Hey everyone,
Game Designer Ce here!
I happily joined the tobspr team this April, still catching up on the long history of shapez 1 and 2 though.
Before we go into the meat of this Devlog, we have an announcement:
Games Forged in Germany
Shapez 1 & 2 will be part of the Games Forged In Germany Steam Event! We're proud to be an indie studio from Germany, and this kind of recognition means a lot to us. There's some really cool titles in this event, so make sure to check it out.
An honourable mention for Star Birds from Toukana Interactive! It's a relaxing asteroid base-building and resource management game. If you like shapez, this is probably up your street too. It's a chill, no-pressure game with beautiful visuals and unique 360° building, and scratches that automation/optimization itch I know you have.
The demo is currently available for testing on Steam, so give it a go and let us know what you think!
Psst: their other title, Dorfromantik, is currently 40% off - check it out :)
Okay, now into the actual Devlog.
As promised in the last Devlog, I bring you more details about Achievements.
Retroactive achievements
A few of you had questions like this:
For achievements to become active, you will likely need to start a new game. More info about this can be found in Devlog 031:
Even if that should change and for additional achievements after the 1.0 Release, only those achievements based on already existing stats will have progress retroactively (and it might be some effort preventing that). I am very interested in for how many of you that might be a big issue, and for how many not so much. Would you prefer retroactive achievements, or would you prefer to start fresh?
Workflow
Now I’d like to share how I went about designing the achievements. First, I collected our requirements for Achievements and investigated priorities. It’s one thing if only a few people making the whole game have ideas. But for the increased team it takes more to align our visions.
Saving effort for other improvements makes us consider what we need to prioritize for the 1.0 release, and what we can postpone to a future update. For example, we decided to not implement an in-game Achievement screen for now, and instead make use of the Steam achievement system as much as we can. Using the actual shapes as achievement icons is another time-saving trick we decided for now, which I find quite fitting.
With the 1.0 release, we want to give you at least 30 meaningful achievements but avoid any rather complicated or high effort cases. We expect to at least add some of those in future updates though, so regarding feedback and ideas from your side the sky is the limit.
We've already had quite a few suggestions, like this one:
This achievement made it onto the “Extra for Release or after Release” list:
"MAM (Make Anything Machine)" - Complete any random operator level without modifying your factory
For clarification on the “Extra for Release”: we are usually pretty pressed for time, BUT all in the team are so passionate about the game that ever so often, someone (especially Tobias) either finds time, or takes time (don’t ask about his weekends - he promised to behave better :D ). That’s how several features and improvements from wishlists still made it. Though you may not always want to inquire the other developers about the consequences. ;)
Part of the next step - Research - included refreshing general Achievements lessons from articles like Achievements 101. In short, for every achievement I need to consider your resulting game experience with it. How interesting would it be to just run the game without doing anything, for the sake of that achievement? And that’s how game design works. This would change the above achievement to this:
"MAM (Make Anything Machine)" - Reach random operator level 200 Complete any random operator level without modifying your factory
We went through lists of achievements for shapez 1 and other factory games for inspiration and potentially homage ("good artists copy, great artists steal"), considering all existing shapez 2 objects and player actions, and of course devouring anything you might have dropped related to achievements on the shapez 2 Discord server, like this:
I think the same. How about:
Finish milestone W or higher, in mode X or Y/or any mode, in difficulty Z (/any difficulty except custom)
“I’m Gonna Be” - Milestone 9, in any mode, in any difficulty except custom
“Lucky number Slevin“ - Milestone 7, in Hard or Insane mode, in any difficulty except custom
"As you wish.” - Milestone 6, in any mode, in difficulty challenge
“Hex hex“ - Milestone 5, in Hexagonal mode, in any difficulty except custom
“Life is pain, Highness.” - Milestone 4, in Insane mode, in any difficulty except custom
The names and numbers are placeholders and can be changed. But more on that later - first we need to decide what the achievements will actually be ;)
My research quickly resulted in a long basic list of potential achievements. There were and still always are different cases and player types to consider. Some achievements support new players to bridge the gap between the visible milestones and onboarding steps, for example:
“Architecture”- Save a blueprint
I want players to early get on using our copy, paste, save and use blueprint features.
Other achievements reward you for playing extensively and building up a huge factory:
“Marathon”; "Can't stop"; …; … - Reach Operator level X (or higher)
10; 50; 100; 500
As you can see, I am not even set on all the required achievement names yet. I am looking forward for any proposals you might have.
A few achievements even might require some skill and special effort. Others are for fun, for example:
"The logo!" - Deliver the shapez 2 logo
At the same time, we don’t want to guide anyone into a bad game experience just following any additional goal we might set with a thoughtless achievement. For example:
“I’ll be back” - Perform 800 Redos. (or perform X redos in a row)
How would you achieve that in the fastest and easiest way possible? Spamming the hotkey 800 times in a row? Would that be fun? I don’t think so, that’s why:
“I’ll be back” - Perform 800 Redos. (or perform X redos in a row)
If you think otherwise, let us know in the comments. Alice wasn't joking when she said we're always watching...
Additionally, we were looking for patterns among those achievements, meaning a similar mechanic but for different structures, modes, or sometimes just a progression of the same achievement. That does not only make it easier for anyone to understand, but also relieves our team from implementation effort, which results in more improvements somewhere else. Ideally, we can do many great achievements with one or a few patterns, for example:
Have (at least) X amount of X entity on single map
“Factory day”; …; …; … - Have X platform(s)
100; 1.000; 10.000
…; “I need trains”; “Milky way” - Have X space belt(s)
10; 25; 100;
“Choo choo”; …; “Tycoon” - Have X trains
3; 10; 25
The result so far were three lists of potential achievements: a first internal to start with for setting up the systems and workflow, extended for an MPV for the release fulfilling our requirement of at least 30 achievements, and the “Extra for Release or after Release” list.
The next step for me was to share the list with the rest of the team, especially the colleagues which would be responsible for implementing them, also making sure no reasonable questions or foreseeable problems were left open to discuss. They took the chance to add their own ideas, feedback as players, and there were some good reasons to strike through some more achievements. One particular example is counting anything within the simulations you might remember from Devlog 027. As you might imagine, we don’t want to ruin the shapez performance for the sake of any Achievement.
Current progress and possible changes
The current state of the achievements is that we have started implementing them.Hopefully, I soon come to point to add the according data, test them, have them tested (hopefully by a lot of you players) gather all the feedback and problems, and iterate. It can already start with more ideas and feedback from you. The design of shapez 2 never ends. The factory must grow.
One for you hardcore enthusiasts:
Quite a “Perfectionist”. It definitely needs a condition when to check. I have to sleep at least a night over this one. Maybe I find some comments when I wake up, shining some light on your perspective how you would feel about such an achievement?
I dearly hope you are going to like what Achievements we end up with in 1.0. But now I am looking forward to your reactions.
~ Ce & the shapez 2 team
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