shapez 2 News

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/

Hey everyone!

It's been quite a while since the last proper devlog! We haven't been sitting idle though (we've been playing Factorio) and we want to show you what we're currently working on.

While we're preparing Update 0.0.9 – which will introduce new Space Belt visuals, multithreading and more later this year – we're also working on Update 1 (0.1.0) for early next year already. We want this first big update to be meaningful and improve a few fundamental areas of the game based on the feedback you gave us since the Early Access launch of shapez 2.

[h2]News[/h2]

[h3]We are hiring![/h3]

We're currently looking for someone working in Quality Assurance / Game Testing. If you'd love to work on shapez 2 with us, be sure to check out the position:

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4057601157




[h3]Disclaimer[/h3]

Pretty much everything in this devlog is subject to change. We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback on what you're about to read, but don't grow too attached to the visuals or get stuck on the details!

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[h2]Devlog 026[/h2]

One of the most common criticisms shapez 2 currently gets is that factories can't be reused enough, especially when it comes to side tasks. Simply erasing large portions of your factory is quite a valid option to free up space as you likely won't need to rebuild it for something. This makes the game sometimes feel too puzzle-ish and takes away a lot from the automation and logistics parts you'd expect from a factory automation game. Instead, we want to make sure there's a good balance between both, without getting rid of the current game a lot of you really do enjoy.

That's how we came to create a new game mode that introduces a whole new system that ensures your factories remain relevant, even in the late game. You can still choose to demolish (parts of) your factories, but you'll do so to improve and/or move it and not because it became useless.

While we are prototyping this as a secondary game mode, it may have the potential to become the new default game mode. However, it's still too early to decide that yet and we'll only do that after intense testing, which you'll be able to participate in if it comes to it. Though do keep in mind that at this stage we can't even say if it will actually make it into the game to begin with.

[h3]How it works[/h3]

The new game mode concept introduces an entirely new research system. Instead of a research tree, there are now platforms that you can place called ‘Converters’, with 8 different tiers. The Converter packages the shapes you feed into it and loads them into a rocket that will fly to your home planet. It will 'trade in' the shapes and return with new shapes.

Tier 1 Converter

You'll be tasked with delivering a shape with parts you cannot produce in any way, aside from with a Converter. To get the Converter to fetch what you need, it requires another shape, which you can produce normally. Essentially, the Converter is a 'building' at platform level that performs a fixed operation: input shape A to get shape B at a limited throughput, which you need to advance.

Edit Oct 25: The shape you get from the Converter would be a completely new shape that isn't currently in the game. It wouldn't remove any shapes on the map and can't be produced with paint. The colored circle quarters in the images below are just placeholders.

Imagine the red circle part to be a shape part that you can not produce otherwise.

Higher tier Converters are larger and require multiple shapes at once, but will also return more valuable ones to you. The shapes these higher tier Converters require are from previous tiers, so you'll slowly be upscaling your factory. As an example, the Tier 4 Converter below requires three different shapes at once.

Tier 4 Converter

These Converters serve as a reduction mechanic. Take the example below: you need 2 quarters of the special red shape part you got from a Tier 1 converter. So to fully satisfy a Tier 2 Converter, you'll need two Tier 1 Converters to produce the shape it needs, plus some other, regular shapes.



This reduction mechanic is similar to other games, where you need multiple of one resource to produce on of another resource, which leads to a tiered structure of shapes (4 Iron Ore -> 2 Iron Bars -> 1 Iron Thingamabob). A full belt of end-game Tier 8 shapes could require a hundred or more full belts of shapes needing Tiers 1 through 7. Or, to visualize, an easier example:


We have a few concepts for higher tier Converters. These continue to grow in size and the amount of different shapes they need before they'll fetch that coveted special shape for you. Connecting and supplying them at scale – since you’ll need many of them – is a challenge on it’s own and we hope it will improve the logistics aspect of the game. Since you still need to supply the extra shapes and process the outputs of the converters, this game mode would keep what makes shapez unique: creating shapes without fixed recipes.

Tier 1, 4, 6 & 7 Converters

[h3]The Goal[/h3]

Now that you know what this new game mode would like, you may be wondering what the ultimate goal you're working towards is and how it would be integrated into the research system.

Our current idea would be to replace the current research tree. Instead, you'll be working through tiers. Completing a tier requires you to deliver an amount of the required shape, either to the Vortex or Converters (we don't know yet). The next tier will unlock new mechanics (trains, fluids, etc.) and the next Converter tier.

Research points still exist to unlock speed upgrades and optional buildings but we haven't figured out yet how they would be generated. Maybe your home planet will include some points in deliveries as a gift? Operator levels will be moved to the end game, with the shape you get from the tier 8 Converter being required to level up. This would be the infinite end game – challenge yourself to make as many tier 8 shapes per minute as you can. Random shapes may also make a return to keep Make-Anything-Machines viable.

We also have some ideas for a Prestige system for speed upgrades. Once maxed, you would be able to reset the upgrades (going from 180/s to 60/s), but every shape is worth three times as much. You can then upgrade speeds again, reset and so forth for practically infinitely increasing belt speed as long as you have research points to spend.

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So this devlog is still full of woulds, coulds, what ifs and even some maybes. These ideas are still all in the concept stage and we're pitching them to you to see what you think. We'll continue to prototype to gather more insights, but would love to hear your thoughts and opinions on everything. This would let us know whether we may be on to something or we need to reconsider.

~ Tobias & the shapez 2 Team

[h3]Join the community:[/h3]

Discord Reddit Suggestions Portal X / Twitter YouTube

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/

Hello everyone!

The Early Access launch of shapez 2 went exceedingly well, so to celebrate the first month we thought it'd be fun to share some stats and share what we are already working on behind the scenes!

PS: Be sure to also check out the new content at the bottom of this post!

[h2]Early Access Launch Statistics[/h2]

[h3]Sales & Player counts[/h3]

In total, shapez 2 sold 273.000 units within the first month. Compared to our projection of 90.000 units, we were completely overwhelmed and surprised by the response and success of the game!

Putting this into context, with all games released in the past 3 years on Steam that are tagged as 'Automation', removing the non-factory related games and use the review count as an indicator of copies sold, this means shapez 2 already surpassed all factory games released within the past 3 years, within just a month. It also has the highest review score out of theses with 98.5% positive reviews (!).

As we are automation game fans ourselves and really enjoy those other amazing games, this really feels a bit surreal.

Games tagged 'Automation' (top 5 tags) and initially released on Steam within the past 3 years, ordered by review count.

A few days after launch, we hit the milestone of 18,806 concurrent players, and 79,119 daily active users!



Out of these players, 2.9% were playing on macOS and 1.9% on Linux. Unfortunately, it seems that Linux players had by far the most issues on launch, with sound problems and some crashes that could be resolved with an Unity update in version 0.0.8 eventually.

As we already stated in a previous devlog, we chose to cut the game length a bit in order to be able to deliver a more polished product on release. Still, we are very satisfied with the average playtime of almost 20 hours, as we expect that to grow a lot over time and with future updates!




[h3]Community Stats[/h3]

Here's a little insight into the community side as well. It's safe to say there's a lot more of you now!

The shapez 2 Discord server almost doubled in size through August, from 16,000 to 30,000! From the release of the game until now, it's up from 19,000 to 32,000. Throughout August, 82,000 messages were sent by 2,000 people (up from 14,700 by 250) and there was 45,000 minutes of voice chatting going on.

Sadly Discord analytics is having some issues, so we had to make our own graph. Shout out to one of our mods Loupau38 for the data points!

r/shapezio is booming as well, with the monthly posts going up from 99 to 1,212 and monthly comments from 740 to 8,800! The community got 1,269,000 views and 79,000 unique visits, up from 136,000 and 16,000 respectively.



Back home on Steam, our blogs used to get around 30,000-40,000 impressions and 2,500 reads each. Since the release, there are a lot more of you! The Release blog got 780,000 impressions and 33,000 reads, the Update 0.0.8 blog got 550,000 impressions and 72,000 reads!

[h2]Future Plans[/h2]

The success of shapez 2 so far allows us to expand the company by getting new people on board! Hopefully, this will allow us to more efficiently go through all your feedback and suggestions, as there's a lot of it!

We also working to adjust some of the initial plans we had for after the release, as we feel like we can do a lot more with shapez 2 than we initially expected. It's still too early to talk about this though, just know that you shouldn't look back to the plans we outlined before the release as they're likely outdated.

However, there's a few things we are already working on that we wanted to give you a sneak preview on!

[h3]New Content[/h3]

We are currently brainstorming how we can introduce new content that justifies starting a new savegame. It's still too early to share details and we are not sure if it'll actually happen, but currently we are thinking about a new game mode that adds a significant twist, like building away from the vortex instead of towards.

(Early draft of a new game mode)

[h3]Multithreading[/h3]

Right now, the game supports roughly up to 500,000 buildings, depending on your setup and factory structure. Some players have pushed the game to its limit already though, building factories with over 1.5 million structures.

Currently the simulation and rendering both run on just a single thread. With this change, we are offloading the whole simulation to separate cores. We designed the simulation to work with this constraints, which made it harder to implement, but hopefully pays off now!

Performance improvements on a i7-10700 CPU - From 0.8 FPS to 43.7 FPS

As a disclaimer - actual improvements may vary a lot, and other bottlenecks might occur. We also haven't been able to fully test it yet, so it will take a lot of effort to ensure the game runs stable. While we are trying to include it in the next major update, unexpected issues can already arise that force us to push it back. We'll most likely start by rolling out the build to our Patrons once we have a version that seems roughly stable.


[h3]New Space Belt Visuals[/h3]

The art team is currently reworking the space belt (and in the future space pipe) visuals, with the intention to make it more clear that shapes are delivered on separate layers. Here are already some concepts:




[h3]Vertical T-Pipes/Wires[/h3]

Some frequent feedback we got were about the limitations of vertical pipes / wires. Making them more flexible required a huge internal refactoring to support buildings accepting inputs from the top / bottom. We finished a big part of the refactoring this week, and now need to add the actual support for these connections. In practice, this means being able to split a pipe to the side for example that is also going up!

[h3]Further Improvements[/h3]

While we haven't managed to go through all your suggestions & feedback yet, we feel we already have a good initial understanding of the current improvements that could be done, for example a Statistics Page, more train controls, improved space pipe visuals and so on.

We will work through these over time and try to include a bunch of them as part of every major update! Be sure to keep suggesting and upvoting them on our Suggestions Portal!


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Thank you for being part of the statistics and we hope you enjoyed this little insight! We'll see you again soon.

~ Tobias & the shapez 2 Team

[h3]Join the community:[/h3]

Discord Reddit Suggestions Portal X / Twitter YouTube

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/

Hello everyone,

We just released update 0.0.8, which includes a bunch of improvements and fixes based on your initial feedback already. Thank you for taking the time to help us out!

This does not yet include anything from the Roadmap Survey. We just started going over the 13,000 responses (!) so that will take a while ..

If the update doesn't automatically download, be sure to restart steam. It should show '0.0.8-rc3' in lower right of the main menu.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]

[h3]General[/h3]

• Updated Unity version to resolve various issues with DirectX 12, Wayland, sound on Linux and many more.
  

[h3]Balancing & New Content[/h3]

• Added Pipe Gate, allowing you to control the flow of fluids with logical signals.
  
• Added Virtual Pin Pusher
  

[h3]Visuals[/h3]

• Improved train loader / unloader package icon meshes
  

[h3]UI/UX[/h3]

• Space Belts / Pipes and Train Rails now automatically place tunnels while dragging.

• Added 'Save As' option as well as 'Replace' for an improved blueprint editing workflow

• Added visualizations for Trains.

• Added visualization for map markers in Overview Mode.

• Dragging a Rail towards the Vortex now automatically places a Train Launcher (once unlocked).
  
• Allow pasting blueprints directly in the library with 'Ctrl + V'.
  
• Added setting to control animation quality/fps when zooming out.
  
• Properly display conflict indicators for Rails if blocked by an adjacent Platform.
  
• Disable research points 'flashing' reminder for 15 minutes when clicking it.
  
• Added 'Invert Y Axis' option.
  

[h3]Localization[/h3]

• Improved Bent Stacker description to mention it's faster than the normal Stacker (now you know).
  
• Fixed inconsistent names between 'Halves Swapper' and 'Swapper' as well as 'Halves Destroyer' vs 'Half Destroyer'.
  
• Fixed inconsistent wording for Train upgrades.
  

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

• Fixed Space Belts / Pipes sometimes not accepting / delivering items at expected throughput.
  
• Fixed Train Unloaders producing a small gap when switching packages.
  
• Fixed Fluid Catcher not transferring fluid to other launcher when the former is on a platform edge.
  
• Fixed blueprint toolbar not updating when changing folder contents.
  
• Fixed crash when connecting item producer directly to Trash.
  
• Fixed research progression statistic showing 100% during tutorial.
  
• Fixed overriding blueprints with different case not working as expected.
  
• Fixed invalid Space Pipe throughput display.
  
• Fixed various pipe/wire path placement issues.
  
• Fixed Fluid Launchers not always displaying throughput / contents.
  
• Fixed screenshots being stored in wrong folder, now saved in user pictures folder.
  
• Fixed some specific space belt loops crashing the game.
  
• Fixed blueprints drag-n-drop in library not working when folder list was scrollable.
  
• Fixed rare crash when analytics failed to init.
  
• Fixed incorrect fluid providing flow.
  

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[h3]Join the community:[/h3]

Discord Reddit Suggestions Portal X / Twitter YouTube