TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

Game Of Thrones, The Shadow Line, The Killing, Running Wilde

Chris’s blog is reminding me I haven’t talked about what’s on in ages. Here’s what I’m watching and why. Continued

Post 500

Quickly, drink this. I just found a retroactive excuse for tonight’s pina coladas: I’ve posted 500 things on this site?

This 500th post calls for MINIMUM CONTENT and MAXIMUM STATS. They start from when the site moved to Pentadact.com in February 2008, and the graph looks a bit like this (click for readable size): Continued

Aaron Sorkin’s Next Show

Graham: I’m reading the pilot script for Sorkin’s new show. I will send it to you, but as a preview, simply close your eyes and imagine that Aaron Sorkin was writing a TV show. Bingo! You now have all the contents of this script in your head. Continued

Deus Ex 3 Is Amazing

At 4pm today the embargo for talking about hands-on experience with the first ten hours of Deus Ex: Human Revolution passed, so you’ve probably seen a bunch of stuff about how good it is.

It’s very good.

Here is my coverage of how good it is:

1. Exactly how good it is and why
This is what I’ve wanted from every game in the eleven years since Deus Ex.

2. Diary of a psychopath playthrough
“Pritchard,” Jensen radios in, as he stabs both fist-chisels through a woman’s ribcage. “I’ve found the hostages.”

3. Podcast: The Deus Ex special
Release the pheromones!

I Like That You Can Slow Down

Great new music is being released rapidly and randomly. Let me review some of it and give you some tracks.

Continued

Good Story In Games

Sounds like I’m going to preach at you, but actually I want your opinion: which games have good stories, and why do they work?

I’m asking because I’m in the early stages of writing stuff for Gunpoint, but I’m also interested in general. I’m incredibly impatient with stories that don’t engage me right away: Dragon Age 2 is dead to me, just because it introduced too many people I didn’t care about and didn’t make them do anything interesting in the first hour or so. The other eighty hours of the game might as well not exist.

Cared.

Mass Effect, on the other hand, is my gold standard: I saw Saren’s betrayal in the first mission (even though my character didn’t), and it was genuinely maddening that he got away with it.

The rest of the game isn’t even that well written – I didn’t really understand why I needed the Thorian or Benezia or Liara or the vision or what the Conduit was until I read the wiki afterwards, but it didn’t matter because the Saren thread hooked me so early.

Did not care.

What’s yours? I’m interested in games that hooked you quickly, immediately made you want to know what happens next, and why you think they worked. I’m also interested in characters you immediately liked, hated or just cared about on any level.

Most games can do that if you’re willing to read or listen to 3,000 words of dialogue, so really I’m interested in the ones that didn’t take ten hours of investment to make you give a shit. CoughJadeEmpire.

If the answer’s Portal 2, by the way, it would be nice if you could avoid spoilers. Cheers!

Gunpoint Now Has Artists, Will Be Art

A million things to say about Gunpoint, but most importantly: please welcome John Roberts aboard as the game’s main artist, and Fabian van Dommelen (Beldak in the comments here) as captain backgrounds and probably additional environment art.

This means the people in Gunpoint are going to look a bit like this:

We’re going to have a chat about it, try some things out, and tweak all this until it fits together nicely, looks clear and readable, and makes you really want to play it. At that point I’ll try to pull it all together into a first proper screenshot so you guys can see what the game’s going to look like.

I’m not kicking into proper “Woo, look at my game!” mode yet, but I have set up a Twitter account: @GunpointGame, to talk about the development, make programming jokes, link other indie dudes I think are cool, and ask you guys for opinions on how some things should work. I’ll also be putting out future calls for testers on there – not sure when the next prototype will be yet.

As you’ll see from the first tweet there, I’ve now got every feature I want in Gunpoint working. This is the fundamental stuff, like:

• Branching conversation trees with player choice
• Mission select menu where new jobs unlock depending on your performance and experience so far
• A shop system where you can buy upgrades and equipment
• Stats that track your performance in a mission so the client can react to how you dealt with it

It doesn’t mean I have the pause menu done or anything looking good, but the full skeleton of the game is there now. The plan for those elements has stayed steady for a long time, but it feels a lot more concrete now I know they all work.

Once we know what we’re doing for the art, my next job is making all the levels. Which means knowing what the missions are about, which means knowing the objectives, which means knowing the clients, which means knowing the key players and their conflicts and characters, which means basically coming up with the story. I’ll put up another post about that probably tomorrow, because I’d like your advice on how to make it not suck.

Lastly, I was interviewed over at Laser Romance, about stuff like why Gunpoint is no longer about a murderous space robot.

As mentioned there, Gunpoint now has a proper URL if you want to link it anywhere: gunpointgame.com. It currently just shows you all the posts here tagged with Gunpoint, but I’ll eventually make it a bespoke site. Incidentally, if anyone knows how to make only posts in the Gunpoint category appear at https://www.pentadact.com/gunpoint with WordPress, I’m having a hard time figuring it out.

Gunpoint’s Possible Art Styles

It’s humbling and overwhelming to have a bunch of talented people throw stuff at you. Content-wise, I mean. I’ll stop gushing about it now, though, and just show you the best of what I’ve seen. Sorry to anyone who submitted stuff that isn’t featured here – I have the enviable problem that to feature everything would actually grind development on the game to a halt, so I’ve had to be more ruthless than I’d like. I’ll split this into Character art and Setting concepts.

 Ethzee

EthZee’s main character mockup is exactly what I was hoping to get – something not a million miles from what I’ve got, but correctly proportioned, nicely shaded, and animated. I love that he used treadmills to explain why the walking and running animations stay on the spot.

Michael Hussinger

Michael’s stuff is amazing. It puts me in mind of some sublimely quirky French adventure, full of excitingly atypical characters. I tried to see a way it could gel with the mood and feel of what I have in mind for Gunpoint, but I couldn’t. I really hope he can use this guy, and the others he made in a similar style, in a future game.

Teck Lee Tan

I particularly love Teck’s second take on the hero. It’s based on a sprite he did of Mal Reynolds from Firefly, and it’s awesome that even at this resolution, you can kind of tell.

Michael Hodkinson

I am scared of this. Definitely one of the most original takes on what the character could be.

Dan Lowe

Dan, an artist at Bizarre Creations until they went under, did the awesome sprite above in the comments here just for fun. He can’t actually do the art for Gunpoint since he’s busy applying for jobs, but he had a go at reducing it down to the 24px size of Gunpoint’s other characters anyway, and it’s somehow even cuter.

John Roberts

The sprite above is the first thing John sent, his take on the ‘professional killer’ enemy type with an android twist (I hadn’t set out my full specs for the setting at the time). It’s one of the rare pieces of art that, even in isolation, just makes me think “Holy fuck I want to play that game.” I’d be this guy, I’d fight this guy, I don’t care, I just want to be playing around in a world with things like that. The guys below that are what the more conventional guards would look like: lean, capable, cool.

Eric Heitman

Eric’s a professional who’s worked on a lot of big licenses, which might explain why his version of the player character does such a perfect job of capturing what I was trying to do with my original art. I tried to do something cartoony in style without being silly, and that’s exactly what he’s pulled off.

Chris

If there’s ever a Nintendo DS version of Gunpoint, this is definitely what it should look like. I like the cleaness.

Condi Buggle

A great character, a little smarter than the Columbo-like slob I was imagining. I can picture him jabbing someone with his umbrella to release a slow-acting poison, and that’s a quality I like in a sprite.

 Curt

Great to see a complete take on it – some of the things I don’t like about my placeholder stuff, like the beige walls, actually look fine once there’s some well-drawn detail in there. Glass-backed elevator is a cool idea.

Chris

A nice selection of interesting environment types here – I think big windows facing out onto the city are a must, and I really dig the giant Pollock in the modern-looking office below.

Graeme Moralee

This is about as clean, clear and cute as the game could possibly get – I don’t have to magnify it, or even really open my eyes, to see every detail. The cityscape is lovely, as is the sparkly rain, and the whole thing has a nice cohesiveness. I can’t quite figure out if the mood of the game would clash with just how adorable these guys are.

John Roberts

If you ask John (who did the awesome trenchcoated android) if he’s interested in doing any environment art, this is what you get back the next day. It looks like a finished game. An amazing amount of detail – the cleanness and bursts of colour remind me simultaneously of Aperture Science and Mirror’s Edge, which is sort of saying something. Click through for the bigger versions of these. The Crosslink mode is so much cooler than the way I imagined it, making it something you’d be excited to switch to rather than an ugly but necessary mess.

Beldak

Such an amazing city backdrop. Has the gloomy, ominous mood I was going for, but is also just slightly futuristic and strange – these tall lit towers are unusual architecturally, and it gives the place an intriguing atmosphere that makes you want to explore it. I’m so set on rain being a big part of the atmosphere on some levels that I’ve been thinking of having varying strengths of it – it’s such an easy win on the audio side, and if heavy rain can look this cool, it’s definitely worth it.

Despite the ridiculous level of talent here, I’m pretty close to a decision. I’m just waiting on a couple of samples to see how certain styles work with certain elements, and I’ll know once those are in.

In the end, it’s come down to style much more than quality – quality just isn’t an issue when so many are so good. Any of these styles would make an awesome looking game, so I just have to go with whoever happens to click with the style and tone of the aspects of the game I’m doing on my end.

Gunpoint: The Setting

Wow. Response to my badly made video has been crazy, a whole order of magnitude more positive than I’d hoped. Actually slightly nervous now.

The best result of this is that a whole load of really talented people have offered their services, and many have already done great samples. There have also been a lot of very reasonable questions that made me realise my last post didn’t adequately define what I’m after. I called the current art a ‘rough guide’ without saying what about it should guide and what should be ignored.

So here’s a bit more about the idea for Gunpoint’s setting, look and mood.

Gunpoint is set in a big, largely empty city – or at least a largely empty part of a big city. It’s only about 20 years ahead of present day, so most technology is the same.

You’re a freelance spy. You get jobs from a site that lets agents choose from briefs written by anonymous clients. You wear a long coat and hat, and because you’re a spy, I would rather your face is either not clearly visible or has no recognisable features.

You’re the sort of person who acts very relaxed until he really needs to do something quickly, at which point you’re a flurry of motion and then back to trying to look nonchalant. I haven’t finalised your movement yet, but there’s a chance you may need to go from a casual shuffle/saunter/mosey into a semi-urgent run as you accelerate.

Through the agency, you buy a few rare high-tech gadgets to help with your work.

Hypertrousers: I always forget to tell people about the Hypertrousers. Compressed air actuators let you jump ridiculously far.

Gluon gloves: let you climb on any wall or ceiling. Adhesion does not actually use gluons. Gluon is a trademark of GluCorp and quantum physics is now a patent violation.

Crosslink: lets you connect any two electronic devices so that one triggers the other. Actually a cheap, widely available app for your phone, but so poorly marketed that only a handful of agents know it exists.

I want Gunpoint to have laughs, but it’s not set in a crazy world of whacky characters. People die suddenly and undeservedly, there are truly nasty people about, and justice is not always done. If you’ve seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, that’s the kind of tone: there are funny people in it, but they’re out of their depth in a dangerous underworld.

Every mission takes place at night. It’ll also rain a lot. The main visual motif is meant to be the warm orange glow of a lit office block in the cold blue of a city at night. I have done a pretty lousy job of capturing that.

I’m fairly easy about style, but guards shouldn’t have too much individual personality, because there’ll often be a lot of them on screen at once.

The main restriction is that people have to be between 20 and 30 pixels tall. I said before that they could go over 24 if it’s part of a whole makeover for the scale of the game, but looking into it, even a makeover wouldn’t work with a 50 pixel tall character. Here’s the problem:

It’s nice and clear, but where the hell is my jump going to land me? The character needs to be small so the jumps can be big. And I want Gunpoint to work on a typical netbook res, 1024×600, all the way up to 1920×1200. The art challenge is to make a low-res character clear and appealing.

Thanks so much to everyone who’s put effort into the awesome samples I’ve seen so far. They’re giving me ideas already, so even the ones that don’t go in will have an effect.

Let Me Mumble You Through An Early Version Of Gunpoint

The game I’m making, Gunpoint, is an infiltration game that lets you rewire its levels to mess with your enemies. It is ugly and has no animation.

I’ve learnt to do a lot of new things while making this, but art always takes me ten times as long as it should, and ends up… well, look at it. So I’d like to find someone who’s willing to help out with the visual side, particularly with animating the characters. There are only a few, it’s pretty simple.

In case anyone is interested, I thought I should talk you through what the game’s actually about so you can see if it’s something you’d want to be involved in. And for everyone else, I’d just like to give a better idea of what it does. I will probably regret this.

Here’s me, talking you through a very early prototype of the game as I play it. This is also my first stab at making a video, which is why it’s barely visible at anything less than 720p, everything’s tiny, I’m really quiet and the game sound drowns me out a few times. Enjoy!

YouTube (HD) – Direct Download (80MB .avi)

The e-mail address is pentadact@gmail.com. Let me know what you think in the comments, and fling the link around if you found it interesting. This is a lot more than I’ve shown publicly before, so I’m interested in whether it seems appealing.

The catch is I can’t pay you – I’m making this in a small portion of my free time, it’ll be free when it’s done, and my budget is zero. So I’m looking for someone who wants to help out for fun, practice and experience.

I’d love to see what you want it to look like. You don’t have to have any experience or qualifications, but if you could do a mockup of one character and their walking animation, that would be awesome. You can post it in the comments here or e-mail me.

Characters are about 24 pixels tall currently, but you can stray from that if you want to give the whole game a makeover – all the level objects and stuff.

There’s a pretty good chance no-one’s going to be up for this, in which case I’ll just do it myself once the rest of the game’s done, but it’s worth asking. I’ll still finish it, it’ll just be later and uglier.

The art that’s in there right now is a vague guide at best: I want the main character to have a long coat and a hat, but everything else is up to someone with actual ideas in their brain. The guards aren’t supposed to be grey – this guy was originally a deranged civilian but I cut that role.

To be clear, here’s what’ll ultimately need doing:

• Walking, climbing and ceiling-climbing animations for the main character.
• Walking and running animations for guards, armoured guards, and professional killers.
• Walking and running animations for some kind of civilian dude, and slight variations of him.
• A few miscellaneous combat interactions.
• A bunch of stuff I’ve forgotten.
• Optionally, any environment and character art you can improve on. Lord knows it sucks right now.

The very loose time frame is about two to three months. The game may end up taking longer than that – I’d like to have it out by the end of July, but even that’s not a hard deadline. Yay development!

Our Limbs Have Been Asleep

If you’ve been dissatisfied with any of the government whales you’ve been using lately, I can recommend the Freelance Whales. When an album starts with a song like this, you know you’re in for some pretty fucking gentle glockenspiel-banjo times.

[audio:https://www.pentadact.com/temp/FreelanceWhales-GeneratorFirstFloor.mp3]

The whole album is good, I got it from here.

On PC Gamer Lately

The PC Gamer site moves pretty fast these days, so I might occasionally recap what I’ve done there recently. Here’s some of my stuff from the last month:
 

Finally finished my Minecraft diary about playing in hardcore mode. Response to its end was amazing, for a story about a man trying to eat a cake while falling to his death on fire. Definitely looking to do another in a different game.

Relapsed on both the previous games lately – the differences are extraordinary. Mass Effect is by far the most compelling main story of any BioWare game I’ve played, it’s so weird that Mass Effect 2 is narratively bankrupt when it improves so much else. This list is how I want to see the best bits combined.

I put up a collection of awesome art/games mashup images by artist Drew Northcott. We used them in our mag a few years back, but few seemed to get the references. Wanted to see them get a bigger exposure.
 

It’s brutal, and should be illegal on a gamepad.

One of the most sublime announcements I can remember, a game whose very name is both setup and punchline, and an indulgently batshit trailer. Starting to really like the Magicka guys.

Got to talk to the Minecraft guys about why their next game is a turn-based strategy based on collectible card games.
 

Loved it. Relic are now the best RPG developer never to have made an RPG.

Old but still astonishing, even next to Crysis 2.

Realised the restrictive tropes that frustrate me about modern games are probably my fault. Bulletstorm’s creative director responds to explain why his game is made that way, which starts an interesting discussion.
 

Megaton hypernews of the millennium. So goddamn excited. Also, a little on why the days of XBLA as the ‘big time’ for indies may be over.

Not all me this time, since Bad Company split office opinion somewhat and we wanted to get a good selection of views. My main one is for a return to the emergent camaraderie of leading a squad of strangers in Battlefield 2.

I go back to the cold metal corridors of the Von Braun, and remember how personal stories kept me going in this place.

No revelations, just my overview of what we know so far and which bits are exciting.

Analysing Happiness

This is a series of reminders to my future self about what I’ve figured out about happiness. The gist of the last one was basically this:

The reason we want things isn’t that they’ll make us happy.

Often, getting what you want does give you a little rush of happiness. We can be fooled into thinking this is the sensation of having that thing. In fact, of course, it’s the sensation of getting it. We are feeling the change in our status, not its new level. Which is why it fades. Continued

PC Gamer Podcast 51: Mine, Part Mine

Oh yeah, we pod a cast. I get to talk about what playing Deus Ex 3 was like, Rich gets to talk about what reviewing Dragon Age 2 was like, we discuss Bulletstorm’s stupidity, Shogun 2’s cleverity, and Battlefield 3 possibilities.

In which game can you part-own a mine? How hard can you throw something at someone’s head before they react? Are mages getting magier or less mageful? Would Team Fortress 2 work with 3,000 players?

All these answers and no more, for the special person who Downloads/subscribes.

Briefly: The King’s Speech

I liked it a lot. It’s pretty much a comedy, albeit a heavy-hearted one. As a drama, it’d be slightly too simple: we never truly understand the exact nature of Albert’s speech impediment or its causes, since both physical and psychological remedies both help somewhat, so there’s no real narrative to that element. The plot is simply that it becomes increasingly important he be ready to take the throne, and his speech continues to be a problem until it isn’t. Continued