Sou'wester Winds cover
Sou'wester Winds screenshot
Steam
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Sou'wester Winds

Development Summary March - July 2022
Hey there! In this summary I will show you what I was working on in the past months and what you can expect to come in the future.

Summary




The new Website is online!


Now finally we have a proper official website where you can get a more complete picture what the game will be about. If you did not already, then please check it out! https://souwester.voronoistudios.com/


Creature Concept Art


Here is a first look at one of the fearsome creatures that will live within the clouds. As you can see below he is only one of many creatures you will encounter in Sou'wester Winds.



Biom Concepts


First a big thanks to all Patreons, thanks to them I can now comission people from the community to do such awesome concept drawings! It is always so exciting to get an idea from my head into something others also understand.

CRYSTAL WASTELANDS (Official concept drawn by SubQuest)



As you travel higher and higher with your airship, you will come across darker and darker clouds. Within the almost blackish stormclouds, there are some really unique islands which hold some very valuable resources...

To validate the process I tested the biom temporarily in the upcoming Landscape module for MOENTO.


Additionally here is a little treat for you guys, a fan concept by one of our comunity members for the...

MOSSY FORESTS (Fan concept drawn by Britzilla)




Very early look at the music side of things


This is a very early draft for one of the ambient tracks for Sou'wester and I think we are definitely going into the right direction. But what do you think? Maybe for some context, this track is made by using many different layers I can fade in and out. To showcase them all, I just added them as the track goes on. But in game they will be added or removed depending on how intense the current gameplay is. My goal was that the track is very atmospheric but with a touch of sci fi.


Tech-Upgrades


Hey look, I just found some TECH-UPGRADES.
Jet and Grapple are a really awesome combination, the Jet upgrade has just enough force to cancel out gravity so when combined with the momentum from sprinting or grappling you can achieve quite the air maneuvers.
Ps, pls ignore the glitchy grappling wire, seem to have a bug there...



Experiments with Clouds














Weapon System Rework




Other Stuff


The Shipbuilder is now nearly fully implemented again, I also updated some of the visual clues along the way. You see now more clearly if something can or can not be placed.


Worked on the electrical connections and made it work with my new input logic. I only used a helm in the demonstration as it was the only 2 axis Input device that is set up yet. On the other hand it also perfectly showcases the flexibility of the electrical connection system.


Behind the scenes


[expand type="details"]
Personal / IRL

First of I would like to remind you all that I'm basically doing all this as a one man show at the moment, while still working nearly full time as an engineer. So in the past I was able to dedicate around 1 day of work per week to all of this. Whenever possible I also dedicate my weekend working, so that's all fine for now but with the newly gained fatherhood I will not want to sustain this grind. Enough personal stuff for now, I think you get what is going on; the limited time is getting more limited. But never the less I will use any remaining time to push forward this project!


Studio Name

As some of you might have noticed as of the 1. April I rebranded "bblessed gamestudios" to "Voronoi Studios". It was indeed not an April fools joke! I'm very excited about this change and have set up the new website and also dealing with all the legal stuff behind the scenes. I don't regret it in anyway so far and I'm excited about the possibilities it will enable us in the future.


Game dev / Playtest

We have now surpassed the 3 year mark, since the project was initially created! It was an awesome journey so far and I was able to professionalize my coding skills in this time significally... Which also means that some of the old code is a hot mess! And this leads us to the biggest time investment lately, I decided to start over with a completely blank canvas and carefully refactoring/reimporting only the code that is actually needed. I'm very happy with the progress I'm making with this, so much so that I did not need to cancel the playtest announced in the last blog. It was significally smaller than I initially planned though. But I can tell you that it was a very wise decision, I'm way faster now working on new systems and the old systems are magnitudes more reliable now! Last but not least also keep in mind that Sou'wester is not my only game, it is important to me to also keep MOENTO maintained and updated regularly and I'm also part of a dev team for a not yet revealed game.
With that all said, thank you, the community, very much for the journey we had so far and I'm excided of what lies ahead.


[/expand]
TL:DR fatherhood + studio creation + refactor = not so much "new" work to show. The playtest was not canceled but was held in a smaller scale. Due to the mentioned fatherhood you might see me post some more comissioned work, which was made possible due to our awesome Patreons.


Last but not least, thank you very much for reading!

Join Discord

Development summary January - February 2022
Ahoy! I have some exciting news to share with you guys, so let's get straight to the point!

Summary




Playtest!



After nearly a year we finally had a playtest again. The main goal of the playtest was to allow dedicated fans to help me test stuff, find bugs and give feedback in general. You can find a video of the stream over on Youtube in case you want to see what we did.

First flight




Inventory and Main menu UI


Here's another main menu concept for you guys, some things have changed since last time so let me know what you think about it!












Widescreen support



I'm a big lover of widescreen setups, so you can bet I'll make sure my game supports it properly! No hacky FOV changes, no in-game UI that is way off to one side or even worse; stretched. None of that, if everything works out it will function out of the box.

Character customization & Grappling UI


I reworked the crosshair to better show your grappling state and also finished up the character customization.


Survival Playtest


You missed the last playtest? Fear not, the next big playtest is already planned! It will show some first parts of the survival mechanics I have planned. If you have any ideas or suggestions in this regard, then let me know over on the discord. With that all said, here is the next playtest event to mark in your calendar:

Happy Holidays - Development summary July - December 2021

The end of the year is nearing and on this occasion I want to take the time to tell you what I was working on the past months. I'm also happy to announce that early next year, we can finally continue with the alpha tests. The dates will be announced on our discord.

Summary




A new look


In the last dev summary I explained the direction change, the steam page was now updated to reflect that change. We also got a new temporary trailer for the game, until the more extensive one is complete, which will feature some of the footage of the upcoming alpha playtests.


July to August


Modular Engines



The concept is that the engine assemblies will consist out of 3 main parts: Engine, gearbox and a prop. Additional attachments can be added to further modify the stats of the engine assembly. The engine and prop can also be stacked to a certain extend to multiply some stats. This is just a rough concept and all of the models shown in the picture are only for a rough reference.


Linkage axles



These functional axles will allow you to "move" rotational power to certain areas of the airship. For example you might not want the engine to be exposed on the outside of the hull as they can get damaged by shooting enemies. These axles will allow you to have the engine inside the ship and "move" the power outside to the props.


Fuel concept



Your engines will need fuel to run. These pipes and tanks will allow you to have a centralised fuel system as this might be safer then just having the tank exposed on the outside...


Helm Concepts



Alot of work is also gone into creating some concepts and ideas for the interaction with the ship.



September to December


The crew



Meet the crew. Taz, Ari and Jed will be the main 3 characters you are going to interact with in your playthrough of Sou'wester Winds and I'm thrilled to finally announce them to you. A lot of thought has gone into them and this is not all, you can even talk to them over on my discord in their #the-cave channel! So make sure to visit them and see what they have to tell you...


Main menu concept


This is a first look at my draft for the new main menu. I love the transitions, the UI itself is really only a placeholder at the moment, but I think you get the idea what I'm going for. 😄 And yes the transitions can be turned of/shortened in the settings if a player wants that.

Inventory


The base of the Inventory is now working as well
as the hotbar. Different weapons as well as the
multitool can be selected and used.
I also added some dummy enemies/resources
which can be shot at and will spawn some items
to pick up. The damage numbers are a mess at
the moment and I will rework them heavily.



Shipbuilding reworks and multiplayer


Rework Nr.5


The final and last rework of the save system is finally nearing completion .😅 One of the main features is the complete separation of data and visuals. This allows me to make multiple "visualizers" of the same blueprint, in the same game and even on different clients. And that is also the second main change; it is now finally multiplayer capable












Multiplayer capability


Last but not least I was able to test the multiplayer capability of the new buildsystem, I'm very happy at how it feelt and as it seems all changes where correctly shared over the network.




That's all for now, thank you very much for reading until here, you are a hero!