GUNPOINT

Tiny Design

Tiny Design is a good blog about tiny design choices and why they were (probably) made. A lot of them are things you might not consciously notice, which made me think that there may be others you still haven’t consciously noticed. So here’s one you might not have noticed in Gunpoint! Unless you followed its development, because I tweeted about it 5 years ago. Continued

Gunpoint Is In The New Humble Indie Bundle!

I’m drunk to announce that Gunpoint is in the Humble Indie Bundle 12! Best of all, you get it no matter what you pay. No! Best of all is what else you get if your generosity stretches to the princely sum of ten dollars:

• Gunpoint, I just said that
• Gone fucking Home
• Papers fucking Please
• Prison fucking Architect!
• Luftrausers!
• Hammerwatch!
• SteamWorld Dig!
• What!

What is not a game, this is just an alarming selection of stuff. And for the first time ever, there’s also a $65 special edition that comes with a load of physical goods like:

• A T-shirt featuring all these games!
• A vinyl record with a song from each of these games – in Gunpoint’s case, The Five-Floor Goodbye.
• A floppy disk! I don’t know what’s on that!
• A manual! I don’t know what it says!
• Some badges, or pins if you’re American!
• It comes in an actual box!

This has been in the works for a loooooooong time, and it’s only thanks to the hard work of the guys at Abstraction that we have Mac and Linux versions of Gunpoint to make us eligible to be in one. I’m particularly delighted to be in this one, with such extraordinary company (two BAFTA winners!), because the biggest upside for me is the sheer number of people who’ll hopefully get to try our game. And when Gunpoint is nowhere near the headliner, lots of those will be people who might never have tried it otherwise.

Gunpoint Mac And Linux Ready For Testing

Update:

The game is now out on Mac and Linux!

Old post:

The fine folks at Abstraction have finally got Gunpoint working well enough on OSX and Linux that we’re ready for you guys to give it a try and see what breaks.

If you already own Gunpoint, right-click it in your Steam list and go to Properties. Under the ‘Betas’ tab, choose ‘maclinuxbeta’ and ‘OK’. The game should update.

If you don’t already own the game but would like to help test it on Mac or Linux, add yourself to this mailing list: if I can, I’ll get some time-limited beta keys to let you guys in too.

If you find any problems, post in the Mac or Linux support forums to tell us about them! Tell us as much as you can about your system, what you were doing, and what happened.

Caution! The Mac and Linux versions are in beta, so I don’t recommend buying the game yet if that’s what you’ll be playing on!

To make sure everyone has the latest fixes, the beta is Steam-only. When they’re ready, the Mac and Linux versions will of course be available DRM-free for people who bought here or on the Humble Store. And buying it from anywhere at any time on any of these three platforms means you own it on all three.

Gunpoint Patch: New Engine, Steam Workshop, And More

Our big Gunpoint patch has just gone live on Steam! It converts Gunpoint to a whole new engine and adds Steam Workshop, so you can see all the awesome new missions people have been making in the level editor. They are nuts. We’ll make a version of this update available for non-Steam users as well, but obviously Steam Workshop support only works in Steam. Here are the major changes:

• New engine, implemented by Abstraction Games. Should fix many technical issues and make the game run faster for everyone, and it’ll enable us to develop Mac and Linux versions next.
• Steam Workshop added, for browsing and sharing user-made levels. Yes, we listened to the 1,779 post petition you guys started even after we’d already announced we would do it.
• Option to turn off swearing. Up to you whether this makes “Grow a ####ing #### and shove it up your ###” kid-safe.
• Reconfigurable keyboard controls.
• Vertical sync option. I didn’t know we needed this, but the folks at Abstraction added it and now the animation is at least 23% more beautiful.
• Level editor. The level editor has been in there since launch, but some people still ask for one so I’m just going to keep announcing I’ve added it until everyone knows it’s there.
• You can now place multiple elevators in a level without it crashing. That’s more than I could do when I was making the game, so I expect your levels to be at least twice as good as mine.
• If you have any technical troubles with the new version, you can still use the old one by going to Properties > Betas and selecting ‘oldversion’. Post your issue on the forums too, so we can fix it.

It’s also 75% off for 48 hours! That’ll end 10am Pacific Time on 19/06/2014. That discount applies to all editions, too, so you can upgrade for $2.50 or £1.50. And we reduced the UK and EU prices from the Steam defaults to better match their USD equivalents.

Get it here!

Header image is a screenshot of Breakin 1.2, by [NL] Omgertje.

Beta Testing Steam Workshop And Gunpoint’s New Engine

Update: whether you join the beta or not, you may get a Gunpoint update that wants to install some standard installery stuff: a particular vintage of DirectX, VC++, OpenAL. The new engine needs to make sure these are all there, and they can only be turned on globally, so everyone gets ’em. Won’t interfere with anything, but it will fix the no-music issue some might have had with the new beta.

Short version

We’re nearly ready to release an update for Gunpoint that’ll add Steam Workshop support to let you share your custom levels, and hopefully fix any remaining technical issues people are having with the old build. Continued

The Gunpoint FAQ

People ask me more questions about Gunpoint than I have time to individually answer, and my silence is starting to feel like metaphorically pushing their faces wordlessly away with the palm of my hand, slightly muffling the latter part of their question. Continued

Gunpoint Half-Price Sale, Edition Upgrades, And Trading Cards

Short version: Gunpoint is half-price for two days, you can now upgrade between editions, and we’ve added trading cards. Here’s a video explaining all that:

Continued

Gunpoint: What I’m Working On

To keep you up to speed, here’s a breakdown of what I’m working on at the moment:

1. Fix the last few Gunpoint compatibility problems

I fixed a lot of bugs pretty quickly in the first four patches, but the last ones left are tougher. Most of them aren’t mistakes in my scripting, they’re fundamental incompatibilities between the engine I used and certain PC configurations. So fixing them means porting Gunpoint to a new engine, and exactly how we do that is a big, complex, important decision for the future of the game. Continued

Gunpoint Recoups Development Costs In 64 Seconds

I just finished Gunpoint’s third patch yesterday, and a lot of what I need to do next requires outside help. So perhaps I can finally take a minute to tell you how it all went? Continued

Gunpoint Patch 3 Is Live On Steam And Humble Store

I’m still working hard on Gunpoint, and our third patch in two weeks just went up on Steam. I’ll update this when the Humble chaps have it up also. Details and future plans!

Update! Now live on Humble Store too. Continued

Gunpoint Patch 2 Now Live On Steam And Humble Store

Update: now live on Humble too – grab it again from the link you got when you bought.

As promised, I just made a second patch live that should address most resolution/screen related issues. Here are the notes! If you bought from this site, I’ll update this post when the new version is available to download. Continued

Gunpoint Patch 1, And Ongoing Support Plans

I’ve finished Gunpoint’s first patch and made it live on Steam this morning. Here’s what it fixes! Continued

Gunpoint Is Out!

After three years of working in my weekends, Gunpoint is out! Try it first, then if it works OK and you like it, buy it below!

What are these fancy editions?

They’re fancy! You can get all three from Steam or from here, and you can upgrade to any of them later. Here are the details!

Gunpoint: Special Edition

• Gunpoint: a 2D stealth game about rewiring things and punching people.
• The Soundtrack: includes all of the game’s noir-inspired spy music in high quality MP3 format.
• Developer Commentary:
  when enabled, you’ll find little sprites of Gunpoint’s developers on
  every mission. Talk to us to hear a little about our thinking behind the
  design (Tom), the art (John), and the music (Ryan). Caution: shooting a
  developer while he’s talking ends his current commentary track. This
  kills the developer.

Gunpoint: Exclusive Edition

• Gunpoint: a 2D stealth game about rewiring things and punching people.
• The Soundtrack: includes all of the game’s noir-inspired spy music in high quality MP3 format.
• Developer Commentary:
  when enabled, you’ll find little sprites of Gunpoint’s developers on
  every mission. Talk to us to hear a little about our thinking behind the
  design (Tom), the art (John), and the music (Ryan). Caution: shooting a
  developer while he’s talking ends his current commentary track. This
  kills the developer.
• The Making Of Gunpoint: a
  40-minute video feature taking you through how Gunpoint developed from a
  one-room test game to what you play today. Featuring Gunpoint’s
  designer playing his earliest prototypes for the first time since they
  were made, to great personal embarrassment and shame.
• The Prototype Pack (Windows only): play
  snapshots of Gunpoint’s development at 9 different stages, including
  cartoony programmer art, the first conception of the hacking system,
  many scrapped levels, and overpowered gadgets we later cut. For
  hopefully obvious reasons, we can’t give technical support for these.
• 4 Exclusive Tracks: bonus
  pieces produced specially by Gunpoint’s composers for this edition,
  mixing the game’s noir style with electronic influences. Since they’re
  not used as background music in the game, our composers took the chance
  to be more adventurous with these tracks.
• The Secret Beta Access List (Windows only):
  adds an option in the game menu to sign up to our Secret Beta Access
  List. If and when future Suspicious Developments games are developed,
  we’ll sometimes give secret beta versions only to the members of this
  list.

Special Edition Extras

If you already have the base game, you can buy the extras from these editions separately:

Exclusive Edition Extras

Note! The Exclusive Extras don’t include the Special Extras, they’re separate.

Have some facts!

• The main story takes most people about 3 hours to play through once.
• You can replay any mission you’ve already completed with whatever
  gadgets you currently have, to try to earn different ratings for
  avoiding violence, kills, noise, witnesses, etc.
• All editions come with the level editor, which is now integrated with the Steam Workshop if you’re playing on Steam.

Thanks so much to everyone who’s already bought it. I have been hurled across the room by your generosity, crushed against the wall by your enthusiasm, and stamped into a broken heap by your support. It’s the good kind of heap.

The Gunpoint Soundtrack, And Upgrading Editions

There are three different editions of Gunpoint, the two fancier ones coming with proportionately more bonus stuff. Lots of people have asked if it’s possible to upgrade from one to the other, after purchasing. It will be! I don’t know yet if the system will be ready for launch, but I want to allow it and both Steam and Humble Store say they can and will support it.

One of the extras in the Special Edition is all the music used in the game in MP3 format.

One of the extras in the Exclusive Edition is that, plus a huge load of bonus tracks Gunpoint’s three composers have put together. In some, they remix each others’ tracks from the game; others are all new.

If you’re not going to get the Exclusive Edition, or you want the tracks in fancy audiophile FLAC format, or you just want to support the composers specifically, you can also buy this full version of the soundtrack from Bandcamp!

There’s a tracklist and samples there, you can pre-order now, and it’ll be released at the same time as the game.

Everyone who worked on Gunpoint gets a percentage of Gunpoint’s revenue, but I also made sure our contracts let everyone keep the rights to their own work – including the right to sell it themselves, independently of me. So if you buy the soundtrack separately, all of your money goes to the composers.

Help Me With Some Final Gunpoint Testing!

I’ve just made a new build of the Gunpoint demo live on Steam, and I could do with some people to put it through its paces. Make sure I’ve fixed what I tried to fix without breaking anything else.

If you’re up for it, here’s what to do! Continued