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Savage is equal parts inspired by the Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, my fascination with Zelda II (yes, yes, I know - the black sheep of the Zelda family), other games of its ilk (like Gargoyle's Quest) and a healthy dose of general barbarian fetishism.

The final product will (hopefully) include a varied, somewhat open world to explore, an interesting little tale filled with machismo, magic and muscles, day/night cycle, overworld hunting/tracking, lots of action/platforming, fun melee system and some mild RPG elements (item use, leveling up, gear, crafting and the like).

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Kell-VS-Horror-Color-version-number.png

Hail barbarian! ⚔️

Hither comes a new update with some important improvements, as well as some "quality of life" changes! New weapons and items have also been added, and the world of Gosen becomes just a bit deadlier with new traps, puzzles, and enemy behaviors.

Highlights in this Update

No More Auto Pickup for Gear

Gear Drops are no longer a pain in the loincloth! By default, weapons, armor, and shields will no longer be automatically picked up when you collide with them. Instead, on item collision, the name of the dropped gear will appear above it, allowing you to make a choice on whether you should pick it up or not. To initiate a pickup, you now press DOWN.

pickups_press_down.gifpickups_press_down_all_gear.gif


This fixes some frustration, where, to make room for a deadly new implement you have run across in the wild, you would drop one or more pieces of gear, only to accidentally pick up all the discarded loot you had just dropped.

Materials, consumables, and the like, are still automatically picked up, as they have an "infinite" space in the inventory.

These will have Game Options associated with them in a future update (Auto Pickup Loot: yes/no).

Important - SLEEP MARGIN?!

Sleep Margin.gif


It looks like there is a setting here in GameMaker that I wasn't aware of -- "Sleep Margin". I have increased this in the hopes that it will fix some speed issues I have seen some people having, and related problems that have been reported to me. One of them being a "slow motion" type effect on the game.

Some games made on GameMaker seem to have this issue, where certain machines running some versions of Windows will set the game's priority to a low value.

Hopefully this fixes this issue if you are experiencing it!

New Items, Gear, and Brutal Ways to Get 'em!

Bone-Breaking_shiv.gif


New items have been added that will facilitate a fully featured "Forge" system in a future update, as well as weapons, key items, and materials.

New Hazards, Props, and Puzzles

The world once again gets a little more dastardly with some new mechanical and visual additions. Existing puzzle and exploration sequences have also been improved and/or expanded.

Eyebeams.gifPuzzles1.gifPuzzles2.gifTrap-Poison.gif

Kell-Forger.png


Patch Notes

BUG FIXES

  • Rising platforms do damage to you (like being crushed) when you pick up or use an item that triggers a “powerup” effect

  • Fixed some elevators not resetting their levers when coming to a stop, forcing you to exit the room and reenter to use the elevator again

  • Certain categories of pickups were influenced by moving platforms and are now not

  • Weapons were not getting their stats from static info, creating different instances of stat blocks if changes were made in a patch

  • MANY items in a room/screen will stay despawned if picked up, especially many of the “Death Tribute” pickups

  • Breakable moving solid blocks (like the cave beetle shell) are NOT destroyed on enemy death by weapons that have more than one “hit” value

  • Fixed treasure chests ONLY containing a random amount of whatever they contain (gold values, consumables, etc.)

  • Fixed WOUNDS drawing incorrectly on the game HUD

  • Fixed when knocking a moveable solid into another that is on a slope, the one you hit comes BACK toward VERY fast you after hitting the one on a slope

  • Fixed attacking a moveable solid that is up against a wall and it’s collision effect doesn’t trigger

  • Fixed levers still “sparkling” and being hittable when they shouldn’t

  • CRASH FIX: Fixed climbing onto side-view-doors (open or closed) crashing the game

  • Floating text prompts have been fixed (were sometimes jarring with where they spawned), and will also now follow a target that makes more sense

  • Solid objects that you can lift, carry, push, etc., no longer draw BEHIND torches, creating a goofy looking effect

  • CRASH FIX: Fixed game crashing on picking up a dropped essence orb

  • Fixed hitting breakable rocks with “mirrored” melee object made it so breakable rock ignored actual weapon collision (i.e. pickaxe wouldn’t work if it hit the rock NOT on the “sweet spot” – THANKS Silverfox!)

  • Fixed an issue with certain gamepads not registering an “interact” event when pressing UP on the DPad (like the Retro Bit Genesis controller – THANKS Tarxsix!)

  • Fixed materials not being removed when forging a new weapon, shield, or armor

  • Fixed hitboxes on several enemies

  • Fixed hitboxes on several door/gate objects acting screwy

IMPROVEMENTS and CHANGES

  • Set GameMaker’s “sleep margin” to 10 – potentially gets rid of “slow motion” effect on some machines, improving framerate on others

  • Redid several rooms and cleaned up event scripting

  • Improved flow of encounters and enemy placement (also removing enemies in overpopulated screens) in several rooms and screens

  • Redid several puzzle rooms

  • Changed the locations of some items, introduced new items to certain chest locations

  • Essence Vessels (“save” spots) added to improve levels, and in some cases added dedicated rooms for them

  • Some loot tables redone across enemies and containers (chests, breakable objects, etc.)

  • Some loot tables now based on Favor

  • Slightly increased the chance for resource nodes (ore, trees, etc.) to spawn, Luck is also now factored into this

  • Weapons are now less effective if you do not meet their stat requirements (base damage is limited and reduced)

  • Certain weapon stats have been tuned differently

  • Certain enemies now spawning with different behavior and attack properties based on player FAVOR stat

  • Gear drops (weapons, armor, shields) do NOT automatically get picked up when you run over them now – current default “pick up” button is DOWN (was frustrating to find a new weapon you wanted to pick up, had no room, dropped gear to make room, and then accidentally picked up what you dropped) – this will have a Game Option in the future to turn on and off (“autopickup loot: yes/no)

  • Gear drops will now also display their name above them when you collide with them so you can make an informed decision on whether to pick them up or not

  • Doors, chests, levers, and other interactable objects that you can activate by attacking now have an “interact prompt”, much like talking to an NPC – this should fix some confusion and also remedy accidentally attacking NPCs in some cases

  • Crafted items at the Forge now display their names when crafting is finished much more prominently

NEW STUFF

  • Several new weapons added to the game across a few weapon categories

  • New rooms and encounters added to the game

  • A few new traps added

  • New puzzle rooms added

  • Some new enemy behaviors added to certain enemies, as well as the allowance for more status effects (i.e. poison arrows)

  • A series of new key items added, some of them specifically dealing with future updates to the Forge

  • Several new materials added for crafting

  • New secrets and loot drops

  • New graphic assets, sprites, backgrounds, tiles, for “Relic” style of environments

map-mockup.png


I wanted to include a brand new Map System in this update, but I am still wrestling a bit with the particulars, but I have decided on a look and size for the thing, and hope to include that in the next update. Volunheim is still on the way, as well as updates to current locations (story, NPC dialogue, quests, bosses, etc.).

I wanted a static display and went with a design that allows me to show as many map cells on the screen at one time, so expect it to look something like this.

Kell-VS-Horror-Color-version-hours-and-units.png

I also want to thank you so much for contributing to over 1,000 units moved on Steam! I have also just recently hit over 10,000 hours of work on the game (disgusting, oops lol - (beyond) time to start wrapping this thing up!).

All the best to you and yours, and thank you for your support!! ⚔️

- Matt

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Post comment Comments  (0 - 10 of 47)
GoodGriefer
GoodGriefer

Just wanted to drop in and say your game looks very interesting! It's giving me Terraria vibes but with a more interesting potential for combat. Looks cool and I wish you the best!

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AvatarSCA
AvatarSCA

The new build looks awesome. It's really neat to see all of the extra story you're putty into it.

One question about the build though. I got to the part where all the villagers are mining and there is an iron door and gold door near by. Watching your playthrough it seemed like this was where I can talk to them and receive a pick axe. However for some reason I can't interact with anyone or with the doors even though I have iron keys.

Might just be a big on my system or perhaps I'm totally brain dead and am just missing something :)

Specs
Win10 Pro
Intel Core i7 920

Thanks!

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toborprime Creator
toborprime

Oh crap! Sorry for the late reply -- IndieDB doesn't alert me to new comments (every blue moon the notification system decides to work).

The NPC dialogue and interactions are coming in the next patch -- as of now they aren't implemented yet and you do not need the pickaxe to progress. If you go to the room immediately to the left of the slaves, one of the crates will contain an iron key that you can use to get into the iron key door.

From there, the rest of the demo is accessible.

Of course, you can always wait til the patch is deployed to engage in conversations, the new quests, etc.

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Retro_Javi
Retro_Javi

Looks awesome!

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toborprime Creator
toborprime

Thanks!

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Scrabbit
Scrabbit

Really good stuff so far! It's quite tough but really satisfying and it looks and controls brilliantly.

If you don't mind me saying though, the sound design and music style doesn't quite seem to fit. Visually, it looks like a Super Nintendo game and the chiptunes and simple synthesized sounds feel a bit out of place next to that kind of visual fidelity. The melodies and such are really cool, but I think they'd fit better played by orchestral instruments. Preferably using less realistic/cheaper sounding VSTs to capture that early 90s SNES sound. The walking sounds can be a bit loud as well, but it's an alpha so I'm guessing sound levels are really not a priority right now!

Just my two cents anyway, really looking forward to playing this in full!

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toborprime Creator
toborprime

Thanks Scrabbit! Yeah, I have yet to do a real audio pass on everything (those pesky footstep noises included) -- and the music will get a bit of a makeover as well. Won't be quite the synthesized midi-esque symphonic stuff of, say, the SNES, but it will sound more high fidelity than straight up NES chiptunes. The stuff in the game right now is mostly place holder.

This is all stuff on the todo list to be tackled once the game is nearly complete.

Thanks again!

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InaudibleSound
InaudibleSound

nice

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NotGamerButPlayer
NotGamerButPlayer

Hello
I played the first alpha version and the latest version. I noticed that in the first version, you could move faster on the map by holding "A" and moving with the arrow keys. In the last version, it doesn't work anymore. Anyway, i love the concept of the game. Awesome graphics and gameplay, but there's one thing i noticed... Wooden Club does almost the same damage as the sword, but the club hits a lot faster than the sword.

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toborprime Creator
toborprime

Hey, thanks for giving it a shot! Holding the 'A' button while on the map screen was a debug thing I forgot to remove that allowed me to zoom around the map.

And yes -- for that build you played (which is around 2 years old by now) I did almost no balancing and just sort of threw a prototype together.

These issues, and more, are getting fixed up. Thanks again for playing, and for commenting!

Reply Good karma+2 votes
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