Windward
Steam Workshop Support
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=545193570
Create mods that change everything about the game -- from adding new quests, ships and skills to changing existing ones... and then put them up on Steam Workshop, sharing it with others -- it's as simple as typing /uploadSteam in chat!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=544587394
As usual, for a more detailed explanation and full list of patch notes, check the writeup on google docs. I will be answering questions regarding modding, how to do this and that, and will create a better guide for it all in the coming weeks based on your questions (if someone doesn't beat me to it, of course!)
If there's enough interest I may even do a live stream where viewers can ask questions regarding how to do something, and I'd explain, show, or possibly even code it right then and there.
But, until then -- happy Halloween, and happy modding!
One Year of Windward!
Well, no matter! Now all of you guys can celebrate by feasting on the changes brought forth by the now-live update including new ships, improvements in questing / trading, adjustable amount of pirate towns, ship stat rebalancing, changes to how ships are unlocked, and more importantly -- a great deal of modding improvements.
Ship customization has reached a new level with the addition of support for colored symbols and customizable pennants. Server admins can upload an assortment of custom symbols and pennants using the new /upload command making truly custom looking factions or creating custom rewards for players via the /createSymbol and /createPennant commands.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=540057846
Better yet, it's now possible to upload entire new ships, easily making them a part of the game without requiring your players to download any mods. Those willing can even replace all existing ships with custom ones set in a completely different era.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=537065620
Those were quite fun, by the way!
If modding is to your liking, definitely check out this update and watch the step-by-step video that shows exactly how to add custom content to Windward.
Git to da choppa!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE40pLt1VLw
As usual, the full patch notes can be found on Google Docs.
Windward sails on Android
Speaking of mobile games, two years ago I launched a fairly simple co-op multiplayer strategy game called Starlink on Android. You can also play it freely in your web browser here. I have been thinking of spending some time updating it to Windward's much more stable net code, adding achievements and the ability to create custom maps, then releasing it on Steam. Do you think adding another co-op multiplayer game to your Steam library may be worth pursuing? Let me know in the comments below.
-ArenMook
Post-Release Wrap-up
There are times when being a lone developer of a project like Windward is a great blessing that makes me giddy with the thought of how clever I am not having to deal with a corporate structure and anyone breathing down my neck. I know how everything works, so I know what to do in order to fix something or add a new feature in the shortest amount of time possible. Then there are times, like actually releasing the game, when I wish I could clone myself a few times over; the times like when I just put up a patch and hundreds of people suddenly ran into a problem that simply didn't exist when I tested everything. I am left running around panicking and frantically trying to track down the cause of the issue and fix it in the shortest amount of time possible without going insane from being awake for over 30 hours straight. On that note, have you ever tried to lose weight? I recommend releasing a game. I lost 8% of my body weight in the first week simply because I didn't have time to eat!
So yes -- fun times!
Well, let's get down to some numbers. The first week of release has seen a concurrent peak of nearly 3500 players, with roughly 15% of them playing online on public servers. One of those servers that had a peak of maybe 25 players throughout all of beta and was deemed "rock-solid" quickly stated having issues once the number of connected players passed the 200 mark, leading me to spending the first few days almost exclusively focused on fixing the server stability. Fortunately that went over well, and by the end of the weekend there were over 300 players connected to the server -- which happened to be running on my own computer. In my home. With a typical household cable modem connection.
Needless to say, I blew through my 500 GB monthly bandwidth cap in about 3 days.
Well, no matter! There were more important things to worry about, like discovering that most players who played online seemed to prefer to play it as an MMO on one densely populated server, rather than spreading out like I thought would happen. Now keep in mind, the game was designed to be a co-op game for LAN parties, ideally meant to be played in groups of 2 to 12 players. I never expected that I would have over 300 of them on the same server; dozens of them in the same regions. In fact, one of the first few days of release there was a Heroic Instance running with over 50 players in it, which was using twice as much bandwidth than the rest of the 200-or-so players combined. Needless to say, player limits were one of the first changes I had to quickly implement.
Another thing that quickly became obvious was that the server back-end was really lacking important administration features -- banning trouble-makers in particular. Yet another thing I had to scramble to implement in the first few days, keeping me away from the one feature that has been bothering me since the first day -- the chat window's lack of scrollable history. With everything else going on I didn't get to implement that one until the second week...
Fortunately as the influx of players started going down, I was able to relax a little and work on features that I felt were missing from release. Among them were the ability to design your own factions, create much larger world maps, and even the most recent one -- the addition of PvP battleground instances.
Hell, I was even able to get a proper night's sleep -- all 9 hours of it for the first time in weeks! Ahh... let's never do this again. Next time -- clones. I swear.
For a full list of patch notes, click here. The patch notes since release are the first 9 pages. Not bad for 3.5 weeks!
See you on the high seas!
-ArenMook
Launch Day: It's A-Boat Time!
Getting to this day has certainly been one interesting experience... From the day Windward was conceptualized as more of a jest at GDC 2012 when I walked up to a certain legendary game designer and asked him a mischievous question to today, it certainly hasn't been a straight run by any means. Some of you may be aware that Windward was actually started in 2012, only to be put on hold due to various reasons. Between the success of a small side project of mine (NGUI) and me joining Unity Technologies for a year I had no time left for poor ol' Windward. Back then it seemed that the game was going to become just another one of my started but unfinished projects that would sit on the back burner and haunt the deep blue depths of my dreams until the end of days...
Well, thankfully that quite obviously didn't come to pass! On the 1st of August in 2014 I simply woke up and decided that it was time to start finishing the things I left undone, and I sat down and looked at Windward's code again. I could continue where I left off... but the 2012 version of the game felt too static to me; too rigid... I wanted something more -- something epic and procedurally generated. I also had to completely redo networking part of it anyway, so scrap it I did.
It only took a few months to redo the game and turn it into a moderately fun playable state, and so Windward launched on Steam Early Access in October last year. The feedback I got from early players reinforced my idea that I was on the right track this time, but also that I still had a lot of work ahead of me. I originally thought that Windward would only need 1 to 2 months in Early Access, if you can believe it. Well, that quite obviously turned out to be very wrong, as here we are 6 months later! Lesson learned... don't make any plans until you get players involved and hear their feedback!
Speaking of feedback -- the feedback I got during Early Access have all been truly invaluable in the game's development. Had I not gotten the comments, suggestions, bug reports and in general just other players to play with throughout the beta process, Windward would be but a shadow of the game it is today.
And so from me to all the beta players: Thank You! You guys are awesome. Enjoy the game, and please continue to offer your feedback!
See you on the high seas,
- Michael "ArenMook" Lyashenko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhASte-REy4
March Wrap-up, release date set
Two days shy of six months on Steam! Has it really been that long? The time just flew by...
Looking back, I originally thought that Windward would be in Early Access for about two months, but listening to all of you offer awesome suggestions on how to make the game better I kept reconsidering and pushing the date back. The "date" itself has never been announced; it was always something that existed only in my head. Well, no more! It's time to draw a line in the sand: Windward will officially leave Early Access on May 12th! (although I fully expect the updates to continue well past that, so don't worry)
And now, onto the look of what happened over the last few weeks.
At the beginning of March there was PAX East. That... was an interesting experience. It started with me and a friend of mine driving from Toronto to Boston, getting stopped at the border, and basically being forced to fork over a thousand bucks just to be able to bring a few computers across. Ridiculous? Oh yes.
Once we finally made it to Boston and figured out how to navigate the city's ridiculously convoluted tunnel system, the rest of the trade show went quite well (pic 1, pic 2). I had 3-4 people helping me out with the two booths I had at the show (the other being Starlink) and both were quite packed with people of all ages, from older gamers with grey hair to young and extremely adorable ones. All in all, Windward was very well received with some players even having entire impromptu LAN parties while there! All in all, high expenses aside it was an excellent trip. I just wish I had more time to do things like this.
Well, moving onto the world of actual development, the past month has been quite busy as well. The majority of updates have been focused on balancing, polish and squashing of bugs, but I did get Windward running on NVidia Shield at 60 FPS! Shield is an Android tablet, in case you aren't familiar with it. Windward for mobiles? Quite possible, it seems.
The most obvious change for returning players will be the redesigned menu system and deeper Steam integration that allows players to open up their local games to their friends without having to host a server.
For players seeking a peaceful, relaxing experience there is now an option to create a Questing / Trading instance in the game. Much like the Combat instance type that preceded it, it allows players to create a private region hand-tailored to their current level, except that there won't be any pirates present. This makes it uniquely ideal for sailing around and earning some gold without having to fight for your life.
The functionality of the game's difficulty slider has been changed as well. Where before it was simply scaling all HP and damage, now it controls what abilities AI ships will get. Above 100% challenge AI will be able to hire allies to follow them around, for example. This way players that wish to increase the challenge can get a more interesting experience without making players handicapped in the process.
For higher level players, heroic instances have been revamped as well. While still very challenging, they can now be done by smaller teams and siege towers found there are now going to be quite a bit more effective against pirates. If you've been waiting to try them, hop onto one of the public servers and team up to give them a shot. The loot will be very worth it!
As usual, if you want to read the full list of patch notes, you can find them here.
See you on the high seas!
-ArenMook
February Wrap-up, Windward at PAX East
Another month of development comes to a close, and with it -- a boatload of polish! Oh yes, I went there!
So what went down this month? Well, let's look over the patch notes, shall we?
The most obvious additions of February will likely be the improved ambiance of the game with the newly animated tree cover and the NPCs that will now talk to you and each other as they sail about. Random amusing banter aside, they may give you hints that will aid your trading, ask for help when in trouble, thank you when you save them and even encourage you to stand fast when they try to save you in turn.
That said, I would say the most important addition lies in private instances. Previously when playing multiplayer the players would be often faced with a world that has already been conquered by others with little to offer to new players who wanted some action. Well, meet the new Instanced Region addition (think private random outdoor "dungeons") -- simply use the Instance button at the top left and you will be sailed away into a private region just for you (and whomever you invite to play with you). And the best part? The instance's difficulty will be hand-tailored to your level providing the optimal experience -- not too difficult, yet also not too easy.
For those on the path of exploration and sailing around, a newly added Diving Suit can be used to salvage shipwrecks found lying about. Players can now recover resources and sometimes even items while exploring. The Sojourn faction, being so uniquely suited for the nature of this work will even get experience doing so. The Diving Suit was actually a community suggestion originally brought forth on the forum.
Continuing on the path of relaxed gameplay, both trading and questing systems have been altered to better reflect distance-based demands and production. The farther away the trade commodity being produced from the town that needs it, the more it will be willing to pay for it. Similarly the farther away the quest's destination, the more the quest will offer as a reward.
Better still, for those that want to enjoy the ambiance or watch their friends play can now simply connect to the game then right-click the player's name in the newly added player list and choose to Observe them. Think "streaming video", without the streaming, or the video! Just watch your friends play in real time, offer suggestions, tips, or commentary as you see fit. And if you're not a fan of being stalked by the paparazzi, fear not! Just go /anonymous. (pro-tip: You can even observe the AI by using the /observe command)
Highly experienced captains may run into elite bosses (Pirate Lords) from time to time. Beware of those, as they will hire allies to follow them around. Speaking of experience, have you ever found the perfect Legendary (orange) item, just to leave it gathering dust as you've gained more experience? Well, now you can upgrade your items by visiting size 10 towns in regions with a higher challenge level than the item you are trying to upgrade. Beware though, doing so won't be cheap!
As usual, you can read the full list of patch notes here.
And finally, if you are coming to PAX East this year be sure to stop by booth 3248 to say hello!
January Wrap-up
Another month of sailing the high seas comes to a close, heralding more improvements, bug fixes and new additions for you to explore.
Improved Steam integration brings forth Trading Cards -- a frequently asked-for feature, as well as cloud-based saves. You can now play on your PC, then continue on your Macbook without missing a beat!
Speaking of missing things, don't miss out on the new 6th faction that was recently added to the game. You won't find it at world creation, but you may find its presence known here and there thanks to the recent addition of liberated towns that lets other factions participate in your conquests alongside you.
Joining this new faction won't be as easy as others, but those who do manage to obtain the purple flag are in for a few surprises. Solani Syndicate, as the faction is called, is essentially an organized criminal organization with their own unique rule-breaking perks that are yours to discover.
Plunder the full set of patch notes below, and don't forget to give your feedback regarding the game's progress on the forum.
2015-01-30
- You can now rename towns again.
- Establishing embassies should now immediately update the world map.
- Added a mod selection window to the start of the game.
- Player characters now get bound to mods used to play them. This means that once you play with a specific mod enabled, you will always need this mod to play with that character. You will be warned before this irreversible binding takes hold.
- When players capture pirate-controlled towns, there is now a chance that they will liberate it for another non-hostile faction instead. For example: a Valiant player captures a pirate town, and instead of it becoming a Valiant town, it becomes a Consulate town. This will add some diversity as well as let players gain reputation with other factions.
- In PvE situations all non-pirate ships now count as one faction for the sake of team balancing. This should reduce lag and keep teams fairly balanced against the pirates.
- Slightly reduced the effectiveness of Diplomacy when it comes to aggro range reduction.
- Flags will no longer be awarded if the player already has them in the vault.
- Path trail will now be visible over terrain as well, not just water.
- Enabled cloud saves.
2015-01-29
- Servers that get removed from the public list will now be immediately removed on clients that are watching the server list.
- Lobby server (used for the server list) will now correctly remove stale servers.
- Hopefully properly fixed an issue that was preventing public servers from reconnecting to the lobby (server list).
- Town icons will now always be on top.
- Unequipping a flag no longer resets the cooldown timer.
- Syndicate now requires players to have at least 50 talent points before offering them to join.
- Added a new skill that will be granted to players after 10 minutes of combat. It’s called I.W.I.N. and I’ll let you guess what it does…
- Added two new quests that you will find among the floating loot.
- Certain quests will now offer items as rewards
- Added /anonymous mode that will hide player’s country flag as well as make them hidden from /who all.
- Spyglass will now provide extra zoom on larger ships.
- 29.1: Trading cards are live.
- 29.1: Improved Syndicate’s base colors a bit.
2015-01-28
- Syndicate players will no longer see “can’t capture anything here” messages.
- Made Windward work on 4k monitors / TVs.
- New players will now always use their faction’s colors until customized.
- Explosive charge should now be usable on a zeppelin that’s not flying.
2015-01-25
- Quest NPCs will now only be invulnerable until the player gets close. After that they’re fair game and players going out of range won’t make them become invulnerable again.
- Poison cloud, inferno and mortar can now all be used outside of combat.
- Reduced the range stat of siege towers at higher levels.
2015-01-20
- Syndicate faction no longer accepts embassies.
- Syndicate players can now always challenge other factions (even if they don’t have a presence nearby), but can’t establish embassies.
- Syndicate faction’s control should now be visible at the top of the screen.
- You can no longer bribe ships if your faction has enough ships on it.
- Captain, Crew and Specialist items will now gain levels as you earn experience. The item level can’t exceed the challenge level of the region you are in.
- Building a siege tower will now complete both the “build a guard tower” and “build a lighthouse” quest, as it counts as both.
- Made Syndicate’s color a little bit lighter so it’s easier to distinguish from pirates.
- Flags will no longer drop for you if you already have that flag in the vault.
- Faction that wins the contest war will now automatically assume control of the entire region.
- Support specialization’s aura’s skill cost reduction will now be visible on tooltips as well.
- AI logic was a bit messed up: they were still updating objectives while in combat.
- AI should now aim water barrels a lot more effectively.
- Faction that wins the PvP challenge will now assume control of the region.
2015-01-19
- Completing a quest will now boost production of a random commodity in the town where the quest was given.
- Delivering cargo will now grant a random quest in the town where the goods were delivered to.
- Guard Tower and Lighthouse building quests should now be available again.
- Offered quests are now going to be less likely to repeat.
- Tweaked the ship’s hull shader, adding some glossiness to make ships look better. Most noticeable with dark colors.
- All factions now have a unique look.
- Added a 6th faction. This faction won’t appear at world creation, and you can’t choose it from the start. You can get invited to join it after doing enough missions for them, however. Note that this faction is a lot more selective than others, so the reputation requirement for it is much higher.
2015-01-17
- Added a theoretical fix to an issue where AI would simply stop doing anything. This is a very odd bug. Unity engine simply stops executing coroutines without any warning or reason. If my “fix” resolves it then I’m going to have to rewrite a lot of code...
2015-01-16
- Fog now prevents capture.
- Added some code to eliminate the player ship duplication bug.
- Minor tweaks to the networking code to improve security and memory management.
2015-01-13
- Permanent PvP setting should no longer prevent stats from accumulating when driving out pirates (for the summary screen).
- You should now be able to steer and accelerate/decelerate at the same time using a controller.
- If the player doesn’t get credit for Edimas, they should now be able to restart that part of the ZPL quest by docking in the same town and right-click advancing the quest as before.
2015-01-12
- 360 controller should now work better with the zeppelin.
- Country flags should now be offset so they don’t obscure the player’s name.
- Added extra checks to ensure that locked worlds can’t be modified.
- Lengthened the respawn timer cooldown that towns get placed on towns after some ship spawns there. Also lengthened the cooldown caused by hostiles being nearby.
- Added some tweaks to hopefully address a couple of minor issues.
Improve buff should now correctly repair buildings when outside of combat.
3 Months on Steam: Please give your feedback!
Windward has been out on Steam Early Access for 3 months now and in that time a great amount of changes have been made, as you can see by visiting the Google Doc -- and at the time of this writing there are 24 pages of patch notes! You can also find a video explaining how easy it is to create a mod in Windward: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC4GiD67SpA
Nonetheless, long patch notes and modding support aside, the game is still under development and will continue to be added to even after its 1.0 release. Which brings me to the topic of player feedback -- without all of your feedback over the course of these months Windward would not be the game it is today, so please continue to voice your opinions on what you like, what you dislike, and what you wish would be different.
More importantly still, I want your honest opinion -- how ready do you think this game is for release? Is it worth the price point? Does it offer enough gameplay? Is it in a state that you would tell your friends about it? And if not, what do you believe would be holding the game back from achieving its best potential?
Please voice your opinion, but keep in mind that setting the release date won't mean "it's done, moving on", but more of "hello world, check out this game!". We all need more victims teammates in PvP, right? :)
If there is anything the game really lacks right now is better exposure to the public, and setting the release date would be one way to help, but I won't do it if the community believes it's too early.
See you on the high seas,
-Aren Mook
Windward News - 12/18/14
The holidays are here, and with them, the stream of updates marches on! There is more to talk about than we can go over without a wall o' text, so we'll just leave you with the astonishingly long list of patch notes since our last update on the 5th. Aren has really outdone himself this time, so be sure to send him tons of hugs. Some cookies and milk couldn't hurt either! We wish everyone a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season from Tasharen Entertainment <3
2014-12-18 - Now Live
* Added a Vault to towns. It’s a private 30-slot extra inventory space that’s shared between all characters on the same Steam account. Use it to store useful items or to simply transfer items from one character to another with ease.
* Item auto-compare will now be much more detailed and will color compared stats red or green to make things easier. It will also show the sum of all stats.
* Certain items (cannons, ammo) were missing some stats.
* Added more variety to which stats can appear on items (within reason).
* AI will no longer use skills on lighthouses.
* Triple Digits achievement is now Four Digits. Same idea: reach 1000 on any stat (used to be 100 before the stat changes).
* Reduced respec cost. Below 10 points it’s simply 1 gold, then up to 30 points it’s 100 gold per point, 250 gold per point until 70 points, then it becomes 500 gold per point. Previously it was 1000 gold per point.
* You can no longer turn off player ships option at word creation if you are not running a dedicated server.
* AI should no longer be getting stuck, and when you get reefed your ship will automatically push away.
* Adjusted sight / attack range of units and towers and made it so that if something is in combat with you, you will also be marked as in combat.
* Made minimap icons a bit more legible and made towers and lighthouses smaller.
2014-12-17
* Towns will now reset their inventory when pirates get driven out, so you no longer have to wait for an hour (or make towns grow) to have their inventory update.
* Pirate raid quest got a bit of love. It should spawn ships in better locations, mark them as quest NPCs properly (meaning a player needs to be nearby to harm them), and will include pirate captains at higher challenge levels.
* Subdue quest pirate will now repair itself, and can no longer be hurt by friendly fire once they surrender. To complete the escort part you can just right-click the source town and send the follower there, same as any other follower. You no longer need to actually go back to the town yourself.
* Diplomacy-based aggro range reduction should no longer affect other things like experience gain range.
* Sight and aggro ranges are now separate, and have both been adjusted to avoid the situation of where something was shooting at players from way off-screen.
* Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause AI to try to endlessly capture something that’s already captured.
* Fix for the bug that was causing AI to circle repeatedly after getting close to their target.
* Persistent server’s configuration will now always be automatically updated by the first updated client. Before it was simply ignoring the server’s configuration and keeping the client’s, but this didn’t account for the case when clients had different (modded) config files.
* Added an indicator visible when first entering a region that shows the region’s challenge level and its associated difficulty.
* Changed the way stationary turning works. It should now be much more difficult to get your ship stuck and to tilt it weirdly when beached.
* Fixed an issue with loot that would sometimes get picked up visibly but would never get added to the player’s inventory.
2014-12-16
* Spyglass will now also offer an extended zoom range at all times.
* All loot is now local to you. It’s no longer shared with other players.
* There will now be a greater variety of pirate ships in the higher challenge regions since top ships are now all useful.
* Zeppelins will now drop loot.
* Added a way to reset the talents.
* Significantly lowered health of all pirate captains.
* Raised Corvette’s hull to 250% (from 200%) and damage to 400% (from 370%).
* Range stat’s effectiveness has been reduced. Everyone was shooting from way too far away at higher levels (and way too quickly), which was making Corvette’s agility much less appealing than it should have been.
* Towns will no longer offer items for sale until the region has been cleared of pirates.
For even more notes, check the community forum here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/326410/discussions/0/626329820743050052/
Enjoy!