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Savage Development Diary

For public discussion of "Savage Land" and other Red Nemesis projects.

Moderator: Mister_Prophet

User avatar ElectricIce
Skaarj Warlord Skaarj Warlord
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Subject: Re: Savage Development Diary

Post Posted: 21 Jun 2021, 08:01

That crosshair is amazing btw! I used to always rely on the sound cues on how many I loaded, this would make it easier LOL

User avatar Mister_Prophet
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Subject: Re: Savage Development Diary

Post Posted: 22 Jun 2021, 18:17

In general, the eightball will be more advantageous in combat. By adding these little updates I hope people will want to use it more and not just stick it for the quick load burst opener before switching to something else. Since group rushes will be more common throughout the campaign the rockets needed to be better at picking targets and the load-and-hold mechanic really helps the player plan their moment.

User avatar Mister_Prophet
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Subject: Re: Savage Development Diary

Post Posted: 21 Jul 2021, 02:10

July Update

Only a minor post this time. Progress has slowed a bit as the mappers on the team work to expand our levels throughout the summer. In particular, Steadz and Fashahhh have made very promising strides on their levels while I myself continue to hammer out some rough corners on the levels towards the front end of the campaign. Some glimmers of real exciting looking mappage are sneaking through.

Though, full disclosure, as the world seems to get back on balance after Covid some of us are finding our former routines going back to normal. While the summer continues, progress on necessary code improvements has slowed as levels get made to test out all the features we have so far (the grunt work, as it is). This is a good thing because 1) it means we are using every new asset we make and 2) we get to maintain the original promise of the project by not to getting ahead of ourselves.

Some of our other recruits from earlier in the year have gone a bit silent on account of their own personal reasons, but this is quite okay as I'm happy with the open door policy we have on enlistment as it is. In fact, just a friendly reminder, we're always looking for new help. Anyone who wants to crap out a single Na Pali level or donate a mesh/model, gimmie a shout out! As always, I am lurking on discord and will respond to messages on the forum when I can.

In Our Country We Like Lists wrote:
-Fashahhh progresses well with his level, dubbed the Desecrated Peaks during development. Looks to show up his previous release of The Vale
-Steadz continues work on his icy mountainous level, featuring detailed ruins forged in crisp bsp, currently under the working title the Abandoned Heights.
-Turboman, the ever busy genius, is silently working on his unnamed level whilst also making touches to his own excellent project, The One.
-Yours truly is currently juggling multiple levels at once because I hate myself and enjoy pain. Nah, it's looking good. I just wish I could close the gap on the blasted third level already.




User avatar Mister_Prophet
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Subject: Re: Savage Development Diary

Post Posted: 05 Oct 2021, 20:27

The Haunted October Update

Firstly, I am sorry for my long absence. I was trying to keep these monthly but it has been a busy period. Not just for me but for our team. Nevertheless, I am back with some much needed news!

I want to start by talking about some team news and general mapping progress. I spent August working primarily on a level for Resurgence, while September was spent on crafting both an introduction area for Steadz's Abandoned Heights level (and testing Heat Proxies and Frost Zones in the process, but more on that later) as well as continuing the long process of porting some of my older levels from early Residual Decay into the Savage fold. Steadz has continued working on his levels whilst also putting effort into the UnrealSP community project, The Descent. Turboman has been quietly helping me on some skin work while Alcapowned continues chipping away at new Savage Package updates for us.

The focus of a lot of these recent works has been more middle of the road in the campaign where our hapless protagonist Patient 3 has, by this point, made quite a bit of distance from the warmer badlands of Oraghar and found themselves on harsher (and colder) fronts. This highlights a continuing theme in Savage Land where there is not much respite left on Na Pali, and the journey undertaken will take the player on a considerable span of the planet.

Please allow me to detonate a bunch of pictures all over you.















Now onto the code and feature side of things...

Testing continues. In lieu of the design of the mid-campaign levels, where Frost Zones are featured prominently, I'll take a moment to bring this topic back up. Back in March we announced the Frost Zone and Heat Proxy actors (these are pieces of code that have sister actors for other things, like poison). We are still working out how to make the Frost effect work in a shooter where it will not be annoying. Originally the player suffered a large movement penalty, but in testing this proved to be a little too aggravating in combat by slowing down the player's speed too much. Instead, we are exploring other things. Currently, the big ideas are to debilitate the player in other ways. Such as...

The Things We Will be Testing wrote:
-Disabling Dodging
-Negatively impacting accuracy
-Slowing the player's ability to heal


Granted, we are still not sure how the final effects will feel, but we do want to encourage players to interact with the environments we are building. At some point, special suits will negate instances of Poison and Frost, but they may not be so easy to find. Easier difficulties will focus less on these mechanics, of course, and as always the object is not to annoy shooter people so I want to be very careful with how we do this stuff.

This has made it necessary to expand on certain details, like the enabling of triggerable light sources. For which, new decorations will be available.





Other things...

Okay so recently Steadz and Al have been brainstorming how to use overlays on certain guns. Mainly, the ASMD and the Crossbow are being looked at for specific reasons. For the ASMD, in effort to utilize a late game upgrade feature the ASMD will eventually acquire a secondary firing mode similar to how the Stinger opts for alternate ammo from the Demo you all played. As of right now only the ASMD works ingame, but I will be posting more on this.





I cannot say for sure how far we will take the overlay use, but I would like to avoid having every gun glow, ya know? Typically it will be for a unique reason, not just to look sexy.

Lastly...

I have been thinking up ideas for the one year anniversary of the Demo release. While the campaign won't be ready by then, I have been cooking up concepts of what we should do. In short order I will be fielding a poll thread on the Public Forum to gauge ideas, but feel free to discuss them here or on discord for the time being. This is just talk right now, but things I've been debating are whether we are just gonna do another Demo (Demo 2?) or possibly a standalone, single level release that uses modified updates from the current package. Whatever we do, I also would like to include a mutator of the current Savage Land HUD and inventory system that can be used on Unreal/Unreal Gold 227 and possibly also UT 436/469, where classic campaigns or levels that use default Unreal code can get the Savage Land treatment. So basically, you could play Unreal and RTNP with the new HUD and new guns/inventory ;)

User avatar Aspide
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Subject: Re: Savage Development Diary

Post Posted: 05 Oct 2021, 22:39

That's some great news!!!, screenshots look fantastic and that ASMD looks so neat. Keep up the good work \o/
Somewhere in Nevada...

User avatar Mister_Prophet
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Subject: Re: Savage Development Diary

Post Posted: 06 Dec 2021, 18:56

Cold December

I skipped a November update due to the many RL matters pressing the team, myself included. December could not roll by however without a little blurp from me just to keep the pace. 2021 is on its last leg and I feel very good about what Team Red Nemesis has achieved for Savage Land this year. We started with a successful demo and have made a huge amount of progress since. Somewhere between the post-demo feedback and the many months of testing the new systems, HUD, and other game updates I do believe I can finally say that Savage Land has found its soul.

This Diary post I want to focus more on what's coming. As mentioned in earlier posts and other threads, we aim to concoct another playable release for 2022. The hope was to target the year anniversary of the first Demo but the holiday months have not been too permissive for the team. We will do something, hopefully early quarter of 2022. I would prefer to keep this a continual theme with the project as both a means to keep content public for the community as well as to motivate the team to punch this one out of the park.

For comparisons, when I was a younger guy I managed to get both Xidia, Xidia Gold, and Seven Bullets released within a year development time each. We are not there yet with Savage Land, but I will be honest with my Unreal peeps....I feel good :o about this one! Please, help us if you can! We still have an open door policy on new recruits! If you have a Na Pali map or a piece of nondescript mappage that you have been holding onto and can't find a home for, Private Message me on the forum or find me on the USP discord (I always have discord on the ready). If you are a skinner without a cool canvas, contact me! We have new pawns that need tuning!

As for physical shows of progress....




The Things that Have Been Happening Since October wrote:
-Frost Overlay now appears beneath the HUD
-Razorjack alternate firing modes underway for testing, including pilotable blades
-ASMD continues to see tweaking with new effects
-Several new pawn updates underway
-ebd helps solve a pupa issue, and they are scary now
-Fashahhh continues work on his original Savage Land levels and his new version of The Vale
-mister_prophet continues reintegration of older RD levels throughout the Holiday
-concept for next years "Demo2" continue in the Think Tank

User avatar Mister_Prophet
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Subject: Re: Savage Development Diary

Post Posted: 14 Jan 2022, 04:33

Haven't got around to making a formal January update yet. Will try to get a more info-heavy post soon! Also on the agenda is cleaning up some details in the Moddb page since a lot of that stuff is a year out of date. Still planning some kind of release early 2022, but depending on the RL crunch it could be a small one. Will have some details on this as well.

For now here's a bunch of renegade map pix that some folks may have seen on the UnrealSP Discord and Moddb (but haven't been posted here). Some shots include the new version of the Vale, appropriately frozen:












User avatar editor Dave
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Subject: Re: Savage Development Diary

Post Posted: 21 Jan 2022, 19:40

Oh, those shots are fire, they make me want to fire some shots there!
Prisons of the Unforchers Retold - more info: https://www.unrealsp.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4565

User avatar Lightning Hunter
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Subject: Re: Savage Development Diary

Post Posted: 23 Jul 2022, 09:07

Hey Proph, just wanted to stop by and say this looks great. I've been going back and playing some of the old classics lately - including Xidia Gold and Seven Bullets. They certainly were/are classics! I read your decision to drop Residual Decay and instead merge all your work into Savage Land, and I have to say I completely understand your decision and agree with the move. I think at our age, we start to realize these projects can't keep going on forever. I for one have reduced the scale of many of my projects (and dropped some others altogether). I think Firestorm and the Chosen One should take this same approach, otherwise we will be old geezers one day (already getting there), and these projects still will not have seen the light of day. Anyway, good luck on getting the project completed. I don't think you need to get too fancy with this - as I'm sure there is already enough content for all of us to enjoy immensely!
For High-Res Unreal skins, click here.
For the RTNP "Ultimate Edition" HD, click here.

Image

User avatar Mister_Prophet
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Subject: Re: Savage Development Diary

Post Posted: 23 Jul 2022, 09:30

I appreciate the post, LH! Thanks for the support!

I should also say that I've been meaning to update this thread these past several months and have little excuse for the delay other then to say that this year has given me substantial distractions. Though, there's still plenty to update. A new level by Aspide, many numerous changes to the core package by Alcapowned, new enemies and inventory, and other things. Some stuff has been slipped in on discord throughout the year but even then I admit that I've been lacking meaningful updates as of late. This will improve. Expect a new post soon with a slew of details.

User avatar Mister_Prophet
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Subject: Re: Savage Development Diary

Post Posted: 15 Aug 2022, 07:29

Some Big Diary Gaps....

So I have not been treating this Dev Diary thread so nice this year. Some prospects I made earlier about a 2022 secondary Demo release are looking pretty tough for me at the moment. I recently had some situations change in my personal life, so some ideas I had planned for Unreal have taken a back seat. Some of it is work related, others are all family (I've welcomed two new nephews into the fold and just this past week my brother had his first kid, my third niece. I've spent much of 2022 being a fun uncle instead of working on Savage Land, sorry :o )

However! Stuff is happening!

In recent months Aspide's level has been getting some traction. Unofficially, it has turned into a soft reimagining of BFNP's Temple of the Mind, albeit a trippy concept of Aspide's own invention. I'll have screenshots up at some point, but it's certainly been an entertaining addition to the lineup. Savage Land will keep Nali mystics at arms length for the most part, following Unreal's trend of letting the player decide if what they are experiencing is magic or aspects of technological antiquity. Aspide's level mind bend that to the brink, however.

With Aspide's level in mind, I've also noticed that our levels tend to run on the long side of things. I made a few resolutions for myself back in 2013 when I began working on new content for an as of then unnamed Unreal SP content that wasn't Residual Decay. I kept a brief readme in my laptop's Unreal folder that I would refer to if I would catch myself drifting. They were:

Prophet's Page of Savage Map Design wrote:
1. No Boss levels (as in, no levels that are only a boss room)
2. No Filler maps (see: Serpent Canyon, or Slight Complication from 7B)
3. Always show/offer something new per new level
4. Make each level like it is the Penultimate level




I must say that so far this short list of rules has been keeping me honest, and the other levels from Jet, Aspide, Steadz, and Fashahhh have maintained the standard also.

In terms of some project improvements, Alcapowned as ever has been exhausting himself fixing and adding to both Savage Land and Resurgence. You have no doubt seen some of his weapon content posted on discord for Resurgence and I don't need to inform anyone of how much he's doing for this game. I've asked him to post some videos of some pawns and things he's worked on in the last year that may or may not be news to people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9nTDDdcUj0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_6XdtN4_RU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORgOX0jowiU

Much of the wildlife of Unreal is more or less dispersion fodder for you old purists. Since a huge chunk of Savage Land is embracing the naked wilderness of Na Pali, Al has been hard at work think tanking with me and also going rogue on his own accord to devise new attacks and movement styles for old foes. You will see new subclasses and old enemies that were perhaps pushovers in the past may be radically different. This part of development is constantly changing.

As for some general information for things added to the campaign in 2022:

New Additions wrote:
-New Scuba Gear added, now called Rebreathable Scuba Gear. Now you only have to find one and the tanks will always regenerate when outside of the water. Based on similar pickups from RTNP and custom campaigns that had the same idea

-New Ammo types being developed for the Stinger and Driftwood Crossbow. The stinger will have (at least) a third ammo type to go with the Red and Blue types seen in the demo and the Crossbow will have a powerful mid-to-late campaign option.

-Boss bars will be a thing and after months of testing are working perfectly now.

-New enemy enhancements, including enemy buffs from secondary sources.

-New Skaarj family enemies being developed.

-I have been learning skinning and have been trying my hand with a drawing pad. But Steadz and Turboman are still better than me and have been making awesome skins for pawns.


I suppose we should address the elephant in the room about patch 227j being officially, and then unofficially released these last couple of months. Since everything is still sort of getting sized up, I anticipate some delays in future project testing as we continue to maintain Unreal and Unreal Tournament cross compatibility. So far we have been able to keep this going with minimal incident (something always works better on one over the other sometimes, eh). I know some of you out there have had some issues with your mods moving onto the new patch. If we have any big problems I will make a post about it, but...honestly I just don't think we are doing anything so outlandish that the new patch will cause ruckus. So far we are still on course for cross compatibility!


As for anything else? If you are a mapper and want to make a classic Na Pali themed level for us, please contact Me!

















User avatar Mister_Prophet
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Subject: Re: Savage Development Diary

Post Posted: 10 Nov 2022, 18:39

A Quick November Squeeze

Just a quick update for the month! Not much to say since the team is feeling the standard pressures that come with the end of the year. I really just want to say two things. First, I'm happy that the community finally has a chance to play Turboman's The One at long last! It has been difficult keeping calm about my excitement for this one ever since Turboman reached out to me about it shortly after the Savage Land Demo was released in February 2021. And now that it is out it is even better than my initial beta test!

The second thing is, now that the cat is out of the bag, this allows me to acknowledge more properly just how much of an impression testing The One and working with Turboman has made on me. His pioneering use of 227 assets need no commentary from me, but it's more the very practical things that Turboman did and continues to do in his SP masterworks that have helped keep Savage Land on the level when it comes to cross compatibility. You've probably seen some examples pop up in screenshots and if you played The One you'll recognize certain "vanilla tricks" to brighten up the old level design.

Most importantly, it's been kept close to the chest that Turboman will be donating certain models and things to the project, such as the Nali Female model that featured in The One which follows in the spirit of Battle For Na Pali concept art. We will eventually have some new alternate skins for this one, as well as new character sounds (if I can get my wife to stop giggling at Nali speech).



Otherwise, go play The One! It might be the single most impressive user made Unreal SP experience I've personally played for this game!

User avatar Mister_Prophet
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Subject: Re: Savage Development Diary

Post Posted: 21 Dec 2022, 05:08

Addressing some things about Unreal ... and Epic

Been a busy period for yours truly and the rest of the team. If you have been on discord than you may have caught some media recently concerning some minor updates about the Driftwood Crossbow. I don't have a big bunch of info to lay on you all, although the recent news trickling across the community about Epic and the legacy Unreal games has probably made the rounds. Unreal and Unreal Tournament have been removed from Steam pending a shutdown of servers for the old games, and in a matter of days Unreal will also be removed from gog.

What does this mean for Unreal SP? Well, the good news is that the community has maintained their own servers for years, so COOP as we know it won't be going anywhere for the time being. However, as a modder the removal of classic Unreal from these storefronts gave me some pause. There is always the hope, and perhaps conceit, that a good mod or mappack could entice new people to try our little forgotten gem and perhaps inspire others to do the same. Taking away the opportunity to acquire these games from popular stores like Steam and gog is worrisome. I'm hoping that a compromise presents itself in the near future, even if it comes to pass that through the Epic Store people can find our beloved Unreal.

As for Savage Land...

I am hoping that after the holiday clears up I can put more time into mapping. I would like to release a second, larger Demo in 2023 that might be more like an Episode in size (the first 9 maps). If all goes well you all will hear about it in early 2023. Otherwise, enjoy some gifs of the new crosshair for the Driftwood Crossbow:





To describe what you are seeing, the targeting system of the Driftwood is being approached to give the player more obvious cues. One thing I noticed on watching some streams of the demo (for those of you that actually found the damn thing) is that there was a lack of understanding for the weapon's strengths.

In Savage Land, the Driftwood Crossbow will have the unique ability to cause critical injury in a way much of the early arsenal will not. Players will be encouraged to "trace" targets for weaknesses. Usually this means the headshot, or in the case of wildlife most anywhere as the Crossbow will be ideal for routing non-advanced creatures one might find out in the Na Pali badlands. Even ill-equipped players might find that they can stand toe to toe with Titans if they use one of these correctly.

Kudos to Steadz for the crosshair graphic and animation and to Alcapowned of course for continuing to fine tune the equipment (and for thinking up the whole targeting to begin with!). And course to Jet, who initially made the weapon way back in 2013...tens years ago now...when I was nearly at the end of my Unreal rope. I've always counted on the fresh thinking and enthusiasm of these younger artists within our own community to give me the kick in the butt to keep at this old game. Despite what might be happening right now with Epic and the old Unreal games, I'm confident that none of us are going anywhere and hopefully in 2023 I make good on some old promises and get some more Savage Land out for you guys to play and enjoy!

User avatar Mister_Prophet
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Subject: Re: Savage Development Diary

Post Posted: 18 Jul 2023, 16:14

Hey folks, your friendly neighborhood Prophet is here just to fill the void with some dialogue.

My last update was in December and I'm sorry about that. Much of this has to do with the fact that I'm on the discord machine nowadays at the UnrealSP channel (even though I always appear offline I lurk everyday). What this means is that if I have a new pic to show or a small nugget of progress to mention it usually either gets dropped into the current on Discord or I'll post said media to the Moddb site for the project. All the regular users tend to be on the Discord also so I'm sorry if I neglect the site here for meaningful updates. I'm sure there are those of you who don't use those other means to learn about the project and only lurk here.

Having said that, news today will be minor. In terms of pix I have some sample pix taken ingame from one of Paul's new levels (Fashahhh to the forum bodies, author of The Vale). You've seen older pix of this new level before but here are some new ingame takes.











As for other things. Alcapwned has been working on a model for another concepted BFNP creature to go along with the Wolf. Some candid shots have been posted on Discord but I'll perhaps wait until we have a more complete image to post on official channels. Steadz and Aspide have been making progress on things as well. Steadz has been helping to adjust/make changes to some decorative models these last few months and Aspide has recently sent me the latest version of his juggernaut Savage Land level.

I'll talk briefly about my plans going forward. As of right now I am favorable on a second Demo release. There's a couple of ways we could do it but I'd like to release something this year. Best plans were for an episode sized release of the first nine levels but since the rate of level creation has slowed during the summer I may entertain a smaller release of a random level or levels from middle of the campaign. We'll see on this, it depends.

If you want to see more forum posts than I entreat you to please comment and ask on this thread or the others. I think part of why I post so infrequently is because I don't see a lot of comments as of late so I wonder who is really reading all of this. Everybody seems to be on Discord :)

User avatar Darkon
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Subject: Re: Savage Development Diary

Post Posted: 13 Sep 2023, 15:27

... I am not on Discord... :D
So I get on here every few months to see if there are any updates.

Thanks also for the update in December about teh old Unreal games.. I didn't know about that!
I think I have a copy on Steam, so I hope they'll keep it there!
Never trust a Dutchman in a tulip fight.

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