Hi everyone, it's been a long time coming but we've finally released on Itch.io and Steam. We are in Early Access at the moment but we've just added update#3 and are well on shedule to release fully in March. We're a small team, there's just the two of us, myself and a programmer called Dazza. This really has been a labour of love, especially as this is pretty much the fourth year of development (Not full time though) and we're really happy to have got this far.

What is it? I hear you ask, well, Smith and Winston is a voxel-based twin stick shooter with a focus on exploration. With fully destructable hand crafted levels and fun puzzles. Along with engaging combat with a variaty of enemies and bosses and an assortment of items and achievments to collect. We think its a lot of fun and from feed back with players, they agree.

You take on the role of Smith or Winston (or both as we have local co-op planned), two hapless adventurers, as you explore a shattered ring world and uncover its secrets, fight invading aliens and prevent the impending doom of the star system.
Only you can save the world from the evil that's approaching and perhaps ultimately the galaxy itself... or not.

Also if you have any questions please ask away

I thought I'd mention a bit about our engine, we're not using either Unity, Unreal or any off the shelf engine but our own proprietary engine. While we initially built a proof of concept in Unity a change to voxels quickly showed up that programs short comings (Unity's a great package and you can do some amazing stuff in it but its not optimized or intended for voxels)
Our engine known as BSEd has been built from the ground up by Dazza, the other half of the team, over the last 4 years (it’s on build number 2.8.4.4.6.2 at the moment, so its been through a few versions), and having used it for nearly that long I can attest that it's a pretty sweet engine and editor.

So what are the advantages, well its built from the ground up to be a voxel engine and editor so for this application its quick (Unity and Unreal can do voxels but they're slow rendering them and we have a lot of voxels in our levels) it’s made it easier to port it over to Linux and Max without too much of an issue. It’s much more tailored to our games needs and Dazza knows everything about it and can change what he need when he needs to.

The Big disadvantage is that it take a long, long time to build, test de-bug etc and there’s been a lot of blood sweat and tears shed but looking back I think we can say it was worth it

If you have any questions we'd be happy to answer them.

Another update, this time #4, getting close to release now

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Update #4 Live - Chopper Boss of DOOM

We've released a new update to Smith and Wintston! This is mainly a metric ton of tweaks to the first half of the game to make it more balanced and more fun to play. Thanks to everyone that gave us feedback and helped make the game even better.



Features:

• Added in the Chopper boss. This is the middle boss in the game. He’s pretty epic (testable via the new BETA TEST menu)
• Added a BETA TEST menu so player can test specific features of the game and give us feedback without destroying their Arcade Save games. We’ll be adding things to this menu and asking for feedback a lot we think.
• Added a button for twitter and facebook in the title screen
• Tweaking/Balancing of lives and ammo based on player feedback and streamer videos
• Added disabled story and coop buttons to the main menu so players know they will be there activated at some point
• After the player dies in a level specific enemies don’t restore so it becomes ‘slightly’ easier to finish the level. The cost to the player is that they will get a slightly lower score because there are less enemies to kill.

Beta Test
You can jump straight to the Chopper Boss from the new Beta Test menu option. You can test the boss and give us feedback without affecting your Arcade Save game. We'd love to hear from all players



Engine Changes:

• Upgraded BGFX rendering code. At least 10% faster on all platforms.
• Added Metal rendering engine for macOS (8x faster than OpenGL)
• Added OpenGL rendering engine for Windows
• macOS and Windows can select the rendering engine to use in Options > Video

Bug Fixes:

• Fix for some of the trophies not being present
• Skip cutscene text is now correct for controller, KB/Mouse users.
• Ping Game Boy helmet renamed to the correct Pink Game Boi
• Chopper based enemies can now be hit by grenades
• Mining Laser now shoots from closer to the player so that when right up against the wall it actually hits it. This makes running through the caves and mines a lot easier.
• In some levels the player plows through snow or mud, after they died this stopped working, this is fixed.
• Some GameObject (enemies, pickups etc) were not restoring after player death
• long german and spanish phrases should now in to text boxes
• custom in game cursors appear in front of the shippy text.

Once again, thanks to everyone that's played the game and given us bug reports and feedbacl. It's really means the world to us so jump in to the forum and tell us what you think!'

Update #5 - Holodeck lessons

Another quick update with some bug fixes and a new BETA area for your feedback.
 

Hollow Holo

We hear you and agree we're really not happy with the way we use Shippy to teach the player how to play Smith and Winston. It's boring and annoying. Training areas in games are always hard tbh so we're having another go at it.

As part of a brand new intro sequence the player will be sent, by shippy, to a holodeck training area to learn the buttons and get a feel for controlling Smith and Winston before getting stuck in.




The shippy text is all provisional and untranslated and we've not added Shippy's patented rudeness or voice yet

What do you think? Is it a better way to introduce the game? Please give feed back in the discussion area More feedback on the Chopper boss is very much appreciated as well



After this the player will see a little cut scene explaining how the ship crashes and then they are straight in to playing the "second" level "Sunshine and Showers"
 

Bug Fixes

Toilet Sound
If you happened to die in a bit of the game with reverb turned on (echoy sound effects etc.) then you were stuck playing the rest of the game like you were in a toilet. Should be fixed now.

White.... so white
Some textures didn't render correctly in OpenGL on any platform. This was because we were blending two texture together one of which didn't exist... yeah, that's fixed now as well... oops.
 

Less chatter, more batter

That's it, have a great weekend, Explore and Destroy and if you've got a bit of spare time jump in the discussion area of Steam or itch and tell us what you think of the holodeck, chopper boss or anything else about the game.

be seeing you

dazza.

Smith and Winston has been polished, tested and tweaked and we’re ready to leap out of early access with a full release on the 27th August. Its been a long hard slog but we’re almost done and we both think we have game that we can be very proud of.

Smith and Winston is the culmination of four years of work, a brand new engine, editing tools, numerous design documents and a bucket load of ideas, we’ve evolved from a simple twin stick shooter to a full blown space adventure, with exploration, puzzles, enemies to defeat and a whole lot of things to blow up!

Available on Steam to purchase or wish list, or if itch.io is more your thing you can get it here on Itch.io too.