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 to the skies
- New Trailer
July to August - Many concepts
- Modular Engines
- Linkage axles
- Fuel concept
- Helm Concepts
September to December- Game changer
- The crew
- Main menu concept
- Inventory
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.
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.
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...
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.
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
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.
