User:Notaus/Scratchpad/Savage

Savage: The Battle for Newerth is a science fantasy computer game by the indiey developer S2 Games that combines aspects of the Real-time strategy (RTS) and First-person shooter (FPS) genres. The game is credited as being the first Real Time Strategy Shooter (RTSS). It takes place in the distant future when humankind has rebuilt society following an apocalypse, but is threatened by intelligent beasts. On September 1, 2006, S2 Games released the game as freeware.

Format
Up to 64 players can participate in a game, which may last anything from 5 minutes to several hours. Games are independent of each other: at the start of every match all players start off from zero again (losing any abilities they may have earned in the last game).

Two teams of usually equal amounts of players combat each other until either team wins. Units, building and weapons available to a team are determined by the team's race, which may either be "Humans" or "Beasts" (see Races below). Ordinarily one team is Humans and the other is Beasts, though Humans versus Humans is preferred by some players.

In each team there is one player with "commander" status, which directs the other players in his team from a bird's-eye view as typically found in RTS games. All other players are field players.

Objective
The goal is to destroy the enemy team's main building ("Stronghold" respectively "Lair" for the two races), which is the only building each team starts off with. It bears quite some health and destroying it with the units and weapons available from the start is not possible in the most cases. Researching technologies making more powerful weapons and units available requires "redstone", the main resource in Savage. It is mined either by players or by NPC workers from redstone mines located throughout the map. Having control over the mines is thus an important secondary objective of the game.

Field player gameplay
Each unit on the battlefield is controlled by a field player. Similar to most first-person shooters the unit's movement is controlled with the WASD keys and weapons are aimed with using the mouse. The view only is a first-person perspective when using a ranged weapon, though; most of the time the camera follows the player around from behind.

Even though the commanders can issue the typical RTS orders (such as "move", "attack", "follow" or "repair") to their players, it is solely up to the players to decide whether they want to obey the displayed order or maybe do something completely different.

Player-to-player combat is equally dominated by ranged and by melee fighting. Ranged combat is very similar to other first-person shooters, while the unique melee system is very challenging for most new players. Human units have the ability to "block" frontal incoming attacks which reduces the received damage to a fraction and stuns the attacker. Beast units in turn can perform "leaps", rapidly accelerating the unit in a direction the player chooses. This can be used to quickly pass a blocking human unit and hitting it in the still vulnerable back.

Commander gameplay
The commanders are responsible for gathering resources, constructing all kinds of buildings and researching technology; at the same time they have to supervise and conduct their team. Since, unlike most RTS games, there always are quite some units moving around, fighting and asking for orders, many new players are overwhelmed by the large number of simultaneous tasks when commanding.

For labouring purposes commanders may build up to 10 worker units which are directly under their control but lack any fighting abilities.

The game features the typical 3 tier setup involving upgrading the main building found in many RTS games such as Starcraft or []. Both races have their own unique technology trees with 3 very different branches, influencing available buildings, weapon technologies and ultimately feasible strategies.

Races
blah?

Patches
Even though S2 Games released a few patches, the last one x months after release, many problems remained. Ambitious fans, blahblah, fan patches, notably EX2 and SEP, were created. [EX2 getting it's own section? anything interesting notable about it? and the extreme mod? Mention particular easy mod-ability!]

Savage Full Enhancement
The Savage Full Enhancement (SFE) is a community expansion package that improves netcode, improves the GUI, and adds other features such as 3 or 4 team gameplay, duel maps, capture the flag and approximately twice as many configurable options. It also prevents many exploits and cheats. The mod was formerly known as the Savage Enhancement Project (SEP) before its final version in January, 2007. It adds many game improving changes, including lag compensation, weather effects, as well as many other features. On June 27th, 2007, the Newerth community site announced that it would be responsible for maintaining SFE, as well as adding additional features.

Savage: XR
After announcing the acquisition of the SFE SDK in July, the Newerth community released the first preview of Savage: XR on September 30th. This release now supports new enhancements to the Silverback engine, which attempt to bring current generation graphics to Savage. The announcement video demonstrates some new graphical upgrades. The developers have announced new features such as a simpler installer, an automatic game updater, and an improved statistics system. The modification enters private beta on November 2nd, 2008.

Samurai Wars
Set in feudal Japan, blah and blah.

Early simple mod, demonstrating the easy mod-ability, shipping with some later game versions. Now integrated into XR.

Tombstone
A mod planned and worked out by Uttar and other people. It's set in the wild west, humans fighting against undead.

Reception
Eurogamer awarded Savage 8 out of 10, criticizing the lack of any introductory tutorials and technical glitches, but highlighting the RTS-style gameplay aspects, accommodation for a wide range of player styles and good looking graphics. TODO: list more impressions here.