IMPORTANT

GameMaker games and Windows 10 seem to be butting heads on certain systems. If your display goes black and then white (showing nothing and no response from Savage) when starting the game in Fullscreen, here’s what seems to fix the issue.

TO FIX:

RIGHT CLICK on the Savage .exe and open Properties and navigate to the Compatibility tab. CHECK the box under Settings labeled “Disable fullscreen optimizations”. Click APPLY.

Doing this seems to have worked for the user that reported it (THANK YOU Gallus!).

Hail, Barbarians!

I come to you now at the turn of the tide… Or, with a big fat update. This is probably the biggest update I have put out of the game as far as new features and content go. But before we dig in and get our hands (or blades) good and filthy, there are a couple new Savage related things I’d like to point out:

Let’s Finish SAVAGE

Going forward, every Friday at 1pm Central, I will be doing a weekly wrap up show on my Twitch channel called “Let’s Finish Savage” that will coincide with a weekly game update (big or small, whatever gets done and is ready for deployment that week). I’ll go over new content added, bugs fixed, tweaks and polish, and ANYTHING and EVERYTHING you can expect in these weekly builds. The plan is to also cover any future plans and roadmaps (i.e. what you can expect in following updates and builds), followed up by some Q and A, provided anyone watching has any questions!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WQZK0cggUE

Feel free to also hop into the Discord to keep up with any and all news posts related to Savage, including livestream announcements. There are also a couple handy channels you can use to give me feedback, report bugs, or just chew the fat about the game:

https://discord.gg/wQhnpUd

OK! With those out of the way, let’s dig into this shiny (and broken) new build.

New Friends

A big batch of new NPCs and characters have been added into the game, each with their own personalities, tasks and animations. Some of them vendor new items! Some will be a trigger for new events and story elements. In addition, new rooms and buildings have been added to Gussek, the border village you first see when exiting the Mining Prison.

Slay them ALL

One of the biggest features I’ve added to the game is the ability to actively attack ANY NPC in the game. Doing so will make them permanently hostile to you and they will then behave like an enemy object to you until slain.

Doing this has consequences, of course. Now that you’ve met them, kill them.

Eat, Drink, and be Careful

You used to be able to totally spam healing items, regardless of your player state. NO LONGER.

You will now have to find a safe moment or location to STOP and eat meat, drink potions etc.

It Wants to Kill You

The world is a dangerous place, and it’s gotten worse. A whole slew of new and terrible things can happen to you in the form of Status Ailments.

These include Burning, Paralysis, Poison and becoming Cursed. But worry not! With every new deadly affliction comes a remedy.

In addition to the new status ailments, you can no longer swim completely submerged indefinitely. You run the risk of drowning if you stay in the depths for too long.

In addition to using an item like the Balm to mitigate Burning, jumping in the water (as well as being out in the rain or snow) can put the fire out.

You Are Being Hunted

Dying results in you dropping your hard earned Essence and any matured Essence Orbs that can later be reclaimed by returning to the site of your death. BUT - some interesting things can and will happen on the place of your death surrounding your dropped Essence. Depending on your Favor stat, things can go South pretty quickly…

The number of times you’ve died and dropped Essence can cause said Essence to go wild, eventually transforming into a shadowy Twisted Self - an entity without any direction other than your demise.

Dying and dropping Essence within a randomly generated encounter on the Overworld Map will LOCK IN the encounter, allowing you to run through it again and attempt to regain your dropped Essence.

If slain by the Twisted Self, the plan going forward is to have him persue you in various locations and on the world map until one of you lies dead.

CUNNING!

A brand new third Major Stat called Cunning has been added to character advancement!

In addition, the level up and character sheet has had a major overhaul (visually and mechanically), allowing you to see all of the sub stats that are affected by leveling up your Major Stats.

Everything Else

In addition to some of these more dense features, there are a whole bunch of other changes, improvements and bug fixes to list.

FEATURES and NEW STUFF

• Added weather and region specific dynamic background tile layers

• Added functionality to pressure plates

• Added new item sprite and description for the Walljump item

• Added new “shard” themed props and assets

• Added exciting, horrible and frustrating new hazards, like beams and lasers

• Added streams of lava and large bodies of lava

• Added new “Slave Garb” armor set, including new pieces to allow me to make more visually different armor sets

• New status ailments: Drowning, Burning, Poison, Paralysis, Curse

• New status ailments “bars” that appear above the player

• New enemy healthbars

• Added Leeches (cures Poison)

• Added Crogue Needles (cures Paralysis and mitigates being grabbed)

• Added Soothing Balm (cures Burning)

• Added God Bone (removes Curse)

• Added several new NPCs

• New rooms and buildings in Gussek, the border village

• ALL NPCs can now be attacked and/or made hostile, and as a result, can be killed New NPC related items

• New lock and key system for “background” doors

• New shortcut within Devil’s Shade, both in the actual level and outside on the overworld map

• Access to Gosenian Highlands and dungeons (Hell’s Teeth, Highland Cliffs, - Kuchvek’s Crossing)

• New CUNNING stat

• New player sheet with redesigned UI elements showing which sub stats are being affected when leveling up main stats (Might, Resolve, Cunning, Favor)

IMPROVEMENTS AND CHANGES

• Rewrote physics for pickups and items

• Dropped items from inventory now get “dropped” in the direction you are facing

• Improved and fixed many rooms (traversal problems, prop placements, etc.)

• Skull Wound tokens now equal 4 hit points per Skull instead of 2 hit points per Skull

• Fixed torches outside at certain times of day drawing an ugly transparent square (improved “lighting” FX)

• Changed texture page sizes to 1024x1024 from 2048x2048 - Overworld map runs MUCH better as a result, as well as improved performance across game

• Game is now compiled in the YoYo Compiler for Windows target platform resulting in (pretty awesome) improved performance (mostly during testing now - future builds will be compiled this way)

• TONS of code and asset optimization, resulting in better performance

• Fixed AI behaviors for Argeshii Brute and similar enemies

• Carried undead corpses, if flagged as able to return to “life”, once re-animated, will be dropped and do damage to the player like a normal enemy

• Changed the color of “healing” number popups from green to gold (green looked like poison and was terrifying)

BUG FIXES

• Fixed NPC in border village turning into headless corpse

• Fixed items from crates and other breakables getting stuck in walls (FINALLY)

• Fixed giving Gal’Vek’s remains to Losech and the player freezing up bug

• Fixed Kell appearing in middle of screen in mid air if exiting left from the small cinematic intro screen of burning village sequence

• Fixed dropped Fetishes giving you FAVOR (i.e. player could pick up a new Fetish, get FAVOR, then drop the Fetish again, pick it up again, and still get FAVOR)

• Fixed using Fetishes NOT removing FAVOR

• Fixed Kell NOT locking to breakable solid container objects when ledge grabbing onto them

• Fixed hit box NOT updating to smaller size hit box when dodge rolling out of a ledge climb animation

• Fixed Kell’s feet getting stuck in a moveable block when ledge climbing up onto the block (if block is on upward moving platform)

• Fixed inventory screen matching a fade in or out - you can now see it clearly if you pause during a fade

• Fixed falling hazards landing on enemy corpses crashing game

• Fixed a bug where Jailer in intro prison cell scene is in a constant attack loop

• Fixed a bug with brown spider enemy “jittering” between animations during an attack

• Fixed game crashing when viewing the level up screen when sub slot 2 has a weapon equipped to it and NO weapon is equipped to sub slot 1

• Fixed a bug where, carrying a corpse and jumping up into a solid (i.e. ceiling) would cause the player to get stuck in the solid, or slowly travel up through the solid

• Fixed carrying corpses marked as undead, returning to “life”, then crashing game

• Fixed carrying corpses marked as undead stopping their “coming back to life” animation when carried

• Fixed game crashing when ledge climbing up onto a “push block” resulting from variable “can_move” not being defined

• Fixed certain enemies, when carried by player and killed, crashing the game

• Fixed Star Flail breaking game on pickup, or creating a Pocked Sica on pickup

• Fixed Blacksmith in Gussek not caring if you RETURN to him either naked or wearing slave garb (he should be upset)

• Fixed “angry” NPCs not deactivating their dialogue interaction objects

And probably other stuff I missed.

Anyway, that’s a wrap! I’ll see you all again next week!

Thanks again!

-Matt