "intentionally" released right in time for yet another anniversary.

It's incredible, but here we are. Savage is 12 years old and outlived its younger brother though its successor, the Savage XR Newerth community mod, which conveniently and fittingly got its 1.2 version to crown the improvements made since 1.1.

The number of changes in the current content patch isn't exactly large, but they took quite some time to complete. As voted by 74% of the users that answered this poll, new content is something most remaining players welcome, so there it is:

• 113 new rock props have been added. Map makers that are willing to revisit their maps can make use of the newly found diversity and replace some of the overused monoliths and pillars with new rocks and rock formations.
  
• The Autominer Tjens designed is now included as claimable map prop. The Redstone Autominer provides 12K stone until self destruct, and the Gold Autominer 100K gold. Although the actual resource generating rates can be changed, the GameScript system currently forbids a proper synchronization between the rate the mines get depleted and the resource-per-second given. Therefore, even though subject to further tweaking based on community feedback, the current values are a rare time/resouces/life match that works, which had to be set manually after many failed attempts.
  
• The standard Gold and Redstone mine models have been given new and more accurate collision boxes that should improve powermining quite a bit since the garrisons and sublairs can now be place more precisely in relation to the mines.
  
• Crashday's cool new Simple HUD is now included and selectable in Options/Game. Thanks for the time and the effort you've put into this, Crash!
  
• MacOSX users should be able to hear ingame music once again. Thanks to Rostner for reporting the bug.
  
• The 2 new worker-type NPCs, the Guardian and the Transport, are now transplanted into the standard mod. As well as with the Autominers that automate resource collection, they aim at helping the comms deal with low player numbers and give them a more active support role. More on their particular set of skills in a later post but just in case anybody wonders, they've been discussed with, tested and okayed by prominent comms, admins and members of the community. Again, as with everything new, they can and will be tweaked as per pertinent community input.

WARNING: Until servers update too, there WILL be version compatibility problems with the updated clients and weird stuff WILL happen (like comms being unable to research stuff). Hotfixes may also be issued leading to multiple updates.

[Crashday]

AWESOME 

[Grasshopper]

Cool Daemon! Nice to see that you and others are still working hard to slap a fresh coat of paint on to a game that is 12 years old. Nice work Crashday, I think that I may actually use that.

Although I'm a little concerned about the addition of the "2 new worker-type NPCs, the Guardian and the Transport" which have now been added to the standard game. So the Guardian and the Transport units are now part of the default game mode, and not just found in the "Evolution mod"? Is this correct? Is there a link to the discussion for this? I'm just wondering who all took part in the discussion for this, what the pros and cons that were discussed, and just trying to imagine how changes of this nature may effect, or possibly even unbalance the game.

[Daemon]

They are not game changers. Just as the Outpost and Burrow did not replace the Garrison or the Sub, these will also be used in very specific and rather rare situations, after the initial curiosity of comms wears off. And after all, there's only one of them per team so they can't be everywhere all the time. Not to mention they cost precious stone.

Just as i did not include the Glider and the Mech in standard after acknowledging that the fear of too much change prevents peope from actually enjoying the new gameplay, even after tweaks and fixes to which I am very open and made sure these units were not OP, I have also considered things very carefully in the case of the new wokers. They were adjusted based on the games I've played and watched but mass testing is impossible when there's a single server still up and there's barely any game going on except for evenings. In this situation i had to perform testing sessions with individual players but the upside was that the discussions were quite productive. Among the people involved i can mention Tirza, Ale, Shag, drk, jazzking, Gridfon, Lucky, ES, Stringer, Clemens etc. I did not consult Djinghis, though.

Myself and others do welcome a little bit of freshness and there's no other way to do it. Or time.

[Attila]

Epic 

[-LioN-]

Good work!

[Bullet]

Awesome! Maybe i'll go in-game a trip just to see this new stuff Hope it bring back more players to the game. Anyone posting these updates on external sites like desura, youtube etc? just to inform ppl the game is beeing updated

[Vectile]

Holy crap! Nice work, The new HUD is awesome and just the update itself xD Good Job !!! 

[drk]

Thank you all for spending your own time for keeping this game alive  

[Angelique]

Yay -   Happy Birthday Savage!

[fixed emoji (:]

[Renegade]

proud of you people
gj dae

[Daemon]

Comms will have to adjust garr placement a little. Garrs can even be completely touching the mines since that would mean good PMining for the entire length of the mine. The situation where you would get wedged between garr and mine was occuring only when passing between them was impossible which meant too few players could PM.

Anyway, it's worth considering raising the collision surface so that jumping is required to get on top all around the mine. Thanks for the feedback.

[Ghitler]

Great job guys! 

[JmZ]

Well done.

It would appear, though, that you never took into consideration the large amount of maps using mines to block paths and control gameplay. Your changes to the mines have broken a large amount of these maps. I suggest you find a better solution or revert your alterations until you do.

Maybe you could change it back or at least make it so you cannot walk over it completely (although even that may not fix it).

Also, I have to say, I disagree with pushing your evo mod changes into the standard mode. They belong in the evo mod and not really anywhere else. Although, regardless of them being misplaced, they are rather cool changes, so good job on that.

[Daemon]

The Evolution mod was created with the sole purpose of being a tool that helps Savage evolve. It was never meant to be played "as is" as you make it to be. Since 2010 it was used as an environment to develop, test and perfect gameplay changes and new additions to XR, without risking of breaking the game until such time when these assets reach maturity and can be moved to standard. And the undeniable annoyance of frequent updates that the average player should not have to endure.

The Guardian and Transport are done since January. I've avoided uploaded them until 1. NSL was over and 2. I was confident they're okay and 3. I had time to be around and adjust and fix the stuff in the patch, including the new NPCs.

And including anything else that needs fixing. Unlike some, I do not claim to be error-free. I keep repeating: everything is up for improvement and tweaking. If there's a problem with something, list the reasons and you can make sure i'll consider them for the simple fact that i do not care to win verbal disputes, but i care for XR to IMPROVE.

Reverting the mine collision boxes is sub-optimal since that will not allow players to experience this change. One may like it or hate it, but if one doesn't see it, one will never know for sure. I'll open up a thread for the mine discussion.