• New engine, implemented by Abstraction Games. Should fix many technical issues and make the game run faster for everyone, and it’ll enable us to develop Mac and Linux versions next.
• Steam Workshop added, for browsing and sharing user-made levels. Yes, we listened to the 1,779 post petition you guys started even after we’d already announced we would do it.
• Option to turn off swearing. Up to you whether this makes “Grow a ####ing #### and shove it up your ###” kid-safe.
• Reconfigurable keyboard controls.
• Vertical sync option. I didn’t know we needed this, but the folks at Abstraction added it and now the animation is at least 23% more beautiful.
• Level editor. The level editor has been in there since launch, but some people still ask for one so I’m just going to keep announcing I’ve added it until everyone knows it’s there.
• You can now place multiple elevators in a level without it crashing. That’s more than I could do when I was making the game, so I expect your levels to be at least twice as good as mine.
• If you have any technical troubles with the new version, you can still use the old one by going to Properties > Betas and selecting ‘oldversion’. Post your issue on the forums too, so we can fix it.

It’s also 75% off for 48 hours! That’ll end 10am Pacific Time on 19/06/2014. That discount applies to all editions, too, so you can upgrade for $2.50 or £1.50. And we reduced the UK and EU prices from the Steam defaults to better match their USD equivalents.

Get it here!

Header image is a screenshot of Breakin 1.2, by [NL] Omgertje.

Update! Now live on Humble Store too.

Bug fixes

• You can’t change the past. At least, you can’t change more than the first 11 missions of the past. At least, you can’t if you don’t have a scroll wheel on your mouse. At least, you couldn’t until this patch, which fixes that. The Up and Down keys (W/S) now work to scroll through the Previous Missions menu.
• With apologies to Mad Men fans, knocking the final boss through his own office window no longer causes him to fall in extreme slow motion.
• If you bought so many batteries that you can no longer afford the Gatecrashers needed for the final mission, a) wow, and b) you can now sell batteries at that point. Unless your battery fixation prevents you from parting with them, in which case your adventure ends here.
• Due to new breakthroughs in microphone technology, Sound Detectors are now so sensitive they can even pick up gunshots. (They previously only triggered if the player was the one who fired).
• Did you know you can patch a soundtrack? We patched the soundtrack so that the track numbering makes more sense for the Special Edition.
• You can no longer teleport backwards through left-facing windows by pressing Down. Sorry speedrunners.

New features

• If you’re having music problems, I feel bad for you son. So I’m working hard to fix them, and in the meantime I’ve added a button to restart the music: press M if you’re not hearing music and should be.

Future plans

Note: ‘plans’ is short for ‘things I hope to do if possible’ – don’t buy the game on the assumption any of these will happen.

• Steam Workshop support for custom levels: looking for someone to write a plugin for this, details shortly.
• Level editor improvements: people are like, “It crashes if you put two elevators in!” and I’m like, “I know, why do you think the levels only ever have one elevator?” But I’ll have a go at fixing stuff like that.
• Customisable controls: I realise not having these is annoying, it’s just gonna take a while to do.
• Conversion to Game Maker Studio: should fix some otherwise unfixable compatibility problems like the slowdown bug, and improve performance for everyone. Need help to do it, though.
• Mac version.
• Linux version.

Reminder! If you have a serious problem I haven’t fixed yet, I’d rather not have your money! See the tail end of this post for how to request a refund. Short version: I can definitely do it if you bought via Humble, otherwise it’s up to Steam but I’ll back you up if needed.

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.

New features:

• Added a more visible and obvious way to abort a mission and change your screen settings if they turn out to look weird.
• The first time you play after this patch, you’ll be asked to choose your resolution. This is a one-time thing for the benefit of anyone who’s stuck in one that doesn’t work.
• Added a ‘Safe mode’ resolution that should work for everyone, and which you can get to using only the keyboard if necessary (in case the current setting is so bad you can’t even click on the right buttons).
• Added a ‘Native mode’ resolution option that’ll detect and match your screen’s native res. Be aware, though, that anything over 1920×1200 is always going to look odd, because Gunpoint’s levels don’t actually *have* that many pixels. Something around 1280×720 usually looks better and runs smoother.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed a thing the resolution menu was doing when switching between two non-native resolutions that I thought was clever but then turned out not to be clever and, in fact, confusing and annoying for all.
• Tweaked the way manual savegames work to prevent a) loading savegames from older versions and causing a crash (my fault), and b) accidentally loading a savegame from several missions ago and regretting it (your fault, but I wasn’t helping).
• An achievement misconfiguration caused the game to believe all players had found all laptops and defeated the final enemy in all possible ways. Understandably impressed, the game unlocked these achievements for almost everyone. Since it no longer knows your real laptop/takedown counts, I think we’ll just call this part of Conway’s backstory and remove those achievements. Each way of dealing with the final enemy still has its own achievement.

Progress on future fixes:

The .dll crash and music cutting out: I’m increasingly convinced these are to do with the middleware I used for music, or how I implemented it, so my next job is to put together a music-free beta that affected players can switch to. If that works, it might be time to look for a new way of handling music.

Slowdown: I now learn that this is a common problem for Game Maker 8.0 and Game Maker 8.1 games – Hotline Miami and Stealth Bastard both encountered it. So it’s probably not a scripting thing I can fix quickly. I have a few possible avenues to pursue in the short-term, but the good news is, when we ultimately switch to Game Maker Studio, that will almost certainly fix it.

An update on refunds: as I said previously, if you bought from this site and want a refund, I can do that for you absolutely no problem. If you bought on Steam, I don’t have the authority to make them give you a refund. But for the few the game still isn’t working for, if you raise a ticket with Steam support and tell them you’ve exhausted all tech support options with the developer (that’s me, I’ll back you up on this if necessary), they may refund you with Steam wallet credit. I won’t say “will” or “should” because as I say, it’s not totally in my power so it’d be wrong to make any promises. I’ll always do what I can to make it happen, though, and I’m always on your side.

Thanks to everyone who’s having issues for their patience! Gonna keep crunching to fix everything I can!

Bug fixes:

• Fixed a bug preventing the game from rightly chastising you for excessively punching the same guard.
• No longer possible to upgrade your trousers so much that they break the concept of linear time (divide by zero error).
• Ryan Ike is now more talkative on Mission 5.
• Fixed a bug that rendered the game unable to cope with how cool you look walking backwards into a subway with your gun drawn, leading to a crash.
• Fixed an interesting bug that caused problems if you played on two different PCs that have the same desktop resolution but different install drives. Well, not that interesting.

New features:

• Press F4 to toggle windowed mode anytime. This was already there, but we forgot to tell anyone.

But Tom, the fix I need isn’t any of those! Why do you hate me?

I don’t! I just haven’t had time to fix everything yet. This is my first game, and it’s reached an awful lot of people, and PCs are weird and different. We tested Gunpoint with over 5,000 people, but now it’s reached rather more, and it’s hard to catch everything.

I have made a list of steps you can try for any problem that may fix it.

This isn’t going to be a release-and-forget kind of thing, though. I’m working full-time to keep making it better now, and here are my top priorities:

1. Making it easier to change resolution
You can already change resolution any time between missions, but I realise the game doesn’t communicate that during a mission. So if you try a resolution on the first menu, then confirm it, then realise it’s wrong, then don’t see an option to change it mid-mission, it’s easy to panic.

Changing res mid-mission would reset the mission, which is why I left it out, but I think now it might be better to let you do that if you’re sure – or at least communicate how to.

I may also add a shortcut key to jump back to the resolution select menu in windowed mode, in case you get stuck in one that doesn’t let you click on the necessary things to do that.

2. Looking into a slowdown thing
Some people with fast machines are finding it runs slowly.

I have no earthly idea why this would be the case, but what I’ll do is put together a special demo that includes some options for changing the way the game handles the flow of time, the cursor, and the frame rate. If anyone affected finds one of these works, we’ll be on our way to fixing it.

In the meantime, it helps a lot if you can tell me your machine’s operating system and specs here.

3. A crash about ‘trigger deleted’
This is something Game Maker games have been known to throw up if they’re huge, or the system doesn’t have enough memory. Apparently it gets mixed up and starts looking for things that aren’t there – Gunpoint doesn’t actually use any triggers.

Again, I’ll try to put together a special test demo with a few things ripped out to see if we can at least determine a culprit. In the meantime, it helps a lot if you can tell me your machine’s operating system and specs here.

Beyond that
In order to bring Gunpoint to Mac and Linux – which is my intention but not yet guaranteed – it needs to be converted to Game Maker: Studio. This isn’t trivial, but once it’s done, it may solve a bunch of problems just from being a better suite. It may also run much faster on lower spec machines, which’d be awesome.

However
I’d much rather have your trust than your money, so if anyone has a game-stopping problem and would rather have a refund than wait for a fix, I’m checking with Valve to see if we can do that and find out how it works.

If you bought on Humble, I can do it for you right now – just write to me at pentadact+refunds@gmail.com and tell me the e-mail you supplied when you bought it. Absolutely no trouble, no questions asked, and if I ever fix the issue, I’ll release a new demo so you can check if it works.

It’s only a tiny percentage of people reporting these issues, but that’s zero help if you’re one of them, so I wanna do everything I can to make it OK with you.