Tom Francis » Heat Signature

Heat Signature is one Space Year old today! To celebrate, we’ve released a big free update we’ve been working on for five months, with over 20 features – including our own twist on a Daily ...

https://www.pentadact.com/2018-09-27-heat-signatures-space-birthday-update-is-live/

I was too nervous to read Heat Signature reviews for two weeks after launch. I was relieved to see the scores were great, and after 3.5 years of work, that was all I wanted to hear: I didn’t wa...

https://www.pentadact.com/2017-11-22-heat-signatures-fair-points-update-reacting-to-good-reviews/

For the duration of Space Halloween (27th of Space October to the 1st of Space November), life and death in the Drift will be a little different: Removed: Death Due to science, you cannot die dur...

https://www.pentadact.com/2017-10-27-death-is-canceled-for-space-halloween/

I reshuffled this post a bit so I can link this part more easily: Update On The Everything Gun It’s been great to see how much people are loving this very silly weapon, and how excited people a...

https://www.pentadact.com/2017-09-27-heat-signatures-launch-and-first-player-legend/

Or you can buy it from the Humble Store. Supporter’s Edition There’s also a Supporter’s Edition, which comes with a bunch of fun extras: Play through Heat Signature’s development with 8 e...

https://www.pentadact.com/2017-09-22-heat-signature-is-out/

Heat Signature will be out on Steam 21st of September 2017! At time of writing, that’s Thursday of next week. It’s for Windows PCs, other platforms will depend on how this one goes. We don’...

https://www.pentadact.com/2017-09-11-heat-signature-release-date-and-launch-celebrations/

Surprising news! I made a new video showing off John Roberts’ excellent new art for the game’s four factions! (Not that surprising) I’m looking for a programmer in the Seattle area to help ...

https://www.pentadact.com/2016-12-21-heat-signature-factions-trailer-working-at-valve-looking-for-a-programmer/

As well as the update above, I’ve been putting up some day-by-day logs of what I’m working on in Heat Signature. I’m only doing them for my own benefit, so they’re not mega interesting an...

https://www.pentadact.com/2016-11-26-heat-signature-what-ive-been-working-on/

As promised on Twitter, I recently sent everyone on our mailing list instructions on how to get in on a new alpha test of Heat Signature. Keys went out to the first 2,000 people to do so, but I�...

https://www.pentadact.com/2016-04-25-testing-wishlists-and-a-new-video/

Hello! I’ll be at Rezzed in London next week, 7-9 April 2016, and you can come and play Heat Signature while I watch, panic, and frantically patch it on a different PC. Saturday’s sold ou...

https://www.pentadact.com/2016-03-30-heat-signature-will-be-at-rezzed-2016-next-week/

Excerpt from an e-mail I just sent to artist John: A brief history of zooming and backgrounds: We worry about how to make the game look good at all the zooms between ‘local’ and ‘galaxy map...

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-12-22-heat-signature-infinitely-scaling-vapour-layers/

My summary of where we are after the last ship-generation post would be: The Drunk Snake is probably the best algorithm so far, for generating the amount of branching and length of critical path ...

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-11-28-generating-locks-and-keys-in-heat-signatures-ships/

Last time I covered how I taught Heat Signature to build ships out of sectors, join those sectors together, lock some of those doors, then place keycards in the right places to ensure they’re a...

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-11-26-laying-out-heat-signatures-ships-snakey-vs-branchy/

I haven’t talked about the way I randomly generate spaceships in Heat Signature since this post – before it even had actual art. That’s partly because I’ve barely touched it since then. I...

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-11-14-teaching-heat-signatures-ship-generator-to-think-in-sectors/

In maths, ‘natural numbers’ are the ones you might use to count observable, whole things: eg. there are six people here. Anything that doesn’t work in place of ‘six’ there, like 3.4 or ...

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-09-25-natural-numbers-in-game-design/

If you own the Exclusive Edition of Gunpoint on Steam – or the Exclusive Extras as DLC – you now have access to a Windows-only, very rough and time-limited alpha test version of Heat Signatur...

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-08-16-gunpoint-exclusive-edition-owners-now-have-a-two-week-alpha-of-heat-signature/

It’s Sunday, so I’m allowed to work on things that aren’t important. This started as a test for an idea I have of how to create a ‘wake’ that expands behind you, something I ultimately ...

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-07-26-vapour-trail-experiments/

My current task in Heat Signature is to tweak the airlocks so there’s room to put a closed door between you and the rest of the ship when you board. That way, you have as much time as you like ...

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-07-25-spot-the-bug/

I let Eurogamer play Heat Signature and sat in the back seat to passive-aggressively criticise! It went great! This is both a slightly better looking build than the last trailer, and a longer vid...

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-07-22-eurogamer-play-heat-signature/

I used to be press! Now I’m a developer. So I’m showing them my game, and trying to figure out if what I’m showing is exciting. Here’s what that’s like. I would like it known that I rea...

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-07-21-what-its-like-showing-heat-signature-to-the-press/

As always, follow it on Twitter or sign up to be told when it’s out, or ready for testing, here. I also made a short montage of all the ways I fucked this video up in previous takes:

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-06-29-new-heat-signature-video-galaxies-suction-and-wrench-throwing/

Here is a video blog about that, and how I’m changing how I think about working on it.

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-05-19-why-im-letting-heat-signature-get-bigger/

Heat Signature’s universe has been infinite since day 2 or 3, but until now you’ve only been able to see a meager 35,000 x 35,000 pixels of it at once. I knew at some point I wanted to let yo...

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-04-12-galactic-zoom-in-heat-signature/

Many of you have been asking how the story of Heat Signature follows on from Gunpoint. We can now explain.

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-04-01-from-gunpoint-to-heat-signature-a-narrative-journey/

Today I added Detpacks to Heat Signature. Here is a Detpack: Detpack FAQ Q: Why does placing a detpack cause you to also fire your gun? A: This interview is over. — Heat Signature (@HeatSig) Fe...

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-02-24-detpacks/

Update: This was originally a post to ask for help, but now that we’ve solved the problem I’m posting the solution for anyone who needs it, and changing the title to make it more searchable. ...

https://www.pentadact.com/2015-01-27-help-me-with-a-trigonometry-problem-for-heat-signature/

I started making Heat Signature on December the 1st, 2013. I know this because I released the first video of it two days later. One year on, and the latest video shows how far it’s come. But I ...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-12-01-heat-signature-one-year-later/

I designed a PC game called Gunpoint and now I'm working on Heat Signature.

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-11-19-new-heat-signature-trailer-shows-art-music-wrenches-and-guns/

Here’s what Heat Signature looks like these days! The new art is by the multi-talented John Roberts, who also did art for our last game, Gunpoint. Next week I’ll put up a trailer to show all ...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-11-06-heat-signature-screenshots/

I think if I embed a YouTube playlist, I can make this post always show the latest Heat Signature trailer even when I change it in future.

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-11-05-heat-signature-trailers/

I have long known that ‘Finite State Machines’ are a thing I should be using, but when I try to read up on them, the explanations are either hopelessly vague or incredibly specific to a langu...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-10-09-help-me-learn-finite-state-machines-for-guard-ai-in-heat-signature/

I’ve been away the last two weeks, showing Heat Signature first at Fantastic Arcade in Austin, then at EGX in London. I’ll show you what that all looked like below, but first I’ll embed my ...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-10-01-showing-heat-signature-at-fantastic-arcade-and-egx/

Last month I made a new video of my ugly prototype for Heat Signature and put out an open call for artists and composers who might wanna work on it. When I did the same thing for my first game Gu...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-09-18-introducing-the-heat-signature-team/

Just a quick update to say I am still going through the Heat Signature applications. Sorry it’s taking a while – if you didn’t see on Twitter, I got 81 applications for the artist position ...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-09-09-update-on-heat-signature-applications/

Heat Signature will be playable at two different events next month, in the UK and the US! 18-21 September: Fantastic Arcade at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas, US 25-28 September: Eurogamer...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-08-22-heat-signature-playable-at-egx-and-fantastic-arcade/

I’ve now made enough of Heat Signature to be fairly sure of what it is, which means a) here’s a new trailer! And b) I’m ready to start looking for an artist and a composer to work with! Upd...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-08-07-heat-signature-needs-an-artist-and-a-composer/

I started making Heat Signature mainly to figure out if the mechanics would be as fun as they seemed in my head, so I built all its systems in the cheapest, fastest, simplest possible way. That w...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-07-19-improving-heat-signatures-randomly-generated-ships-inside-and-out/

The reason it’s been a while since I last showed off my space stealth game, Heat Signature, is that I want to use the next video to put out a call for artists and musicians to hire. So it needs...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-06-24-heat-signature-development-time-lapse-5-months-in-2-minutes/

I’ve been designing and trying various ways for you to make progress towards your objective in Heat Signature, and four bad iterations have led me to a surprising conclusion.

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-04-22-heat-signatures-first-four-objective-systems-and-why-they-all-sucked/

Yesterday I tweeted from the Heat Signature account about avoiding a tricky problem with homing missiles by just increasing their acceleration over time – I called it AccelerationAcceleration. ...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-03-09-jerk-jounce-and-rates-of-change/

The next thing I wanna let you do in Heat Signature is take the helm of an enemy ship and fly it yourself. But right now, things go very screwy if you’re on a ship as it accelerates. So I’m r...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-02-27-ending-a-space-war-with-a-punch-in-heat-signature/

Updated! see bottom of post. Heat Signature is a game about randomised space ships that you can sneak aboard. These ships have a randomly generated interior of connected rooms and corridors, and ...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-02-22-thinking-about-pathfinding-in-heat-signatures-randomised-modularly-destructible-spaceships/

IndieCade East was lovely. It’s a convention in New York, held at the Museum of the Moving Image, consisting mostly of people giving talks about games or showing their games. For example, Zack ...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-02-22-how-indiecade-went-for-heat-signature-and-the-grappling-hook-game/

The way Heat Signature randomly generates its ships at the moment is very basic – I’m new to random generation, and I don’t polish or improve things until all the other systems are in. Its ...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-02-07-randomly-generating-simple-spaceships-in-heat-signature/

People often ask me: “Tom, frequentlyAskedQuestion.” “Well,” I tell them… When will… I don’t know. I didn’t finish my question! If it starts with ‘When will’, my answer is alw...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-02-07-the-heat-signature-faq/

I can now show you what my space stealth game is really about! As long as I don’t get spotted like three times in a row right at the start of this video. Watch that first if you care, if not, h...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-02-03-heat-signature-a-game-about-sneaking-aboard-randomly-generated-spaceships/

Thought I’d take a break from programming talk to get into game design, and how I approach it. I am aware my mug is ridiculous – it’s an old GTA III promo one. I’m bad at shutting up once...

https://www.pentadact.com/2014-01-25-game-design-the-non-stick-plan/

Here’s the first video of Heat Signature, a temperature-based space stealth game I’ve been making the last two days. It’s about sneaking up on ships while keeping your ship cool enough to f...

https://www.pentadact.com/2013-12-03-heat-signature-a-stealth-space-game-about-temperature/