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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Luckily, Conway’s Teflon Hyperface renders him immune to lachrymatory agents.

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.

If a puzzle has more than one solution, one of those solutions will be easier or more obvious to the player.

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

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.

]]> http://www.pentadact.com/2011-11-20-gunpoint-is-delayed-level-design-is-hard-choice-is-weird/feed/ 39 http://www.pentadact.com/2011-11-14-the-saddest-goddamn-thing/ http://www.pentadact.com/2011-11-14-the-saddest-goddamn-thing/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 20:07:17 +0000 Pentadact http://www.pentadact.com/?p=3691

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

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

]]> http://www.pentadact.com/2011-11-14-the-saddest-goddamn-thing/feed/ 14 http://www.pentadact.com/2011-11-13-here-are-some-of-the-crosslink-sounds-people-sent-in/ http://www.pentadact.com/2011-11-13-here-are-some-of-the-crosslink-sounds-people-sent-in/#comments Sun, 13 Nov 2011 20:09:37 +0000 Pentadact http://www.pentadact.com/?p=3644 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.

Read more on Here Are Some Of The Crosslink Sounds People Sent In…

]]> 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.

Sorry that this isn’t all of them, by a long shot – they came in faster than I could keep up with, and I had to trim this video to stop it getting ridiculously long. If I end up using any of the ones that aren’t shown in this video, I’ll put them up here too.

]]> http://www.pentadact.com/2011-11-13-here-are-some-of-the-crosslink-sounds-people-sent-in/feed/ 29 http://www.pentadact.com/2011-11-13-the-perils-of-being-a-melee-companion-to-an-archery-character/ http://www.pentadact.com/2011-11-13-the-perils-of-being-a-melee-companion-to-an-archery-character/#comments Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:58:00 +0000 Pentadact http://www.pentadact.com/?p=3668

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]]> http://www.pentadact.com/2011-11-13-the-perils-of-being-a-melee-companion-to-an-archery-character/feed/ 2 http://www.pentadact.com/2011-11-11-skyrim-review/ http://www.pentadact.com/2011-11-11-skyrim-review/#comments Fri, 11 Nov 2011 23:33:43 +0000 Pentadact http://www.pentadact.com/?p=3660 “Hey Greg, why didn’t the skeleton go to the party?”
“Because he’s a fucking skeleton, Jen, we’ve talked about this.”

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

Read more on Skyrim Review…

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

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.

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You slip into a mindset where you expect things to work, which makes you angry rather than confused when they don’t. I’ve had to start spotting this mindset when it crops up, and taking a long, relaxing break before I go any further.

When I come back, I have to change gear. And the most useful way I’ve found to think of it is this:

It is a mental patient. It has completely lost its mind, and to make it behave in any kind of reasonable way, you have to be expecting every sensible instruction to be met with screaming, preposterous bullshit.

Programmer: Hello Game, how are you feeling? I’d like to make this object stop when it hits a wall, if that’s OK with you.

Game: GRAVITY NO LONGER EXISTS!

Programmer: What?

Game: Every lightswitch in the world will fire a single red laser at one man’s head, and that man is… HIM!

Progammer: OK – I’m not sure how that’s related, but I’ll look into-

Game: I DON’T KNOW WHAT SPACE IS!

Programmer: The key, or…

Game: SPACE! SPACE! HORIZONTAL CO-ORDINATES! I have over five thousand references to ‘x’ and I’ve NEVER HEARD OF X.

Programmer: That’s… that’s how far right things are, Game. It’s the first thing we learned.

Game: NO! It’s a room! A room with a box, and a photocopier, and a lighting error, off the corner of Baker and 45th.

Programmer: …

Game: X IS A ROOM!

Programmer: Ohh, I actually did change the name of an old test level to that for a moment, I guess that’s what’s getting you confused – I’ll fix it.

Game: PRANKSPASM IS UNDEFINED!

Programmer: That one I’ll give you.

We finally got to the point where the perceived value of the coverdisc was less than the value of the extra pages we could make with the money it costs, and dropped it. As a former disc editor of PC Gamer, I will say this: thank fuck.

We’ve done lots of new stuff with the extra space, but I’m particularly happy that this issue is packed with diary-type stuff. It’s my favourite kind of writing both to read and write, and I got to do loads of it this issue, and read loads more by better people.

My main thing was a 10-page Skyrim diary – I got a nice long session with it, so I just wrote up the whole weird story of my experiences with it. It’s awesome. Properly fresh, huge and new. And like Oblivion, rough, crazy and over-ambitious. In the 2-page interview that follows, Todd Howard tells me what happened on his wedding night.

The other big diary feature is about Artemis, a multiplayer game where each person mans one station on a Star Trek style bridge. I was the engineer, O’Francis, and it was honestly the nerdiest thrill of my life. Tim asked me how long repairs would take, I estimated half an hour, then got it done in five minutes. It doesn’t get more authentic than that.

Then there are 8 Now Playing pieces, our shorter diary bits about whatever we’re up to. Great pieces from a few less common faces in there this issue, including Chris Impossibly Nice Donlan on Super Crate Box, Duncan I Also Work For Wired Geere on Universe Sandbox, and Phil Octaeder Savage on Frozen Synapse.

Normally I’d suggest you grab it from our online shop, but rather embarrassingly we’ve already run out of stock for individual issue sales. It was a bit of an experiment, and it went better than expected. You can still subscribe, though I don’t know which issue it’ll start with.

We’ve just launched with this issue on iTunes’ new Newsstand, and we’re already on Zinio. I’m not totally sure if and how the hat comes with the various digital options – in the physical mag, it’s a printed code. And in the UK at least, shops still exist.

I wasn’t expecting anyone to cover this, so I didn’t really talk to anyone beforehand. If you work for a site or mag and are interested in covering Gunpoint, just drop me a mail at pentadact@gmail.com.

I’m always happy to sort you out with a recent build so you can have a play, and answer any questions. I managed to do this with Ars Technica, so their piece is a preview. Here are some quotes from that, and some of the other lovely words people wrote about Gunpoint.

Gunpoint hands on: an intelligent indie spy thriller—with breakable glass

“Guns actually introduce tension into the game, which is a rare thing in modern action titles… In minutes I felt like a capable killer, and began skulking around each level like a pro. The full release can’t come soon enough.”

Ars Technica

 

Gunpoint Points Out Its New Look

“In between murdering trees and optimising for search engines, Tom’s drafted in some artists to dramatically overhaul the game’s look, which results in the rather eye-catching, Flashback-y aesthetic…”

Rock, Paper, Shotgun

 

Secret agent indie Gunpoint makes being an electrician cool

“From plumbers and farmers to … Noids, video games have a long tradition of elevating blue collar jobs to rockstar status. Now, after eying these new Gunpoint screens, it looks like we’ll be adding “electrician” to that list when Tom Francis’ secret agent game arrives this Christmas.”

Joystiq

 

This Indie Game is Giving me Flashbacks of, Well, Flashback

“It looks wonderful, in a “Deus Ex meets Canabalt” kind of way. It also helps the game has photocopiers. I love games with photocopiers.”

Kotaku

 

Stealth Platformer Gunpoint is Looking Mighty Fine!

“Gunpoint looks absolutely glorious.”

IndieGames.com

 

Gunpoint’s Graphics Now As Awesome As Its Concept

GameSetWatch

This is a split shot showing how the same level looks normally and in Crosslink mode. Crosslink mode is what you switch to to rewire the electronic bits of a building: you can see what everything’s hooked up to, and drag these connections around to make the level work the way you want it to.

Everyone in Gunpoint dies in one gunshot – even you – and the guards are extremely accurate. A good plan doesn’t involve giving them the chance to shoot at you. This – this was a bad plan.

You can play at pretty much any scale: from this to an ultra high-res 1920×1200 view. If you want stuff to be nice and big on-screen like this, you can use Crosslink mode to pan around the levels with the mouse.

The colours that devices glow tells you what circuit they’re on. Things on different circuits can’t be linked to each other, and some high security circuits require you to get to their circuit box and tap into them manually before you can rewire stuff. There’ll be a colourblind mode where circuits are distinguished by symbols, too.

If you can get the jump on them, you can throw yourself into guards pretty hard. Windows won’t stop you.

Guess I got shot a lot testing this level.

You can use Crosslink mode to set up ridiculously elaborate chain reactions, and even infinite loops of devices triggering each other. I try to make sure that the super advanced stuff is never necessary to progress, but there are always extra things to achieve with finesse solutions. This one isn’t a finesse solution, it’s just me connecting a bunch of shit up to make the wires look pretty.

You slide a bit when you land from a powerful jump. I don’t have anything intellectually interesting to say about this, it just feels really cool – particularly if you slip off the edge of a roof and land flat on your face.

As ever, just drop me a mail if you’re interested in trying out the next prototype of Gunpoint. Make sure you’re following @GunpointGame, that’ll be the first place I post the details of the next test. It’ll probably be the first two or three ‘acts’ of the game, which’ll have five when it’s done.

My review of Deus Ex: Human Revolution is finally online. It is the greatest thing. The game, not the review. Kind of a big one, so I hope I explained it well enough.

Gunpoint’s at a really exciting stage now – character animation for the player and the basic guard type is done, so the game has a lot of its final ‘feel’. And John’s just passed over the first set of environment art, along with a mockup showing all of it crammed into one showcase level – a real one would be less busy. And check it the hell out (click):

It looks way too good. Now I feel like I’ve got to make a proper game or something. The background is obviously just a stretched version of Fabian’s original at the moment, but the rest just looks done. Which means I’m way behind on the coding side of things.

So by the end of this weekend, I want to have all of Gunpoint’s Act One working: that’s the first for or five levels, which mostly use this tile set. It’s sort of about escape anyway, come to think of it. By the end of them, the player should understand all the basic mechanics and have played around with crosslinking a bit – enough to see the point of it.

It’ll also kick off the plot, and resolve the most immediate part of it, but how much of that will work at this stage I don’t know. I’ll certainly get the actual dialogue in there – so far, writing has been the easy bit.

Gunpoint’s at too exciting a stage right now to take time off from it. If I was making a game about Escape this weekend, though, here’s what it’d be.

You’re a small escape pod with a single thruster, jetting around an infinite randomly generated space. Planets of randomly generated size attract you with their gravitational pull. If you land on one, you’ll find your thruster isn’t powerful enough to let you escape.

You can, however, press down to burrow through the crust of the planet into its gooey core. Your pod automatically sucks up the molten minerals in the centre of the planet to use as fuel. The bigger the planet, the more intensely its fuel burns, and therefore the more powerful your thruster can get if you suck up its whole core. It’s just enough power to escape the gravitational pull of a planet this size, so from now on you can escape any planet that isn’t bigger than this one without boring to its core.

As soon as you start sucking up a planet’s core, though, it becomes unstable and will soon explode. It also gets lighter, reducing its gravitational pull. You have to judge how long you can afford to keep sucking up its core before you need to start escaping. The longer you suck, the more powerful your thruster and the weaker the gravitation pull it has to overcome, but the closer you get to the planet’s detonation.

You have to leave the crust through the hole you made on your way in, or take a second to drill a new one. Provided you get outside the fatal radius in time, you can ride the blast wave of the explosion for a speed boost that’ll last till you next hit a planet, or thrust in a different direction.

You’re trying to get to the galactic core, a direction indicated on-screen, by progressively increasing your thruster power and armour to increase speed and skip more and more planets on the way. You want to get there to suck the whole thing up and use it as fuel to escape spacetime or whatever THE END.

Extraordinary, exhausting, spectacular, and frequently no fun at all. Still liked it, though.