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TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

Hello! I'm Tom. I'm a game designer, writer, and programmer on Gunpoint, Heat Signature, and Tactical Breach Wizards. Here's some more info on all the games I've worked on, here are the videos I make on YouTube, and here are two short stories I wrote for the Machine of Death collections.

Theme

By me. Uses Adaptive Images by Matt Wilcox.

Tom’s Timer 5

The Bone Queen And The Frost Bishop: Playtesting Scavenger Chess In Plasticine

Gridcannon: A Single Player Game With Regular Playing Cards

Dad And The Egg Controller

A Leftfield Solution To An XCOM Disaster

Rewarding Creative Play Styles In Hitman

Postcards From Far Cry Primal

Solving XCOM’s Snowball Problem

Kill Zone And Bladestorm

An Idea For More Flexible Indie Game Awards

What Works And Why: Multiple Routes In Deus Ex

Naming Drugs Honestly In Big Pharma

Writing vs Programming

Let Me Show You How To Make A Game

What Works And Why: Nonlinear Storytelling In Her Story

What Works And Why: Invisible Inc

Our Super Game Jam Episode Is Out

What Works And Why: Sauron’s Army

Showing Heat Signature At Fantastic Arcade And EGX

What I’m Working On And What I’ve Done

The Formula For An Episode Of Murder, She Wrote

Improving Heat Signature’s Randomly Generated Ships, Inside And Out

Raising An Army Of Flying Dogs In The Magic Circle

Floating Point Is Out! And Free! On Steam! Watch A Trailer!

Drawing With Gravity In Floating Point

What’s Your Fault?

The Randomised Tactical Elegance Of Hoplite

Here I Am Being Interviewed By Steve Gaynor For Tone Control

A Story Of Heroism In Alien Swarm

One Desperate Battle In FTL

To Hell And Back In Spelunky

Gunpoint Development Breakdown

My Short Story For The Second Machine Of Death Collection

Not Being An Asshole In An Argument

Playing Skyrim With Nothing But Illusion

How Mainstream Games Butchered Themselves, And Why It’s My Fault

A Short Script For An Animated 60s Heist Movie

Arguing On The Internet

Shopstorm, A Spelunky Story

Why Are Stealth Games Cool?

The Suspicious Developments manifesto

GDC Talk: How To Explain Your Game To An Asshole

Listening To Your Sound Effects For Gunpoint

Understanding Your Brain

What Makes Games Good

A Story Of Plane Seats And Class

Deckard: Blade Runner, Moron

Avoiding Suspicion At The US Embassy

An Idea For A Better Open World Game

A Different Way To Level Up

A Different Idea For Ending BioShock

My Script For A Team Fortress 2 Short About The Spy

Team Fortress 2 Unlockable Weapon Ideas

Don’t Make Me Play Football Manager

EVE’s Assassins And The Kill That Shocked A Galaxy

My Galactic Civilizations 2 War Diary

I Played Through Episode Two Holding A Goddamn Gnome

My Short Story For The Machine Of Death Collection

Blood Money And Sex

A Woman’s Life In Search Queries

First Night, Second Life

SWAT 4: The Movie Script

War Were Declared

wa

So the Demoman and Solider are getting three unlockables each next week, and there’s a seventh weapon that will go to whoever kills the other one more. They racked up 2.7 million kills of each other in the first sixteen hours of this competition, and currently the Soldier’s in the lead. I was trying to remember what I hoped the Demoman and Soldier unlockables might be, a year and a half ago, so I dug it out of the archive.

Both my suggestions for replacement melee weapons encourage and reward mid-air whacking after propelling yourself at the enemy with your explosives. I strongly suspect this seventh unlockable weapon, the one that could go to either class, is a melee weapon that critical-hits if used during or shortly after a rocket- or sticky-jump: it’s niche enough not to give the class it goes to a large advantage, and it’s one of the few areas of common ground between them.

My only suggestion for the Grenade Launcher at the time was its complete and permanent removal. I still hate it, but if I had to take a guess at a viable replacement, it’d be kind of cool to have one whose charges stuck to players and walls, detonating after a short delay regardless of enemy contact. Less useful for direct hits, but more useful for injuring pursuers while retreating. Here’s the others:

Demoman

demoman-creepers

Wee Creepers: sticky-bombs that roll slowly towards nearby enemies, faster the closer they are. If an enemy’s close enough, they’ll follow him at Demoman walking-speed (very slightly slower than most classes). He can only lay four at a time, and they stop for a while if shot.

Why? Almost every situation involving these conjours an entertaining mental image.

Why not? This would allow players on your own team to screw you over by luring stickies towards you. It’s hard to say how much of a problem that would be, because to an extent it would require the enemy Demoman’s co-operation. If you’re close enough to them to lead them at walking speed, he’s probably just going to blow you up straight away.

demoman-goodstuff

The Good Stuff: alternate whiskey bottle which, if not yet smashed, temporarily adds 50 health when doing the drinking taunt – even if it takes him above his usual maximum. The boost decays over fifteen seconds, during which time the Demoman is also immune to fall-damage. The bottle always crits while the Demoman has been airbourne for more than a second.

Why? Bracing yourself for a good sticky-jump, whacking people at the end of it.

Why not… that swingy dynamite he had in the first trailer! I’m only guessing, but I would think that made it too easy to take out an Engy, all his kit and everyone defending him without actually entering line-of-sight. The swinging charge-up animation was interesting, though – I wonder if you had to stay still during that.

Soldier

soldier-lastditch

Last Ditch Digger: broken trench-shovel whose damage and attack-rate are proportional to the amount of health the Soldier has lost.

Why? Apart from encouraging unlikely comebacks, it makes rocket-jumping spade-attacks more effective. And fun things should always be made more effective.

soldier-screamer

Imploder: rocket launcher whose blasts suck people in rather than knocking them away. The actual damage radius is smaller than a standard rocket, but the ‘suck’ radius is larger than either.

Why? Lets the Soldier cluster large groups of people into a tight space for maximum damage, but sacrifices his ability to juggle enemies, keep them at bay or rocket-jump – though some wall-climbing and ceiling-sucking is doable by firing the rockets above you.

soldier-skeetshooter

Skeet Shooter: shotgun which only and always crits on airbourne opponents. Can be drawn, fired and holstered by pressing Right Mouse, whichever weapon the Soldier is currently holding.

Why? If you manage that, you deserve a crit.

Why not… grenades! Hey, good idea! It looks like Valve completely forgot to put these in TF2, despite how fun it is to get killed by speculatively flung munitions bouncing arbitrarily around corners by trigger-spamming morons! Thank God we reminded them!

Why not… heat-seeking rockets! Because aiming highly explosive projectiles to hit within a few meters of a target is still too hard! Not only should the modicum of skill required to play a Soldier successfully be removed, but it should be removed by an unlockable weapon that only the most skillful players will earn. Perfect!

Why not… a rocket-launcher that’s more powerful but has to be reloaded more often? Reloading all the damn time is the least fun part about playing as a Soldier, and dying in one hit is the least fun part about fighting one. Let’s not exacerbate either.

The rest of that post was here. War Were Declared is from, apologies for shakeycam, this.

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