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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

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.

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.

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

That's some great news!!!, screenshots look fantastic and that ASMD looks so neat. Keep up the good work

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 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

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:

Oh, those shots are fire, they make me want to fire some shots there!

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!

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.