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.

I have three different ways I could get it done, so I’m investigating two of them while trying to do the third one myself. If doing it myself works, that’s handy. If not, I’ll know how hard it is and how much I should be paying to get it done.

Whichever method we use, it should fix those compatibility problems, make the game run much faster for everyone, and pave the way to port it to Mac and Linux.

2. Steam Workshop integration for custom levels

This has always been the plan, but obviously it doesn’t make sense to do it just before switching engines – it would have to be re-done immediately after. My first priority is to fix the game for the few people who still can’t play, and helping people share levels will be my next job after that.

3. Mac and Linux

How I do these ports depends heavily on which method I use for 1, as will the time frame. These two are my main priorities, though – if we ever do any other ports, they’d be handled externally so I can stay focused on PC platforms.

If you want some idea of the kind of fun I’m having, the shot above is from the fourth try at getting Gunpoint working in Game Maker Studio. The first three just crashed outright, and in number four Conway is distorted (?), all floors are transparent (!), the screen is being rescaled from 1024×600 with the wrong aspect ratio (!?), and the Rooke logo is now misspelled (!?!).

Fixed all those, with some help from the kind folks at YoYoGames, so now I probably only have a few thousand more crazy issues to go!