TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

The ‘Tiny World’ Game I Didn’t Make At The Weekend

Another Ludum Dare, the competition to make a game in a weekend! Another weekend I can’t really do so! Instead, I worked on Gunpoint. But as before, I’ll tell you what game I would have made. The theme was Tiny World, and my game idea is called… Launch Craft. Continued

Gunpoint’s Release Date

I’m going to stop estimating it. I’m always wrong, as you’ll have noticed, and however much I forewarn you about that, I hate having to change the ETA again and again. It feels like I’m artificially creating a constant stream of bad news for you guys, about a project that’s going incredibly well, is fun to do, and that I’m making quickly and efficiently. Continued

A Snoop At Gunpoint’s Labs

Last week I added two new gadgets to Gunpoint and added test levels for eight of them, to give you a custom-built space to try them out and learn how they work. At the same time, coincidentally, John finished the level art for the labs of the company who make these things. I wanted them to have functional-but-trendy offices above ground, and straight up supervillain labs beneath. The stuff he’s actually produced is way cooler than I’d imagined. Click this for big: Continued

PRESS RELEASE

UNITED KINGDOM – April 1, 2012 – Intense creative re-focussing has led Gunpoint to be re-invented as a 3rd person cover shooter.

“We’re going to make a lot more money this way”, says morally bankrupt CEO.

Making Gunpoint’s Save System

Gunpoint’s current save system is rough, but functional if you know how to use it. The game autosaves every ten seconds, and when you die, a message pops up telling you to press L to load the latest one, O to load the one before, or R to start the mission completely. It’s just placeholder, but it’s close to what I want: you should never have to repeat a chunk of progress you’re happy with, only the bit you actually screwed up. Continued

GDC Talk: How To Explain Your Game To An Asshole

I never went to the Game Developer’s Conference as a journalist, but this year I took a week off and flew out to San Francisco on my own dollar to attend it as a developer. I was mainly there to demo Gunpoint for the expo crowds at the IGF Finalists Pavilion, but I was also invited to give a five-minute talk as part of the closing talk of the Independent Games Summit: the Indie Soapbox Session. Continued

Talk To Me, Be Talked At By Me, And Play Gunpoint At GDC

I’m giving a talk at GDC! It’s part of the Indie Soapbox Session at 16.30 on Tuesday, in Room 2003, West Hall, 2nd Floor. Ten of us will give five minute talks, and mine is called: Continued

Maybe I Should Just E-Mail You When Gunpoint Is Out

I drew up a more specific and honest to-do list at the weekend, and realised Gunpoint is going to be done later than July. I’ve also set up a mailing list called Just Tell Me When Gunpoint Is Out. If you sign up, you’ll get two e-mails now, to confirm it’s your address, and one when the game is released. Continued

Gunpoint Business Cards Render Quality Of Actual Game Irrelevant

I get to go to GDC for the first time this year, to cover it, give a talk, demo my game, and lose an award! I thought I might need some classy-ass business cards to give to all the classy-ass people I’m sure to meet there, so I did these via Moo.com. Details are on the back, on the same scene in Crosslink mode.

From what I understand of business, the quality of your card stock and matte laminate are the primary traits by which companies attract a mate, and beyond that your actual work has little bearing.

New Gunpoint Test Build Soon, Sign Up Here

Update: build sent out 15/02/12, thanks to everyone who signed up. You can still sign up to put yourself down for future test builds.

I’m almost ready to send out a new test version of Gunpoint to anyone who’s around and able to give me some brief feedback. There’s no selection process, just sign up on the mailing list here and you’ll get it in the next day or two:

Also, Gunpoint was just previewed on BoingBoing! Brian Easton played an early build and seemed to really dig it!

Link.

You Can Now Vote For Gunpoint In The IGF

The category we’re a finalist for is Design, but all finalists are also nominated for the Audience award, which is decided by you suddenly very attractive people. If you’d like to help Gunpoint achieve ULTRO FANTASY DREAM, take a sec to vote for it here!

Remember, you’re free to vote for any game, unless it isn’t Gunpoint, in which case you are asked to ignore your own preference and throw us a pity vote. Look how small your character is on-screen! That makes us literally the little guy. Also I’m new at this lol *falls over*.

Eurogamer Gunpoint Preview

Chris Donlan has been playing Gunpoint, and gives it a lovely write up over at Eurogamer:

“The interface is uncluttered and intuitive – you just drag beams of light from the object you want to act as a trigger towards the object you want that trigger to activate – and the whole system’s bristling with opportunities, especially when you start to factor in enemy AI.”

Gamasutra Interview

I am interviewed on Gamasutra! Here is a question from that interview!

How did you come up with the concept?

I feel like a lot of games are designed on the assumption that the player is stupid: a tester doesn’t have the intended experience, so I guess we’ve gotta force him to look at that spaceship crash, lock him in the room until the enemies are dead.

I wanted to make a game with the idea that the player might be smarter than me. Let him think of solutions that never occurred to me in hours of playtesting, and give him the tools to be more creative than I was when I designed this level.

I don’t think that testers are being stupid, I think they’re being defiant. And they’re defiant because the game isn’t letting them be creative or smart or funny, it’s trying to make them have a packaged experience.

So the Crosslink gadget, which lets you rewire any of the electrical things in a level, is my way of giving you some of the designer’s power. It’s almost like a level editor: I restrict some things to make sure it’s a challenge to complete, then I let you design how you want the level to work to achieve your objective. You can be clever, efficient, complicated, funny or cruel.

True PC Gaming Interview

True PC Gaming interviewed me about a bunch of things – both development and general opinions. Here’s one!

What are your thoughts on how the PC gaming industry as a whole are dealing with the problem of intrusive DRM and piracy?

Big companies move slowly, particularly public ones who keep having to point to the past to justify their strategy. To anyone who’s been paying attention, it’s been obvious for a long time that the customer isn’t just king anymore – he’s God. He can do whatever the hell he likes. No-one has the technology to stop him from taking whatever he wants.

Developers that are quick to adapt have focused on making the player want to support them, rather than pissing him off with increasingly intrusive attempts to restrict his access. Slower companies are still trying to get back to a time when people were forced to pay for software, and however safe that might seem, plans that involve angering a God usually aren’t sustainable.

Link.

Gunpoint Now Has Music

After spending more than a week listening to more than 45 submissions for Gunpoint’s music, I’ve decided to go with Ryan Ike’s cool, moody upright-bass style for Gunpoint’s missions.

There were also two particular songs among the submissions that just clicked perfectly with different parts of the game: for the shop and upgrade interfaces you access on your phone, Francisco Cerda’s gorgeous smooth jazz was exactly what I wanted. And for the game’s more sombre moments, John Robert Matz’s mournful and sinister theme tune was magnificent. So Gunpoint has sort of ended up with three musicians.

Coming to a decision was harder and much more time consuming than I expected. I got more submissions for this than for the game’s artwork, and listening to a full music sample takes 1,833 times longer than looking at a sprite. The more I listened and played, the more I liked less prominent tracks that supported the game’s existing atmosphere.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/29664976″]

Thanks again to everyone who did such awesome work, and sorry to everyone I couldn’t use. I was amazed by the calibre of what came in. Obviously I feel terrible turning anything good down, but I still believe in the open submissions process because I’ve been on the other side of it a few times. Both times I wrote short stories for the Machine of Death collection, it was with no expectation they’d get in – I just did it because I enjoyed doing it. I hope that’s the feeling among everyone who’s submitted stuff for Gunpoint, music and art.

You might remember I also did the same thing for the Crosslink noise, and got some awesome stuff. I’ve decided to use Jeremy Watssman’s smooth warbly sound, which you can actually hear in his music submission video here. I’d also like to use the sound Ben Royle submitted for a different purpose, if he’s OK with that: it makes a great satisfying thunk when spending points upgrading your gadgets. Update: he says, quote, “Fuck yeah!”

Gunpoint in 2010, before it had a title. The filename was just ‘grey’, after the background.

Lastly, I talked a bit about how far Gunpoint has come on and asked you guys if you thought I should charge money for the game when it comes out. I was expecting around 90% of you to say I should keep it free, and if it was as low as 80% I’d start to believe it might be worth something. The figure was around 1%. Over a thousand comments, the vast majority of people said “No! Don’t give us a free thing! Charge us money!”

That’s an amazing and confusing response for me, but you don’t have to tell me twice. Well, you don’t have to tell me more than a thousand times. I will obey your command to charge you money for Gunpoint, though I plan to keep it low and provide a substantial free version. I won’t claim anything specific yet since I’d like to confirm how and through whom I’ll be selling it first, in case they have advice or rules that affect it. I’ve talked with all my awesome art and music collaborators and we’ve agreed on a split we think is fair.

Exciting times! Although the music selection process and Christmas took up a lot of the break, I also managed to build a dynamic system for context sensitive music layers and overhaul the way your gadgets are powered and upgraded.

I still have a few levels left to make, and a fair few more I’m not happy with variety- and fun-wise, so I’ve used some of the time away from my PC to plan out new puzzle ideas, come up with some new gadgets and devices, and figure out which ones will be easy to code and add a lot of fun possibilities.