Hey everyone again!
The response to the latest devlog was super positive, so I thought I'd try to give you more regular updates now! This devlog is covering the topic of cutters, rotationally dependent shapes and much more. Enjoy the read!
Why cutters are difficult
How it started
Cutters have often caused confusing in shapez 1 already. Here's a quick reminder how they work:
Basically the right side of the cutter always outputs the right half of the shape, no matter the orientation.
There is actually a good reason to not just cut the shape in half like a wedge on a belt: It would break blueprints.
Imagine having a blueprint with cutters and rotating it - the blueprint would now work differently, being effectively useless.
However, we felt that this is still a suboptimal solution, since there were frequent "bug" reports of the cutter not working, which was due to a misunderstanding how it works.
For shapez 2, we wanted to revisit this mechanic, and here's what we ran into:
Making the cutter 'open'
As mentioned in the previous devlog, one step to make the cutter more obvious was to make it fully animated:
However .. Besides of the animation & mesh being work in progress, I'm not sure this makes it any better at all to be honest. While the process is more visible - it's still very hard to determine how the cutter will cut.
Camera Rotation / North indicator
Another issue is - while the camera rotation in shapez 1 was fixed, you can fully rotate the camera in shapez 2. In order to determine how a cutter will cut, you now also have to factor in the camera rotation. For example, if you revisit the gif from above - are you wondering why the cutter is putting the right side on the left belt?
This is actually because the camera is rotated by 180 degrees - the cutter is actually facing downwards.
To better show in which direction the camera is currently facing, we added a small compass:
As well as a small indicator (WIP!) on the shape:
Belt Relative Rotation
At some point, there was the suggestion for belt relative rotations. What does this mean?
Basically, right now, all shapes always point upwards. This means that the cutter also always has to cut from top to bottom.
If the north of the shape would now be aligned instead towards the direction of the belt, the cutter could always cut in that direction, because even if you rotate the cutter, you'd get the same result.
While this would partially solve the cutter issue - it now introduces a whole bunch of other issues.
For example, as you can see in the gif, it's now extremely hard to predict how the stacker will combine the shapes, because they rotate on every belt corner. Which is, after quite an extensive discussion on the shapez 2 discord, we decided against it.
Rotation for Research Goals
Another issue we ran into: In which direction would you actually have to deliver the shape into the hub?
In shapez 1, the shape had to be rotated in the correct direction in order to be accepted.
However, can you spot the issue on this screenshot?
Because the camera is rotated by 180 degrees, it looks like you would be delivering the shape in the correct rotation, while in fact you are delivering a shape that is flipped.
This lead to a lot of confusion - and even bug reports like "HUB is not accepting shapes".
To avoid this, we simply now allow the shape to be delivered in any rotation into the hub (However - if you are looking for a more hardcore experience, we are considering to add an achievement to deliver all shapes in the correct orientation! And probably also an option in the game creation settings, although probably not on the initial release).
PS: Did I already mention the artists are currently reworking the hub? Follow the shapez 2 store page to receive future updates!
Operation Previews
Another improvement we made to make using cutters (and other buildings) a little easier: Whenever you are about to place a building, it shows you the predicted output:
Simplifying the onboarding / "Light" Cutter
We've been really trying a lot to make the cutter easier to understand, however even with all the improvements, the cutter can be hard to understand.
Because the cutter is the very first processing building you unlock, we felt that it can quickly overwhelm new players.
Thus, we came up with a solution - A "light" cutter which only outputs one half of the shape, and trashes the other side. This avoids the whole directional conflict, has a much simpler animation, and is easier to understand:
(The mesh is a placeholder)
Later in the game, you can then unlock the full cutter as an additional unlock, effectively "flattening" the difficulty curve a bit, while you can still choose to rush it.
And the great thing is, the light cutter still has its use case after unlocking the full cutter: If you only need one half of the shape, it's more efficient (space & throughput) to use the light cutter.
Follow & Wishlist!
Be sure to follow Shapez 2 on Steam to receive notifications about future devlogs!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/
I hope you enjoyed the read, and stay tuned for the next devlog, where we will cover the new stacking mechanic in Shapez 2!
~Tobias
