Tom Kail (@tomkail) header
Tom Kail (@tomkail) profile picture

Unity dev at BetterUp, previously at Inkle. Maintains the Unity plugin for Ink. GDC speaker, game design blogger.

Cambridge
Joined March 2011
.... There once was a labyrinth at the end of time .... 🚨 ANNOUNCING 🚨 THE FOREVER LABYRINTH An inkle game In collaboration with @googlearts Free to play right now, in browser or the GAC app 🖼️ goo.gle/foreverlabyrinth
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🎮 #GameJam Announcement! 🎮 A 48 hour in-person Game Jam hosted by Cambridge Game Makers at Thrive! 📅 18th-19th November 📍 Thrive, Cambridge RSVP now! 🔗: eventbrite.co.uk/e/game-jam-…
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Been waiting to play Goodbye Volcano High for YEARS! Most excite.
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Ooooh my NorDevCon talk on Ink is on Youtube! youtube.com/watch?v=ybr5TPu0… It's...basically impossible to hear the audio 😅 We never tested audio input worked
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Finally got around to building out the horrible but necessary systems for my incest game (which I'll explain another time). The key was ditching the very hard layout system and forcing the player to untangle weird relationships - which is 100% GAMEPLAY.
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5 years ago I released a game. It had many flaws. I couldn't pull it off - yet. Now I'm going to make it right. Windy Meadow - tales of 3 young people facing difficult choices, set in a village from the fantasy world of Roadwarden. Coming soon. #indiedev #gamedev #pixelart #vn
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Last night I dreamt that @unity fixed the bug in Unity Answers that swaps all instances of the string "is" with "$$anonymous$$"
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To my shame, these are better than the actual docs 😅
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Phew! Talk at #nordevcon is DONE! Lots of fun. Thanks to @n3rdybirdy for the pic!
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Are there any game designers who know games that have made improvements to Clash Royale's chest system? I've always thought of it as a very fair and well considered F2P system but it's quite old now, and I'd be interested to know if it's been bettered!
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Happy Monday! Here's a nice song that reminds me rather a lot of a layered version of the Outer Wilds theme. open.spotify.com/track/0fVK2…
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Oh wow Unity's spline system is fantastic! It's the first time in quite a while that I've been impressed by their output.
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Sadly moving away from @git_fork because it's impossible to google "how to do X in git using fork" because fork is itself a git keyword :( Such a weird problem to have! Back to Sourcetree, I suppose. Hope they've fixed all the bugs since 2015!
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I'll be giving an Ink 101 talk at the @NorfolkDev conference this Feb! More info closer to the time, but it'll be my first time doing anything professional in the city I grew up in, which feels lovely.
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Sharing some code that converts between local and anchored positions in Unity RectTransform. gist.github.com/tomkail/b28a… In a regular inspector, anchored position is shown for RectTransform; local position for Transform. In a RectTransform, localPosition is always the visual center.
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Quite why this isn't standard is another thing entirely. Been working on UI heavy projects for YEARS and this stuff still regularly confuses the bejesus about of me.
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If you like text-y adventure-y games I really, REALLY recommend you play Roadwarden store.steampowered.com/app/1…
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I’m behind the Ink booth at @AdvXConf this weekend; come say hi if want to learn ink or would like help with your ink projects!
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Sharing a little macro that creates seamless looping audio with Audacity! gist.github.com/tomkail/ead7…
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I set up a phone-based eye tracker, Eyewearbeam, for some playtesting. Here's me attempting to play Hyper Demon with it!
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Software is good; not great. I've found it works best if you don't move your head at all. Not wearing glasses may help but I also needed to see. Definitely worth a go if you're doing playtesting on a lack-of/shoestring budget!
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Hyper Demon turned out not to be the best game to use as a showcase - it's a game that deliberately focuses your attention on the center of the screen to an insane degree - super mesmerizing.
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