TOM FRANCIS
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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

Here I Am Being Interviewed By Steve Gaynor For Tone Control

Gone Home writer/designer Steve Gaynor interviewed me for his podcast on the Idle Thumbs network, Tone Control. In it, I guess we vaguely cover tone at some point probably, but also: Continued

Heat Signature: A Game About Sneaking Aboard Randomly Generated Spaceships

I can now show you what my space stealth game is really about! As long as I don’t get spotted like three times in a row right at the start of this video. Watch that first if you care, if not, here’s the summary. Continued

Werewolf And The Logic Of Lies

I played Werewolf for the first time tonight, a game you play with just a few scraps of paper. I’ll explain what it is and the specific setup we played at the same time:

There were eight of us, seven played and Kim ran the game. She hands all seven of us a folded piece of paper that we look at and keep to ourselves. Written on it is our role, which will be one of the following – numbers in brackets are how many people are assigned that role. Continued

Game Design: The Non-Stick Plan

Thought I’d take a break from programming talk to get into game design, and how I approach it. I am aware my mug is ridiculous – it’s an old GTA III promo one.

I’m bad at shutting up once I get talking about this stuff, so I’ll also summarise the basic points in this post. Not all of this stuff is in the video and not all of the video is in this – good summary Tom. Continued

The Grappling Hook Game, Dev Log 6: The Accomplice

I’ve decided to let people play this prototype of my Grappling Hook Game at IndieCade East in New York next month, partly to force me to focus on what it really needs to be a playable game. After a week and a bit, here’s what I’ve got. Continued

A Story Of Heroism In Alien Swarm

This is great, people keep linking me to things I wrote ages ago and forgot about, so I can link them here. Snowskeeper Ferenczy points out this, something I wrote very fast after a game of Alien Swarm one night that seemed necessary to report.

“Our main gunner, a Special Weapons guy with the Minigun I coveted, ran ahead and got himself infested. I had my medic gun out, but he panicked, ran away, bumped into a door and exploded in a shower of slithering facehuggers. We all just kind of looked at each other.”

2013

This has obviously been the best year of my life. When working on Gunpoint got tough towards the end, and the amount of sustained effort required exceeded my intrinsic determination, I made a guilty little list of all the things that releasing a game might improve about my life in the best-case scenario: Gunpoint motivation.txt. Nothing on it was anything like as good as the reality. Continued

The Grappling Hook Game, Dev Log 5: Wrapping And Slacking

I’m working on the grappling hook game again now, and I’ve got the rope wrapping nicely around things, going slack when it should, and even making sounds. In this video I show you how that looks, then – with fair warning – get into how the code works.

Sounds from freesound.org
Retract noise: eelke
Grapple impact noise: taylorsyoung

One Desperate Battle In FTL

The podcast I am party to, the Crate and Crowbar, now has a forum. On it, Gunpoint artist John Roberts has started a thread for tales of people’s in-game adventures, starting with a good one of his own about FTL. And someone else mentioned an old story of mine from that game. I don’t think I ever linked it here, so I will now:

Heat Signature, A Stealth Space Game About Temperature

Here’s the first video of Heat Signature, a temperature-based space stealth game I’ve been making the last two days. It’s about sneaking up on ships while keeping your ship cool enough to fool their sensors.

So you can jet around an infinite galaxy super fast, but your thrusters generate heat, and enemies can detect that from far away. The closer you want to get to them, the cooler you have to stay, and the more precise you have to be with your thrusters. And to take them out, you have to physically clamp onto their hull and shut down their systems.

GHGC is still my main project, I’m just taking a break from the brutal process of learning Unity to make something quick in Game Maker, where I already speak the language. How far I take this depends on how the next few features work out.

Risk Of Rain: The Huntress Dies A Subtle Death

Made another video with the Huntress in Risk of Rain, this time with audible audio. She’s awesome.

Assassin’s Creed 4: Treasure Island

Black Flag is really satisfying. Followed a treasure map, explored an island, shot a barrel.

Assassin’s Creed 4: Pirates Without Boarders

I tangle with a strange ship my men refuse to board, leaving me to somewhat sneakily assassinate the crew by myself.

Risk Of Rain: Acrid And The Mystery Boss

More of the randomised RPG-shootery thingy, this time as my favourite class: acid beast Acrid. And I meet a boss I’ve never seen before.