Hey everyone! Its been a little while since the last devlog. Weve been very busy with the Gameplay Reveal trailer from two weeks ago, which was then followed up by Gamescom. However, were back now! So lets discuss what weve been working on since devlog 007.

News

As previously mentioned, we finally released the Gameplay Reveal Trailer for shapez 2! Thank you to everyone who joined us for the premiere and supported the trailer. In case you missed it, you can find the trailer here: [previewyoutube=0VO_52LJ268;full][/previewyoutube] If that got you as excited as we are, be sure to wishlist the game and follow shapez 2 to stay up to date with the news! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/

Reinforcements

The astute among you may have noticed a second logo at the end of the trailer. We are working with Gamera Games who you may know from Dyson Sphere Program to publish the game in Greater China & Japan. They will also handle the Simplified Chinese translations for our announcements and devlogs! Additionally, we have enlisted the help of Game Drive, a games marketing agency. As were moving ever closer to the Early Access release next year, marketing becomes more and more important for the growth of the game, so we need some extra manpower!

Alpha 7 Build

Alpha 7.4 of shapez 2 is currently available on our Patreon and has been for a bit. A lot of the changes youll read about below have already been implemented in this build. If youre interested in giving this new build a go, be sure to subscribe to our Patreon to get access, alongside a host of other great benefits! [hr][/hr]

Devlog 008

So with all that out of the way, lets dive into the new devlog.

Rendering & graphical performance

After watching the trailer, a lot of you had questions about the performance of the game. Once you really got going in shapez 1 and made a huge factory, or made a make-everything-machine or two, the simulation could start to lag quite badly. So understandably, when people saw the graphical uplift of shapez 2, people assumed this would make things worse. Well, fret not! Unlike Shapez 1, Shapez 2 is made in Unity with C#. This gives us a lot more tools to optimise the simulation and prevent unnecessary use of your systems resources. One of the changes is that the game now supports multi-threaded processing, so the simulation and the game wont run on just one of your CPUs cores. The biggest change however, is how we handle off-screen simulation. Instead of just fully simulating everything in your factory at all times, were limiting the simulation of the portion of your factory that isnt currently on your screen to just 2 times a second down from the full 60 times a second while still running at full precision. You wont notice a mechanical or visual difference at all. However, itll make sure the simulation runs smoothly regardless of the size of your factory. We stress tested this system on a mega factory of 360.000+ buildings and it works great. In fact, you saw this very factory in the trailer! Our goal here is to allow for about 1 million buildings on a modern PC build for the release of the game.
Do keep in mind that the massively improved graphics will mean you most likely wont be able to sneakily play Shapez 2 on the school computer as you could (and we know you did) with shapez.io. You will require a bit more computing power to run this at a smooth frame rate; without any tweaking of the settings, that is! To counteract the increased resource demand of the game somewhat, there will be a host of graphical options to tinker with, alongside a minimal mode. This mode will reduce the visuals to an absolute minimum and allows Shapez 2 to be played on laptops. This mode has been tested on a Microsoft Surface Pro and runs fine! Exact minimum and recommended system requirements are to be determined and published closer to the release of the game. If you want to give it a try right now though, be sure to download the free alpha version through our Discord server! As the game still has a lot of optimisation to go in its current state, its safe to say that if your PC runs Alpha well, it will be able to run it in the future.

Trains progress

We know youre excited for space trains, and were working hard to make them a reality. Youve seen them in action in the trailer, so youll have a good idea of the vision we have for them. Do keep in mind that the trains are still subject to change.
However, a lot of work still needs to be done to make trains fully operational, but were on track to have the trains depart for Early Access next year. We hope to do a devlog dedicated to trains in the future, once theyre finalised.

Barreling

In devlog 006, we introduced you to the world of fluids. One of the topics we addressed here was fluid packing and cross-island transport. As theres no way of moving fluids directly between islands, youd need to produce barrels to keep the fluid in, fill the barrels, then move it by your preferred mode of transportation. Once at your destination, youd empty the barrels and pump the fluid back into your pipe system. We feel like the process of producing barrels didnt quite fit. Having to deliver shapes somewhere to produce the barrels made fluids a hassle to use. It didnt add anything interesting to the mechanics, just more tedium. Instead, the Fluid Packer building will take the fluid and freezes it into blocks that can be transported however you wish.

Auto pinning side goals

As the side goals are very important for your progression through the game, we want to make them a bit more prominent. Now, side goals are automatically pinned if you produce the shape they require. We will continue working on the early game and research experience and are planning to add a full tutorial.

Visualisation layers in overview mode

We added brand new visualisation layers to the overview mode. You watch a neat little demonstration here: [previewyoutube=pJmYjAyCzbg;full][/previewyoutube] The layers now include:

• Islands grid
• Shape Patches
• Fluid Resources
• Shapes
• Explored Areas & islands
• Tunnels
• Train Items
• Train Lines
• Train Stations

You can enable multiple layers at once, or even all at once if you hate being able to see what youre doing.

Island selection toolbar

We added a new Island Selection toolbar, allowing for quick and easy access to the different types of islands you can place. Youll also be able to select multiple islands and delete them all at once. Its easy to accidentally delete a lot this way, but dont worry, you can undo everything if you mess up.

Packer Building

Weve been working with the Packer and Unpacker buildings. The Packer building allows you to stack many shapes of the same type and color and pack them into one item. The Unpacker, as you may expect, does the opposite. The main purpose for these packs is to transport the shapes via train. Pack the shapes, insert the packs into a train, remove the packs from the train, then unpack everything again. Its also great for massively increasing the throughput on a belt, as long as you have enough Packers. Details on how this building will work together with trains, will come in the devlog dedicated to trains.

Graphical Improvements

A lot of time has been spent on improving the graphics of the game across the board. Improvements have been made to the materials of the Space Station, all buildings, the playing field as well as global lighting effects. We hope you liked what you saw in the trailer!

One of the main improvements weve been working on is LOD (Level of Detail). For those who dont know, a common technique to increase performance is to lower the LOD of models that are far away from the camera. This technique is especially important to make the game run smoothly when zoomed out, like in Overview mode. We dont want the decrease in LOD to look jarring when you zoom out though, so were trying our best to make this look smooth and as unnoticeable as possible. This is done by having multiple stages of LOD, so the transition from one LOD to the next isnt as big. Were also fading out the shadows now, instead of simply removing them.
[hr][/hr] Now, were finally caught up! Again, apologies for the lack of devlogs lately. Now that the trailer is out and we have some reinforcements, we hope to bring you new devlogs every other week. If youd like to support the game, please wishlist the game here on Steam and follow the Shapez 2 page if youre not already. It really does help us out a lot. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/ We hope you enjoyed this devlog and cant wait to show what else were working on! ~Tobias & the shapez 2 team

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[ 2023-08-31 14:01:19 CET ] [ Original post ]