itch.io

Hi BorisZv, We're not on GoG, the game was rejected by their curators because it was too niche!

Thanks for the bug report. If you move it to an Ext4 partition it will most likely work. There  does seem to be a problem with 64 bit filesystems. It's on the list of things to fix.

Oh and all copies are DRM free, on all platforms.

(PS: I deleted your other post, hope you don't mind)

cheers! We think it's pretty cool :)

Hello, This is dazza from Execution Unit, we make Smith and Winston, a voxel twin stick. I know how hard it is to work with voxels you've really excelled at it. Great work, keep it up :)

You did! Your plan to work your way up the games industry to get on to the panel worked ;)

Seriously though, thanks for your support.  👍

At the top of the game page there is a link to download the game, click that and there should be an option to "Claim a Steam key". Let me know if you have any problems.

have fun, dazza.

oh that's good intel on the boss, that explains something I've noticed. The panda helmet bug.... bah, I thought we'd fixed that :) Thanks for letting us know and we're glad you're enjoying it so far :)

Yay! Thanks nervenbuendal.

Thanks :)  As it happens we're working on this right now: https://twitter.com/executionunit/status/1111733007403094016

the reason it's not in the game is that it's too buggy to give to people although it's getting close. If you happen to be at EGX Rezzed in London next week we're showing a coop build there and watching for more bugs :)

We've had a lot of great feedback from the Linux community and it's been a pleasure to port the game across :)

And this is why we are indiegamelover-lovers :) Thanks.

I've reported a bug to FreeDesktop.org, hopefully this will be resolved soon: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109754 I'm nit 100% sure if it's a radeon_dri bug or a packaging bug but we'll get to the bottom of it. Thanks for your patience.

oh dear, this is a proper mess isn't it? I'm sorry it's not working for you. My Xubuntu is on Mesa 19.1.0-devel, LLVM 7.0.1 and I'm getting the assert as well. Annoyingly my Radeon R9 380 isn't fully supported by Gallium3D and I only get a few limited resolutions which is making this hard to debug (I usually use the amd-gpu proprietary drivers). I'll do some more digging today and maybe get in contact with the BGFX developers to see if they have an hints on a work around.

Thanks for your patience with this. Do you happen to remember which version of  Mesa etc. you used when it was working?

I'm getting this in Ubuntu as well when I install the open source drivers for my Radeon card. Two things that worry me is that the 19.1 .0 release of Mesa is flagged as a "development release" and package maintainers seem to be building it without NDEBUG defined (so asserts can be triggered). I'm not sure there is anything I can so about this I'm afraid, can you roll back to the previous version as the release notes mention? https://www.mesa3d.org/relnotes/19.1.0.html

We're working toward a new release in the next few days and after that I'll dig a little deeper and see if there is any work around I can put in the engine. The new release does include an updated BGFX (graphics) library so it might just magically be fixed but I'll do some more digging. Thanks for being patient with us.

thanks, I've checked through the Mesa bug database but I can't find any bug like this for 19.1, only 18.1.

Hi nervenduendal,

Could this be a Mesa 18 issue? has mesa changed recently? What version are you running.

(sorry for the late reply, I didn't get an email from itch).

Hi nervenbuendel,

Looking at the information you provided last night it looks like you were pressing "Continue Arcade Game" in the main menu? If that's the case can you send me your preferences file please? You should find it here:

/home/stephan/.local/share/ExecutionUnit/SmithAndWinston/userprefs

If you could email it to me at dazza@executionunit.com I'll see what's up. I don't think this is Linux specific.

Hi nervenbuendel,

Sorry it's not running for you. I've just reinstalled the latest version on Ubuntu and I'm not seeing this. Can you run the game from the terminal with the parameter -console:

/home/stephan/.config/itch/apps/smith-and-winston/SmithAndWinston -console

this should make the app print a lot more information. If you could paste the output here or email me at dazza@executionunit.com whichever is easiest for you.

Thanks for your help.

Ahh yes, Thank you for clearing that up.

I've added a bunch of Steam keys to the itch.io backend so you should be able to request a Steam key now. The itch docs say:

Keys will be distributed to a purchaser when they first click the request key button on their purchase page.

but I'm not exactly sure what that means! Can any one see this button? I'm guessing it's in the My Purchases section?

oh wow, thank you leafo and thanks for a great platform to deliver games on and interact with people. It's been a real pleasure using itch.io

Hello everyone.

We've just opened up Smith and Winston, our twin stick metroid style explortation game to first access.

https://executionunit.itch.io/smith-and-winston

We would really love any feedback from players across Windows, OSX and Linux. We're including the first three levels of the game at the moment and we've got regular releases scheduled for every 3-5 weeks until March, 2019 when we release.

So if you love voxels, twin stick, metroid or us... come and join in.

thanks for reading and happy gaming.

17th Feb 2019

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.

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.

22, Jan 2019

Fixes

Added material slots to Butterflies and insects (will now light properly)

Fixed gun effects as some of these weren’t working properly

Gameplay Tweaks:

Set some pick ups to not restore (things like, keys and cubes etc will not restore as you do not lose these on death)

Selective enemies do not restore when killed

1_1

Removed redundant particles

Level 1_2

Fixed hole in wall in lava section (thanks for BagleMageTV for finding this check out his stream on https://www.twitch.tv/videos/370202746)

Added some lighting around the hidden helmet in the lava levels

Level 1_1

Made some adjustments to 1_1, after watching playthroughs, to make it easier/less frustrating.

Moved the first 2 islands further apart, Making it more encouraging to use the red key, (rather than just jump over to the crab combat) this also has the knock on effect of if the player dies at the first crabs they don't re-spawn all the way at the beginning (as they have used a portal by then).

Added more land mass under air pick ups, it was a bit cruel before :slightly_smiling_face: asking players to use dash and jump to get the air pick up (for the first time) and then get them to land on a tiny island (it's a lot more forgiving with more land under both air pick ups, makes it easier for players to practice). It's also easier to get back up if you fluff it.

Moved the weapon pick up and ammo/beacon up a bit ( makes the smg more obvious) as they were mixed up with the find the hidden portal beacons (hopefully this should make this a little clearer to the players)

Made the collapsed bridge jump a tad easier ( a specific complaint)

Put some particles round the stone cubes you push down the hole at the end (to make this a bit more obvious that this is part of a puzzle)

Added another gate between the crab combat and the shooting aliens, problem was before the logical route before would send the player to get the gun and then into combat but if they died fighting here they would respawn right back before the crabs. So putting a gate in that route will respawn the player closer.

1_1a

Adjusted Secret section (Pink Rocks) Made one jump a little easier and reduced the height of some of the stone stacks

Added some extra lives (as there was only one before)

Lowered height of raised vegetable beds so bullets dont keep hitting them

Added extra gate shield and guardian

Caves

Added a life into this level

KNOWN ISSUES:

* long german and spanish phrases don't fit in to text boxes.

* custom in game cursors appear behind the shippy text.

2 Jan 2019 - Update #3

This is a repeat of the information in the blog postso if you've read that you're good to go.

•  Fixed fly forever ceiling bug - turns out that if you were in a cave with an invisible ceiling you could fly forever and basically scoot across all the lava and enemies that we deliberately put in the way to make the game hard. Very naughty of you so we've fixed that!
• We tweaked the elite enemies so they aren't SO hard to kill. They basically had really high health and soaked up way too many bullets.
• Reworked the bunker boss as it was too hard and actually became a bit tedious. We don't want that so we've removed a stage, slowed down the enemy spawning and reduced his health a little.
• Added sound effects to doors and lifts in the early levels.
• In Deep Down Again we reduced the fog a little as the enemies were too hard to see.
•  Fixed Proximity mines sometimes reappearing after death but invisible.
• Fixed Proximity mines camera shake so it doesn't feel like you're going to spew.
• Fix for the player flying/hovering forever. If you flew up and as you were about to reach the floor you dashes and the next frame there was a certain type of voxel you would fly/hover forever until death.
• Fix a bug were rebuilding level collision/models occured multiple times because dazza is an idiot. (helps low end machines a lot).
•  Removed some annoying debug prints that slowed down windows builds a bit.

Sorry for not upating this for Update #2, I completely forgot.

18 Oct 2018 (2) - CRASH

• quick fix for crash reported to us by a lovely fella.
  

18 Oct 2018 - Bug fixes and tweaks

• [linux] build now works on Ubuntu 16.04 and distros using glibc 2.23 and up
• [osx] set the min os version to macOS 10.9 (upped from 10.8)
• fix a devilish memory leak in the particle system that  caused major slow downs over time especially on Windows
• tweak level 3 so that after jumping in through the first portal you weren't immedietly shot, sorry about that ;) Bit harsh.
• tweak the particles in the crash site (first level) to not make peoples machines crawl so much or their GPU fans to cry.
• added actual artwork from an artist for the collectable heads and not the horrendous coder art MetalDazza inflicted upon all of you.
• tweaked pretty much all of the gun and bullet particles to clean them up a little bit (what Charlie means by that is instead of 400 particles covering 30 pixles, it's not 100)
• fixed a roof 'puzzle' in level 3, as in it was too easy and you all cheated :P
• slowed the bullets on the Gate Guardian because Charlie thinks they are too fast because he's not as leet as MetalDazza
• Depth of field opened up a little bit because apprently players need to see the enemies and bullets!

Lots of these fixes only exist because of the brilliant feedback from players. Thanks to everyone who reported bugs and  to everyone who just said the game was fun. It's you guys that keep us motivated and not just watching day time television.

13 Oct 2018 - Linux launch fixes and Story mode

• [linux] remove dependency on libsndio which came in from libSDL
• [windows/linux/osx] remove libcurl dependency. Lib curl was used to report analytics to an analytics server during early play testing. This is no longer needed nor desirable. It shouldn't have made it in to the public release (even first-access) so we apologise for that. No data that could be linked to an individual was ever posted. Just information like "a player finished level 2 in two minutes".
• Loading or starting a new story mode actually starts a new story mode and doesn't just hang like a dufus

10 Oct 2018 - Some OSX fixes:

• fix for OSX version intermittently getting slower and slower due to OpenGL issue
• fix for Playstation DS4 controller issue on OSX.

9 Oct 2018 - part 2:

• actually include all the head collectables in the build!

9 Oct 2018:

• fix for being able to change controller/keyboard mid game
• added names to the first three levels so that save games appear correctly named
• removed legacy music
• fix for loading an arcade mode save game
• fix for loading an story mode save game
• can view collected heads and change your head in game (pause menu)
• shippy help box now anchors to the bottom of the screen and doesn't get in the way of combat so much