Hello Pioneers,
This month marks 6 months since Sailaway: The Sailing Simulator launched into Early Access! It’s been so exciting to see how much people enjoy Sailaway and we’re so incredibly grateful to everyone who has picked up an Early Access copy, given feedback and helped us make this the best sailing simulation it can be!
We had ambitious plans for improvements during Early Access, perhaps too ambitious for our one-man development team. As you can probably tell from looking at our Development Roadmap, although Richard has made significant progress, we are still working on some BIG features that unfortunately mean we will need to stay in Early Access a little longer.
We’ve already implemented a number of features to bring the oceans to life including more ambient sounds, Seagulls, Dolphins and Whales, better real-time weather accuracy and more buoys, lighthouses and markers. Improving the accuracy of the coastlines and refining heightmap data will improve on this even more and is our focus at the moment.
The heightmap data in particular is taking a lot longer than we anticipated, as Richard explained in his latest developer blog. We are importing ENC charts to improve our 3D model of the earth further, but since the world is a really big place and the resolution is as small as we can make it, the amount of data is immense and takes more time than we thought. Once this import process is complete it should make our data far more accurate! Hopefully you can already see the improvements in the US coastline after Update V.0.9.024.
Further race improvements are planned and we are looking for new servers to house Sailaway. Being a persistent world means that Sailaway needs A LOT of data and our old servers, although good, weren’t created with the current number of players in mind. It’s a great problem to have, but not one we expected to encounter so quickly!
We also have a number of community members testing our race creation tools, you can already play their races in the Races tab under ‘Player Created Races’.
As you know there are now five boats in the current version of Sailaway: the 38′ Cruiser, Mini-Transat, 52′ Classic Yacht, 52′ Cruising Catamaran and the brand-new 50′ Performance Cruiser! We have plans for more and we’re currently working on the next addition...
Right now work focuses on tracking down and eliminating small performance hiccups, reducing memory usage, bug fixing and improving the overall stability.
The hot-key system has now been in place for a while but we’re continuing to test this and working out what tweaks would improve this based on your feedback. Oh and lastly, controller support has been on our wishlist of features for some time and work will start on this as we approach full release.
We’re planning for this extended Early Access period to end early next year, so it’s not too much longer to wait. We really believe that this extra time is just what Sailaway needs and will allow us to release into V1.0 with a truly special sailing sim!
We also want to take the time to let you know what Sailaway will not be. We’ve seen a lot of discussions about survival mechanics, career modes and other features in the Steam Forums but these do not line up with Richard’s vision for Sailaway. Richard has laid out his vision below.
Note from Richard: Sailaway is a sailing simulator that focuses on the weather, the weather conditions and sailing itself. I created Sailaway to be a tool to spread my passion and knowledge of sailing to others. What is it not about is life on board with fishing, mending sails or dealing with water and food rations. Nor did it aim to bring a detailed replica of all the coasts, harbors, marinas and lagoons. The world is a big place and it's surface largely consists of water. The vastness of this water and the atmosphere that it creates it is where Sailaway's challenge lies. Sailaway grew from the desire to sail the world's oceans. To experience the weather systems and ocean currents. To be able to undertake adventurous voyages that most people would probably never do in real life. For some the reason is the lack of time, for others the lack of experience and, for most, a lack of funds. A virtual sailing simulator brings these experiences within reach of everyone. To a certain extent of course, because nothing can compare to the real thing! Not everyone is a weathered sailor with many miles at sea behind him or her. There are people who have never sailed in their lives and people who do know how to sail but want to learn more. For these groups there are tutorials and there will be more of those in the near future. For more experienced sailors who are interested in racing or short-to-medium distance sailing or cruising there are official organized races, user organized races and the ability to sail together on a boat. And finally the long distance sailors. (I count myself among them even though I never sailed further than a crossing of the North Sea.) The long distance races like Vendée Globe, Ostar, Mini Transat or the Jules Verne Trophy are what captured my imagination and in the future one of these races, or a trip like it, will certainly be available in Sailaway. There are preset routes in the form of challenges in Sailaway and of course the weather and currents are there to face.
Now we have a question for you: what would be your top 3 new features or improvements we could add to Sailaway? Please share them in the comments. :)
Keep in mind that during early access, you will encounter bugs and although we know they’re frustrating, please be patient while we address and fix what we can around the new feature development. We always do our best to fix and update any major issues as soon as we can and we hope our update history shows this.
Again, thank you all for your support for Sailaway since Early Access launched!
Happy sailing!