Issues and Wishlist

From Savage 2 Strategy Wiki

Contents 1 Foreword 1.1 Reporting Bugs 1.2 Reporting Crashes 1.3 Customer/Tech Support 2 Priority Bugs/Glitches 3 Issues 3.1 Art 3.2 Sound 3.3 Music 3.4 Maps 3.5 Interface 3.6 General Bugs 4 Balance Issues 4.1 General 4.2 Human 4.3 Beast 4.4 Hellbourne and Maliken 5 Resolved Bugs/Issues 6 Wishlist 6.1 General Features 6.2 Sound 6.3 Music 6.4 Maps 6.5 Interface

Foreword

The staff devoted to working on Savage 2 is minimal at best. Since Savage 2 was officially released, much of the crew that had been working on Savage 2 moved on to S2 Games' next project. According to the lead designer, the staff devoted to Savage 2 consists of "1 programmer, 1 game designer / director, [and] a handful of artists." Please remember this. These guys are overworking themselves to bring us a game they hope will bring us joy, so try to show a little respect when making a suggestion, bug report, etc.

Reporting Bugs

If you encounter a bug, the best thing to do would be to log onto the [Bug Report Forum], check to see if anyone else has reported the same bug and, if yours is unique, post a report.

• Try not to post the same bug as someone else, as it may slow the process down
  • If someone else gave the same bug report, feel free to add your own experience in the same thread.
• When posting a new bug report, try to give the match number if known.
• If you don't know the match number, try to instead list the server and time/day on which the bug was encountered.
• If you don't know the server number, at least list the approximate time and day when you encountered the bug
  • Most of the time, the match number can be tracked down with just your Savage 2 Nickname and the time/date.
• See if you can identify the situation which an be associated with the bug/possibly the cause of the bug. At least try to describe what happened around the time when the bug occurred.

Reporting Crashes

1. If your game crashes, most of the time, the game will ask if you would like to save a crash report.
   1. If it does, tell it yes, then make note of the name it gave the crash report.
2. Archive both the crash report and the console.log file.
   1. They may be found in the "My Documents\Savage 2 - A Tortured Soul\game" folder.
   2. Zip or Rar format will be fine.
   3. It is CRUCIAL that you do this before you start the game again, or the game will overwrite the console.log file!
3. Email the archived report along with a short description of the crash to one of the developers. The following developers are willing to receive such reports:
   1. S2Mercenary
   2. S2Fielding
   3. S2Kyle

Customer/Tech Support

This is an entirely different issue. If you wind up posting such an issue in the Bug Report Forum, no one's going to be upset with you, but if you're certain this is less a bug and more a tech support issue, please post your question in the Tech Support Forum.

Priority Bugs/Glitches

This list includes all bugs that can be considered 'game-breaking' or have a large and negative impact upon the playability and enjoyment of the game and are subsequently, the most important issues to be resolved. Please only add a bug to this list if it meets this criteria.

• Polymorph works on Maliken but no animation is shown when attacking/interrupting/blocking.
• It is still possible for a commander to hear sound effects originating from underneath the fog of war. An observant commander can detect enemies where he should not.
• Occasionally, the game will not acknowledge the Spawn Portal ability; attempting to place one will simply make your character use melee attacks.
• Dispel is not being aimed where the marker shows on many maps, causing far too many misses.
  • This seems to occur more frequently on maps with considerable changes in altitude, like hellpeak, crossroads, and ancientcities, to name a few.

Issues

This is a compilation of all of the bugs found in Savage 2.

Art

• Shader issues from the commander view for some arena structures.
• The appearance of the HUD models for many weapons does not seem fluid.
• The spawn portal icon for your squad's portal on the spawn screen could stand to be a bit more obvious.
• Many of the smoke and fog particle effects cause considerable FPS drops.
• The "alt" key overlay for player health causes considerable FPS drops.
• Steambuchet attacks fall straight through perfectly level ground. Smoke trails from Fire Bombardment instantly vanish upon the projectile hitting anything.
• Enemy conjurers, who are colored red, shed green leaves.
• Team colors are not prominent on Maliken.
• NPC idle animations are all synced at the beginning of the game.
• Maliken Flame animation on sword needs to be fixed on ATI cards (no transparency on sprites)
• Shapeshifter explosion needs to be fixed on (this seems to be primarily attributed to ATI cards, but there are users with Nvidia cards who are also having this issue ( - Mercenary)
• Massive drop in FPS when placing a spawn portal and model goes through other objects (such as on rocks).
• If a Shaman runs out of mana whilst casting a chant, the chant will stop but the graphical effect will remain.
• Bats have no target on the ground when placing like Hawks did.
• The graphical effects for Piercing Fear does not appear, even though the spell takes effect and the debuff icon is displayed.

Sound

• Many large impact sounds being very dull compared to the rest of the game (the tempest meteor impact sound is a prime example of this)
• There are six voice command sounds still missing, some are critical like the beasts' "Defend the Lair!" sound.
  • List all missing voice commands here.
• Commander's VOIP volume and sound quality are both extremely low.

Music

• Occasionally, the music will completely stop.

Maps

• Many texture seams are visible on the official maps.
  • Add specific instances here.
• There are still some areas where you can get stuck in the official maps.
  • In Morning, it is possible to be jammed between a fence and the cliff wall where the south path originates from the east base.
  • Also in morning, it is possible to fall through the hole in the ruined buildings made of gray stone. Of course, this is a non-issue for short units like builders and shaman, but for tall units like legos and malphai, this is an inescapable trap.
  • Add any other specific instances here.
• The quantity of large trees in morning makes it difficult for ranged siege to see.
• Random map crashes need to be fixed (everyone, if you get one, please archive your console.log file and crashXXXX.dmp file and email them to a dev so they can fix these).
• Maps repeating themselves needs to be fixed (rare)
• Spawning below the map needs to be fixed (a result of corrupt/missing maps. Easy to work around, but a fix is still needed).

Interface

• Double-clicking player portraits as commander does not always take you to the player's position.
• Replay and Local menus have non-functional elements.
• Buddy and clan lists in the lobby don't put active players at the top.
• Player avatars do not show for players not in clans.
• The "decline karma" button is unclear. Does it also mean that you can't receive karma in addition to not awarding karma to a player?
• Stat pop-ups don't show up for all players in the lobby. Have the pop-ups for commander (and candidates) show commander relevant stats.
• Occasionally on the loadout screen, the persistant items from tickets in the inventory will blink as white squares when you move the mouse cursor over unit's portraits. ( youtube link )
• Occasionally on the loadout screen, items will stick to the mouse pointer. This has no actual effect, but can confuse the player.
• The Beast speed boost item is titled "Lynx Feet", but has a picture of a boot.
• In some resolutions the text of game tips is larger than the box will allow, resulting in text appearing outside of the tip box.
• In some resolutions health/status bars of buildings appear on top of the building description text.

General Bugs

• Fix all hard-coded binds (ping for example) to be configurable in the options menu.
• Add a sensitivity option for double-tapping for charges/dodges, or make them bindable to a new button.
• Voice chat spam prevention is way too strict.
• Some part of the hell shrines is still not being pre-cached (I'm assuming either the model or the music).
• It is very easy to accidentally give a commander a rating other than the one intended since the value changes only by hovering the cursor over it.
• If you eject as a siege unit, you lose your enduring items.
• In the replay of match 47307, I (Mercenary) ended up losing 5 of the 6 items I was carrying during some sort of lag. I did not use a siege unit. Starts roughly at 00:38:55.
• NPCs get stuck on props and each other regularly.
• The Summoner has not been replaced in practice (and probably the tutorial and duel_arena).
• Conjurer's root does not seem to work consistently. (This is likely Power Absorption blocking root, and thusly may not be a bug. Graphical confirmation for Power Absorption would be a plus, though).
• Persistants should not give regeneration bonuses to hellbourne/siege.
• Random(?) server disconnects need to be fixed
• Random(?) lag spikes need to be fixed
• Inability to select a class needs to be fixed (rare)
• You can't reconfigure the Y key (used by a new screen by default), except when editing startup.cfg
• Players are still removed from their squad and made the officer of a new squad as more players join late in a match, regardless of the player's wishes.
• Practice mode has no spawn point - if the console is used to spawn as a unit unavailable in practice mode, you will be brought to a spawn map with no available spawn points. User then has to quit practice to fix this problem.
  • A current work-around is to place a spawn portal before using the console command, thus making available a single spawn point.
• All units should be available in practice mode.

Balance Issues

These issues fall somewhat between fixes and a wishlist. Until there's more of an idea of where these issues should be placed, I'm separating them out. I'm sure the discussion page for this article will be full of mostly balance concerns.

General

• Reevaluate the potency per cost and per slot use for health potions.
• Reevaluate the potency per cost and per slot use for both shrines (health and mana).
• The lungs of maliken stamina replenishment may need to be reevaluated.
• Dodge needs some sort of limitation to prevent spamming.
• Dodge should work while running forwards.
• Being able to dodge while holding a ranged weapon might need to be reconsidered to prevent kiting.

Human

Beast

• Hunter's Venomous can still poison a unit that is blocking.
  • To quote S2Fielding (a developer) "This isn't a bug actually. Venemous worked the same way in Savage 1. I'm not convinced this is a balance issue, either." The original quote may be found here.
  • In light of this information, I recommend removing this issue.
• Consider reducing Bat Eye HP by about 40%.
• Towers will fire at Hunters using Hibernate, but do not cause damage. They will continue to do so, even if there are other, more valid targets. Towers should disregard Hibernating Hunters.

Hellbourne and Maliken

(Empty - last issue was addressed in version 1.5.1)

Resolved Bugs/Issues

• Mana cost was added to Blade Throw.
• Hellbourne no longer gain the effect of Maliken items.
• Hunters can no longer disable their melee modes while Hibernating, so it is now no longer possible to walk around in stoneskin form.
• Melee animations now take precedence over taunt animations; they are no longer hidden by them.
• Hunters' Glide Strike damage reduced from 90 to 30.

Wishlist

This list is for anything that users would like S2Games to add to Savage 2. This list should not include filling in gaps for things such as missing voice commands. Only smaller additions such as minor ui features, communication and intuitiveness additions, etc. should go here.

Major feature requests should go in the discussions page for this article. Any features that would have major gameplay implications that the community cannot agree upon should not be listed here. No new units, items, gameplay modes, abilities for existing units, etc. should be discussed here.

General Features

• A polled join feature for joining servers which are currently full. The Savage 2 client would monitor the server (updates every 5-15 seconds) and join when there is a slot open.
• Reorder the minimap layers so that enemies ALWAYS show above any other object.
• Bindable (not bound by default) donate keys in the options menu.
• Allow the skill bar to be reordered again.
• Allow servers to override the minimum players per team and maximum players values set in maps.
• Allow server operators to configure the download rate for unofficial maps.
• Tiered VOIP (as follows)
  • Commander can choose to speak to either all squad officers or all players on his team.
  • Officer can choose to speak to his commander or squadmates.
  • Non-officer squadmates can only speak to squadmates.
• Add the first 3 characters of player names over player portraits in the commander's view (as seen in this post).
• Allow the commander to click on a player's name in the chat display to center the camera on that player.
• Show commander area-of-effect buff placement for players on the ground. This will allow players to see what the commander is doing and cluster-up for maximum coverage.
• Remove the explicit repair key bind, and have builders/conjurers repair automatically when standing next to an under-construction/damaged structure.
• Change the update routine so the user only elevates privileges for patching. Requiring the game to always execute with admin level privileges is poor design from a security standpoint.
• Take advantage of Windows Vista features: integrate with the Games Explorer and provide a 256x256 capable icon.
• Provide a 64-bit Windows build.
• When someone donates gold, their name should be displayed to the comm so he knows who donated. (Lord Naej's suggestion)
• Improve or adjust Tephra Wave and Rot, which are currently marginally useful.
• Consider making dodge speed initially faster, but decrease over the course of the animation, down to a speed of 0 at the end of the animation. This would make dodge more powerful, but also make the user vulnerable near the end of the dodge.

Sound

• The lack of whiz-by sounds for projectiles (to add to the intuitiveness of combat, although this technically means adding a feature for it).
• Slashing, clanging, and thumping sounds for various successful melee hits that are audible without needing them to be hit notification sounds that aren't treated as 3d sounds in the game environment.
• Add sound occlusion so that sounds out of a player's LOS are significantly dulled or outright muted.
• Add either an effect (preferable) or set of sounds for distant sounds (to add to the large scale war effect).
• Make units automatically perform a war cry when engaging in a large group battle.
• The player should hear multiple hit sounds when hitting multiple enemies with weapons and spells which have an area of effect, to feel better the potential power of these attacks and have a better comprehension of what's beeing damaged around the impact point.

Music

(Empty, I'm unsure of what could go here that isn't subjective and that the community can agree on. Please check the discussions page for this article if you have anything you'd like to contribute here - Merc).

Maps

• Many of the official maps need a lot of visual polish so they don't stand out as much compared to the much-higher-quality models for units and buildings. Eden is a major culprit here (see the original map compared to some texture and environment changes and a couple of other things that don't affect how the map plays at all. And this is before a lot of detail work that could be done).

Interface

• Visually highlight player portraits for commanders when the player sends a message to the team. A plea for (de)buffs can be applied faster.
• Visually indicate debuffs on player portraits (perhaps a translucent overlay - something similar to players that can be revived).
• Visually indicate certain abilities on player portraits, such as a shape shifter that has sacrifice activated.
• Allow area-of-effect buffs to be applied to player portraits. The buff will be centered on that player. In conjunction with the above suggestions, this would allow commanders to quickly dispel a debuffed player or armor a sacrificing shifter without having to change the view or frantically locate the player on the field.
• Add a visual indicator for voice chat transmission, such as a small volume meter in one corner of the screen.
• When placing buildings, the building's default angle should be the same as the SH/Lair's angle. On most maps, this will make garrisons and sublairs point in a logical direction by default, and tech buildings will be uniform with the SH/Lair (aesthetically pleasing). Currently, buildings face north by default.
• On the spawn map screen, give the player a reminder of which squad they are on (perhaps the squad list typically found on the left in-game).
• Remove legacy upkeep/income timer from the HUD.
• Make the art style of GUIs across the game more consistent. Currently, the main menu and loadout have sort of a demonic style, the lobby and replay/options/local/etc menus have a parchment-type style, and in-game HUDs have another style.
• Consider adding support for multiple languages (might want to look into exporting most of the text of the game into a strings file (xml another plaintext format is preferred) for easy community translation).
• Consider adding support for alphabetic characters found in foreign languages (i.e. ä ö ü ß etc.).
• Keys that bring up windows (like h for character window or b for building window) should also be capable of closing the same windows.
• Respawning should default your selected skill to skill 1.