Sailwind News

* sometime in October

Hi guys, it's been a while since the last news post here. Just wanted to let everyone know that work on Sailwind continues as usual, and the next big update is expected to be ready sometime next month. It will include a major revamp of the economy system - the goal is to make buying and selling trade goods on the market the main way to make money in the game, encouraging the player to plan their routes more carefully and with more variety. The new system will include real time price changes based on local supply and demand, a new UI for tracking prices across different ports, and even local currencies.

I invite you to check out the Sailwind Community Discord, where you will always find the most recent development news and discussions.

Also, I've updated the development roadmap to include some information about the planned transition out of early access and into full release.

Balance Changes
- smoking tobacco now has a bigger effect on your sleep, depending on the type of tobacco
- increased the time it takes for one piece of tobacco to burn out completely
- slightly adjusted the shrouds on the kakam to make more room for square sails

Bug Fixes
- the pipe smoke now correctly follows the direction of the wind on a moving boat
- fixed a bug where some junk and gaff sails would turn randomly as if unaffected by wind, or would not turn at all in some cases
- removed the floating winches on the kakam
- fixed several bugs with winches visible even when no sails are attached to them
- removed the floating forestays on the NPC kakam

New Features
- added pipes and tobacco for smoking; they're available for purchase in the capital cities and several other towns
- more customization options available for the kakam
- sails and other custom parts now add weight to your boat
- junk and gaff sails now reef in the opposite direction (except Al'Ankh gaffs)
- the big ships can now be cleaned in shipyards for a fee

Balance Changes
- entering a shipyard no longer costs gold; you will now be charged the shipyard fee when confirming an order in the shipyard instead
- reduced the frequency and intensity of the water splash effect in calm water to make it slightly more realistic
- increased the range of the mouse sensitivity setting; this means you will most likely need to reduce your mouse sensitivity to match the previous setting

Bug Fixes
- you can now place maps on tables
- your food, water and energy should no longer decrease while in a shipyard
- fixed a bug where disabling control hints in the settings would hide item prices in shops
- your current alcohol level should now save correctly
- various other minor bug fixes

After a long delay and months of beta testing, the ship customization update is finally ready for an official release. This does not mean the new system is bug-free, but it is now mostly stable and fully functional. This update comes with dozens of new sails and various other custom options such as bowsprits and cabins, but more sails and other options will be gradually added over time. Customization for the big ships is also coming sometime in the near future.
New Features
- ship customization is now available for all starter boats: you can install custom sails, change the masts, cabins, bowsprits and other custom elements. Boats can be customized in shipyards in the capital cities (Gold Rock City, Dragon Cliffs, Fort Aestrin). Dock your boat in the shipyard area marked by yellow flags, and speak to the shipyard master to enter the ship customization menu.
- sleeping on your boat while it is moored will now skip time much faster, and you will continue sleeping even when not tired
- added a new painting for purchase on Chronos
- you can now disable the tutorial hints in the settings menu

Bug Fixes
- improved the stability and smoothness of boat physics; boats should no longer shake in an unnatural way
- fixed a bug where square sails would sometimes not follow the wind properly when their sheets were loosened
- many various minor bug fixes

Hi!
It has been quite some time since the last update. This post is here for those of you who were worried about the recent lack of news, to let you know that development is still very much active and ongoing. The next update will the biggest and most technically complex one yet, which is why it's taking a lot longer than previous ones.

This update will let you fully customize the sail plan on the three starting boats, allowing you to choose all kinds of different sail shapes and sizes, and install them in any configuration you can think of, as long as they fit on the mast and don't collide with each other.

You will also be able to do some customization of the masts, cabins, bowsprits, etc. This will also be available only on the starter boats - customization for the bigger boats will come later.

The good news is, the update is now almost done, and an optimistic estimated release date would be in a week, maybe two weeks from now.

In the meantime, if you'd like to check out the upcoming features, you can try the beta branch, where partial sail customization is currently available for testing. As you'd expect, the beta branch contains quite a lot of bugs and a general lack of polish (even more so than the regular "early access" version).

If you're not already on our Discord server, please feel free to join us here:
https://discord.gg/u4C8RQG6X9

You'll always find the latest development updates there, and it's the best place to discuss and provide feedback about the upcoming features.