TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

Suspicious Developments announces existence

BATH, UNITED KINGDOM – January 24, 2012 – UK game developer Suspicious Developments today announced that it exists. The news marks a major upturn in the firm’s previously disappointing existence results, and a year-on-year existence increase of divide by zero error.

“No-one could have foreseen this,” said company director Tom Francis, shortly before the result. Francis controls 100% of the company’s shares, beating its second largest stakeholder Sylvester McCoy, who controls 0% and is not aware the company exists.

“I don’t know who you are,” McCoy said.

Suspicious Developments headquarters broken into

BATH, UNITED KINGDOM – January 21, 2012 – The headquarters of UK game developer Suspicious Developments were broken into last night by the company’s own director, Tom Francis.

Continued

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.

Discovered In 2011: Boss

Boss is the evil West Wing: a political drama about a powerful figure concealing a degenerative illness, but one in which no-one is likeable or trying to do the right thing. It’s still about smart people working hard to do their job well, they’re just terrible, terrible people with horrible, horrible jobs. Continued

Gunpoint Music Submissions Update

Thank you so much to everyone who’s sent in samples for Gunpoint’s music! It’s been exciting to sit here listening to all this awesome work. Some people have asked for a) a deadline and b) a bit more guidance. I mentioned Monday on Twitter – I’d like to extend that to Friday the 23rd of December, since I won’t have time to go through everything thoroughly on a weeknight anyway.

As for b), I don’t want to get too specific about genre or style, because the great thing about this process is that people are always surprising me with things I wouldn’t have thought would work, or just hadn’t considered at all. I will say that you need to put it over the gameplay video, and if your music doesn’t ever change in response to what’s happening in the game, it’ll probably lose out to something that does.

When you’re done, uploading it to YouTube and posting a link in the comments here seems to be the best way to get it out there. E-mailing me a download link is fine too though. I’ll see it either way so you don’t need to do both.

To help out as much as I can, I want to pick out some to he submissions that have come in so far and point out specific things that are awesome about them. This isn’t a best-of list, I won’t decide stuff like that till all the submissions are in. There are some great ones I haven’t included here because they’re just generally good, or because the thing they do well is already covered here.

C418 worked on something called a Minecraft? I am stunned and immensely flattered that he made a sample for Gunpoint, and stunned and immensely excited by how good it is. A few people on Twitter said things to the effect of “Contest over!” – that’s not true. I’m serious about the open submissions idea – if John Williams, Jeremy Seoule and Jesper Kyd sent in samples too, I’d still listen carefully to every submission anyone put their time and effort into, and give them all a fair chance.

The two things I love most about C418’s take are a) the clever transitions between indoors and outdoors – not only adding an extra layer when you go inside, but muffling the music when you leave again. And b) the beautiful crosslink music, and the natural way it builds onto the existing track – I get excited thinking about how switching in and out of crosslink could feel like composing your own music on the fly.

HyperDuck’s take is a great example of subtle game music, focused entirely on atmosphere and tone. There’s a fantastic heartbeat pulse when you pounce a guy, which fades after just the right amount of time. And the tinny muzak in the elevators is hilarious.

A really stylish old-school take, gorgeous upright bass. There’s a huge upkick when you’ve completed your objectives – it might be too dramatic for some levels, but it’s a really cool idea to give the player a “Let’s get out of here!” vibe without actually imposing a hard time limit. It’d also be great for when a gun goes off – at which point there really is a time limit.

This is just one track at the moment, but I love the mood of it, and the way it can turn from an anticipatory, suspenseful tone to an exciting action one smoothly.

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

John also made a video, but it’s the full version of this song he wrote for the menus that I want to highlight. It’s a gorgeous, lonely piece of brass, the kind of sad, sinister track you’d hear in one of LA Confidential’s darker moments. If this started playing when you died, I’d probably sit and listen to it before reloading.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/30169493″]

As Ben says himself this piece isn’t really a soundtrack, I’m just including it here because wow, what a great track.

Apologies if I haven’t mentioned yours – it doesn’t mean it wasn’t awesome, because that list would be very long. Thanks again for all your hard work, and sorry if you asked for a reply and I haven’t sent one – my backlog is so huge that I may just have to come to terms with seeming rude to some people. I’ll try to keep up with posts like these to give as much feedback and detail as I can.

The Game I’m Not Making This Weekend: Red Snow

It’s Ludum Dare this weekend, a regular competition to make a game from scratch in a weekend. I don’t have two days spare, but I do have two hours and a cup of coffee, so I’ll pitch you the game I would make if I could.

The theme is decided by a vote, and ‘Alone’ won. However, ‘Kitten’ was also in the final round. It got more down-votes than any other theme, but I can’t help wanting to combine the two. Here’s my idea:

Top down view of snowy tundra. You are a badly drawn TINY KITTEN that scampers towards the mouse cursor, kicking up snow and leaving messy pawprints. It’s a zero button game: all you do is move the mouse.

If you stray far from where you start, you’ll run into a villager or two. They stop when they see you, and run to the north if you approach. They’re faster than you, so you can never catch up to them.

The further north you go, the more villagers you’ll see. They all run away to a village to the north, but if you get close to the village itself, they’ll flee that too. If you chase them, you’ll reach a cliff edge. The villagers will stop at the threshold, but if you come close enough they’ll throw themselves over to get away from you.

The other side of the ravine is a sheer wall of ice, in which you see blurry reflections of the villagers you’re chasing into the chasm. But your own reflection is wrong: far too big, dark and spiky. A rough silhouette of that more monstrous shape appears over your usual badly-drawn kitten avatar, and gets stronger the longer you spend in the presence of your reflection. Eventually, the kitten fades away entirely and you see yourself as the monster you are.

After that, there’s a small chance you’ll encounter smaller villagers who can’t run as fast as you. If you get close to one, you automatically pounce on it and rip it to shreds in a spray of blood, and you’re unable to control yourself until you finish devouring its remains. After that, any time your cursor is directly over a villager, you’ll accelerate to chase it down and eat it. The more you eat, the faster your hunting speed.

If you do kill a villager, there’s now a chance that the villagers you meet in future will throw rocks at you before running away. The more you kill, the more will try to fight you. The rocks knock you back very slightly, so if more than a couple are pelting you, you can’t catch up to them and have to run away.

After the first few, rock hits will make you bleed steadily, leaving a trail of blood in the snow. The bleeding stops if you eat a villager. If you don’t stop the bleeding, your monstrous image starts to fade and the kitten returns, still bleeding.

If you leave the villagers alone, or you kill them all, you’ll end up alone in the snow. After a while alone, your beast appearance fades and you start to see yourself as a kitten again. The screen gets darker as night closes in, and the kitten starts to tremble and turn blue. Eventually, its scampering slows to an unsteady crawl, it lies down, goes still, and is lost in the dark blue snow as darkness closes in.

It’s Like 16 Ropes When All You Need Is A Bomb

Fact Friday: this was Morrisette’s original lyric until Warner Brothers demanded it be changed to spoons and knives because of “What.”

More On Making Music For Gunpoint

In the trailer I put up last night I said I’m open to suggestions for music for Gunpoint, then claimed there’d be a version of that trailer without my voice here on the site. There wasn’t! There is now!

So if you’re interested in doing music for it, I’d love it if you could add what you think is appropriate to this version of the trailer.

I’m mostly open-minded about what the music should be like, but here are a few thoughts I have on it:

• You’re a spy, and it’s a stealth game. It needs to be quiet most of the time – possibly silent. I don’t think constant music is necessary, certainly nothing too busy or active.
   
• Music can be triggered by in-game events, but obviously you need to know what specifically it should respond to – it can’t just be “Action” without a clear idea of what defines that.
   
• Gunpoint’s set in the near future, with some silly gadgets, but also tries to be noir-inspired wherever possible. So electronic stuff is cool, and lonely sax is cool, but by no means compulsory.
   
• A light touch is good. I’d rather people not notice the music than notice when it doesn’t fit.
   
• I’m personally not wild about chiptunes. I’m open to it, of course, but I’ve never heard anything chiptuney that feels like a good fit for this style, to me.
   
• The flow of the game will probably go:

  Mission: leaping around a building, looking for a way in, avoiding detection.
  Mission: Pouncing on a guard or two – sudden bursts of violence that’ll usually be contained and go back to quiet sneaking.
  Mission: reaching your objective, getting what you want.
  Mission: escaping – not usually to a time limit, but there’s generally a quick way out.

  Dialogue: debrief with a client, they react to your missions, you choose dialogue options.

  Menus: buying new gadgets, upgrading gadgets, reading briefings and choosing your next mission.

  Dialogue: briefing with a client, you choose dialogue options, ask questions.

  Then back to a mission.

If Gunpoint ends up being free, I can’t pay you anything. Sweet deal, I know! If we do end up charging for it, and you end up doing the music, you will get a share of it. I should warn, though, that it’ll be a very small share – I have to prioritise the stuff the game wouldn’t work without. Basically, for God’s sake don’t do this for the money.

Gunpoint Trailer: Let Me Talk You Through Some Ridiculous Solutions

It’s been eight months since the first Gunpoint video, and it looks rather different now, so I’ve made a new trailer. I’ll talk you through the basics and then some of the most complicated solutions I’ve come up with, just to give you an idea of the stupid stuff you can do when you mess around with Crosslinking.

Something I forgot to mention in the blurb at the end: if you write about games and want to write about Gunpoint, please do get in touch and I can send you a playable build next time I have one ready for previewing. It should be pretty soon now. Also always up for answering any questions and stuff. People who write about games are probably the best people on Earth.

In the video I ask if you think Gunpoint seems like it’s worth money. If you have an opinion, let me know in the comments here! I am trying to figure out the right balance between being a) nice b) fair and c) not an idiot.

Beheading Gmail’s New Look

Gmail’s new look is optional – FOR NOW – in the same way that Twitter’s was – FOR A WHILE THERE. And like Twitter’s, it’s sort of vaguely pretty but twice as awkward to use for all of my most common tasks.

I just found a script that lops off most of the wasted headspace that scrunches all the e-mails down, even in Compact mode, and it’s made a huge difference for me.

Works natively in Chrome, needs Greasemonkey in Firefox.

It’s weird how all the extra spacing made the default view look claustrophobic. To a certain mindset, white space isn’t open air, it’s the walls closing in.

Gunpoint Is Delayed, Level Design Is Hard, Choice Is Weird

With a comical inevitability, I have to admit I can’t see Gunpoint being ready for Christmas. Lots of elements I think of as ‘done’ aren’t really ready, and finishing each of those seems to take about as long as coding them in the first place. Then there’s level design.

I’ve been mentally filing levels under ‘content’, stuff I already know how to produce and which just needs a little grunt work to churn it out. I’m now discovering that it’s really more like the game systems: something that shapes the experience so fundamentally that you need to get it in early and keep tweaking and revising it as you go along.

I’ve also learnt a lot about the difference between a puzzle game and something more open ended like Deus Ex, and some of it really surprised me.

In the first prototype that included the Crosslink device, you could literally link any device to any other. It was fun to mess around with, but there was no game there really – as I think all testers noticed, you could stand by one light switch and just wire it to everything else you wanted to change.

It was never going to stay that way, I knew how to shape it: I put some devices on different coloured circuits, ones you can’t rewire until you reach the right circuit box and tap into it. That let me design puzzles: proper obstacles to your progress that you have to think your way around, tapping into the right circuit and finding ways to get to the next one.

I guess I just assumed that was level design, because when I sent out the last build I realised I’d pretty much ended up with a straight puzzle game. Sometimes it works, other times it feels like it’s just keeping you busy: you have to get to this circuit box to progress, and there’s really only one way to do it. If figuring out that method isn’t interesting, the only fun is in the basic interactions: pouncing, punching, executing chain reactions, knocking people off rooftops and through windows.

I should probably be happy with that. I asked testers what they’d give the game if they were reviewing it, and the overwhelming majority said 8/10. Even accounting for a large positive bias in the selection process, that’s way better than I was hoping for.

But I still want it to be more than a puzzle game with punching. The point of the Crosslink mechanic is to let the player be creative, and I feel like I must be able to do a better job of that.

So I tried designing a new level with a completely different philosophy: make a building, not a level. Just make sure there are at least two routes to every objective and sub-objective.

It was terrible. It might be the worst level I’ve ever made. It felt like the game was just broken – you keep asking yourself “What’s this room for? Why would I want to go there? Wait, I’ve completed it? Did I cheat?” It wasn’t easier than the other levels, it just felt like most of it was misleading or irrelevant.

I tried it a few other ways and kept running into the same problem:

If a puzzle has one solution, it’s only really fun to solve once.

So, you just do that one. Even if you notice the others, they add nothing: it feels pointless to take a longer or harder route, even if it involves some interesting tricks.

This really surprised me. I’ve always thought the opposite: that alternate routes are always valuable, even if you don’t take them, because you appreciate having options. Nope! Sometimes alternate routes are just noise. Sometimes having a lot of options just makes it feel like there isn’t really an obstacle at all, so getting past it feels more like a commute than a challenge.

So why do I enjoy taking alternate routes in Deus Ex? Why don’t I always go for the first or easiest one?

Honestly: because it sucks. In Deus Ex the shooting is intentionally bad, and even in Human Revolution, the cover shooting is nothing like as cool as the stealth. Deus Ex doesn’t offer you choice by presenting you with door A and door B. It presents you with a really difficult and awkward door A, then says “Oh no! I can’t believe you found a vent!”

Choice, I think, needs to be a fuck-you from the player to the designer.

You have to see and understand what you’re expected to do, and make a personal decision to reject it. Either because you just don’t like it, or because it doesn’t fit with the play style you’ve chosen.

In Gunpoint, that means I actually do want one clear solution to each puzzle. I just need to give you the power to override it and do things your own way if you want to.

I haven’t finished figuring out my full solution to that yet, but here’s what’s working well so far:

1. Reworking levels at least twice

All my favourites are old ones that I’ve changed bit by bit, adding sneakier possibilities as they occur to me, and encouraging fun situations I found myself in when testing. Pretty much by accident, these have one clear solution and a bunch of ways to bypass it.

2. Play style incentives

I’d already planned for clients to have optional requests – “There’s an extra $200 in it for you if you don’t hurt anyone.” Now that I’ve put these in, they add complex, tricky and ever-changing routes through the levels that I don’t even have to design. Avoiding guards is almost always possible just because you’re so mobile, but it’s much harder than taking them out. It’s not a fuck-you to the client, but it’s a fuck-you to the conventional design of the level.

3. Gadgets

I’ve added some tools you can buy which can let you shortcut certain types of puzzles, and set up more elaborate chain reactions and traps. The Transfuser, for example, lets you connect two things that are on different circuits, with a pretty blended wire that shades between their different colours.

4. Persistent consumables

These gadgets have charges, and your total carries over to future missions. So sometimes the shorter route has a cost associated with it, and it’s up to you when you think it’s worth it.

5. Upgrades

You can upgrade lots of different aspects of your kit to suit different playstyles. If you go for one heavily, you can sometimes get past obstacles with the method they’re designed to stop. The Deathfluke, for example, repels a percentage of the least accurate shots fired at you. Upgrade that and your jumping speed enough and enemies have a hard time hitting you, letting you get past them in some situations you’re not meant to.

So that’s partly why it’s taking longer. I’ve got five or six levels that need designing from the ground up, and six or seven more that need a few more iterations to make them more flexible and fun. Then there’s the little stuff, like creating a scripting engine for story events and writing the entire game.

Truthfully, I have no idea how long that stuff will take me. Lyingly, let’s say March and I’ll let you know when that seems impossible too. If you’ve mailed me about testing, I should have a version for you in December.

The Saddest Goddamn Thing

I ordered my elf mage to move somewhere, accidentally told her to attack my dog. This kills the dog.

Listening To Your Sound Effects For Gunpoint

I asked if people wanted to make the sound effect for when you switch into Crosslink mode in Gunpoint, the view from which you can rewire how everything works. People did! Thanks, those people! I’ve made a video of me listening to some of your sounds, and reacting with a mixture of delight, horror and confusion. Continued

The Perils Of Being A Melee Companion To A Ranged Character

My Skyrim Review

Skyrim is out, my review is up, and it’s spoiler free.

Although I was hugely privileged to get to play this early, there is a special kind of agony to being this excited about a game and believing you’re just about to get hold of it, every day for nine days.

I was out for my parents’ anniversary dinner the night the mail finally came in, and the code was waiting when I got home late. It was going to take seven hours to download, so I set my alarm for six and went to bed.

I haven’t woken up early for Christmas since I was about 12, but for Skyrim I woke up at 4, then 4.30, then 5, then 6, then 6.30, then 7. Every time the download had about two hours to go, and it seemed to get slower as it went.

I made breakfast, tidied my room, exercised, showered, brewed coffee, did laundry, cleaned my kitchen, fretted, and then finally saw it finish. It would definitely crash. It would be encrypted. It would work, then be removed from Steam the next day.

But it worked, I had time to play it thoroughly enough to review before the embargo, and it was this good.

“Hey Greg, why didn’t the skeleton go to the party?”
“Because he’s a fucking skeleton, Jen, we’ve talked about this.”