Tom Francis @Pentadact Twitter profile

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Tom Francis

10 months

Time for a new 'Where else to find me' pinned tweet: ⛅ BlueSky (posting most stuff there) 📸 Insta 🐘 Mastodon (posting infrequently) ✍ Blog (slow but eternal)

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Last Seen Profiles

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

1 year

Adding helicopters near the start of game dev: "A Helicopter is a Vehicle." Adding helicopters late in game dev: "When you think about it, a Helicopter is just a very advanced type of Door."

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

8 years

No gods No kings

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

4 years

We did it. We finally let it go too far.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

1 year

Shout out to this apartment building for having the very non-psychotic idea to hide the haunted faces of children on their gate grills, so you only glimpse them for a bone-chilling moment as you walk past.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

My God, they finally did it. PC Gamer back page joke, 2011 Bethesda E3 conference, 2017

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

2 years

A crow got inside Vancouver airport, and their response was just to shit-proof the sculptures and make a welcome sign.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

Should have known my dad wouldn't let a little thing like dying stop him from wishing me a happy birthday. (This is a prototype for a digital calendar he made for my gran, I took it as a memento of him.)

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

I am now ready to tell you that the prototype I've been working on ( ) Is called: TACTICAL BREACH WIZARDS And @John_Arr has been doing some sketches for it! Here's the pitch:

Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

YouTube's auto-captioning misheard my tiny-XCOM prototype as 'Tiny Ex-Con', so that's the codename now.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

4 years

While we're all stuck at home, maybe I can help you learn to make games in Unity? Part 1 just went up! - Free tutorial, no ads, using only free software - Aimed at folks who've never written code - Focused on making something fast, and having fun with it

Make A Game In Unity With No Experience #1: Movement

Hi! Let's try making a game and not having a miserable time trying! Some important links and notes:- Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUtKzyI...

www.youtube.com

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

3 months

"Stop what you're doing, you're late for a meeting I've just decided starts immediately. Here, lemme set off a siren in your home until you join." Phonecalls are wild.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

Stop blending in.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

Are you kidding me @VoidBastards

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

I'm at the war memorial. I'm at the Shrek diorama. I'm at the combination war memorial Shrek diorama.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

Oh no

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

HEAT SIGNATURE IS OUT Break into spaceships! By the Gunpoint devs! Buy! RT pls? New trailer!

Heat Signature is out! This is the launch trailer

Buy it here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/268130/Heat_Signature/Trailer narrated by the excellent Alex Ashby: http://twitter.com/alexashby

www.youtube.com

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

I wonder how many times on how many dev teams a director has said "We're going to be the game that does it. We're going to animate taking clothes off and on." And tech/anim have given it their all and come back saying "No. Sorry. We are still 400 years from this technology."

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

I'm very nervous and excited to show you: TACTICAL BREACH WIZARDS! A character driven tactics game from the Gunpoint and Heat Signature folks, about wizards in modern-day tactical gear! Follow @BreachWizards ! Wishlist it! RT?!

Tactical Breach Wizards on Steam

In Tactical Breach Wizards, you lead a team of renegade wizards in kevlar through turn-based battles to unravel a modern conspiracy plot. Combine their unique spells in clever ways, or rewind time to...

store.steampowered.com

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

8 years

This is the actual input pattern you get by moving an analogue stick in a circle, so I'm quitting game development.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

The problem with videogame April Fools is that no concept is so stupid our industry wouldn't do it.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

4 years ago this week, I quit my job to make indie games. Last night - with many caveats - I sold my millionth copy. Thank you all so much!

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

Untitled Goose Game is out now and if you get your beak stuck in a milk bottle it affects the accoustics of your honk. Anyway goodnight.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

"Can we simulate two galaxies colliding?" "Yes, in an afternoon." "Can we show, for example, someone taking off a sock?" "Look, I'm not a fucking wizard."

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

1. You don't owe us anything for your game taking 1 month longer than expected to make. 2. Anyone who would be placated by you working brutal hours can and should fuck off.

PCGamesN

@PCGamesN

6 years

Warhammer 40k: Inquisitor - Martyr got delayed to June, and the devs are working 90 hour weeks to apologize.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

8 years

"What did great grandad do in the war?" "Well, son, war is... *rubs eyes* complicated."

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

God, I just remembered that in Command & Conquer you could just walk an engineer into any enemy building and own it. I remember driving an APC full of engies into the enemy base to run into all their buildings and immediately sell them. Games were sillier then and it was good.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

Encountered a buff guy in gym gear in the lobby, who asked which floor I was going to, joined me in the lift, and on the way up fully explained his key-related problem and which doors he did and didn't have access to. Have never met a more Hitman NPC.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

Talking to people at GDC and Rezzed made me realise I’ve accumulated a load of non-obvious knowledge about how Steam works. A lot of developers are excluded from the circles where this kind of info gets passed around, so allow me to spill:

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

3 years

Fuck's sake, just tryna get home but I guess I gotta answer 3 riddles from the Junction Geese again

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

I've been a playtester on this at various points but I can't say anything more about it except a) that's a nice trailer and b) I would like a medal for keeping the secret for 4.5 years. .

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

Choosing the right development environment for your indie game, as a novice coder: If you would like the end of your project to be a nightmare, use Game Maker. If you would like the start of your project to be a nightmare, use Unity.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

You: (feature request) Me: You think you want that but you actually don't, here's why it compromises the integrity of our high-level design goals... Me two months later: Actually no that's good.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

I told Pinterest my gender and that was my first mistake.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

Whatever you reward, some players will feel forced to do it. The tiny XP payout for hacking in Deus Ex 3 killed the game for this person.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

Received a new debit card with strict instructions to destroy the old one. I sliced it through the chip, cut it in quarters and scattered it to the four bins. On closer inspection of the new one, it's not for that account.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

Hello! I have moved to Vancouver, where it apparently just looks like this.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

8 years

Oh my God, I just discovered I can survive a long fall by creating a doppelganger down there and dropkilling her. What am I.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

1 month

Every tech service I use is like: create your thing. OK but a thing must belong to a Project, create a Project. Well a Project must belong to a Solution, create a Solution. A Solution must belong to a Workspace. A Workspace must belong to an Ultrablork.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

Alright but you could, like, try.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

This hollow alert dot signifies that this man *would* find what I'm doing suspicious (smothering him with a pillow) if he could see me, but also that he is not currently seeing me, because there is a pillow in the way.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

3 years

Was just reminded that Plants Vs Zombies was originally going to be called Lawn of the Dead, and wept for what the world has lost.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

I wrote about trying to decipher the mysteries of one of my dad's cleverest gadgets after he died: The Egg Controller. I hope I kept the tone light-hearted, but inevitably involves some sadness!

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

Game dev: some things take 8x longer than you think and other things take an 8th of the time, and there's no way to know in advance, the end

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

To leave a truly happy family who all like each other And a workshop full of gadgets we barely understand That'll be hard to live up to To have enough warning before you go To say how you feel and hear it back That's how I'd like it to end Thanks for everything, dad

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

People are gonna get hit by this thing wondering why the full detail model hasn't loaded in yet.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

9 years

Programming is a good job if you want to spent all of your time at the absolute limit of your capacity to understand things.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

"They should have sent a pilot." - A poet, from the wreckage

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

8 years

When this table catches the light, you can see the smudges from when it was last cleaned. 👌 [Deus Ex: MD]

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

3 years

This remains a real shitty way for a single player game to punish players for its own servers being down. [Hitman 3]

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

Every day my laptop's Windows Defender icon gets a little blurrier and I can't wait to find out what the fuck this means.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

If you read links as text rather than buttons, e-mails sound a lot more threatening. "Dear Tom, we are pleased to confirm your reservation at 19:00. Cancel this booking."

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

8 years

Finally back in the UK. What… what happened here?

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

Can't load my Witcher 3 save because I don't have the right downloadable beard. Videogames have gone too far.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

4 years

Hard to believe I've already completed Animal Crossing.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

Hm, slightly weird description of a backpack. ... This one also puts a lot of emphasis on smell and chewability. ... Wait, is this because I was controlling a dog when I clicked Inspect?! [Overland]

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

10 months

Don't often weigh in on the clusterfuck of the day, but in case it needs saying: @unity rug-pulling a new fee structure on devs is an astonishing scumbag move. (Thread)

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

1 year

Please enjoy Tactical @BreachWizards newest type of door.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

Boy it's a thrill to see this.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

9 years

3 out of 5 stars: good 6/10: OK 60%: bad

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

2 years

Without spoiling any details, what games had the best endings? I'll get a few out of the way: Portal Inside Disco Elysium

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

The canon of stealth games is a series of very elegant answers to the question of "How can you avoid detection?" paired with extremely clumsy answers to "What happens if you don't?"

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

I can't believe they marketed Just Cause 4 on "there are storms now" when the real headline is "it has the deepest and most complex grappling hook configuration system in history".

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

Me, honestly trying to follow the tutorial in Steep.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

9 years

We may have reached peak New Yorker. http://t.co/WtVbOhxFMf http://t.co/CeinwXFK8R

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

Heat Signature is out Sept 21st - next week! We're doing strange things for launch week! .

Heat Signature launch week celebrations - it's out Sep 21!

Details on both these events here! http://www.pentadact.com/2017-09-11-heat-signature-release-date-and-launch-celebrations/

www.youtube.com

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

4 years

Villagers then: Wow, you're so good at placing things, you should be in charge of all our town planning decisions! Villagers now:

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

4 years

The talk I was going to give at GDC was called "Consider Giving Up" - and then GDC, wisely, did. So I've done it from my lounge instead - a 5 minute talk on why 'Never give up' is really bad advice: .

GDC Talk: Consider Giving Up (5 mins)

Appropriately enough (and for good reason) they gave up on holding GDC itself the year I was meant to give this talk. Since I talk a bit fast and my camera m...

www.youtube.com

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

Hitman 2 bug: Diana says "target eliminated, nicely done" when in fact it was a shitshow.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

4 years

optimism.gif

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

"So what's shopping like in the US?" "Same as home mostly, you squeeze the lemon grenade, it shrieks, then a silent man angrily serves you."

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

A key I use a lot in programming turns out to be my shortcut for OBS to start recording, so I unknowingly captured my true coding face. And I am afraid it is this.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

I'm wearing a bucket in Divinity, so when I enter sneak mode it looks like my hat just gets bigger.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

Best thing about Assassin's Oranges so far: > Set your horse to autopilot > Turn the HUD off > Mind control your eagle = Epic journey cam

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

In case anyone's tempted by Pixel's Assistant, here's where they're at with natural language processing:

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

I'd love to play (or make?) a simple RPG that reacted the way a playful DM does to 1s and 20s. Investigate [1]: you still have no idea what this is and now you've also forgotten what swords are. Investigate [20]: this is a Francis Bow, you invented it. (+8 damage)

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

8 years

I face this dilemma with every object in my house.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

I'm expecting a package today and Celeste uses my doorbell's *exact* chime as a sound effect so 0/10. I have literally answered the door to no-one twice already.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

My shotgun crashed, the future is awful. #Prey

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

OK, I have listened carefully to all your Brooklyn 99 endorsements and used your enthusiasm to get past my dislike of the first episode and carefully reviewed 35 further episodes and... I love it. You were correct.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

8 years

Got a zester, so now my old fashioneds are prettier and my orange looks like it would do 15 fire damage to non-magical units in a 2m radius.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

4 years

March: Animal Crossing is the game we need in this troubled time. May: the game where you just fucking break everything also makes a compelling case.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

Me estimating development time:

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

Every time a bandit in Assassin's Creed yells "Your time is up, dog!" I whisper "What's updog?" as I kill them.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

Update: the package came and they fucking knocked.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

4 years

A lot going on in this extremely videogames sentence. [Watch Dogs Legion]

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

7 years

Now that's a shopping interface. (From: )

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

Hello! I have finally got my shit together enough to figure out how much I should give to charity and to which charities and to actually do it, so I've done it. Here's a post about what I decided and why!

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

It's live! Heat Signature now has a Daily Challenge, Character Traits, 4 new unique enemy types, 7+ new hazards, new AI, and 10+ other new features. And it's 40% off for the first time! Buy it: Full update details: RT?

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

2 years

ICYMI at the weekend, here's our new trailer! I've also just updated our Steam page to better pitch the game, describe who you're fighting, and explain what you do between missions:

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

3 years

There are an almost infinite number of things you could add or improve on a game that would all feel productive and worthwhile and take up your working week, but only a slim percentage of them will actually move the needle on how players feel about the end result.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

Are we completely fucking out of slogans.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

8 years

A play in two acts.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

My boiler is down so I'm heating my house the old fashioned way: running The Witcher 3 on Ultra.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

I love that Steam users regularly changing their nicknames to baffling garbage is so widespread that there's now a feature where *I* get to name you and the whole system can just ignore whatever stupid bullshit you're calling yourself this week.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

8 years

Game dev tip: to arrive at the correct price for your game, simply multiply the graphics by the length. Eg. 5 graphics x 3 hours = $15

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

8 years

Videogames are a series of interesting decisions.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

3 years

Ah shit, there was just a button for it.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

3 months

Got two new flatmates this week, and they're hogging the bathroom. Say hi to Beth & Jess, 5mo rescue kittens, sisters, and prime suspects if I die by melting.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

5 years

I have now put more hours into Assassin's Creed Odyssey than I have into... *checks calculator* ...my career.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

9 years

It's vanilla, mate, not scorpions.

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Tom Francis

@Pentadact

6 years

If I could have any superpower from a videogame it would be pressing E on someone to have them spontaneously initiate conversation without me having to think of something to say.

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