Code of the Savage Update #14

The latest Kickstarter update for Geoff Jones’ Ultima-inspired old-school RPG Code of the Savage brings us up to speed with the game’s ongoing development, lets us know that the game’s backers can now access a fresh alpha build, and poses a design-related question about the game’s movement system. Have a look:

There isn’t a lot visually to show, as most of the work I’ve been doing has been under the hood. I was struggling with some niggling issues in the magic system for a while, which was driving me insane… That’s all fixed now, though.

I have added classes to the magic window. The classes can be selected via the 3 new buttons at the top of the window. Not all spells have been added to the game yet. (that is low on my priority list at the moment). I plan on adding a 4th class that deals in curses and pestilence.

The stats window has been updated to include elemental resistances, and the hunger system is more or less in place. (currently the hunger drains much faster than it will in the final game, due to testing purposes). I’ve placed food on the ground in the starting position. When the hunger meter goes passed the halfway mark, the players stats will begin to progressively lower. There is no health loss or death caused by hunger, only temporary stat loss.

Hovering over elements in the stats window will show a hover over window explaining what that element does.

World building – I have written scripts that automate how walls and fences are placed. Previously it was quite tedious to place a building or fence, as I needed to manually place the upper and lower portion of the wall, add two different types of directional blockers, add boundaries to prevent picking up items through walls, add the correct top wall edge, and then hope that I didn’t make any mistakes…Now all I need to do, is place the top part of the wall, and the code does the rest automatically. This will make world building MUCH easier in future.

• added classes to the magic system
• fixed magic window scrolling
• new fire sprite and animation
• torches can now be toggled on or off
• hunger system in place
• fixed issue with tree top shadows
• hover over for stat page elements
• spell classes added
• effect icons in stat window now working
• added target-self for spells
• wall/fence placement automation
• fixed magic window scrolling

Alpha version 0.296 has now been moved to the Dropbox folder for eligible backers. As usual, let me know via PM if you need the link again.

Just a couple of things to note:

• I would like to get your specific thoughts about the grid based movement. Does it feel natural to you? Would you prefer to see free movement similar to Ultima 7? Currently it is modeled more on Ultima 6.
• I have been getting the odd generic crash when I exit the game. Please let me know if you also experience this.

I hope everyone is having a good start to the year! I will be away for 2 weeks starting Feb 6th, so the next update may be delayed a bit.

~Geoff