2016.5.25 Gaiden Mode

Hi everyone!

Sorry for the silence through April -- allergy season plus our new location hit me pretty hard for a couple weeks which wound up getting me sick. Annoying! We invested in a neat little air purifier though, and that thing seems to be helping out big time. But enough complaining and excuse making -- onto progress!!

Boss Redux

You remember Tra Tibowt from the last update, yeah? I felt like something was missing with her to make her fight more memorable and give it more character. I decided to go back and revamp her bear companion (Mag, the Avatar of Magdragh) visually and mechanically, and allow her to ride into battle on the guy!

This gives the fight an initial, more interesting phase with different behaviors. Damaging them enough eventually knocks her off the mount and you wind up having to take them out as a pair.

New Areas

I have been going on a grayboxing rampage with the remaining levels and zones, stopping to whip up a couple necessary assets. The most recent of these being a revamped tileset to make the deep forest areas visually more exciting.

I've also done some palette swaps and some minor adjustments to some older tilesets to bring it up to snuff with the rest of the finalized ones.

These are all added to the growing arsenal of bits and pieces I'm using to crank out rooms. SO MANY ROOMS.

New Enemies and Hazards

As I grind through the room and area content, I am mopping up the remaining enemies and entities that still have to be created and dropped into the game. A couple examples are the brand new "platform wasp" and "forest ape".

The wasp enemy in particular is starting to fill a growing need for the game to include more of what I call platformer-friendly hazards. I have plenty of enemies that sort of track your movements and are largely reactionary in how you deal with them. I need more enemies like this that are more "learnable", or have a much more apparent pattern. This makes platform-heavy situations more satisfying, since you have readable obstacles that you can navigate around.

This guy, on the other hand, is a bit of a hybrid of those two enemy/hazard types. He can be set to a more static sort of artillery behavior, where he lobs boulders at you from a fixed position -- or, he can engage the player and bust out a few interesting attack moves. He is also one of the more vertically aware enemies in the game, following the player up onto, or underneath ledges and other obstacles (being a big monkey guy and all).

Here are the previously mentioned elements (tilesets, new assets and enemies) all working together:

Those are some shots from one of the new areas, "Devil's Shade", that bridges the Gosen Hills and Highlands areas of the game.

Game Flow

With all of the new elements and rooms I am creating for the game, I am slowly addressing my game flow concerns. Things like, "Is this too repetitive?" "How do I make these rooms more interesting?" have come barreling their way to the front of my concerns. Pacing things like interactivity, enemy placement, and things like powerups are a real concern for me. After all, how many times can someone smack something with a sword before it starts to get boring? Hopefully, quite a few times if the core combat mechanics are good enough, ha!

Structuring levels and rooms, I have started to notice annoying design crutches that I repeat. Like tunnel shapes and similar geography elements. It's like writing music -- you start to realize that maybe you are using similar progressions across multiple songs. This is not necessarily a bad thing in some situations, I guess, since this also evokes a certain style, but I feel it's necessary to be aware of so I don't wind up with a finished game and thousands of rooms that all feel too same-y!

Here's a bit of an example of how I sort of map out general flow and some of the critical path out:

Using visual aids like this helps in defining pacing for me, and shaping those "peaks and valleys" that compose the player's overall experience with the game.

Cinematics!

I've also, finally, gotten around to knocking out the game's more lore-heavy sequences, which will be delivered in the form of Ninja Gaiden-esque cinematics.

As of now, I've got the majority of these sequences completed, but there are still a few more that need doing.

Also, with a lot of this stuff getting wrapped up, I submitted the last bit of game footage to my friends at Escaping Westlawn Productions for the launch trailer!

Here are some work in progress screens from the visual FX shots Christine Carstairs is working on:

I am really excited to see this thing!

Progress!

So there we have it -- I am in the middle of grinding out TONS of rooms that will make up the final areas and levels of the game, and I hope to have a build finished soon that I can play through from start to finish. I can't believe I just said that - pretty unreal!

I know it's taken a lot longer than I initially planned for, and I'm sorry about that, but even more grateful for all the support and positive feedback from you all! I am continuing to work hard to make this thing fun, and a suitably brutal and bloody adventure!

Thanks for letting me share with you all! Have a great one, and I'll see ya next update!

-Matt

2016.3.28 Un-Bear-Able!

Man, what an em-bear-assing headline (sorry, I can't help it. It's, like, a serious problem)! 

Ahem. Anyway... Progress goes on, my to-do list grows ever shorter and the game gets closer to something I'd consider fun and playable! At present, there is enough rough content (still in desperate need of a polish and balance pass) that I can speedrun what's mostly finished in about an hour and a half -- and I'm enjoying it, rough edges aside!

Here's what's been going on behind the scenes:

New Location and Sub-Areas, Cairns of Magdragh

This zone is heavily populated with the cannibalistic hill tribes, the Ilgogi. Worshipers of bears and the bear god, Magdragh, their weapons and clothing mirror their brutal way of life.

This area features a few new modular enemy types:

• Ilgogi Maneater
• Ilgogi Huntress
• Kin of Magdragh (Hill Bears)
• Rockbiters

Yes, Rockbiters are back and working within the new enemy system! These little buggers were a pain to bring back into the fold, but worth it. Here's a debug screen of me attempting to snap them to their new locations -- challenging, given their wall-crawly nature.

The area also features some new puzzly mechanics:

New Boss - Tra Tibow't, Mother of Bears, Feastbreaker and Warcaller of the Ilgogi... and her bear Mag!

Here are some work-in-progress bits for the new boss and her pet, based on a friend of mine and her online twitter persona, @twobitart!

I had built out the boss room a certain way, and after some testing, found out I was really not very happy with it. It had too many small platforms that sort of created small uninteresting choke-points during the fight.

The rebuild of the room came out much better - still keeping a bit of deviation in the terrain, but keeping it open enough for everyone to move around.

New Gear

Pictured in the above gif madness are new Ilgogi and bear themed shields, bone based weapons like spears and clubs, as well as a shiny new powerful polearm called Phalanx!

Archived Livestreams

As some of you know, I livestream every now and again on Twitch. I have recently decided to start archiving the streams on my Youtube channel, which you can find here!

That's all for now. Thanks again so much for all your patience and support! I'm as ready to be done with this game as I'm sure you are to play it, and I'm working hard to make it worth the wait - we're gettin' there!

See ya next update, and have a GREAT one!

-Matt

2016.2.7 You Shouldn't Run With Knives... BUT

Hi everybody! Sorry for the quiet during January (speaking of, hope you all had a great holiday season and your new year is off to great start!), but I have been cranking out ALL the things! ... ALL of them.

Productivity levels have been super hot, so let's take a trip down to update-city so's I can show you all the shiny new stuff, shall we?

NEW LEVELS

I am at a really exciting place with the game right now. All the grinding out of props, animations, baddies, etc. has supplied me with what feels like a massive bag of legos to play with. This weird piece of software is starting to look like what I imagine the final game will be. I actually have fully functional, final versions of areas and stages to play through - YAY!!

As a (crude) example of a stage in the making, here're some pictures and stuff!

... And some in-game shots from the new areas:

NEW NPCS

Parts of these areas (including towns) need a few non-aggressive denizens to chat it up with. I added a whole slew of mining prison-specific unfortunates that you'll  run into.

NEW PROPS/HAZARDS/INTERACTIVE BITS

There are lots of new ways to navigate areas and engage with puzzles, enemies, and other dangerous bits. Included below are also a few shots and examples of one of the new and finished areas.

TUNES

The shower is great. Not only does it make me smell better than I usually do, but for whatever reason, pieces of music tend to assault my brain while scrubbing. Clean + music = yay!

Over the last few days, a couple of tunes materialized and pretty much demanded to be recorded/commited to ones and zeros. I OBEYED and did this:

These tracks are still rough and need a few passes yet:

Whew. I went a little gif-crazy there. Sorry about that! But again, thanks so much for letting me share all of this with you, and for all of your support! 

The game is going great and work is happening pretty darn fast.

Until next time!

<3 Matt

What Sorcery is This?!

Happy Holidays, everyone!   

Sorry for the lack of updates through November - I've been nose to the grindstone over here and sometimes it's hard to remember to come up for air. Before we get to the new stuff, let's talk about release since we're about to head into the new year.

To be frank, the game isn't finished yet, which is as big a downer for me as I'm sure it is for you. I was hoping to be close to wrapping the project up by this time, with mostly sound, music, and quality assurance work left and well underway. I'm not quite there, mostly because I feel that what I have isn't the game I want to play yet. When this game launches it needs to be well worth your time to play through! Sorry to be a bit of a broken record, and thanks so much for your patience and support!

On the other hand, what I do have is coming along great! Over the past year, I have essentially been building myself a toybox full of cool action figures and set pieces at my disposal. It's a relief (and very gratifying) to be able to pick and choose from an array of neat looking stuff and build out interesting little rooms and levels. I have learned that this is also one of the most challenging parts of the process - to produce interesting and playable levels that don't get boring, and keep the experience fresh from start to finish. The map maker and designer in me is having an absolute ball throwing all of this together, while the obnoxious art-coward in me is throwing a fit at the challenge. The map maker part is totally kicking the coward's butt, last I checked ;)

As a small example, here's what the old pre-alpha starting dungeon looked like:

And here it is again after a pass using some of the new art assets and props to populate the scene:

It feels a lot more alive and a bit more "real" (as real as a low resolution pixel art scene can feel, anyway, ha!). 

So, New Stuff! 

Here's a sampling of the new area, Blackfen, in the works:

An example of the new visual props I've cooked up:

New Boss!  

This particular character has definitely been the most challenging to create thus far. He does a lot of things that I'm not used to - flying around, shooting magic, teleporting, etc... From a raw engineering perspective (and an art one), it's been a real battle trying to get it right - but I think I've finally nailed down something I am very satisfied with.

Here is a graphic representing his most basic finite-state machine loops (horrible graphics tablet handwriting and all!):

Some character fluff - because!

He was called Gizmotin - a sorcerer from from an ancient civilization who reached too far into esoteric wizardry, flinging his body across time and space into the Beyond, a realm composed of madness, nightmares and raw psychic energies. He has spent so long away from the physical plane that the sum of years comprising his absence are trivial. He has since re-materialized in the world of Lor where his body and mind are broken and in a constant state of flux. Bits and pieces of his ego phase in and out of reality, quadrants of his psyche are constantly fragmenting and reshuffling, existing in several places at once. His sojourn has made him alien, mad, and even more dangerous.  

With him he brings things strange and vile; creatures that devour, break and bury anything not of their own.

My gif software doesn't like the game's framerate, so Gizmotin's teleporting animation looks strange here

Trailer Update!

The super talented Christine Carstairs of Escaping Westlawn sent me some composite shots of the Savage "TV commercial" she's been working on - Behold!

I'm hiding behind the 'table', holding the sword up in place :)

To see the full update including a sample video, go here: http://www.escapingwestlawn.com/savage-the-shard-of-gosen-commercial-preview/

Music!

When time allows, I've also been cranking out some in-game music, as well as music for the trailer.

This is the full version of the track, "Sei-Thahn", featured in the recent teaser:

Here's a mashup of different versions of the Savage theme, "Hymn of Doom", that will go in the final trailer:

So that's all for now - again, sorry for the delay everyone. I can't tell you how grateful I am for your patience and support - it means everything! It will be super worth it once your game ships!  

The Happiest Holidays to you and yours!

-Matt

2015.11.7 Screenshot Saturday

New area: "Blackfen" - and my artistic ode (shameful ripoff!) to Demon's Crest and Ghouls 'n Ghosts!

2015.10.31 They (un)Live! Halloween Update

Happy Halloween!

To tie up this series of spooky inspired updates, I figured we'd end with an undead extravaganza!

They're Back

And loaded with all sorts of improvements! I took a final pass at our skeleton friends and gave them a fresh coat of paint and a slew of new combat abilities. They can potentially spawn with a number of different weapons, shields, armors and helmets - each giving them a different behavior and attack set:

 If you don't land a blow that removes their head, or smash a skeletal corpse to pieces, they have a chance of getting back up on their feet!

 Again, depending on what gear they spawn with, they have access to some neat defensive moves, too. Some will try to stop you from stun-stomping them on the noggin (you'd be foolish to attempt this against a skeleton warrior who has a spiked shield!):

 Even in death, their addiction to the dark arts is as strong as ever...

To complement the skeletal ground troops, I introduce the Undead Warlock (or, Wraithlock, if you prefer)!

 The souls of long dead dark wizards and magicians, trapped in limbo and refusing to give up their hold of dark energies they still command.

That's a wrap!

I hope you've enjoyed this little series of horror-y themed updates! Thanks again so much for your support, and have a happy and safe Halloween!

-Matt

P.S. Enjoy this little Savage related monster mash (with hints of things to come!):

More Spooky Monsters!

As promised, I've been finishing up some more creatures that'll fit right into your Halloween festivities!

Bats!

Spiders!

Pictured above, I've also given the player the ability to deflect certain projectiles with a shield bash, making the projectile dangerous to enemies

That's all for now - thanks for reading and see ya next update!

-Matt

Gettin' STEAM(ed)!

The Steam store page is LIVE!

Click the image to check it out, or go HERE!

Along with the store page, I threw together a teaser trailer showing off more of the game's combat and other systems: 

Work is still being done on what will be the "official release" trailer, but I'll have plenty to tide you over with until then!

Now, since it's that spooky time of year, I figured I'd crank out some of the game's more season appropriate content, like these little puppies (pun intended, I guess):

 ... After all, what's a Halloween without blood thirsty (giant) wolves trying to have you for dinner? I'll keep you all posted with more spooky goodness as we roll through October! 

A release date has not been locked down for the game yet, but I'll let you know as soon as I have one. Lots of other little improvements have been made and there's still a ton of work to be done, but rest assured that I'm working hard to deliver you a game worthy of your time and attention!

Thanks so much for your patience and support!

-Matt

I Got Crabs (sorry)!

Apologies for the radio silence through August! Long story short: a series of obnoxious and painful mouth problems culminated in the removal of my wisdom teeth. I expected there to be a degree of recovery time, but it hit me harder than I anticipated. Anyway, good riddance!

I did manage to get a few things done through August along with a bunch more this month - so, onto the good stuff!

AVAST! Ship Travel!

• The player can now board (and dock) ships and travel to areas otherwise inaccessible!
• The ocean is now populated with Argeshii navy, mercenary ships, pirates, and other unsavory entities.
• (On a technical note) Had to engineer a way to invert collision masks with land vs. water where appropriate, i.e., whether the player is on land or sea.

New Scenes and Encounters! New Art Assets, Baddies!

• New ship and underwater scenes
• New ship tilesets, underwater tilesets, and background artwork
• Shark enemies (variety of species and appropriate abilities)
• Crab enemies (crabs can also spawn with one giant pincer that they can use for defence - this pincer can be severed or destroyed by the player!)
• Water physics, water breathing (some baddies can drown!), and "swimming"!
• New water effects, like splashes, bubbles, wave type shaders, blood effects 

HAVIN' A SHELL OF A TIME (... sorry again)!

• OMG GIANT CRAB MONSTER

So - a LOT done, but still tons to do content-wise. I'll keep you all posted as I continue to flesh this game out!

Thanks for reading!

-Matt

The Room(s)

Since the last update, I've been in mega content-grind. What I have been focusing on for the most part is rooms. Rooms and rooms and rooms and ROOMS! All the pieces that will make up randomly generated encounters and mini-stages (including dungeons and caves).

One of the challenges presented with these "sections" is that they all need to match up - ground levels and ceiling levels need to be on the same coordinates from screen to screen, so the player's character doesn't get "stuck" in a solid during a room transition. This is all handled during the stage randomization, right before the area is loaded. Rooms are tagged with a base coordinate, so that the algorithm knows which batch of rooms it can choose from... like a giant grab bag of rooms stamped with a number, all shuffled and mixed up, and then slotted into a randomly chosen sequence.

Another thorn in my side has sadly come from Game Maker: Studio's room creator/editor. Doing so many of these, I started to get really worn out - the user interface is a bit challenging to work within, especially quickly! BUT - I found an alternative in a piece of software called Tiled.

Tiled is freakin' awesome! It has (just about) everything I have been craving that's missing from GM:S's room editor - fill commands, randomizers, line tools, buttery smooth UI interactions - it's seriously good stuff. It has cut my room production time waaay down - I am able to crank out a room in a quarter of the time it was taking me in GM:S! This is especially handy since each room needs to be "skinned" several times over with location and biome specific tilesets. Highlands need to look like highlands, swamps need mud and vines, mountains need snow and tons of rocks - you get the idea.

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If you're interested in checking out Tiled, you can grab it here: http://www.mapeditor.org/

There's also this brilliant little program created by someone named Pasty on the GM:S community forums that will convert your Tiled files to .gmx files (asset files used by GM:S) which can be enthusiastically enjoyed here: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=583235

These two programs have made my life about a billion times easier - yay!!

I've also been cranking out all of the remaining environment art that still needs doing. Things like props, varied backgrounds, climbable bits, and so on.

Here are some composite test shots with some of the background and parallax scrolling assets:

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One last thing for anyone interested in project organization and the like - My good friend Tim (of Boss101 and Donley Time Foundation) introduced me to Cloudforge and TortoiseSVN. You see, GM:S had recently kinda melted on me (MY FAULT!)- Savage WOULD NOT compile! The last week has been quite the nightmare, pulling my hair out trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

I had been going about managing my backups very stupidly - creating a brand new project file every time I pumped out a new iteration, with titles like "Savage - the Shard of Gosen_a 7-27-2015". Somewhere, somehow, GM:S's streams got crossed and assets were overwritten or deleted. Trying to compile resulted in GM:S not being able to find things like sprites, backgrounds, rooms, or whatever, and causing it to crash when I would try to compile the game for testing.

I ultimately managed to fix things by digging around in a backup's asset directories, and overwriting my working directory's asset folders.

What TortoiseSVN and Cloudforge allow me to do, is have this sort of live project folder that keeps track of EVERY change I make every time I choose to update to the repository created on Cloudforge. If I need to, I can delete my entire project file locally, and grab a previous build from the repository, while also monitoring every single modification made to the project! BRILLIANT!

Things like this have slowed me down somewhat, but I am in a much better (and more stress-free) position to plow ahead.

There's still a lot to do, but the game is getting beefier and more exciting all the time - it's become a ton of fun to run around the worldmap and see what sorts of stages are generated when you run into a baddie or a dungeon!

Talk to you soon, and thanks for the support!

Shields Up!

Happy Friday!

I've been riding a tidal wave of momentum this past month and a half, though I've  run into a few hangups in the form of almost one power outage per week thanks to the storms out here. Nevertheless, there's a TON of update material to share with you all so let's dig in!

Worldmap and Random Encounters

First up, I've started populating the brand new shiny world map with props and locations:

Going hand in hand with the map, the randomly generated encounters system is up and running, and supports as many darn rooms and layouts as I want!

To explain: The above illustration illustrates a 5x5 grid, and a series of layouts. Each square on the grid is a room (or screen, if you will), that houses all the baddies and environment art the player might run into depending on what biome they are currently in, time of month and day, and how the weather is. One of these layouts allow for me to snap together a series of these "rooms" to create a sort of mini-stage. A different experience or scenario every time you run into a wandering bad guy, or any sort of other encounter generated on the overworld map!

These screens are chosen from hundreds of handmade rooms like these:

These rooms will generate cool things like treasure, unique boss fights, secrets - all sorts of things, including ore nodes and harvestable trees. 

Speaking of which:

Resources and Crafting

Wood as a crafting resource, harvestable trees and ore nodes have been added! These harvestable trees will spawn different "looks" to them based on your map location. 

The old system only had one crafting resource: Ore. Ore was treated as almost more of a crafting token - a catch all number where to craft a new sword, you simply needed X amount of ore. I've expanded the system to include wood, ore, hide, and bone. But how do you go about acquiring hide and bone, you ask?...

Animal corpses (and, if you wanna go full savage, human corpses as well, mwahaha! (careful though, depending on certain circumstances, dead things might get up and walk around!)) can now be skinned to get hide, leaving behind a bony corpse. The skeleton can then be smashed apart with a blunt instrument to harvest bone.

Once you have a base item (like a wood club) and enough resources, it's time to scope out a forge!

Pay no mind to the buggy armor animation... shhh.

Above, you can see the required material to take the "Broken Arming Sword", and create a brand new "Bronze Arming Sword". ALSO - the tiny little box in the upper right? Fetishes (mind out of the gutter, you)!!

I've added a whole series of brand new fetishes (or, god carvings) to the game. Each one can be broken open on its own to produce a "1 up", used in crafting to apply a god specific effect to a piece of gear, and equipped to that green box in the HUD to level up and learn something cool! Some of these fetishes are extremely rare and difficult to find - others are unique to each playthrough and equally difficult to find... Picking up a fetish also increases your "FAVOR" stat. FAVOR makes finding items a bit easier, gives you a chance to pull of a critical strike on a tough enemy or boss, and a few other secret things ;) 

Conversely, using a Fetish outright or for crafting breaks the carving and lowers your FAVOR - having low favor and using a Fetish could be hazardous to a barbarian's health and make combat... interesting - you know, incurring the wrath of the gods, and all.

AAaaand, speaking of combat:

New (and final) Player States/Shield Functionality

Shield BASH!

Shield bash at the right moment can parry an enemy's melee attack!

Shield blocking OVERHEAD!

New shield states! A new shield bash mechanic has been added to replace the old half-arsed one. This new shield bash can break an enemy's guard, parry an enemy's melee strike or just generally smash a bad guy's face in (shields with spikes will do extra damage).

The shield can now also be raised above your head to defend against enemies coming at you from above, hazards, arrows, and all manner of nasty bits trying to rain death down on you.

This puts a cap on the player features (finally!) and brings the final player states to a total of 96!! ... Whew.

NEW BOXART (and promotional material)!!

To wrap everything up, here are some test shots and general prop wrangling for the up coming trailer!

Lots going on here and lots more to come! To BATTLE!

-Matt

Podcast Fun Time and Sprite MAAAAgic

Last week was a bit brutal - I got smacked square in the face with a flu bug that took me out of commission for a good seven days or so. I'm pretty sure somewhere within that time frame I smacked it back in its stupid face since it isn't here anymore. So, um... victory!!(?) But, on a super positive note, last week I also got to hang out with the magnificently talented bunch at The Milkshake Boom and talk about three of my favorite things: barbarians, video games and movies (maybe probably in no particular order)!

In particular, we chat about Savage and the 1982 film, Conan: The Barbarian. You can check out the discussion here: http://www.themilkshakeboom.com/2015/04/02/episode-011-conan-the-barbarian-1982/

I just finished ALL the game art for one of the most complex bosses in the game, In'D'Ok - King of the Frost Giants, so I figured it might be a fun thing (maybe?) to share some of the mega-magical-behind-the-scenes-type stuff with you!

Here's the original sprite alongside his likeness, the Twitch Streamer known as Indie...

... and here's the cleaned up version. Here is also where I start to separate the sprite into pieces and give them their own layers (head, torso, left leg, right leg, etc.)...

Not happy with the initial color scheme, I make a pass on color correcting the hair, and change the wraps and fur lining of the clothing. I also add additional pieces of armor and clothing, keeping each piece separate on its own layer. You can also see our naked little hero for size reference.

Having all the pieces of the "idle" sprite separated, I start his primary attack animation with some construction lines.

Editing and warping the pieces to fit the construction lines, I start to fill out the image, animating things like the torso and each leg individually (including the super sexy loincloth).

I keep animating all of the individual pieces and layers seperately, and we wind up with the non-armored version of his attack animation.

Finally, I do an alternate head sprite for when he's wearing his helmet and finish animating the other armor bits! ALL DONE!

And that is (the short version, anyway) more or less how I go about constructing and animating an enemy sprite. This particular character is super complicated because of his size and moving details like his armor bits and such. 

Time to export his sprites and drop them into the game!

The rest of the game is coming along great and I am in full boss mode - only a few more remain after this one is completed!

Thanks for reading!

-Matt

Huge World (and content) Update

Last week saw the one year mark since the Kickstarter was funded - ONE YEAR and it only feels like I've been at this for a handful of months since then - not TWELVE! Looking back on the progress I've made with the game over the past year it's hard to believe that this is the same project I started with. The improvements made to the core systems and the overall presentation adjustments make it almost feel like a sequel. The past two months have been especially juicy with the updates. You can also (kinda/partially) blame the radio silence through January on this guy:

Ok - waxing nostalgic/excuse-y sympathy vote minutiae mode OFF - time for a GIF-o-rama featuring some new bosses, biome and environment art, dungeon art, finalized overworld map, and (my favorite) corpse platforms!

Savage is also rocking swamps, frigid mountains, Gosen highlands, the Red Steppe, coastal areas and the Black Fen (oOooh, mysterious!)! The seasonal system is now working as well, with region specific overlays and particle systems being drawn appropriate to the current season (i.e. red/orange leaves for Fall, naked trees and snow for Winter), giving a pretty insane amount of variety in the types of map encounters when combined with the day/night cycle.

The game's world map is also complete! The textures are now in the game and working! Zone specific props still need to be added, as well as the actual map locations.

So, to sum up:

• Completed world map
• Seasonal system (including season specific art and particles)
• Two new bosses
• New biomes and environment types
• New dungeons (fortresses, palaces and cave types)
• Better enemy AI and pathfinding
• Spike corpse platforms!!
• MORE parallax layers!

The game's systems are mostly working and complete, outside of some UI work and general (and necessary) polish. Environment art and assets are also about 90% finished (yay!). At this point, it's mostly a content crunch - there is still a lot of work to be done, in the form of level design, enemy art, more bosses, more weapons, armor and shields, and story elements.

I'm getting closer to completion and things are looking fantastic. Thank you all so much for the support and encouragement over this past year!

-Matt

New Tilesets, Areas and Such!

I hope everyone's having an excellent holiday season so far! My gift to you: .GIFs!

New dungeon and stone tilesets! (With some older parallax background art - I'll get to updating those)

Raptor Throwing!

New snowy/rocky/mountainous tilesets and area art!

Horrific creatures from an alternate plane of existence!

... And here's a snazzy production screencap (and random guitar sprite - because distracted)!

In addition to new tilesets, areas, environment art, new enemies, and additional combat mechanics (picking up and tossing baddies is a blast!), I'm still working through the backbone of the game's levels and stages (or, the critical path). Once that's finished, I'll be working on some of the optional objectives and hidden areas that will be included in the game, in addition to polish and bug testing.

Great progress is being made; there are features and content that are starting to really shine, which is incredibly exciting. There is still much to do though, and I'll keep updating all of you as I slug it out in the trenches! 

A very merry happy holiday season to everyone, and thank you all so much for the support this year! Here's to a very barbaric 2015!

XOXO, Matt

New Stuff! IndieDB Top 100!

The game certainly has changed over the past 6 months - it feels like an entirely new experience. I have added SO MUCH new content to this thing that I'll go easy on the bullet point-y stuff and let these images do most of the talking:

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Some of what's NEW in the game since the last update:

• New areas and tilesets!
• New enemies (wild boars, revamped battlecat, flesh eating crows, raptors, a HOST of Argeshii soldiers and warriors, with procedurally generated gear and behavior)!
• NPCs!
• New armor sets!
• A lot more I can't remember!
• Blood and gore (yay)!

In addition to all that, I'm FINALLY at a code complete stage in the project - I am now fully entrenched in creating the critical path of the game and churning out the extra content needed to create a complete gaming experience.

I'll be releasing a final handful of alphas/demos in the coming weeks and months, so STAY TUNED!

It's that time of the year again to vote on your favorite Indie games at IndieDB! Help SAVAGE get into the top 100 by voting here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/savage-the-shard-of-gosen

Thanks for visiting, and have a great one!

xoxo, Matt

Took Me Long Enough

I look at the date on the last post I made on here and I die just a little tiny bit inside. Whoops. All I can say is "sorry it took me so long!"

So much has happened since I last posted here, I may as well just hit the giant theoretical reset button and just talk a bit about what's going on RIGHT NOW - or, at the very least, summarize:

• The Kickstarter for SAVAGE: The Shard of Gosen was a resounding success, woohoo!
• SAVAGE: The Shard of Gosen (from now on referred to as "the game") hit Steam Greenlight, and is now holding strong in the top 30s!
• The game went to the GDC 2014 under the wing of YoYo Games, showcasing the game on a Playstation 4, which was a little bit of a dream come true.
• I've been live-streaming development on my Twitch channel HERE.
• Other stuff I can't remember

So, yeah, lots of awesome stuff surrounding the game; just about everything EXCEPT the game having a home - a rock solid online location that it can hang out and just be itself, thanks to my rampant neglect... until NOW! 

I prettied up the main page, and I've redesigned some bits and pieces on the Savage page proper. My goal is to cultivate a much more active homepage and devlog, so expect some fun things happening here in the near future.

There is also this:

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I was in desperate need for some shiny promotional material, and doing a "for realsies" bit of boxart was something I had been dreading for a long time. I finally rolled up my sleeves, looked at lots and lots of Frazetta paintings, and got my hands dirty. I hope you like the result!

On another new note: SAVAGE: The Shard of Gosen public alpha 4.5 has been released, so if you fancy a bit of bite-sized adventure, by all means, have a go! 

Details for the new build

Anyhow - that's the long and short of what's been going on. Again, many apologies for the lack of updates! But no longer! It's about time the Barbarian Horde had a comfy place to call home (again).

-Matt

Alpha 4.5 Released!

Finally - shields are working and in-game! Here's a handy list of all the new stuff you can expect to find in the latest build:

• Added more gamepad functionality (bit of rumble anyone?) and expanded controls (see README)
• Shields!
• Two handed weapon types and new two handed sword
• Backhanded slashing weapon types and new backhand weapon
• New player states and animations
• New armor overlay animations
• You can now see your equipped armor on the map screen
• Certain enemies will only appear at night
• New enemies: Skeleton warriors!

Go ahead and click the shiny image to get the new build!

Blocking and shield parry!

Skellies!

Halloween Updates and Goodies Bag!

Just a short (and... spooky??) update for Halloween: 

I've got a Steam community page up here: 

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/savage-the-shard-of-gosen

And a Steam Greenlight page up ova here! 

I also threw together some goodies for you (or anyone who's interested) to consume! The "bag" includes: Wallpapers, NES retro controller overlays, and a few songs from the soundtrack from the Alpha version. (no) candy. (zero) razorblades. Enjoy, and Happy Halloween!

Take your Halloween goodies bag (and my thanks) here: 

New Alpha Build - IGF Submission - New Trailer

This weekend I decided to hold my breath, take the plunge, and submit Savage to the IGF (against my better judgement, ha!). Why? Because I like being a nervous wreck and biting off way more than I can chew! On a personal level, I don't expect much to happen, but I am glad I submitted - in the long run, I think putting my game on a chopping block of that size is, overall, a good experience. Pluse: hitting the 'submit' button was great fun :D

On to the (potentially) more fun stuff -

I've decided to publicly post the build I submitted to the IGF because... well, why not? Quite a few substantial updates and bug fixes await anyone brave enough to go another round with the alpha, i.e.

Added a few new items - Argeshii Fetish, Gosen Fetish, Meat

Fade transitions, zoom in/out transitions on worldmap

Overworld procedural encounters (hunting type, battle type)

Story engine is now in place, with first story sequence

Balanced the enemy spawners, some enemy HP and damage

Weapons and Armor now lose BP upon death instead of outright breaking

Broken gear remains in inventory (to be used in repair/salavage in a later update)

Increased initial knives/axes carrying cap

Font and UI polishing

New Enemy: Jailer

New location tilesets (only used in overworld encounters right now)

Extended some areas

New music track

New death system/checkpoint system - game no longer goes to "game over" screen on death, but respawns player at the last (invisible at the moment) checkpoint they crossed.

Squished lots of bugs (and probably created many new ones as a result)

You can download the latest alpha here:

(IMPORTANT: SAVE FILES FROM THE PREVIOUS BUILD WILL NOT WORK WITH THIS ONE - Sorry :/ This will probably be the case until beta, or whenever I put a much more stable save system into the game.)

And last but not least, Savage: SOG's first trailer (*sniff* he's growing up so fast):

Thanks for reading/watching/playing!

Crom laughs at your Four Winds,

-Matt

Public Alpha, Name Change(upgrade)

So - I have shamelessly copied/pasted the following from my Game Jolt page (because, up for a billion hours!! :D )

I made it! I managed to keep to my own goofy little weekend deadline! *gets a cookie* Posted the first publicly playable version of Savage: SOG, in all it's SOGgy glory: 

http://gamejolt.com/games/action/savage-the-shard-of-gosen/16310/

Be sure to wear a helmet - this is a pretty rough ride thus far. Lots of squishy bugs, game breaking issues, weirdo graphics stuff, etc. etc.

But, hey - that makes it more of an adventure, right? ... right? Either way, I hope you have some fun with it :)  Feel free to report any bugs/issues, send any comments/concerns/questions/feedback right here or via PlanetTobor.

Expect many changes, additions, and general gussy-ing up to happen frequently. Thanks for taking a look!

xoxo, Matt