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Shapez 2 gets an Early Access release date and a new trailer to explain how it'll consume all your free time

I like a good factory game, but there's a fine line between "I enjoy this" and "I am uninstalling this before it ruins my year." I can't tell on which side of the divide Shapez 2 will fall, but I'm planning on finding out when it launches in Early Access next month on August 15th.


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Huge factory sim Shapez 2 releases on August 15 with over 300k wishlists

It's almost time to get cutting some shapes, with the Early Access release of Shapez 2 coming on August 15.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/07/huge-factory-sim-shapez-2-releases-on-august-15-with-over-300k-wishlists

shapez 2 - Early Access Release Date Announcement

Hello everyone!

[h3]We’re super excited and proud to announce that shapez 2 will release into Early Access on August 15th, 2024![/h3]

Almost exactly a year after the Reveal Trailer, you’ll finally be able to play the Early Access of shapez 2.

[h2]Watch the shapez 2 Gameplay Trailer here:[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Shapez 2 will cost $24.99 / €23.99* / £19.99*. If you’re looking to support us further, consider the Supporter Edition! This would really help us out with the development of the game. The shapez 2 Supporter Edition (which includes the base game) will be $34.99 / €33.49* / £27.99*. If you’d first like to give the base game a go, you’ll be able to pick up the Supporter Edition Upgrade DLC at any time. Everything will have a 10% discount for the first two weeks after the Early Access launch!

*Pricing adjusted on Aug 1 2024

As a thank you from us for your extra support, you’ll get the Rail Loop & Twister for your trains and 40 minutes of extra soundtrack with the Supporter Edition.



https://store.steampowered.com/app/3075620/shapez_2_Supporter_Edition_Upgrade/

Before the Early Access release, we’ll have another blog with a full overview with what’s in the release build of shapez 2 so you know exactly what you’re buying.

While shapez 2 will already offer what we think is a full experience with Early Access, we want to work together with you to make the game even better and refine everything for the full release come next year. We’d love it if you’d join us!

There are only 3 more weeks to go, so be sure to wishlist the game to help us out for the release! 300,000 of you already did and we truly appreciate it.

See you soon,

~ Tobias & the shapez 2 team

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


[h3]Join the community:[/h3]

X / Twitter YouTube Discord Reddit

Devlog 025 - The Final Alpha

Hello everyone!

We’re getting very close to wrapping up development on the shapez 2 Early Access release build. At the end of last week we released Alpha 23 with 23.1 and 23.2 – the last Patreon-exclusive Alpha build – following shortly after. We’re moving to Beta builds where Patreons can test the release candidate and report any remaining issues they find.

In two weeks, we’ll officially reveal the exact release date (which is set in August) of shapez 2. If you don’t want to miss out, be sure to follow and wishlist the game here on Steam and join the Discord!

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

If you really want to get your hands on this build before the release, be sure to check out our Patreon! You’ll also get access to the betas to help us iron out the last couple bugs, the first of which released today! Your savegame will be compatible with the Early Access build from Alpha 23.2 onward, barring any unforeseen issues.

This devlog will be a bit shorter as we’re currently very busy, but let’s walk you through what Alpha 23 brought to the game. Final note, even at this stage everything is technically still subject to change.

[hr][/hr]
[h2]New Content[/h2]

[h3]Hexagonal Scenario[/h3]

As teased in the last devlog, Hexagonal shapes are now real! Added as a separate scenario, a layer now holds 6 segments (sextants), 90° Rotators now rotate 60° and there are three new shape types exclusive to this scenario:
  • H – Hexagon
  • G – Gear
  • F – Flower
Hexagon (left), Gear (middle), Flower (right)

The shape code works as you’d expect, with an example below. We’ll leave the rest for you to explore for yourself :)



[h3]Train loop & Twister[/h3]

We added the Rail Loop and Twister to spice up your trains. Wildly inefficient, but I'm sure you'll be forgiven. They're unlocked as part of the shapez 2 Supporter Edition alongside a whole lot of additional soundtrack!

Gif contains some placeholders

[h3]Other new things[/h3]

Aside from that big ticket addition, there are a handful of other new bits of content and balancing changes.
  • Added train speed and capacity upgrades, as well as an upgrade to allow you to dunk a train directly into the Vortex to deliver all its cargo at once.
  • Rebalanced fluid buildings to be more intuitive and added more information in the panels.
  • Supplying a different fluid to fluid buildings now makes them slowly drain and eventually consume the new fluid instead of waiting for the previous fluid forever.
  • The same system also applies to trains loading a different shape or fluid.

[h2]Visuals[/h2]

We added brand new visuals for Shape Miners, Fluid Miners and their respective Extensions.



Train locomotives finally have their visual!



Added new visuals for train loaders and unloaders.



Added animations for belt/fluid launchers launchers towards space belts/pipes.



There’s a new animation for shapes going into the Vortex.



Also included are several animation fixes and improvements across the board, including improvements to fluid shaders.

[h2]Development[/h2]

As we’re finalizing a lot of things, there were lots of rendering, blueprint and simulation performance improvements. Placing blueprints and large islands should now be much faster, various issues with wire logic were fixed and we’ve vastly improved savegame loading times.

To show off the current state of performance optimization, here's the game running on a Mac Book Pro M1 Max at full HD with 420,000 buildings. The goal is still 1 million buildings at 60 fps, but we're happy with our progress!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]Video contains some placeholders

[h2]UI / UX[/h2]

The origin point (the part of a building that’s placed where your cursor is) of the Painter and Crystal Generator buildings was moved to the conveyor belt instead of the tank. This makes placing these buildings feel a lot better, but it does break any blueprint made prior to Alpha 23 that uses them.

There’s now a button to clear the selected platform, space belt/pipe or train (un)loader of all its contents.

Additionally, rail placement and the Feedback dialogue have been improved, the latter of which now has a link to report translation issues. Speaking of translations, the translations for almost all of the languages we wanted to include were added.

[hr][/hr]
That’s it! As we said, a shorter devlog this time. The Beta has started in order to hunt down the last issues. Once that’s done, we can freeze development on the Early Access release build. We’re super excited to finally release shapez 2 next month, so be sure you have the game wishlisted (sorry for asking so often) and we’ll see you again with a big announcement in two weeks.

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

[h3]Join the community:[/h3]

X / Twitter YouTube Discord Reddit TikTok Patreon


[h3]Check out the previous devlog:[/h3]
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2162800/view/4220517501549404713

Devlog 024 - Settings galore

Hello everyone!

With the Early Access release of shapez 2 set for August, we’re creeping ever closer to finishing development. Our current focus lies on remaining visuals and polish, especially when it comes to the UI. However, we still have some exciting new content additions to show you, so today we’ll walk you through what we’ve been working on lately.

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

[h2]News[/h2]

[h3]Alpha 22[/h3]

Last week we released Alpha version 22 for our Patreon supporters, which includes most of what we'll cover in this blog. If anything here makes you want to check out the game immediately and want to give us feedback, consider supporting us!

[h3]Disclaimer[/h3]

As always, a lot you see in this devlog is still subject to change. We’d love to hear your thoughts on everything, but if anything still looks a bit rough around the edges its likely still being worked on. For more info on what to expect from the Early Access release build, be sure to check out our previous blog.

[hr][/hr]
[h2]Gameplay[/h2]

[h3]New Scenarios[/h3]

We’ve added more scenarios to the savegame customization options. These scenarios affect the shapes you’ll need to deliver to the Vortex in order to progress. The higher the difficulty, the more shape types, layers and colors you’ll need to put together.

The types of shapes you’ll need to deliver are unique to their scenarios. We’re not talking small differences – these goals are completely different designs. We had a lot of fun making these challenges so we hope you’ll enjoy them as well!

Do keep in mind that unlike the difficulty Setting, scenarios are permanent and cannot be changed after the savegame has been created. You'll need to start a new savegame to play a different scenario.

Operator Certification
We highly recommend new Operators to obtain their Operator Certification before you do your own thing! You’ll be guided through building your very first factory with extra information and hints. The Operator Certification uses the default scenario settings, but you can customize the difficulty before you get started. Once you’re deemed worthy of the Certificate, you get to choose between continuing with the normal scenario or the hard scenario – more on them later. Your progress is fully transferred, including buildings and unlocked upgrades.



Factory - Normal
This is the default scenario and recommended for players unfamiliar with shapez. Eases you into newly-unlocked mechanics and shape goals are relatively straightforward.

Factory - Hard
Recommended for players who have already done a playthrough and are looking for an extra challenge. If you’re here from shapez 1, this scenario may be a good fit for you! Shape goals get more difficult faster, requiring additional cutting, stacking or painting when compared to the normal scenario.

Factory - Insane
If you’re a very experienced player and you’d like to push your brain to the limit, this scenario is for you. Will require game knowledge, precise planning and thinking ahead: shape goals need many different shapes and colors, often stacked to the maximum amount of layers – which for this scenario goes up to 5!

There's a lot of room for us to add more scenarios to the list and we already have some ideas in mind. Here's a teaser:

[expand]
This is not in the game yet and we can't guarantee it'll make it in for Early Access release, but it's something we're working on![/expand]

Scenario customization
This option allows you to customize the settings of any of the previously mentioned scenarios. You still need to select one of them, but you can then customize map generation (as highlighted in this blog) and set additional savegame rules of which there are more now! If the Insane scenario isn’t insane enough for you, you can make it even more difficult here :)



[h3]Operator Level[/h3]

Keep delivering previously unlocked shape goals to increase your Operator Level! Every level unlocks additional chunks and research points to aid you in growing your factory! Completing a goal will allow you to complete it again, but with an increased amount of shapes needed. Be sure to diversify!

Operator Levels allow your old factories to remain useful after completing their milestones. Instead of quickly building something and to get rid of it once you advance, this incentivises to expand instead of replace and long-term solutions instead of quick and dirty ones. We want to see big and tidy factories!



If you want to go the extra mile, you can also produce the Randomized Goal! This requires less shapes to produce in order to level up, but you’ll need to switch up your factory frequently to adapt to the new goal. Or, just set up a Make Anything Machine!

[h3]Blueprint Icons[/h3]

Remember two weeks ago when we said we probably wouldn’t be able to add Blueprint Icons before the Early Access release? Yeah, about that…

Introducing Blueprint Icons! You can now customize your Blueprints with up to 4 icons at a time to make it easier to tell them apart in lists and hotbars. There’s a big list of icons already used elsewhere in the game and a couple of preset shapes. You can also add custom shape icons with Shape Codes!



[h3]Other new things[/h3]

Platform and platform blueprints can now be mirrored! We’ve also expanded the tutorial (now Operator Certification) and expanded the Knowledge Panel with all milestones, mechanics, example videos and translations.

[h2]Visuals and Graphics[/h2]

We’re working with new Rail visuals! Rails now look a lot less bulky and it clearly indicates which direction trains can travel. All the other visuals for trains are still work in progress though, so you’ll have to wait a bit longer to see everything else!



[h2]Development[/h2]

We’ve done a big simulation refactoring pass to improve simulation accuracy and stability. There have also been several more performance and rendering improvements.

DirectX 11 is now the default rendering backend on Windows systems, as we got a lot of feedback on the demo about some issues caused by Vulkan.

Factories outside of your view are now simulated at lower tick rates for up to 20x simulation performance improvements. This will prevent the simulation from struggling with huge factories, as only what you’re currently looking at is fully simulated. Your factory will continue to run perfectly fine if you’re not there to keep watch! It’s not like the belts start slacking off the second the manager is busy elsewhere. Or so they tell us.

[h2]Lore[/h2]

You read that right! We’ve begun to sprinkle bits and pieces of lore around the game to give it some flair. This includes the aforementioned Operator Certification, but you’ll be able to find lore and flavor text around various places in the game.



[h2]UI & UX[/h2]

As we’re getting closer to the Early Access release and most of it is ready, a lot of the remaining work consists of UI and UX changes. Here’s a list of what we’ve done!

  • Cleaned up train toolbar & icons
  • Added new 'conflicts' visualization: Whenever an issue is detected – like belts moving in opposite directions – an exclamation mark will appear at the location. There’s a button in the bottom right of the UI to toggle conflict warnings, though we suspect turning the warning off won’t fix the problem.
  • Merged Upgrades and Shop into one shared tab: Allows you to shop for upgrades
  • Added the option to clear all fluids in all fluid buildings
  • Added setting to disable chromatic aberration
  • Added setting to disable vignette: there will still be some vignette, but a lot less
  • Added setting to choose the target display: for your sextuple monitor setups
  • Added setting to reduce input latency: this may make the game feel more responsive, but will increase CPU load and may result in a lower frame rate.
  • Disabled auto-rotation for large buildings, like the Painter
  • Added setting to disable custom cursor (will make us sad)
  • Splitters and Mergers are automatically placed when connecting or disconnecting belts or pipes.
  • Added glow indicator for shapes that are actively being delivered
  • Improved difficulty & scenario selection screen (see related section above)
  • You’re no longer required to hold 'Shift' to replace conveyor belts / transport structures
  • Transitions between waypoints or moving to the vortex are now animated
  • Added placement indicators for fluid & wire buildings to better show inputs / outputs
  • Improved fluid miner placement indicators
  • Updated game logo: we gave it a real good scrub
  • Added a button to take you directly to the relevant knowledge panel entry while placing or selecting a building
  • Updates to the wire icons
  • Improved & fixed belt launcher placement indicators & logic
  • Added a setting to toggle toolbar selection mode between ‘deselect’ and ‘cycle’, with ‘deselect’ being the new default.
  • Improved space belt & pipe placement, now should behave similar to belts but at a much larger scale (more improvements coming)
  • Removed confirmation when purchasing speed upgrades: We know you got a need for speed
  • Indicators for wrong connections are introduced for Buildings, Wires, and Pipes: These are the checkered blockers and separate from conflicts, though currently serve largely the same purpose.

[hr][/hr]

That’s it for now! Only a couple devlogs left to go before you get to play shapez 2 for yourself in August. We’re very excited (and very busy) and we hope you’ll join us again for the next devlog.

See you then!

~ Tobias & the shapez 2 team


[h3]Join the community:[/h3]

X / Twitter YouTube Discord Reddit TikTok Patreon


[h3]Check out the previous devlog:[/h3]
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2162800/view/4149584538797983676