Hello everyone!

For those who haven’t seen my post on Junkpunk, my name is Russell and I’m the newest member at SCT tasked to work on Gunsmith and Junkpunk.

The YouTube video is a general discussion between Rich and I about the company as well as Gunsmith and where we're headed in 2024.


Just like with Junkpunk, I am going to be deep diving into Gunsmith and finding out what it needs to take the steps towards a 1.0 release. I've started my playthrough and am already picking up on general improvements to be made.

Improvements to the research tree are a frequent request from the community, something I want to be looking into working with.

This game feels to me like a paradox strategy one, and i feel as though introducing different narrative branches which have story & factory based impacts would make for a satisfying player experience. As well as implementing events to shake up and make gameplay more intriguing.

Changes to factory building, management and expansion to reduce feelings of tedious repetitive gameplay.

Please feel free to send me feedback and any suggestions for things you want to see in upcoming updates! My name is Dimir in the Gunsmith discord so just give me a message :)

I'm looking forward to working on Gunsmith and hearing your suggestions.

Russell


Hey guys I just wanted to add an extra message down here in response to some of the feedback that’s been given.

Truthfully, I am brand new to this game, a story based progression system similar to HOI4 was an idea I was floating around with because I enjoy that kind of thing in the games I personally play.

But you are all right, this is a factory management game, not an entrepreneur narrative game.

So rather than focusing on designing and adding new content that ultimately does nothing to solve the fundamental issues that this game has. I’ll be working to fix the already existing gameplay mechanics, and rework current content to bring Gunsmith to the full potential of a factory management game that we believe it can be.

Thanks for all your responses.

Hello everyone, i've put up an update for Gunsmith in a video, its fairly lengthy but it also addresses a few things about the game, it's future and generally a chit chat about game development.

I have been really busy for the last few months and my update consistency has dropped so I apologise for that but hopefully we can get back on track.

Theirs some items i missed in the video so I'll put them below so you can check them out.

The Gunsmith 1.0 will be adding a tonne of content, as i said above some of which I was reminded of after I finished the video. I'll put a brief list here of the items we are going to launch 1.0 with.

MBT - main battle tank for the vehicle production line.

All the different types of tank munition and their individual lines. This will include such stuff as HE,COMP,APDS and APFSDS rounds just to name a few, there will be more in the final push.

I'll let everyone check out the screens before we continue.

We will also be introducing a range of missiles in the game of various capabilities all the way up to cruise missiles.

These of course these will have their own lines and manufacturing processes.

Landmines, Claymores and C4 will also be making an appearance.

On top of all this we will be adding a drone line to the game.

On top of that content we will be putting in various artillery rounds as well.

And last of all we will be adding more guns.

The only unfortunate news is that I am going to postpone this update from October. I will likely announce a new date shortly but as you can see above there is a colossal amount of content going in and this has taken some time. I have read a lot of user feedback and people are saying to polish and delay and we listen to feedback and take it seriously so I am doing just that.

As I explain in the video there also are a few things about how the game works im not happy with and I want to get more player feedback on before we put in the final systems and leave it be.

Im sure you can all understand. We are going to make the 1.0 rock. You might find me randomly pinging you and asking for your feedback on the game if you have left a review or a note in the 1.0 section of the discord.

Thanks again for everyone's support. I hope you enjoy the preview content.

Warm Regards

Rich

Today we are announcing a provisional date for Gunsmith to leave Early Access, we will be announcing a precise date closer to the time however we are happy to announce we are aiming to release Gunsmith 1.0 at the end of September or early October this year!

I have made a video with my thoughts and the overall plan for Gunsmith going forward.

Thank you everyone, what an incredible journey.

If you dont want to watch the video then a quick summary;

Theres a few more features we want to add before 1.0 focusing on the globe / politics / gameplay in that area.

Were going to also be taking a look at the huge list of requests of features that people want for 1.0 and of course implementing some of them. ( the good ones )

More QOL and fixes but we are fairly happy with this.

Possibly I want to look at tutorial again.

Various balance coming for 1.0

More content and craftable items to come for 1.0

Take care and see you soon!



Rich and SCT

0.7.beta patch changelog
- Fixed a bug where decorations didn't properly load their effects on resting objects.
- Fixed a bug with boxes not moving properly after you move the racks.
- Fixed a bug with the Assembly Workshop and its collision resulting with issues regarding large objects like the Humvee bonnet.
- Made a few timing tweaks to craft speeds and output speeds that should slightly improve timings in cases where machines drop to 0 input items in inventory.

Massive news! We will be revealing the final road map to our 1.0 release and launch out of Early Access for Gunsmith. Yes that's right we will be 🙌 CONFIRMING A LAUNCH DATE NEXT WEEK! 🙌 This means that we are going to be getting our final ideas, improvements, features list together along with all your feedback and were going to finally do it! 💪 Cant thank you all enough for coming on the journey with us over the last 5 years. We also have a small update with fixes and improvements coming out now! ( in fact i just put it live ) I'll drop that news below. However....



https://youtu.be/2qQqGi77MCI


https://youtu.be/wiGuim4chwI

I just want us all to take a second and realise how amazing that is. All of us ( that includes you reading ) have made this happen. Everyone that's jumped in early. Years ago for some of you. Have helped us push it all the way and this will be our first Early Access to finished game launch. That is the power of Early Access and proper indie development and it's only been through your continued support and awesomeness that we have manged to achieve so much!

It's been super tough, and we've had to make more games and secure our little indie dev company with multiple revenue streams to make sure we can survive this crazy competitive market but you've come with us through the whole journey and thank you so much for that! I hope we can continue post 1.0 to add more things to make and expand the game even more.

We will definitely need to get more traction because Gunsmith aint cheap yo. So we are going to try and get that momentum for 1.0 and if you think there's a YouTuber that would play it then let us know in the Discord!


On a side note, another milestone for the studio as a whole, we have got a new game coming out that we'd love to share with you all. If you're a fan of city builders and comedy then we think you'll love this.

I'll drop a link below. It launches at 6PM tonight and i hope you'll take a look and jump in if you like it! Thank you for your continued support as an indie studio and not just on Gunsmith. We love you all. ❤️

Rich and SCT

https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/app/1937200/Blockville/

Notes for branch that's live now.

0.7.beta patch changelog
- Fixed a bug where decorations didn't properly load their effects on resting objects.
- Fixed a bug with boxes not moving properly after you move the racks.
- Fixed a bug with the Assembly Workshop and its collision resulting with issues regarding large objects like the Humvee bonnet.
- Made a few timing tweaks to craft speeds and output speeds that should slightly improve timings in cases where machines drop to 0 input items in inventory.

Dual Belts are here! Hey everyone Rich here hope you're well. Today we are super happy to announce that Gunsmith now supports 2 different types of belt. Releasing tonight at 6PM UK - London Time.

As you all know, we are constantly listening to the community and improving the game based on your feedback. We are super supportive of all our players and we've constantly tried to make the game better for everyone to play. Earlier on this year we noticed that some of our players are die hard physics fans and there was no way our new system could possibly cut it.

Therefore we decided to do something we think is a first. Gunsmith now supported TWO entirely differently belt systems in the game. I dont think any other game does this... Let me know if they do but now you have the power to choose. Physics madness or Snapped belts. Both are great fun and now you as a player have the choice to go down whatever route you would like.

All you have to do is start a new game and you have the power to choose either mode you'd like to play.

Thank you all for your continued support. Gunsmith continues to grow into a title we are super proud of and we think you'll love this now they belts are back.

We have also rigged up the physics system so now you can use all items in the small and medium range so now both systems are fully compatible back to back.

Obligatory RIP fps when you have thousands of items.

As im sure you can all imagine having a double system is super complex will almost certainly spawn some bugs so let us know and we will as always fix them up!

Thank you so much everyone!

Enjoy everyone!

Best

Rich

Hey everyone Rich here hope you're well, i've made a pretty long 25 mins-ish video taking a look at the physics belts in their new form and whats going to be happening with them, you can see that goodness here;

We've added alot more to the old physics system and we will be retrofitting it even more to add medium belts to the mix as well over the next few weeks.

I will also be getting a group of closed play testers to help us test as this update is pretty significant and there's no way we will catch all the issues alone.

Releasing on the
This means Gunsmith as of its next update that I am happy to announce will give players both physical belts and locked system belts offering 2 styles of game play something that we don't think has been done before so we're really excited for that.

We hope you all enjoy the return of the belts and the physical nightmares the bring for players and developers alike :D

Thanks everyone and see you soon.

Rich.

Hey everyone Rich here and today im dropping some news on the next update for Gunsmith, this will be a pretty awesome feature and i've done a 10 minute video explaining exactly what the plan is and why are we bringing the old belts back!

We've listened to a tonne of feedback and community ideas and we think we have found a great solution!

I'll drop it here below!

Best

Rich and SCT

Hey everyone, Rich here, today is a pretty huge day for us. Beta for Gunsmith is finally upon us.


I’ll drop the trailer here; it is on the Steam page anyway but here as well if you want to see it.

If anyone missed the more in depth video on what is coming that is also here;

I don't usually get the time to spend a considerable amount of time writing up my thoughts as im a full time dev and a dad of 2 young kids but we've actually for once been ahead of schedule so I thought id take some time to chat and share my experiences working on Gunsmith over the last few years.

It’s taken four years of development to get here and a lot of hard work and learning. I wanted to take some time out to do a write up for those interested to read what it was like to get to this point and what we’ve learned over the years.

When we first started off working on the project we were fairly new to UE4 however we were excited because we could see how powerful and easy it was to get to grips with the engine.

We all had a super long journey of self teaching and experimenting, learning to make 3D models, learning to write blueprints, learning to make a game from scratch even.

We knew that we wanted to make a factory game based around the arms trade and we thought if we combined that with some fun crafting we would have a pretty good game on our hands. What we didn't realise is how many people would actually really like the idea.

With this idea came our biggest strength and our biggest weakness. A great idea, however with a scope far surpassing that of 2 people. We were just super hyped and ambitious at the time and I thought screw it let's go for and we will work that out later.

Well it turns out that making a 3D factory game with over 500 items that all need their own graphics recipes and balances is kinda time consuming. Just to name a few things.

But the enthusiasm for your first original game is a huge driver especially when people are enjoying it and the feedback is positive.

The journey to get to the BETA has been absolutely crazy and the amount of things we have added is actually quite incredible for a team of our size and I'm super proud.

Some of the biggest lessons we’ve learned, shock, planning what you are going to do is actually much faster in the long run rather than just running with an idea. Some of you might notice on our other games that we have been developing generally much faster and that's because we are vastly more experienced in the planning and execution process.

Gunsmith has definitely taken longer than I would have expected it to take. About halfway through its life cycle we were starting to feel the pinch of a game that was not growing as fast as it should have been or was starting to lose momentum.

This put us in a situational crisis where I personally had to make tough calls. Do we plough ahead with Gunsmith and potentially this situation does not get better and we are in a really risky place, or do we try and get more games onto the market to support our team as a whole.

Ultimately we went with option 2 which paid off and has allowed us to continue development on Gunsmith.

I do want to probably make a video explaining my views on Early Access games, having more than one title in development etc in more depth at some point but in short. With my experience speaking from a developer that has grown a company from nothing to multiple titles.

This notion of having to finish a game totally 100% or die on your sword has got to go. I urge any developers who are in a financial rock and hard place. Do not wait for your game to randomly turn its fortunes around as you could run out of time if you can't achieve this and then the dream is over.

If that happens you will never finish the game. There's an argument to say that if we went full tilt on the game it could have gotten more popular but we were feeling that was a super high risk roll of the dice.

Gunsmith fell into a situation where it made us enough money to get on our feet, stay comfortable for a few of those early months, however then the burn rate of the money started to catch up as every month is not super profitable. I can't complain at all, it’s been a blessing to have a game provide us with this much long tail but it just didn't have the early explosion we needed to finance a title of this magnitude.

All of this was a massive learning curve for us. Especially when you consider we started at “let's make this cool factory game” and then years later im discussing diversification of titles and long tails of development etc.

I would actually have loved more than anything to just have been able to finish Gunsmith and wrap it up. But it just didn't play out like that and you sometimes have to play the hand you're given. I’ve never been a quitter, and people close to me will tell you, I can be down but i'm not out, not unless it’s literally impossible and I have zero options. I will try my hardest to not fail. Sometimes we get a lot of the classics. Abandoned game omg !!11. Not here. As ive always said, my company will deliver on the promises we make unless there is an impossible situation.

We would never cut and run and until I'm no longer in charge ( dead ) that won't happen. I think it's happening far too much in the industry now even when some of us make millions it’s still a cut and run. Anyway, I digress.

So we did what we had to and although its taken longer than I would have liked we are finally getting there. Its been a slow burner but we are super proud of where the game is now and we hope all of you that have stuck with us in the long haul will enjoy what is coming in the Beta and what's to come in the run up to the full 1.0 launch.

I will say a super huge thanks to everyone that has supported us to this point. Without you all we would have no reason to continue so a massive thank you. You know who you all are. Also a big thanks to the SCT team. We are a tiny team of 5 now but we are absolutely rocking it and with everyday that passes we get better and better at making high quality titles on a low budget.

After this Beta goes live we will be going to get an update ready for our other game JUNKPUNK, its also a factory game so if you like what you see maybe hop on over there and play that.


and if you like city builders we are also building a funny city builder as a side project here;


Don't worry theres no more games in the works until Gunsmith is finished. But i can't wait to share more of my game designs with the world and im really excited for the future.

Lastly I will say, we always need your help in telling people about our games and dropping us reviews so shameless plug time… If you’re still here, tell a friend, tell a Youtuber or drop a review. It would really help us out.

Thanks as always.

Rich