After Christmas I like to sit at my computer, barely able to touch the keyboard due to my distended belly, barely able to see the screen because of my beer goggles, and upload a new patch to Smith and Winston.

Well there was this bug report and from that there was a bit of testing and a bit of crashing and soul searching.

When entering the end of level portal some idiot had written some code that deleted the entire world and then tried to delete bits of it again causing the game to crash.



Behold a new build has been born.

Have fun, Merry Christmas and a Happy new year!

dazza.

Whether you're planning to go out and scare your neighbours, let off a bazillion Diwali fireworks or follow the ancient Celtic harvest traditions and sculpt a turnip in to a truly terrifying object (honestly, don't click that link if turnips scare you) we've got some all hallows' eve fun for you!

Behold! free in game helmets that are themed in a silly way and make no sense in the strange shattered ring world that is Smith and Winston! Why are we not charging for these tiny easy to build and add to the game items you ask? Because we are not douche bags we reply in a spooky voice 👻👻👻.



🕸️So 🕸️ scary 🕸️....



Have fun and whatever you are celebrating we hope you have a great time.

🎃 Dazza & Charlie 🎃

PS: The new helmets are already in your Collectables menu, you don't need to find them in the game.

If you played the game and the whole screen was blurry or even wibbly-wobbly like the fire on the right... or if the plants weren't gently swaying like young optimistic teens at a school disco pontificating on whether Britney really did want to be hit one more time then we've got news for you!



It was a cunning plan to remind you that you were playing with OpenGL on an NVidia card. Now that's done we've fixed the bug, I mean wibble.



We also patched a few particles that were naughty and won't be allowed out to play again.

Have fun Exploring and Destroying.

Obviously we totally know what we're doing and nothing went wrong at all in the Steam back end and we didn't have to open a support query and have a massive panic at all... no siree.

Have fun, we hope you like our weird sense of humour and don't forget to use the buddy mode in coop to play with your friends and family... it's hilarious.

Thanks to everyone that gave feed back, reported bugs and said nice things. Every little thing was massive to us and spurred us on through some tough times.



Explore and Destroy

Dazza and Charlie.

We've set the release date for Smith and Winston. It's been a very very long road to get here. Thanks to everyone that has given feed back and encouragement. It really has helped.

We have of course created a little trailer:

https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=A26srWhEuOI&feature=share

So long and thanks for all the fish.

We discovered a pretty weird and quite delightful bug in macOS builds using Metal as the renderer yesterday. It happens on all builds (Windows, Linux and macOS) with all renderers (OpenGL, DX11 and DX12) but Metal looked the best:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-ZZcvWBR3M

If you remember the old days with four color CGA graphics adapters then this is pretty nostalgic :)

For the technically inquisitive: This happened when the engine only gave the shaders 7 lights instead of the mandatory eight and only happened on very rare occasions. So the eighth light in the scene has some other random settings for it's position, color, brightness etc.

We also fixed a bug where we rendered very expensive particle systems when they were offscreen... so yeah, this will help people who were dropping frame rates a little.

Have fun exploring and destroying and we hope your summer holidays are going great.

dazza.

Jupiter Hadley (twitter: @Jupiter_Hadley) made an great little montage video showing Develop 2019 including a little clip of Smith and Winston. I thought you'd like to see it. Lots of interesting games in there that might grab your attention.

We uploaded the final Smith and Winston beta a few days ago. The game is now complete and we'll be "releasing" it pretty soon. We're working on a new trailer video and fixing any issues that players being to our attention.

If you want to wishlist us or even write a review we'd be very grateful. It all helps :)

https://youtu.be/BLR12WGXiNo

Have fun Exploring and Destroying,

dazza

Like a fine wine or soft cheese Smith and Winston makes us dizzy and smells like feet! But you want to know why it's not finished yet?



This is a picture of the VOIDs home. He's a tidy fellow really but he's been stealing all those monoliths for some reason and plugging them in!

We are very close to finishing. We're planning on releasing the complete game early next week but still marking it as beta. Then after a few weeks of final testing tweaking and poking we'll release it to the world so it can stink up everyones refrigerators.

We got delayed by Develop conference in Brighton. We were one of ten games that got chosen from nearly two hundred applicants. It was great fun but quite tiring for two old farts like me and Charlie. Because develop is for industry people we got a lot of crazy feedback but also some really valuable comments on things like the camera and controls that we really wanted to fix. We met up with loads of people we'd seen at EGX-Rezzed and people I worked with over 20 years ago on PSX games and wow that was weird! I wish I had more time to drink and chat but we were working... sort of.




Here is a picture of our stand and yes we did print out little pictures of Smith and Winston and glue them to our monitor :) There is nothing in life that can't be made just a little bit more silly.




This is a picture of Brighton, on the south coast of England. It a lovely old Victorian seaside town. There are quite a few game developers based there. It's only about an hours train ride from London. As with all seaside towns there are a lot of gulls and the big ones attack! Charlie had a whole sandwich taken from his hands while sitting on the beach!

Finally, thanks for sticking with us. We'll get the release ready for next week and you should see Steam happily updating and slowing down your Netfix stream.

EXPLORE AND DESTROY!

dazza.

We are pretty chuffed to announce that Smith and Winston has been selected for the Indie Game Showcase at Develop: Brighton 2019 here in the UK.

Develop is an industry event where developers from all over Europe get together and talk shop. We're very surprised and quite elated that Smith and Winston is one of the 10 games that has been selected by an expert panel. We didn't even have to bribe them with cake! The nine other game are all amazing and well worth a look if you are looking for great indie games to play.

https://www.developconference.com/whats-on/indie-showcase



Charlie and I will both be there running a stand so if you happen to be a developer in Europe... come and Explore and Destroy!

dazza

Everything here is available to download now... so update, explore and destroy!


Spynall Tapp

Where the demons dwell if you can find the secret door at least.



Asteroid

You’ve made it to the surface of the Asteroid. The space ship that the VOID used to gather the monoliths to unleash his power… it’s a bit weird on the giant cube.



These are the final two levels before you enter the Asteroid to face the VOID itself.


Listen, we all know that you hate training levels. But we also know that some people need them. So we’ve added a get out quick door at the beginning. So if you are super l337 hard core haX0r twin stick aficionado then you don’t need to sit through it.




We got an interesting bug report that sometime you picked up a power cube but it didn’t appear in the HUD. After some digging we realised that it wasn’t clear that some flowers give you a coin. So now when you get a power cube an icon appears to let you know it’s a power cube you’ve collected and not a coin.




Speaking of power cubes. You collect them to repair shippy, well at least that’s what she tells you at the beginning of the game. Well now they are needed to power the spinning portal doors. After feedback from EGX we realised that people were just powering through the levels and not taking the time to smell the roses and explore a little. There is a lot to find in all the levels so this is a little hint to chill a bit, destroy a bit more and dig for some POWER!

The number of power cubes needed is written at the top of the door because the aliens that inhabit this shattered ring world are all highly organised and probably have a spreadsheet about these sorts of things.




When you jumped to a new level Shippy told you some useful information about how many enemies you’d killed, how many power cubes you got and all that stuff. Well that was far too nice of Shippy so now she tells you sometimes useful information and sometimes sarcastic information.




Screen SHAKE Shenanigans!

• Screen shake is worked out for each co-op player independently so now, just as you were making that difficult boost across a gap, your coop partner can’t throw a grenade making the whole screen shake.
  
• If the screen was shaking because, say, a large block was moving, and you threw a grenade… well all hell broke loose and the screen shook like a wet dog. That’s fixed now.
  
• If you’ve turned off the screen shake then maybe give it another go.
  
• Better physics on low end machines
  
• Physics uses more cores if you’ve got them
  
• Up debris in options > game > debris

We’ve sped up the loading of levels a tiny bit by being a bit more clever… or less dumb. We no longer build the same model thousands of times per level and just do it once. Thank you for recognising my genius.

Have fun exploring and destroying.

dazza