We’ve turned on save games for coop. So now you can officially continue a coop game you’ve been playing with your buddy.
Coop rebirth
If one of the coop player runs out of lives they will be given a free life with a full shield if you can get to the next level. We’re prototyping an in-level recovery mechanism where a pick up can recover the lost player. We’re not sure if the pickup should come from killing, destruction or just add it to the extra life pickup. Any ideas?
Buddy Mode
We think this is a big one. In buddy mode player 2 can never be killed and if they fall off of the level they get respawned. We wanted a way to play Smith and Winston with our young kids. Hopefully you’ll find it useful. It’s part of our design mantra of always making the player feel powerful.
There are some really interesting tactics that you can use in buddy mode with your kids or less-gamer-like friends and it’s fun and that’s all that really matters in life.
Oh coop partner, wherefore art thou!
You can turn on a little icon that appears when your coop partner goes offscreen. Yeah the levels can get quite confusing after blowing them to pieces and spinning around for a few minutes :)
Language update
We’ve updated all the German, French and Spanish strings in the game with google-translated strings that match the English. They got out of sync with the EGX Rezzed build. Sorry.
No more clever, adjust the slider
We tried to be clever and add a dynamic debris load balancing system and it didn’t work. The code tried to monitor how long the CPU took to calculate all the debris physics and adjust the amount of debris on screen in a super clever way. Well it turns out it was bloody rubbish! So now there is a slider in options > game that you can slide up or down to increase and decrease the amound of debris. It’s stupid, but it works.
Shippy
We’ve added some more sarcastic shippy comments through out the levels because she’s funny and we like adding sarcastic messages when we get a few minutes.
Have fun exploring and destroying.
Update #8 - Coop, shattering and more!
We've releaed a new update to Smith and Winston, so while it's downloading behind your back why not read this and be amazed :)
Shattering
For a long time we’ve had the world blowing up in to tiny voxels. This has been very satisfying for everyone. We’ve made it even more satisfying now by creating big chunks of floor and walls from the world when you blow it up.
Tree Collapse
Cutting the bottom out of a tree is one of the first things that players do. When it doesn't fall a lot of players feel cheated. So now the tree will fall down shattering in to bits in the process. This is oh.. so... good :)
Head over Heels for Coop.
We recently showed Smith and Winston at EGX Rezzed in London. Coop mode went down a complete storm. "Best Game of the Show", "So satisfying" were just two of the many comments we got from all different types of gamers and we're still beaming from hearing all the kind words.
Coop mode isn't complete and there are still a few issues but it's so much fun we want everyone to join in with a friend and blow some stuff up.
One notable ommision is that we haven't got save games working and when a player dies there is no way to revive them just yet but fixes for those are coming soon.
Dig in.
Better Debris
One of the challenges with Smith and Winston is managing all the tiny cubes that fly around. They are relatively expensive to draw (for what they are) and they are very expensive to do the collision for but oh they are so satisfying.
So in this update we've added a more flexible system where if they are getting too expensive we remove them from the scene more quickly keeping the framerate up for all players and allowing players with monster machines to get even more debris!
This is especially useful in coop where people seem to spend most of their time mining out the floor from under their 'coop partner' :)
Mining freeze
At the EGX rezzed show we learned that a lot of users were just using the mining laser to shoot everything, the world and the enemies. This is cool but when someone said "I don't think you should give the player a shotgun from the beginning!" we realised that we'd got the mining laser all wrong.
So for mining the laser hasn't changed at all but now it freezes enemies it hits for a second or so giving the player time to change weapon. Give it a go and see what you think.
Quicker level restores
With all this new destruction we started to notice that when the player died and we have to revert the level back to it's original state it was taking too long. This has been even more optimized now so it doesn't get in the way of your fun.
New title page and new intro movie
No one likes a long boring intro movie but we've made one just to annoy you even more. Trust me it's very short, gives you an insight in to Shippy and why she's a little mad and hopefully as we finish up the single player mode you'll enjoy her more as a character. We're working really hard to making her a richer and more rewarding part of the game.
We changed the title page just because it so cool to see Shippy in space!
Thanks to all our supporters
Lastly but definitely not leastly we'd like to say thanks to all that have bought the game and supported us. We are just two guys making a game. It's completely self funded, we don't have a wealthy backer or publisher and sometimes we need to take on contract work to pay the bills. It's really frustrating but that's life. Once again, thanks for your patience and kindness.
Tweaks
A lot of small things that players have asked for:
Disable ALT-F4 from killing the game.
Better controller detection and actions when unplugged/plugged in
Correct controller names in the HUD
Enemy shots are more controlled, sometimes they fired at weird angles which sucked
Turn on/off Depth of Field (video menu)
Turn on/off Shadows (video menu)
Turn on/off Bloom (video menu)
Enable/Disable screen saver kicking in (video menu)
Thanks for reading all this, I'd forgotten we'd done half of this stuff. The next update hopefully won't take so long to get out.
Have fun exploring and destroying.
Dazza & Charlie
Update #6 - New Levels, Shield is Live and a Rejig.
All of this is live now so update Smith and Winston! ːsteamfacepalmː
Story and Arcade Merged
If you’ve been following along you’ll know that originally there were two game modes: Story and Arcade. With the introduction of the shield (see below) and thus the removal of one shot death these two modes seems a waste of time. So they are merged. The downside of this is that everyone’s saves games are now invalid so, unfortunately, everyone has been kicked back to boot camp and has to start the mission again. The good news is that the mission is much clearer, much more balanced and starts a lot easier because of the shield.
Introductory Offer
Lets be honest no one really likes a cut scene but they are sometimes necessary. We found that people were asking questions like:
Who are Smith and Winston?
Am I playing as Smith or Winston?
Why is shippy such an asshat?
Is shippy the ship?
How many potatoes are there is each voxel?
So when you start a new game you get to see a little 30 second intro sequence which helps to set the scene a little.
Training
The cut scene plops you in to a little training area now where you can learn the controls. We’ve removed most of the introduction Shippy Beacons from the start of the game now. A lot of players just ignored them and Shippy’s voice was just too annoying
Calm down Shippy!
We’ve re-synthesized Shippy so she’s FAR less annoying to the players ears, especially when wearing headphones. So if you’ve turned down the shippy volume… you may want to turn it back up for a bit.
Shiela Sha-poo-pee Shields
We’ve added a shield. This means you can take three hits before losing a life. This makes a huge difference to the game. It’s amazing. We said we’d never do it but in the end, the players were correct, the game is better with a shield.
Bossing the Boss around
Based on the feedback we got about the Chopper Boss we’ve moved him to be the first boss that you see. It’s a better boss, it plays better than bunker boss and this gives us a chance to revisit the Bunker Boss and make him better.
New Levels
We’ve added three new levels to the game… each with distinct eeriness, distinct enemies and one of them is based on my personal addiction to Paprika Pringles.. but it’s probably not clear which.
Anyway, that’s it for now. We’re going to get a build ready for EGX Rezzed in London 4th-6th of April, 2019. If you’re around be sure to drop by and say hi.
Have fun exploring and destroying and thanks for all your help.
be seeing you
dazza.
Prototyping a shield... whadda ya think?
After quite a lot of feedback from players we're prototyping a shield in the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP9q7huXdnc
This is part of a bit of a reorganisation of the game. We're merging "story" and arcade mode in to one to make a better game.
Originally story mode was essentially the same as arcade mode except when you ran out of lives you could continue from the beginning of the level you just died on and your score was reset. Even while typing this I can hear what a complete mess of an idea that sounds like ːsteamfacepalmː When you make a game you often get lost in ideas, pause, look at the idea and realise it's been through some sort of transporter accident and it needs to be humanely killed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIiNbDVQMRE
So now we're planning
one mode of play (and coop of course)
a shield with three slots (so the fourth hit kills you).
shield pickups that recharges one of the three slots
less life pick ups (to give the shield pickup some value)
Finally I can get the spread pickup!
Let us know what you think. The artwork and sound effects are all prototypes.
Do you like the idea, hate the idea, think we're idiots, wonder where all the potatoes hide at night?
Update #5 - Holodeck lessons
Another quick update with some bug fixes and a new BETA area for your feedback.
Hollow Holo
We hear you and agree we're really not happy with the way we use Shippy to teach the player how to play Smith and Winston. It's boring and annoying. Training areas in games are always hard tbh so we're having another go at it.
As part of a brand new intro sequence the player will be sent, by shippy, to a holodeck training area to learn the buttons and get a feel for controlling Smith and Winston before getting stuck in.
The shippy text is all provisional and untranslated and we've not added Shippy's patented rudeness or voice yet
What do you think? Is it a better way to introduce the game? Please give feed back in the discussion area ːsteamhappyː More feedback on the Chopper boss is very much appreciated as well ːsteamfacepalmː
After this the player will see a little cut scene explaining how the ship crashes and then they are straight in to playing the "second" level "Sunshine and Showers"
Bug Fixes
Toilet Sound If you happened to die in a bit of the game with reverb turned on (echoy sound effects etc.) then you were stuck playing the rest of the game like you were in a toilet. Should be fixed now.
White.... so white Some textures didn't render correctly in OpenGL on any platform. This was because we were blending two texture together one of which didn't exist... yeah, that's fixed now as well... oops.
Less chatter, more batter
That's it, have a great weekend, Explore and Destroy and if you've got a bit of spare time jump in the discussion area of Steam or itch and tell us what you think of the holodeck, chopper boss or anything else about the game.
be seeing you
dazza.
Update #4 Live - Chopper Boss of DOOM
We've released a new update to Smith and Wintston! This is mainly a metric ton of tweaks to the first half of the game to make it more balanced and more fun to play. Thanks to everyone that gave us feedback and helped make the game even better.
Features:
Added in the Chopper boss. This is the middle boss in the game. He’s pretty epic (testable via the new BETA TEST menu)
Added a BETA TEST menu so player can test specific features of the game and give us feedback without destroying their Arcade Save games. We’ll be adding things to this menu and asking for feedback a lot we think.
Added a button for twitter and facebook in the title screen
Tweaking/Balancing of lives and ammo based on player feedback and streamer videos
Added disabled story and coop buttons to the main menu so players know they will be there activated at some point :)
After the player dies in a level specific enemies don’t restore so it becomes ‘slightly’ easier to finish the level. The cost to the player is that they will get a slightly lower score because there are less enemies to kill.
Beta Test You can jump straight to the Chopper Boss from the new Beta Test menu option. You can test the boss and give us feedback without affecting your Arcade Save game. We'd love to hear from all players ːsteamhappyː
Engine Changes:
Upgraded BGFX rendering code. At least 10% faster on all platforms.
Added Metal rendering engine for macOS (8x faster than OpenGL)
Added OpenGL rendering engine for Windows
macOS and Windows can select the rendering engine to use in Options > Video
Bug Fixes:
Fix for some of the trophies not being present
Skip cutscene text is now correct for controller, KB/Mouse users.
Ping Game Boy helmet renamed to the correct Pink Game Boi
Chopper based enemies can now be hit by grenades
Mining Laser now shoots from closer to the player so that when right up against the wall it actually hits it. This makes running through the caves and mines a lot easier.
In some levels the player plows through snow or mud, after they died this stopped working, this is fixed.
Some GameObject (enemies, pickups etc) were not restoring after player death
long german and spanish phrases should now in to text boxes
custom in game cursors appear in front of the shippy text.
Once again, thanks to everyone that's played the game and given us bug reports and feedbacl. It's really means the world to us so jump in to the forum and tell us what you think!
Patch 2 to Update #3 available today.
Another patch, this one has bug fixes and a few features. Nearly everything here has been reported by players so a big thanks to everyone that helped.
We're getting close to releasing new levels soon as well ːsteammockingː
New Features:
Tweaks to the game:
Bug Fixes:
Known Issues:
Happy Exploring and Destroying
dazza
Update #3 available .
Today we released a 32MB patch to Smith and Winston fixing a few small issues that have been reported by players and one we noticed in a Twitch steam.
Hot low end action
On lower end machines players are having to turn down the amount of debris. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. So we’ve tweaked the physics a bit to get some more juice from your CPU and get some more debris on screen at 60 fps.
Keeping your head!
Because we are idiots we didn’t think about heads properly. So if you collected one of the hidden Collectable heads in the game you could never switch back to a standard Smith or Winston head. Well now you can.
More text… or space for it
Some of the shippy text when you’re at the crash site didn’t fit in the little shippy box. We know no one is going to read this text but we really want you to be able to ignore all of it properly, in it’s entirety with aplomb.
No dead flying!
When you were lying flat on your back, shot, wondering why you even started exploring this cursed ring world of DOOM you could press the boost button and fly up. This wasn’t very useful to you and in many ways it was quite funny but NO… STOP IT…. you’re dead ;)
No more equality
If you pressed the equals key (‘=’) you seemed to randomly warp around the level… even to places that you can’t get to normally. We use this debug feature to quickly test new areas of the level and you were never supposed to have such powers because we just can’t trust any of you naughty people can we? Look out for this feature accidentally being re-enabled because “we are idiots” ;).
No more HOME
Another oversight was that pressing the HOME key brought up a very useful debug window with loads of wibbly buttons and sliders and gizmos and yeah, we’re idiots, that’s not for you. Even I don’t know what most of those buttons did.
Glyphs?
A glyph is a fancy word for one of the letters in a font. We cleaned up the glyphs that represent the controller buttons for PSX and XBox controllers so they are less… poopy.
Happy Exploring and Destroying
dazza
Update #2 is live
Earlier than promised (by only a day) we've released the second update to Smith and Winston. Of course we're really excited to hear what you guys think of the new levels including another secret level! Can you find it?
Get lost in the ancient underground temples but watch out for the killer space slugs. They take a lot of hits to kill.
Get up high and survey the landscape, jumping to the left of me, enemies to the right and here I am stuck in the middle with... is that a weapon power up down there!
When you've spent the evening shooting, plundering and exploring why not take a trip to the Chalk and Flowers level. The sun is setting, the birds are chirping and the blossoms are blossoming. There's loot to be plundered here but it's not where you expect.
Of course this release comes with a hosts of bug fixes including a lovely crash bug that we've been hunting for a few years, an AI bug where they just jumped off the world for no reason and a sound bug where enemies would explode forever deafening everyone for one hundred miles. Thanks to everyone who reported bugs and gave feedback on here, Reddit and itch.io.
Wishlist Smith and Winston or just check back here for info.
There will be more news about steam soon. If you buy the game on itch.io, we'll give you a Steam key when the game releases on Steam. We did intend to release on Steam this week but we've run in to a bug with Achievements and we don't want to release a buggy annoying game to you.
Explore and Destroy.
Update #2 update
"How are we doing with the next update due on the 6th of December" I hear you ask, well I'm glad you asked because it's going really well.
Update #2 is going great and we're on track to deliver it a few days early!
With this update you really get in to the core of the combat, every level but Chalk and Flowers has got some really challenging and time consuming to design combat. It's great fun, a little bit challenging but not too much, you're still in the first half of the game after all.
The new levels are enigmatically called Bridge over Nothing, This Seems 'Nice', Deep Down Again, Back to the Daylight and "Chalk and Flowers".
