TOM FRANCIS
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GDC Talk: How Reviewing Games For Nine Years Helped In Designing Gunpoint

My talk from GDC Europe is now online for free! It has slides so I don’t think I can embed it – I’ll just say the title again and you can click that.

How Reviewing Games For Nine Years Helped In Designing Gunpoint

Gunpoint: What I’m Working On

To keep you up to speed, here’s a breakdown of what I’m working on at the moment:

1. Fix the last few Gunpoint compatibility problems

I fixed a lot of bugs pretty quickly in the first four patches, but the last ones left are tougher. Most of them aren’t mistakes in my scripting, they’re fundamental incompatibilities between the engine I used and certain PC configurations. So fixing them means porting Gunpoint to a new engine, and exactly how we do that is a big, complex, important decision for the future of the game. Continued

Learning Unity

My day job is now trying to fix things in Gunpoint and writing e-mails, both of which I’m pretty bad at, so in my spare time I’ve been learning Unity. Not making anything in particular yet, just following tutorials – my test project above has been charitably described by my friends as Thomas Was At Gunpoint.

I have a question, for anyone who uses Unity. Continued

Gunpoint Recoups Development Costs In 64 Seconds

I just finished Gunpoint’s third patch yesterday, and a lot of what I need to do next requires outside help. So perhaps I can finally take a minute to tell you how it all went? Continued

Gunpoint Patch 3 Is Live On Steam And Humble Store

I’m still working hard on Gunpoint, and our third patch in two weeks just went up on Steam. I’ll update this when the Humble chaps have it up also. Details and future plans!

Update! Now live on Humble Store too. Continued

Gunpoint Patch 2 Now Live On Steam And Humble Store

Update: now live on Humble too – grab it again from the link you got when you bought.

As promised, I just made a second patch live that should address most resolution/screen related issues. Here are the notes! If you bought from this site, I’ll update this post when the new version is available to download. Continued

Gunpoint Patch 1, And Ongoing Support Plans

I’ve finished Gunpoint’s first patch and made it live on Steam this morning. Here’s what it fixes! Continued

Gunpoint Is Out!

After three years of working in my weekends, Gunpoint is out! Try it first, then if it works OK and you like it, buy it below!

What are these fancy editions?

They’re fancy! You can get all three from Steam or from here, and you can upgrade to any of them later. Here are the details!

Gunpoint: Special Edition

• Gunpoint: a 2D stealth game about rewiring things and punching people.
• The Soundtrack: includes all of the game’s noir-inspired spy music in high quality MP3 format.
• Developer Commentary:
  when enabled, you’ll find little sprites of Gunpoint’s developers on
  every mission. Talk to us to hear a little about our thinking behind the
  design (Tom), the art (John), and the music (Ryan). Caution: shooting a
  developer while he’s talking ends his current commentary track. This
  kills the developer.

Gunpoint: Exclusive Edition

• Gunpoint: a 2D stealth game about rewiring things and punching people.
• The Soundtrack: includes all of the game’s noir-inspired spy music in high quality MP3 format.
• Developer Commentary:
  when enabled, you’ll find little sprites of Gunpoint’s developers on
  every mission. Talk to us to hear a little about our thinking behind the
  design (Tom), the art (John), and the music (Ryan). Caution: shooting a
  developer while he’s talking ends his current commentary track. This
  kills the developer.
• The Making Of Gunpoint: a
  40-minute video feature taking you through how Gunpoint developed from a
  one-room test game to what you play today. Featuring Gunpoint’s
  designer playing his earliest prototypes for the first time since they
  were made, to great personal embarrassment and shame.
• The Prototype Pack (Windows only): play
  snapshots of Gunpoint’s development at 9 different stages, including
  cartoony programmer art, the first conception of the hacking system,
  many scrapped levels, and overpowered gadgets we later cut. For
  hopefully obvious reasons, we can’t give technical support for these.
• 4 Exclusive Tracks: bonus
  pieces produced specially by Gunpoint’s composers for this edition,
  mixing the game’s noir style with electronic influences. Since they’re
  not used as background music in the game, our composers took the chance
  to be more adventurous with these tracks.
• The Secret Beta Access List (Windows only):
  adds an option in the game menu to sign up to our Secret Beta Access
  List. If and when future Suspicious Developments games are developed,
  we’ll sometimes give secret beta versions only to the members of this
  list.

Special Edition Extras

If you already have the base game, you can buy the extras from these editions separately:

Exclusive Edition Extras

Note! The Exclusive Extras don’t include the Special Extras, they’re separate.

Have some facts!

• The main story takes most people about 3 hours to play through once.
• You can replay any mission you’ve already completed with whatever
  gadgets you currently have, to try to earn different ratings for
  avoiding violence, kills, noise, witnesses, etc.
• All editions come with the level editor, which is now integrated with the Steam Workshop if you’re playing on Steam.

Thanks so much to everyone who’s already bought it. I have been hurled across the room by your generosity, crushed against the wall by your enthusiasm, and stamped into a broken heap by your support. It’s the good kind of heap.

The Gunpoint Soundtrack, And Upgrading Editions

There are three different editions of Gunpoint, the two fancier ones coming with proportionately more bonus stuff. Lots of people have asked if it’s possible to upgrade from one to the other, after purchasing. It will be! I don’t know yet if the system will be ready for launch, but I want to allow it and both Steam and Humble Store say they can and will support it.

One of the extras in the Special Edition is all the music used in the game in MP3 format.

One of the extras in the Exclusive Edition is that, plus a huge load of bonus tracks Gunpoint’s three composers have put together. In some, they remix each others’ tracks from the game; others are all new.

If you’re not going to get the Exclusive Edition, or you want the tracks in fancy audiophile FLAC format, or you just want to support the composers specifically, you can also buy this full version of the soundtrack from Bandcamp!

There’s a tracklist and samples there, you can pre-order now, and it’ll be released at the same time as the game.

Everyone who worked on Gunpoint gets a percentage of Gunpoint’s revenue, but I also made sure our contracts let everyone keep the rights to their own work – including the right to sell it themselves, independently of me. So if you buy the soundtrack separately, all of your money goes to the composers.

Help Me With Some Final Gunpoint Testing!

I’ve just made a new build of the Gunpoint demo live on Steam, and I could do with some people to put it through its paces. Make sure I’ve fixed what I tried to fix without breaking anything else.

If you’re up for it, here’s what to do! Continued

Gunpoint Demo Released! Pre-Orders Open! Release Date Announced!

Stop what you’re doing and play the Gunpoint demo! (Also on Steam!)

Note: If you don’t have admin privileges, choose a different folder than the default ‘Program Files’. Sorry, I’ll get a new version up with a different default.

Like it? Pre-order it! Really like it? Get a fancy edition!

When’s it out?

Unbelievably, Gunpoint is out next Monday, the 3rd of June.

Why are there fancy editions?

I’ve been working on Gunpoint for three years, and it could be a turning point in my life. If it does well enough, I will quit my job to become a full time game developer. I could make more games like this, hopefully better and more quickly. This would be amazing.

Gunpoint is not really a mass-market thing, but I’ve noticed that it just clicks with some people. If those people are happy to support it in exchange for a few extras, Gunpoint could succeed because of passionate players, rather than just a very large number of players. This would be amazing.

I’ve tried to design the extra goodies so that if this was an indie game I was excited about, like FTL, I’d buy the $30 edition no question. But I know everyone’s circumstances are different, so I’ve made sure the base game is the same for everyone – no exclusive missions or bullshit bonus items.

If you can’t afford to go fancy, you can still do me a huge favour by spreading the word and pointing it out to people who do Let’s Plays and the like. Speaking of which, anyone who does game videos to a decent following (say 1,000 subs or followers), get in touch.

So, what fancy editions? What fancy editions!

Gunpoint – $10 – $9

• Both a DRM-free download of Gunpoint.
• And a Steam key to own Gunpoint on Steam.

Gunpoint: Special Edition – $20 – $15

• Both a DRM-free download of Gunpoint.
• And a Steam key to own Gunpoint on Steam.
• The Soundtrack: includes all of the game’s noir-inspired spy music in high quality MP3 format.
• Developer Commentary:
  when enabled, you’ll find little sprites of Gunpoint’s developers on
  every mission. Talk to us to hear a little about our thinking behind the
  design (Tom), the art (John), and the music (Ryan). Caution: shooting a
  developer while he’s talking ends his current commentary track. This
  kills the developer.

Gunpoint: Exclusive Edition – $30 – $27

• Both a DRM-free download of Gunpoint.
• And a Steam key to own Gunpoint on Steam.
• The Soundtrack: includes all of the game’s noir-inspired spy music in high quality MP3 format.
• Developer Commentary:
  when enabled, you’ll find little sprites of Gunpoint’s developers on
  every mission. Talk to us to hear a little about our thinking behind the
  design (Tom), the art (John), and the music (Ryan). Caution: shooting a
  developer while he’s talking ends his current commentary track. This
  kills the developer.
• The Making Of Gunpoint: a
  40-minute video feature taking you through how Gunpoint developed from a
  one-room test game to what you play today. Featuring Gunpoint’s
  designer playing his earliest prototypes for the first time since they
  were made, to great personal embarrassment and shame.
• The Prototype Pack: play
  snapshots of Gunpoint’s development at 9 different stages, including
  cartoony programmer art, the first conception of the hacking system,
  many scrapped levels, and overpowered gadgets we later cut. For
  hopefully obvious reasons, we can’t give technical support for these.
• 4 Exclusive Tracks: bonus
  pieces produced specially by Gunpoint’s composers for this edition,
  mixing the game’s noir style with electronic influences. Since they’re
  not used as background music in the game, our composers took the chance
  to be more adventurous with these tracks.
• The Secret Beta Access List:
  adds an option in the game menu to sign up to our Secret Beta Access
  List. If and when future Suspicious Developments games are developed,
  we’ll sometimes give secret beta versions only to the members of this
  list.

Have some facts!

• Gunpoint is for Windows only right now. Hope to do Mac and Linux versions next.
• The main story takes most people about 3 hours to play through once.
• You can replay any mission you’ve already completed with whatever
  gadgets you currently have, to try to earn different ratings for
  avoiding violence, kills, noise, witnesses, etc.
• There’s a level editor. The levels it makes are saved as simple text files so they’re easy to share.
• You can also buy it from Steam if you prefer. We get a bit less of your money that way.

Thanks so much to those who helped Gunpoint by expressing excitement
or telling people about it. It would have been much harder without that.

I am now a useless ball of nerves, so I’ll stop here and let you know how it goes. Cheers!

Gunpoint’s Release Date’s Release Date

An Announcement

I will be announcing Gunpoint’s release date here tomorrow, Monday the 27th of May.

To be clear, this is not an announcement of Gunpoint’s release date. As promised in our hit post Gunpoint’s Release Date’s Release Date’s Release Date, this is an announcement of Gunpoint’s release date’s release date.

Gunpoint’s release date remains unannounced, until tomorrow.

Games I Don’t Plan To Make: Relativity Paramedic

I forgot part of the plan for this: your near-lightspeed space ambulance would also be indestructible and have perfect inertial dampening. So to decelerate, you just try to crash into all the debris you were trying to avoid as you picked up speed. So it’d go:

• Accelerate away from planet – dodge debris!
• When you’ve gone far enough fast enough, decelerate – hit debris!
• Turn around.
• Accelerate towards planet – dodge debris!
• Crash into planet!

Gunpoint’s Release Date’s Release Date’s Release Date

An Announcement

I will be announcing the release date of Gunpoint’s release date here tomorrow, Sunday the 26th of May.

To be clear, this is not an announcement of Gunpoint’s release date, nor is it an announcement of Gunpoint’s release date’s release date. It is an announcement of Gunpoint’s release date’s release date’s release date.

Update: We have been delighted with the community’s empassioned reaction to this announcement. These are just some of the high user-engagement social media interactions we have already logged:

Games I Plan To Make #1: The Randomised Strategy Game

Hey Tom, why are you always cooking noisily when you make videos? Because I am finishing my videogame, so vidbloggiovlogging kinda has to cram into any downtime I get. Hope the noise isn’t too annoying.