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TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

Hello! I'm Tom. I'm a game designer, writer, and programmer on Gunpoint,
Heat Signature, and Tactical Breach Wizards. Here's some more info on all the
games I've worked on, here are the videos I make on YouTube, and here are two
short stories I wrote for the Machine of Death collections.




Tweets by Pentadact


THEME

By me. Uses Adaptive Images by Matt Wilcox.


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TOM’S TIMER 5


THE BONE QUEEN AND THE FROST BISHOP: PLAYTESTING SCAVENGER CHESS IN PLASTICINE


GRIDCANNON: A SINGLE PLAYER GAME WITH REGULAR PLAYING CARDS


DAD AND THE EGG CONTROLLER


A LEFTFIELD SOLUTION TO AN XCOM DISASTER


REWARDING CREATIVE PLAY STYLES IN HITMAN


POSTCARDS FROM FAR CRY PRIMAL


SOLVING XCOM’S SNOWBALL PROBLEM


KILL ZONE AND BLADESTORM


AN IDEA FOR MORE FLEXIBLE INDIE GAME AWARDS


WHAT WORKS AND WHY: MULTIPLE ROUTES IN DEUS EX


NAMING DRUGS HONESTLY IN BIG PHARMA


WRITING VS PROGRAMMING


LET ME SHOW YOU HOW TO MAKE A GAME


WHAT WORKS AND WHY: NONLINEAR STORYTELLING IN HER STORY


WHAT WORKS AND WHY: INVISIBLE INC


OUR SUPER GAME JAM EPISODE IS OUT


WHAT WORKS AND WHY: SAURON’S ARMY


SHOWING HEAT SIGNATURE AT FANTASTIC ARCADE AND EGX


WHAT I’M WORKING ON AND WHAT I’VE DONE


THE FORMULA FOR AN EPISODE OF MURDER, SHE WROTE


IMPROVING HEAT SIGNATURE’S RANDOMLY GENERATED SHIPS, INSIDE AND OUT


RAISING AN ARMY OF FLYING DOGS IN THE MAGIC CIRCLE


FLOATING POINT IS OUT! AND FREE! ON STEAM! WATCH A TRAILER!


DRAWING WITH GRAVITY IN FLOATING POINT


WHAT’S YOUR FAULT?


THE RANDOMISED TACTICAL ELEGANCE OF HOPLITE


HERE I AM BEING INTERVIEWED BY STEVE GAYNOR FOR TONE CONTROL


A STORY OF HEROISM IN ALIEN SWARM


ONE DESPERATE BATTLE IN FTL


TO HELL AND BACK IN SPELUNKY


GUNPOINT DEVELOPMENT BREAKDOWN


MY SHORT STORY FOR THE SECOND MACHINE OF DEATH COLLECTION


NOT BEING AN ASSHOLE IN AN ARGUMENT


PLAYING SKYRIM WITH NOTHING BUT ILLUSION


HOW MAINSTREAM GAMES BUTCHERED THEMSELVES, AND WHY IT’S MY FAULT


A SHORT SCRIPT FOR AN ANIMATED 60S HEIST MOVIE


ARGUING ON THE INTERNET


SHOPSTORM, A SPELUNKY STORY


WHY ARE STEALTH GAMES COOL?


THE SUSPICIOUS DEVELOPMENTS MANIFESTO


GDC TALK: HOW TO EXPLAIN YOUR GAME TO AN ASSHOLE


LISTENING TO YOUR SOUND EFFECTS FOR GUNPOINT


UNDERSTANDING YOUR BRAIN


WHAT MAKES GAMES GOOD


A STORY OF PLANE SEATS AND CLASS


DECKARD: BLADE RUNNER, MORON


AVOIDING SUSPICION AT THE US EMBASSY


AN IDEA FOR A BETTER OPEN WORLD GAME


A DIFFERENT WAY TO LEVEL UP


A DIFFERENT IDEA FOR ENDING BIOSHOCK


MY SCRIPT FOR A TEAM FORTRESS 2 SHORT ABOUT THE SPY


TEAM FORTRESS 2 UNLOCKABLE WEAPON IDEAS


DON’T MAKE ME PLAY FOOTBALL MANAGER


EVE’S ASSASSINS AND THE KILL THAT SHOCKED A GALAXY


MY GALACTIC CIVILIZATIONS 2 WAR DIARY


I PLAYED THROUGH EPISODE TWO HOLDING A GODDAMN GNOME


MY SHORT STORY FOR THE MACHINE OF DEATH COLLECTION


BLOOD MONEY AND SEX


A WOMAN’S LIFE IN SEARCH QUERIES


FIRST NIGHT, SECOND LIFE


SWAT 4: THE MOVIE SCRIPT


TOM’S TSTRETCH TIMER

I could never find a work/break timer that worked quite how I wanted, so I made
my own. Lately, though, I’ve had RSI issues, and now my focus is on just
ensuring I don’t work too long without taking a break to stretch. My old timer
half-worked for that, but to get really consistent, I needed something that:

 * Tracked whether I was using my PC or not automatically, without needing to
   remember to press a button.
 * Let me configure the maximum time I’m allowed to work, and how long I have to
   take a break before it counts as a break.
 * When I overwork, nag me in (customisable) ways that are gentle enough I won’t
   just close the app, but persistent enough I won’t just ignore it.
 * Met or exceeded the high standards of alliteration established by Tom’s
   Timer.

And so!

Tom’s Tstretch Timer
(Windows, 17MB, v1.6)



“Every moment of my life it haunts me. I work. I eat. I rest. I sleep. Still it
persists. Tom’s Tstretch Timer 1.4.”
Victoria Tran, referring to a previous version.

“Repeatedly” means once a minute, and it stops nagging if you’ve been AFK 30
secs already. You don’t have to click Reset to resume working, that’s just for
the GIF. You can force Work or Break mode with those buttons, but generally just
leaving it in Auto mode is best.

 

 


A SNOWY RAMBLE ON WHAT MAKES GAMES ‘DIFFERENT EVERY TIME’

It’s snowing, and I have a mic that make me audible outdoors!



So I got mildly snowed on while I rambled about board games as roguelikes, what
matters when making games ‘different every time’, and how Dune Imperium pulls it
off so well.

 

 


BLUNDERING INTO DEAD KING’S BLUFF

Blundered into a board game design lately, and it’s coming together. Here I am
talking about it on a cold, sunny, noisy (sorry) day! Will show it in action
once some little rules things solidify.



 

 


UNITY’S TRAP

Update: Unity have since walked back the worst part of this threat: those of us
using older versions won’t be subject to the new terms unless we upgrade. As far
as I understand, there aren’t new terms that would prevent them from pulling
this same trick in future, but the fact that the outcry turned them around to
this extent is a big relief for me. It suggests we at least have time to finish
our current game, and do any essential patching, before they get desperate
enough to try something like this again.

Unless there’s a legal guarantee of being able to stick with the terms that came
with the version of Unity you use, though, this attempt at a scumbag pressure
tactic leaves Unity a very risky prospect for future projects.

Original post:

Last week, Unity announced that they will soon start charging developers $0.20
each time their games are installed, past certain (high) thresholds. This came
as a surprise to me and a few thousand other developers who chose Unity,
invested in it, and paid for it in large part because they told us they wouldn’t
take any of our revenue.

The reaction has been huge, but it’s not clear yet if Unity will make it right.
The hasty, vague, conflicting clarifications they’ve offered all seemed aimed at
reassuring people “No no, we’re not gonna steal much of your money, because you
won’t be successful. Our plan is to steal that guy’s money.”

That’s not my issue, so I just wanna spell out exactly what my issue is.
Continued

 

 


TOM’S TIMER 5

8 years ago I made a little timer app to sit in my taskbar and track how long
I’d worked or not-worked. I’ve used it pretty regularly ever since, and every
now and then my need for some extra feature or tweak outweighs my laziness and I
make a new version. I’ve just made v5. Continued

 

 


THE BONE QUEEN AND THE FROST BISHOP: PLAYTESTING SCAVENGER CHESS IN PLASTICINE

My chess variant stalled a while, cos I rarely felt like coding when my work day
was done. So I bought a chess set and some plasticine to try some ideas lo-fi
style. What follows is how my first game of this iteration of Scavenger Chess
played out.

Continued

 

 


FIVE PROBLEMS WITH CHESS

Firstly, of course: many folks I like and respect love chess, and I’m happy for
them and have no interest in persuading chess fans to like it less or want
something different. But it’s not for everyone, and I’m one of the people for
whom it’s not. So what I’m interested in is: what needs fixing to make it a game
I enjoy? And if you did that, who else might enjoy it?

I am gonna call these problems problems, though, because it gets exhausting to
say “possible areas where there’s scope to broaden or mutate its appeal to a
different set of people, without wishing to detract from or disparage the great
enjoyment many already draw from the game as it stands.” And because some of
them, from my perspective, for players like me, with all the caveats above, seem
incredibly fucking stupid. Continued

 

 


BADMINTON

Badminton is the best sport – and I’ve tried easily six of them. Here’s what’s
good about it:

 * Sound effects: hitting a shuttlecock (they call them birdies here) doesn’t
   just make a great sound, it makes a whole range of them. You’ve got your
   gentle pongs, your lively thwaps, all the way up to the fearsome splack of a
   good overhand smash. I’d say the only sport that can claim more satisfying
   noises is archery, and in badminton no-one has to die.
 * It involves a lot less walking around and picking things up: this is the main
   thing it has over tennis – even a ridiculously overpowered shot never goes
   more than a couple feet from the court, and in tennis even the gentlest shot
   can bounce to a neighbouring country if you’re not there to stop it. This is
   because of a secret feature of badminton:
 * It has Bullet Time built in: a shuttlecock is a weird little contradiction –
   streamlined in silhouette but engineered to slur through the air like it’s
   treacle. The harder you hit it, the faster it slows – meaning, basically, go
   ham. You pretty quickly learn to lunge for shots you think you’ve already
   missed, because the proportionate slowdown is so extreme that you sometimes
   get them anyway. It almost feels like you’ve gone slightly back in time to
   get another chance.
 * Extreme dynamic range: these hard shots – aim them up and they absolutely
   soar, giving your opponent plenty of time to get in position, but also plenty
   of time to overthink it and whiff at the last minute. Aim them down and it’s
   the opposite: an absolute bullet to the ground, brutally difficult to defend,
   but when they do come back it’s such a sudden reversal that all you can do is
   flinch in self-defense. And those are just the hard shots – at the other end
   of the spectrum, there’s a whole artform in barely touching the birdie so
   that it lazily bellyflops over the net and dribbles down the other side in a
   fatal fall that leaves them hurling themselves across the court to reach it
   and attempt an equally pathetic shot back.
 * Comedy: that’s very, very funny. Even more so as a return to a much more
   dramatic shot. And even more so if you’re busy celebrating your genius when
   the fucking thing comes back with exactly the same smug lethargy. And these
   are just the shots that work – badminton is a masterclass in the taste of
   victory turning to ashes in your mouth. Pride, cleverness, and an
   ostentatious wind-up come before a public self-own every three shots.
   Sometimes a long-awaited serve just drops to the floor without even touching
   a racket. Sometimes your sneaky side shot goes so far out it’s a valid shot
   in the next court. Sometimes they set you up for the perfect unstoppable
   smash and you just beast it directly into the net. Sometimes you beast it
   under the net. Sometimes you just beast it directly into the ground, and look
   around at everyone like, well I don’t know what that was supposed to be.
 * It’s exercise but I enjoy it? This is sort of self-referential and redundant
   – I like badminton because I like badminton? – but the last point was too
   long-winded to feel like a conclusion so here we are.



 

 


WE’RE LOOKING FOR SOMEONE TO MAKE A TACTICAL BREACH WIZARDS TRAILER

Update: the position’s been filled, thanks everyone!

We’re looking for someone to make a roughly 2 minute trailer of Tactical Breach
Wizards, preferably by the 9th of May.

We have a new chapter of the game to show off, but we don’t want to do our usual
in-depth talkthroughs because it would start to get spoilery.

The game has pause, slowmo, level select and camera controls built in, and we’ll
also provide you with the Unity project if you’re able to make use of that.

We have a composer and some tracks already in, you’d work with them directly to
figure out the music needs.

Our game is a fairly straight-faced parody of a modern military action thriller,
borrowing superficial tropes and critiquing or inverting some of the deeper
ones. You can get a sense of it from our last talkthrough vid:



And you can get a sense of our sense of humour from the Gunpoint and Heat
Signature trailers:





 

 


VOID BASTARDS VS HEAT SIGNATURE: A COMPLETELY OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS

Note: this was written around the time Void Bastards was released, but
languished in my Drafts for years because I’d planned to make it longer. What’s
there all still makes sense to me though, so I’m just gonna make it about the 3
things I did cover and throw it out there:

Void Bastards is a roguelike first-person shooter about boarding randomly
generated spaceships. I designed a top-down roguelike about boarding randomly
generated spaceships, so it’s interesting to see how the two games tackled the
same issues differently, and how well their solutions worked out! I picked
three: Continued

 

 


SEEKING A COMPOSER FOR TACTICAL BREACH WIZARDS

Update: Applications are now closed! It’ll take some time to go through them
all.

Update: We’ll continue taking applications for the composer position until noon
Pacific Time on Wednesday this week! This link should tell you when that is for
you.

Original post:

We’re looking for a composer to handle the music for Tactical Breach Wizards!

 * This is a contract position for this project only.
 * Remote, paid – let us know your preferred rate. Ask for what’s fair, getting
   this done cheaply is not a priority for us.
 * See below for the scope and nature of the work.
 * We expect to be working on the game for at least 1 more year, so that’s the
   rough time frame for working on this.

We don’t care about years of experience or prestige of prior projects, all we
need is to hear some of your existing work – whether it’s personal or
professional. You don’t need to have worked in games before – the game-specific
concerns are outlined here so you can judge if they’re gonna be a problem.

Instructions for applying are at the bottom of this post, but first I’ll give as
much info as I can about the job: Continued

 

 


GRIDCANNON: A SINGLE PLAYER GAME WITH REGULAR PLAYING CARDS

I thought it would be an interesting game design challenge to come up with a
single player game you can play with a regular deck of playing cards. My first
try, about a month ago, didn’t work. But on Sunday I had a new idea, and with
one tweak from me and another from my friend Chris Thursten, it’s playing pretty
well now! In the video I both explain it and play a full game. I’ll write the
rules here, but they’ll make more sense when you see it played: Continued

 

 


MAKING A BETTER CARD FEEL WORSE WITH UX

Nowhere Prophet has a power where each turn you can choose 1 card from your hand
to discard, and draw another to replace it.

Slay the Spire has a power where you draw 1 extra card per turn, then must
discard 1 of your choice right after.

Slay’s power is straight up better: you get to see what the new card is before
deciding what to discard, which both lets you factor it into synergy
considerations, and allows you to discard the new card itself, if it’s worse
than what you have.

But experientially, Nowhere Prophet’s feels more positive. You’re presented with
a hand you can keep, or if you like you can get a do-over on the card you like
least. Doing nothing is fine, but if you see a bad card you can chuck it for
good odds of a better one. Yay! Continued

 

 


STEAM QUIRKS FOR DEVELOPERS

Talking to people at GDC and Rezzed, especially people just starting in game
dev, made me realise I’ve accumulated a load of non-obvious knowledge about how
Steam works and how best to use it. Info like this tends to get passed around
between established devs, at events and in closed circles, but newer devs and
those excluded from these groups don’t get access to it.

Everything marked ‘info’ was either learned by me first hand, or told to me by
Valve at events with the express purpose of getting this kind of info out to
developers, without request of confidentiality. I say this because I do also get
told things confidentially – none of that is in here. Continued

 

 


CHARITY

When Gunpoint did well, in 2013, I thought: “I should give some money to
charity. But this might have to last me the rest of my life. So I should wait
til I have a second game out, and see how that does.”

When Heat Signature did well in, 2017, I thought: “It’s doing great so far! But
how fast will it trail off? This has to cover the budget of the next game. What
if Steam’s algorithm changes and all our revenue stops? Maybe after the third
game I’ll know more about-”

I see what my brain is doing. There’ll always be enough uncertainty in my life
that I can delay a donation in the name of caution. But I don’t think that loop
ends on iteration 3 or 4, so I’m cutting it short now. I’m giving $25,000 to the
Against Malaria Foundation and another $25,000 to GiveDirectly. Continued

 

 


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