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Savage Gets Extensive Patch, Publisher Unwell?
0xBulbizarre writes "The long awaited patch to V2.0 for FPS/RTS hybrid Savage is now here, in both Windows and Linux flavors. It's also worth taking the time to read the amazing 2.0 ChangeLog for a list of all the additions, fixes, etc in the new Savage patch, since they've made new units, new visual effects, and plenty of other changes besides - lets support good Linux game makers." We've previously covered this reasonably well-received 'acquired taste' of a title, and elsewhere, HomeLan Fed is reporting on unconfirmed rumors from "highly placed sources" that Savage publisher iGames may be closing its doors, but that "[Savage developer] S2 Games is still in operation and will continue to support and add onto Savage as planned." Update: 01/22 00:15 GMT by S : A follow-up at HomeLan Fed has the CEO claiming "rumor of [iGames'] closing was started by an innocent miscommunication [with the company's] former COO."
...that the patch is a great improvement over an already great game, although I haven't had a chance to play it yet. The devs work really hard on the game, and it's not all that odd if you can find them online playing. A couple of my friends and I had a nice conversation with one of them while playing the demo version.
It's sad to hear that iGames might be closing. I had a problem with downloading the full game from their website, and once I emailed them, I got a response very quickly, and eventually got everything I needed fine. I even talked to the same person in game later.
It's extremely nice to see the devs and publisher online, playing the game, and communicating with the community. It's a nice change from the usual nameless and faceless developers (and publisher) that ignore the community, which is all too common in the gaming industry.
All generalizations are inaccurate...except that one about gen....fsck it.
For a good period of time I was a mid-teen gamer with none of the above, and parents who wouldn't keep me from buying games myself, but wouldn't encourage it too much either. I can remember sitting in my room with $200 saved up, looking at something I wanted to buy online, and being fully aware of how powerless I was to do anything about it. *Sniff*
Basically, the only way for me to get something was to go to the store and get it.
Savage, and its creators, did everything right. A multiplayer demo, for linux too, with enough of the game to get you hooked and playing, but leave you wanting more. Online CD Key purchase and download. Clients for both windows and linux, servers too. And continuing development that has already improved the gameplay by an order of magnitude. If the big name companies put this much thought into how to make a game right instead of pumping out the next franchise/licensed game as fast as possible us gamers would be in heaven.
They only list Windows (.exe) patches, so I found the Linux patch (73MB) here http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=4442"
I also have a review with screenshots I wrote of it (pre-patch) here.
I think Savage is a great game. Hell, even the game itself aside, I bought it because they put on the requirements "Windows OR Linux" on the box. That's worth my money alone. I support those companies who support Linux.
One option for indy game developers are "self" publishing through sites such as cafepress.com.
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On cafe press you can publish your game, your merchandise and more. Cafepress.com isn't the only one out there either. They accept all the usual, credit cards, checks, moneyorder. Best of all, the developer doesn't have to worry about deploying an eCommerce solution, and you can do quite a bit in the way of customizing your "store".
I say down with the publishers, software, print and music. For music you have sites like ampcast.com where you can put a selection of mp3s up for download and from the same page, your new found fans can order a hard copy of your CD. Add the url of your ampcast.com page (or your band's site w/link) to your mp3's header info and put them on P2P yourself. Anywho, that's OT.
Note, I don't work for cafepress.com, but my employer does use them for our swag as well as our creative pocket genius' character'sswag
I'd like to see more opensource and independent developers use sites like this and say f*** you to the publishers.
You can always hire somebody else to do your promotion/advertisement.
<flamebait>Publishers are obsolete.</flamebait>
DONT PANIC
I'm one of the programmers at S2, I can answer some of the questions people have brought up: The 2.00b (most current patch) should improve everyone's framerate significantly over 1.2, optimizations were made to the rendering code, CPU usage, memory usage... pretty much all around. Also, we're pretty sure we've caught all the memory leaks at this point. Sam was working on the Linux patch today, looks like the link is working as of right now. If the auto-updater isn't grabbing it yet, I'm sure it will be soon (the bandwidth of delivering the patch has really been killer, bear with us for a few days). Our official servers are all running on linux, so even if we wanted to, we couldn't really give it up ;) We did recently lose one of programmers (slothy), who happened to be the Linux guru, leaving Sammy and myself who both have only some moderate Linux experience, so don't be too hard on us if we make a few noob mistakes with the linux support, we're both learning, and slothy is still willing to help us out when we get stuck.
We're going to release a patch to bring the demo up to date, as well as a full new package of the demo soon, that's the next thing in the pipes at the moment.
Lastly, as pointed out in the update, iGames isn't closing up, but not really being a part of them I can't say exactly what's going on. On the other hand though, I can tell you S2 will be around for a while to come, we're gearing up to get started on the next big thing right now :)