Code of the Savage Update #18

The latest Kickstarter update for Geoff Jones’ old-school Ultima-inspired RPG Code of the Savage goes over the recent additions to the game and outlines the improvements introduced by the latest 0.329 update for the backer-exclusive alpha demo. Here’s what’s been done and what you can expect in the near future:

Greetings everyone

I’ve fixed some huge issues I was having with NPC movement that cropped up after switching to the new 16×16 movement grid. It was quite a lot of work, but its all working perfectly now. Previously, NPCs weren’t moving to their destinations and would often walk around in circles or stand there having a spasm…

NPC diagonal movement is now working perfectly too (that was a lot more work than it sounds). One of the problems I’m having is working with my old code.. I’ve improved a lot since I first started this project and when I need to go back and modify something I did way back when, I just have to roll my eyes and ask what I was thinking.

NPC schedule now work again. NPCs will go to bed, and wake up at correct times during their daily schedule.

Instance draw depth is also fixed. The player will no longer lose his pants when he steps in front of certain items.. There are still a few niggling minor depth issues, but those will be fixed in a future update.

• NPC schedules fixed
• Implemented new instance depth system
• Foliage animations and placement updated
• Fixed player armour disappearing when moving over certain areas
• Updated enemy chase AI
• NPC schedules fixed
• NPCs appear at the correct location at the time of day the player starts or loads a game
• Fixed memory leak causing the game to slow dramatically after a few minutes
• Diagonal movement for NPCs fixed
• NPCs now use the bed at the correct time of their schedule
• Randomly moving NPCs now blocked correctly by obstacles

In the next update, I’ll be tackling the combat system- which has a lot of problems. A lot of these issues were fixed in preparation for that, and that is what I will be focusing on in the next update (among other things), so stay tuned.

As usual, the dropbox folder has been updated with the new Demo version.

Geoff