Good Robot Achievement Bounty

By Arvind Raja Yadav Posted Friday Apr 8, 2016

Filed under: Good Robot 158 comments

When we first thought of putting hats in Good Robot, it made sense to tie in a few achievements to them. After all, people like hats and achievements â€" combining them was a surefire way to video game stardom.

As it turns out, a couple of those achievements are slightly difficult to obtain. And by slightly I mean so difficult that nobody outside of the dev team has done it yet. The achievements I'm talking about are:

For reference, you lose your hat if you get hit by an enemy. Yep.
For reference, you lose your hat if you get hit by an enemy. Yep.

We don't want these achievements stay un-achieved forever. To encourage you to go out there and get these bad boys, we're putting a bounty on them. Be warned, this challenge is not for the faint of heart.


The target demographic for this challenge. The white space represents the universal set, i.e. those who like hats.
The target demographic for this challenge. The white space represents the universal set, i.e. those who like hats.

Rewards

If you're one of the first three people to get the “Hardest Hat” achievement, we'll send you a Good Robot T-Shirt, an Unrest T-Shirt, a bunch of posters, an Unrest boxed copy, a bunch of stickers and badges, and a handmade certificate of Goodness and Robotness. Oh, and a key for the Pyrodactyl Complete Pack on Steam.

If you're one of the first three people to get the less difficult “Elite Hat” achievement, we'll send you a Good Robot T-Shirt, a Steam key for the Good Robot Soundtrack and a handmade certificate of Goodness.

The Rules

  1. You must stream yourself completing the challenge and save the VOD.
  2. Once you get the achievement, open the Steam overlay from inside the game and clearly display your Steam profile URL by opening the achievements menu. This is necessary because we will use this info to verify if you have the achievement.
  3. Post a comment in this thread with the link to your video of your entire run â€" from starting a new game to getting the achievement. The time at which you post your comment will be used to decide the winners.
  4. No cheating, video editing shenanigans, modifying game files etc. This includes means of cheating not listed here.

If you are eligible for the bounty, we'll contact you for shipping info so we can send you the reward.

Notes

  1. T-Shirt sizes available from S to XXL. If your size isn't available, we'll send you a Steam key for one of our games instead.
  2. We'll handle the shipping costs.
  3. We reserve the right to refuse rewards for any reasons whatsoever.
  4. We have never done something like this before, and have no idea what to expect. We hope this is an exciting experiment for both us and you.

Happy hunting!

Additional Note from Shamus:

This basically makes the game a one-hit-and-you-die kinda deal. We actually considered that as a game mode at one point, but it got pushed aside by other features. Like hats.
This basically makes the game a one-hit-and-you-die kinda deal. We actually considered that as a game mode at one point, but it got pushed aside by other features. Like hats.

Above, Arvind said that nobody outside the dev team has these achievements. It’s important to note that the devs only have these achivements because we needed to test and make sure they actually worked, and they did so by turning off the robot AI. Nobody has legitimately earned these yet.

Also, we may add more to the prize pool for the Hardest Hat. I suspect many people might want some stuff signed by me, but the swag is in India and I am… not. We’re still working out the logistics.

Elite hat seems pretty do-able. I’ve been watching streamers and YouTubers play the game all week, and lots of people were able to complete one level without losing their hat. without any real practice.

But the hardest hat? I have no idea. Aside from jokes, there are two reasons to put an achievement in the game:

“We should create this artificial goal, because people might enjoy attaining it.”

But also:

“If someone actually did this, they really deserve recognition.”

Hardest Hat is very much this second form of achievement.

I’d say it was impossible, but I’ve seen people do some really insane stuff in games like Spelunky.

Also, don’t be shy about sharing your streams. Even if you don’t get the achievement, feel free to post a link to the VOD below. I really do love watching people play the game.

Also, please share this post with the streamers in your life. Thank you.

 


From The Archives:
 

158 thoughts on “Good Robot Achievement Bounty

  1. Bubble181 says:

    I’m honestly surprised no-one’s gotten the Elite Hat one yet. I haven’t been able to finish the game yet (not even close), but in one of my many short aborted play-throughs, I did manage to finish the prologue and the first “normal” level without losing my bonnet.

    Finding the bouncy primary weapon and being able to buy the scanner immediately helps a lot there, ’cause the first few levels are thereby reduced to nice-looking advanced snooker, shooting everything around the corner. Doesn’t hold up all the way through, sadly ;-P

    But man, constantly streaming while playing? Blegh :P

    1. Mephane says:

      I think you mistook zones for levels. What you do between the starting point with the hat vending machine and the exit, is a zone. All zones in a given tileset plus its final boss together are a level. Three zones without losing a hat has probably been done a lot. Three levels – well apparently not.

      1. Bubble181 says:

        Then the wording’s pretty vague – doesn’t the “easy” version also say “finish one level with your hat”? I can’t check at work, (Steam’s blocked here, obviously).
        But yes, that would make more sense for not being achieved yet.

        1. Falterfire says:

          There are four total:

          One for completing a zone, one for completing a level, one for completing three levels, and one for completing the game.

        2. Joe Leigh says:

          Also confusing because levels are referred to in-game as “chapters” and zones aren’t referred to at all I don’t think.

      2. Vukodlak says:

        It’s strange that I had actually assumed the opposite – that the areas that share the same overall appearance and esthetics are “zones” and that each has multiple levels. I mean, it seems natural to refer to each level (between a hat machine and a vending machine) as a level… At least to me.

  2. This is clearly some things i should add to my, “things i will never accomplish” list

      1. Wide And Nerdy â„¢ says:

        Yeah there’s no way. I don’t know if I’m even going to be able to finish this game. Though I’m enjoying this game, this isn’t the sort of thing I normally play so the reflexes just aren’t there.

        But its a nice reintroduction to shmups for someone who’s last shmup (besides OpenTyrian that I downloaded for my phone thanks to a recommendation from Ross Scott’s “Game Dungeon”) was probably Galaga, if that even counts.

        Speaking of OpenTyrian, if you could find a way to port Good Robot to smartphone I’ll bet it would do pretty well. I’d buy it again.

        1. 4th Dimension says:

          I’m not familiar with mobile games, since I don’t have a smart phone, but how would that control scheme work?!?

          I guess movement is pretty simple. Either tap to go there or press in direction you want to go, and continue to move in that direction until you release the screen.
          I guess you could set up some buttons on the edge of the screen for firing the weapons.
          But how do you aim and move at the same time? Maybe limit the movement taps to a limited area around the Good Robot, and treat any other tap as aiming/firing primary weapon in that dirrection.
          Would that work?

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            I dont see a way for it to work on a phone,but on a tablet you can add a small dpad somewhere in the bottom(probably on the left),and it would work fine.For a touch screen,that is.

            1. Wide And Nerdy â„¢ says:

              It would work reasonably well with a phablet mounted on a controller (such as what I keep with me. ) Though it wouldn’t be as responsive due to bluetooth input lag (in my experience).

          2. Viktor says:

            I know the migraines this will generate, but: motion control. Angle the tablet and the robot goes towards that side of the screen, tap to fire. Tap on a machine to use it.

            1. 4th Dimension says:

              But how precise would that be, since you need really tight controls so that player can dodge shots.

              1. tmtvl says:

                Exact precision depends on the device, obviously, but it can be made quite precise, as a bunch of apps have shown.

                1. Viktor says:

                  Well, if you’re adapting it for tablets, there’s going to be changes anyways. I’d probably expect reduced enemy damage/rof to balance the jankier controls, fewer particle effects for the sake of the processors, different coloring due to the small screens and sub-optimal lighting conditions when people tend to play mobile. Maybe even make later levels selectable once you reach that point in the game once, since people tend to do shorter mobile gaming sessions and won’t want to replay the same starting zones every single time.

    1. MichaelGC says:

      Aye right. Is there an achievement for buying a hat without losing the hat? i.e. managing to safely exit the shop screen without taking any damage? ‘Cos I think that’s about my speed…

      PS Love the artwork for the achievements! :D

  3. Mephane says:

    I suggest you also post the bounty on the Steam forums. :)

    1. The announcement and Steam forum post are both posted now.

  4. Droid says:

    Does the stream need to be:

    – commentated
    – entertaining and/or
    – well set up?

    Because while I might manage the first one, any of the latter two might disqualify me from the start.

    Oh, and I’m a firm believer that stubbornness is a good substitute for skill. So it might take a while.

    EDIT: Also, it seems, if you do nothing and go back to menu, Continue generates a new game while new game lets you continue your old one. Strange…
    EDIT 2: Okay, if continue just brings you back to the start of the last zone, that is probably WAD, even though you could cheat by resetting the current zone until you find a nice layout.

    1. Ranneko says:

      From what I can see they don’t even require talking on stream, just that the game is streamed AND the stream allows for the steam overlay to check for cheaty hacks.

      I should figure out how to capture the steam overlay as well as the game.

      1. Droid says:

        You can get the overlay as well as the game with OBS and a game capture window. There’s a special checkbox for overlays.

        1. Ranneko says:

          Yeah I have just never actually set it up, I would rather not accidentally expose messages sent to me and turning on and off steam notifications every time I stream or record is a bit more fiddly than I would like.

          1. Droid says:

            Play it with Steam in Offline mode? Not sure how well that works, but that seems less fiddly than turning off steam notifications.

        2. Ranneko says:

          Actually scratch that, the only way I can get OBS to capture Good Robot and the overlay is via Monitor capture.

          Window capture doesn’t work, I just get a black screen. Game capture works great except does not get the overlay regardless of settings.

          Monitor capture is one of the worst options.

    2. Nope, all we need is your stream having the achievement. If not commentating is better for you, feel free to do just that.

  5. On the one hand, I’ve already been working on trying to do this. (I am not close.) On the other hand, blech, I don’t want to fuss with setting streaming up, especially given how long in the tooth my computer is getting. On the gripping hand, I *do* really want some Unrest swag . . .

  6. Ciennas says:

    Tangent:

    I liked the bleak wrongness of Rutskarns first draft. Not wanting to play it mind, but it was amusing to read. As this current build is after the exitinction event, I want the original draft script declared the canon reason. A pizza robot destroyed them all, and now a pizza robot has been repurposed to clean up the evidence.

    (Also I feel like the pizza robot was built by the guys who built Wayside School.)

    And as it was a pizza delivering robot, I’m sensing a bit if synergizing with FNAF in there.

  7. shpelley says:

    Just wanted to let you know Shamus/Arvind that I’m really enjoying the game thus far and it deserves it’s 84 positive reviews to… 2 negatives. It’s been entertaining watching videos/streams of people as they pick the game up. It’s honestly hilarious how, apparently, choosing a hat seems to be the hardest decision for most people.

    A few reviews I’ve read talk about the lack of a tutorial being a stumbling block. Honestly, I think that’s one of the more fun parts of the game. It’s like the old arcadey games where you Learned By Doing (TM). This works well for things like “which gun is better,” “what does this door lead to?” You can see the “ah-ha!” moments go off. Here’s a few things I’ve seen that might be legitimate things though that you might want to take a look at (collated from just about every YouTube video/stream I’ve seen)

    Doors: While I like the doors not explaining what they are until you go through, it might be nice if something popped up when you went through the tunnel and the screen went black that explicitly said what the room ahead was. That would help differentiate the less “obvious” buttons like Mini-Boss vs Boss-Boss, the Labyrinth-style levels, etc.

    Direction: It seems people are finding problems with a “I’m doing this…why?” thing. Even putting the description of the game in a little animation on application launch (NOT “New Game”, unless it’s just a news blurb line of text before fading in or something”

    Goals: The hat achievements are really, really smart. They give a lot of replayability. Assuming the game does well and you feel comfortable investing more DEV time into it however, I’d go full Binding of Isaac on it. Achieve certain goals, get a new initial load-out and hat. Would be cool to have different loadouts like “Get Froggy” with the Froggy Eyes hat and all bouncing weapons, stuff like that.

    News: People seem to love the writing, but I see a lot of people accidentally ignoring some of the stuff because it is lower down. Might be a good idea to move the headlines either to the side (like a little article you can scroll on the right) or maybe in the “shop rooms” there could be these TV-like things that have the news ticker going by. It’d keep them from being intrusive, but also make them more eye-catching.

    Duplicate Weapons: A few people have been confused when a duplicate of a weapon they already have drops. I find the weapon drops can be just a little on the rare side sometimes, so it’d be nice if it were impossible for a duplicate drop to happen.

    Radial Heater: No one likes this gun :P

    ———————————–

    Those are the things I’ve seen repeated in most of the playthroughs I’ve seen. Keep up the awesome work, man. The game is a blast and I hope it is a big success!

    1. Thanks for the feedback! We’ll evaluate where we stand as far as expanding on the game goes in a week or so, when the launch week is settled and we’ve patched the technical issues that were discovered.

      (P.S. I wanna thank everyone who posts feedback here, on steam, twitter etc. I might not reply but I read the comments and I’m thankful that you took the time to give us feedback)

      1. Ranneko says:

        I think the feature I would like to see most is probably a daily challenge mode, complete with its own leaderboard. That really helps get people to play a game day after day competing to see who was best this time.

        Mind you it doesn’t seem like a trivial amount of work given you have to ensure that all random elements are the same for every player, which is not an assumption normally baked into these games. It would have to apply to enemies dropping weapons, weapon available at machines, crates, etc.

        1. Yep, we had that on the todo list for a long time until we realized it just wasn’t going to be possible without pushing the game back by at least a couple of months, and that was simply not possible. Maybe if there’s an expansion pack or GR2, we can add it – but right now we don’t know if that will happen until a couple of weeks at the very least.

          1. shpelley says:

            I love the idea of daily achievements, though it would be hard to police with an easily moddable game. Maybe just a simple checksum on the core files and basically a little disclaimer that they can’t post their results to the leaderboard if it doesn’t match up?

        2. King Marth says:

          One great idea I saw on a Spelunky blog: Spelunky has a daily challenge run that everyone can play once (same seed, so everyone has the same spawns) to compete for highest score. This is intrinsically flawed because there’s no risk vs reward tradeoff – everyone is playing this, the high score will always go to the person who took the most risks that paid off. There is never an incentive to play safe, because enough other people are playing that some out there will do the stupid thing for a miniscule improvement and beat you.

          A much better take on this? Randomly pairing people that start up the challenge and giving just those two the same seed (alt: every time someone starts the mode, either generate them a new seed and save it or give them a saved seed). Your daily challenge is still trying to set a high score, but the playing field doesn’t have the sheer numbers to brute-force the highest score, so your goal is to outlast and do better than your rival. Realistically this would likely work best in small pools, say around ten people filling out an arcade-style high score table, but there’s the idea: You’re competing, but with just one run you need to balance your risk against the small number of people that won’t pass you by sheer luck.

      2. shpelley says:

        No problem! Another thing I just heard in a couple of videos was the lack of knowing what a weapon does. Easily the best way to show this off would be to have a “Preview” button that shows a little video of the Good Robot and like 3 enemies (who are sitting stock still and not shooting back) and showing you use the weapon to blow them up.

        It would be similar to something like League of Legends Champion Spotlights where they show off each skill in isolation. Example:

        http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/site/guide/jinx.html, click on each of the skills and a little video shows the skill in use.

        1. Richard MacDonald says:

          I’m broke and don’t have the game yet, so I could be wrong, but I don’t think that is really all that necessary. Part of the fun of roguelikes for me is learning by doing. I see an item in Binding of Isaac or Downwell that I don’t recognize, I have to pick it up and use it. If it winds up being something that I don’t like or something that puts me at a disadvantage, that’s too bad. I knew the risk when I grabbed the weapon, and now I have to adapt or die. And when I do die, because I always die, at least I learned something for the next run, and that bit of knowledge feels like progress towards the end game.

        2. Decius says:

          If we could at least see the stats first, that would be an easy improvement.

      3. Trix2000 says:

        In regards to the news ticker/story stuff, I think it might help to vary up its color and design relative to the shop itself. Make it a fairly distinct element, since that might catch the eyes (and curiosity) better.

        As it is currently, it blends in a little too well with the show descriptions, to the point where often my mind thinks that’s what it is.

    2. Droid says:

      No, SMG is way worse than radial heater:

      Wanna hit the thing you’re aiming at? Well, roll a d100. If your result is higher than the distance to your target in cm, it’s a hit.

      1. Bubble181 says:

        Sure, but radial heater (and sonic whachamacallit) require such a short distance to be anywhere near effective, that you die along with the enemies. Might be my incompetence ,but the Good Robot just isn’t sturdy enough to get up close o_O

      2. MrGuy says:

        Maybe it’s play style, but I love SMG. It works great against missile spawners in the early game – just hold down the trigger and they can’t touch you. Plus you can just fill a corridor ahead of you with bullets and fly down a narrow passageway in relative safety. The need to not aim exactly and still hit a target can be really useful in a swarm. If you have an attack power upgrade or two I find it to be an early game problem solver.

        There are later game weapons that do similar things better and more powerfully, but especially the opening and Chapter One I believe are SMG friendly.

        1. 4th Dimension says:

          Yup that one and Argon blaster are the go to low level DAKKA weapons that you use to sweep corridors out of your sight.
          On second thought it might be an acquired taste, and those wanting more precision probably hate it, but to a scrub like me weapons with some scatter (but no gravity drop) are a god send.

        2. shpelley says:

          I don’t mind the SMG. Pump up attack power and spray an area while moving can be good. Go back and forth quickly between cover and spray bullets so you pick off any homing missiles they fire and do some decent damage to a crowd. You then just need to focus on getting a higher damage secondary for killing off 1-off enemies easily.

        3. Abnaxis says:

          Actually, one of the biggest beefs I have with the game is that upgrading attack power does NOTHING for the “fast-fire-rate, low-damage” weapons, at least if you go by the damage number feed-back.

          From what I can tell, the power upgrades add +10% more damage (rounded down), which for the SMG means 1.1 damage rounded down to 1 per bullet. Even if you 100% upgraded attack power, it wouldn’t make a difference to the SMG

          The upgrade system is where my biggest eye-rolls come from in general–the dev blog said that they went to a cash system to help players recover if they invest in the wrong upgrade path, but the price for everything shoots up no matter what you upgrade. Attack power is terribly useless, upgrading shields makes it absurdly expensive to repair (as far as I can tell), upgrading vision makes it so enemies shoot at you from farther away since they always shoot as soon as they’re within view.

          The upgrades seem like they were intended to be “powerful but expensive so choose wisely,” but they wound up at “always upgrade fire rate unless you need to upgrade shields because they are low and you’ll get gouged if you repair them”

          1. Arstan says:

            I upgraded only shields and made repairs (also second lives). That made it possible for me to get to level 4, since i am bad at dodging. Ahh, why i could’t afford that machine gun-8000)))

          2. Noumenon72 says:

            How do you repair? I played 14 minutes and never found any way to repair.

            1. Phil says:

              One of the vending machines (blue or red, don’t recall at the moment (not yellow, though) has a “Recharge Shield” or such (bottom left of the 6 entries, warranty being top left and primary and secondary weapons being the remaining 4).

              1. Noumenon72 says:

                Thanks, I never saw one.

          3. Naota says:

            That’s not entirely true, though the ambiguity is totally on us for this – repair costs are based on: percentage of HP lost, number of previous repairs bought, and a base fee of 500.

            Robot activation is based on a distance value set in the script files, not vision radius, so you can safely buy this as well. It’s actually possible to spot even bosses before they activate with level 2 vision in certain cases.

      3. Draxom says:

        The SMG is a great gun. It fires a non-stop spray of bullets in front of you which means that you will never be hit by any missile or rocket that comes from that direction. it’s also really good at taking out the smaller enemies since they only need 2 or 3 hits to die. for the bigger enemies get a secondary weapon with a high fire rate and your golden.

      4. SMG is my 2nd favorite, so far. Takes care of missiles and doesn’t require aiming too precisely – just dodge and spray, and eventually the bad robots go away.

      5. Decius says:

        SMG is a low-damage cone weapon; put enemies in the cone and they take damage.

    3. MrGuy says:

      While I like the doors not explaining what they are until you go through, it might be nice if something popped up when you went through the tunnel and the screen went black that explicitly said what the room ahead was. That would help differentiate the less “obvious” buttons like Mini-Boss vs Boss-Boss, the Labyrinth-style levels, etc.

      I kinda like the exploration mini-game aspect of the door types (though in this day and age of GameFAQ’s I think 95% of players will just look it up.)

      The one door type that I think needs explanation is the level up doors. You show a message in not too prominent text in the lower left of the screen, where the player’s attention rarely is. I missed it the first time I leveled up. I’ve seen multiple lets play videos where people also miss it. I feel like a level (and the chapter title) deserve a little more recognition.

      1. shpelley says:

        I’m of the same mind when it comes to doors. The only 2 rooms I find understandable confusion in are the mini-boss vs boss (red guy vs slightly different looking red guy, especially on smaller laptops) and the labrynth (it’s just not 100% clear what, exactly, it’s depicting). I liked finding out “ELECTRIC WALLS OH GOD” and “Mystery box $$$$” for myself the first time.

      2. Noumenon72 says:

        I only played 14 minutes, but my experience was “guess green, guess red, annoyed that I can’t go back and didn’t get a meaningful choice.” It would be more fun if it said “Entering Doom Chute” to give you a sense that guessing wrong and being trapped was part of the fun. It would show you aren’t meant to know what’s right.

    4. Felblood says:

      I like the radial heater, but then, I’m stuck playing in Invisible Robots Mode, so my need for AoE weapons is very great, and I’m willing to accept a lot to get one.

    5. 4th Dimension says:

      For me the biggest problem is the fact that you don’t get enough information to inform your purchasing of weapons from vending machines. Some stats, at least how it’s projectiles move, would sure be welcome.

      1. Jonathan says:

        Yes. I just flat don’t buy weapons from vending machines, because if they stink I get nothing back. I’ve just made it to Area 3 once, and a $5k weapon is a repair and a half, or half of a badly-needed shield upgrade.

    6. Daemian Lucifer says:

      ““ Radial Heater: No one likes this gun :P

      Yup.Even those who say something else is worse,or actually defend this weapon,are just doing so to be contrarian,but in actuality they too think this is the worst gun.

      1. Droid says:

        Actually, I thought the Radial Heater was your starting weapon, because I recently picked up a new primary weapon in a new game, and when I turned back the way I came, on the spot I picked up the new gun I found a Radial Heater pickup. Must have been a case of acute blindness or a robot dying to ricochets offscreen on that spot.

        Yep, it’s probably the former.

    7. Abnaxis says:

      I think the close-range weapons in general (e.g. shotgun, radial heater, soundwave blaster) need a significant buff. It’s a significant risk to close in far enough to use these weapons; if you charge in that way, enemies should melt. The way they currently are, though, any other weapon will not only out-range these weapons, they’ll out-DPS them too.

      EDIT: and while I’m at it, my last major gripe is the score multiplier. I think it should last a little longer–either increase the timer on it, or make it stick around as long as there are Bad Robots still on the screen. That would give an incentive to charge in, so you can maintain a high multiplier.

      As it stand, I charge in and I still commonly lose my multiplier because the damage I am doing doesn’t kill stuff fast enough to maintain it.

      In fact, rewards (both in-game cash and score) for finishing a zone quickly would be greatly appreciated by me. I want more reasons to fly risky for better rewards.

  8. kaypy says:

    I’m thinking even Hattiquette is a step too far for me.

    But on the topic of making sure a run is legit, is there any sort of checking of the data files on the Leaderboard uploads? Easyish modding and a Leaderboard seems a recipe for abuse…

    Failing that, is there some way a mod can manually disable the Leaderboard?

    1. There are too many ways to abuse the leaderboards, since all the logic of the game is on the client. There is simply no effective way to prevent someone from uploading bogus scores UNLESS the game runs on a server and you login to play like an MMO (which simply isn’t possible for us to do, nor do we want to do it).

      By default, the game won’t download leaderboards until you look them up in the menu, so I guess the best way to disable-ish them is to not look at them.

      1. 4th Dimension says:

        Maybe running some sort of check sum on game files during load and comparing the combined check sum with the one on the leaderboard server, would limit most of the simple hacks via modding? Or is the leaderboard server not under your control.

        Paradox Interactive does something similar, to simplify debugging multiplayer errors (to check if your and the server are running the same version+mods it is enough to check the checksum on the start screen), since their games are more often than not modded.

        1. That’s the thing – we’re not running the leaderboard server, Steam is. And steam doesn’t allow any code or checks – it just takes a value you upload and plonks it on the server. If we could check for valid entries server side, it would be a different story.

          1. Wide And Nerdy â„¢ says:

            They do support VAC but that detects any modding and treats it as cheating.

            1. Mephane says:

              While I strongly disagree to equate modding with cheating, I do think you have a point. It could also just be a thing in the game: if any file is modified from default, don’t add your result to the leaderboard. Just that. Let anything else happen as it happens, do not trigger VAC (you’d effectively *ban* modding if it did that) or go any further. Just checksum the files, if different from a (hardcoded) default, no leadboard entry.

              If then someone wants to hack the exe to change the defaults or send purely fake data to the Steam servers, well, you can’t stop that, but few people are going to go that far.

              I speak here also from a personal perspective: I have done two slight modifications that make the game massively more enjoyable to me than the default settings, but I do not care about leaderboards and indeed for those that do, I find it fairer if you’d only appear there when your files are unmodded; but I’d utterly hate being flagged in Steam as a “cheater” for that, or be completely unable to get achievements (one thing that is strange about Cities Skylines, especially since a mod can re-enable achievements that are disabled due to mods… so it’s kind of useless and self-defeating).

      2. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Wouldnt a solution be for the game to send the hash of the settings files back to some server before posting the score to the leaderboard,or before granting an achievement?And if the result is not the same as the stored one,grant a “cheater” achievement instead.

        1. It isn’t just a single settings file that is enough, all of the game’s configuration files (robots, levels, hitbox sizes), the dlls and executable would need to checked every time someone uploads a score.

          Hell, someone could just edit the memory where the game holds the score and set it to a high number.

          Not to mention that we’re just 2 programmers – all the time we spend on doing this finicky stuff means we’re not working on the game. It is simply not feasible for a team of our size.

          1. Bubble181 says:

            Hey now! I’m sure Shamus could do it and turn it into *at least* two funny posts complaining about Earlier Shamus’s bad coding habits! :P

          2. Daemian Lucifer says:

            But wouldnt a hash of all the files together still be (relatively) unique?And (relatively) simple to implement.

            1. Ed Lu says:

              But editing the memory holding the high score, or modifying the packets before they’re sent, wouldn’t be detected this way. If you trust the client, there’s always going to be a way to cheat.

              The way Dustforce and Devil Daggers have implemented their leaderboards is the way to go. Those games record and send all the actions a player takes during a run; then, on the server, they run the same (similar?) code and validate that the player really could have completed the level in that time. However, as Arvind said up above, it’s nontrivial, and even with this method tool assistance (think TAS) can still be used.

              1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                And its not a fullproof solution either.I deliberately mentioned a slow ass machine down there because you can emulate a slow ass machine and have the game run suuuuuupeeeeeeeer slooooooooooooooooow.Recording your moves then will still yield a positive result,even if no human alive could replicate them at regular speed.

            2. When it comes to cheating then speaking as a semi-experienced cheater I’d say that I hardly ever modify the actual game files.

              I either:
              1. Use the console (cheats made by the devs)
              2. Cheat Engine (creating my own cheats/hacks)
              3. A trainer (somebody else did all the work)

              Then there is the definition of cheating.

              For example my SteelSeries mouse has software on the machine that allows macros.
              So I could rapid fire at millisec intervals, instead of clicking once or twice per second I could click 1000 times which is not humanly possible.

              Also, I got a older mouse that has onboard storage of macros so it’s macro button will work on any machine with no extra software.

              I also got two USB pedals, one is programmed to act as Shift and the other as Ctrl and will work as such on any machine (the programming is stored on them).

              This is why I ignore any and all achievements myself, sure it’s bragging rights but there are too many variables for such to be used as as comparison of ability or skill.

              The only way to prevent cheating is to run the entire game on a server, thus making the game little more than a input/ouput/rendering client.
              Now you got network latency to consider (which means rubberbanding issues common in MMORPGs and more).
              And if the network connection ha a hickup (but not lost) you will get kicked out of the game.

              Achievement cheating is not the same as multiplayer cheating which is not the same as competitive multiplayer cheating which is not the same as single player cheating.
              Now add to this fact that some people make up their own achievements and their own rules for getting them, the water gets a lot murkier.

        2. Mephane says:

          As I mentioned above, I would hate it if modding in any form would label you as a “cheater”. Not posting your score to the leaderboard is a good and fair idea, but anything beyond that puts the game in a grey area somewhere between “you are a bad person for modding the game” and “ban the filthy cheater”. We even have a case in this or the previous thread of someone who modifies some settings to make the game more easy on their eyes, do you really want them to be regarded a cheater, too?

        3. Decius says:

          Not to mention that finding has collisions for the common hash algorithms is mostly solved.

      3. kaypy says:

        I wasn’t thinking “I want to mod in a way not to see the leaderboard”, I was thinking “If I’m tweaking the game files I shouldn’t *post* to the leaderboard”.

  9. Galad says:

    Myeah, I’m probably going to try and fail at it for a while, then quit at this. However, I have a friend who’s awesome at completing games. I’m talking of a guy who beat Apotheon a second time, because the last achievement was awarded for completing that game on max difficulty. If he goes over the hurdle of setting up VODs and sets his mind to playing Good Robot, well, I’ve no doubt he’ll succeed at it.

    Not jumping the gun a mere few days after release with this?

    1. I think the sooner we post it the better. In my opinion it would be much worse if someone got the really tough achievement, and then a week later we post this announcement – I think they would feel incredibly bummed out.

      As of posting time, nobody has the achievement, so currently everyone who wants to participate is on an equal footing, so to speak.

  10. MrGuy says:

    Ok. Three things.

    First, Good Robot Merch exists? Where can I purchase for real money (as opposed to by investing weeks of my life protecting hats)? Shut up and take my money!

    Second, why does the set of apparently extant Good Robot Merch not contain a Good Robot branded hat?

    Third, and maybe Steam is smart about this, but given how moddable the game is, does including how the Dev team tested the achievement put you at risk for “sploits” being used to collect the prize? If so, maybe censor that part of the post?

    1. Shipping merch is super tough and annoying (I learned during the Unrest KS), so I haven’t set up a merch store yet. I have a very limited number of Good Robot and Unrest Tshirts, so there is also a problem of me running out of a particular size and then I have to refund them. We might set up cafepress or something like that if there is demand for it, I suppose.

      1. MrGuy says:

        Yeah, understand the logistics kind of suck, especially considering where you’re based. M

        Consider this the first formal request for Merch. Other people interested, please chime in!

        1. Bubble181 says:

          Chime!

        2. Alex McKenzie says:

          Chime!

        3. Akhetseh says:

          Chiming in, too.

  11. NoneCallMeTim says:

    The reason people haven’t got these achievements is simple: THEY ARE CURSED!

    I have the “Hattiquette” acheevo (Get a hat, and go through a whole level without losing it), I then noticed the popup saying I had it, looked at the hat and realised I had got through, and promptly got shot, losing the hat.

    It kept happening that I would go a long stretch with a hat, realise it, then lose the hat.

    Can you debug this? “Set curse=’off'”?

    Seriously though, I almost always buy a hat, usually the cheapest, as for $10 is an easy way of stopping a hit.

    Edit: Looking at the steam achievements, it says that 0.1% of people have the achievement. Is that the people testing the game?

    1. MrGuy says:

      It’s Schrodenger’s hat. Only when you stop to observe “wait, do I still have my hat?” does the hat definitively enter a “yep still there!” or “nope shot off” state.

      The Good Robot clearly uses quantum computing.

      1. NoneCallMeTim says:

        Nearly, the points I was commenting on were times when I looked, had the hat, then a second or two got shot and lost the hat. Happened far too many time to be coincidence.

        In reality, it is probably loss of concentration, causing me to play badly, but I still hold out hopes for the curse being turned off.

        1. I try to use the halo whenever possible for this exact reason – the halo is the highest-contrast hat, and it’s very noticeable when you lose it. I find the pope hat and angel wings are both great alternatives, though tbh I usually take the kitty ears when they’re available regardless.

    2. Phil says:

      I usually run into the problem where I’ll enter the next zone, and there’ll be two enemies immediately opening fire and knocking my hat off before I can respond.

      I am nowhere close to getting Hattiquette, let alone the others, heh.

  12. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Is it ok if I use this thread to list bugs and gripes?Ill do it here anyway:

    – When you use Q/E to scroll the messages in the vending machines,they go one step further.Clarification:When there is no left arrow,but you press Q,next time you press E or right arrow,the first message will repeat.When there is no right arrow,but you press E,next time you press Q or left arrow,the last message will repeat.

    – Special equipment(radar,compass,targeting laser,magnet)being changed only when you buy one or when you exit the vending machine is kind of annoying.Having a way to scroll between them without exiting the vending machine wouldve been better.

    – Option to rebind the esc key would be nice.Especially for exiting the vending machines(but for the menu as well).

    Im sure someone said this,but Ill echo:
    – Having a grace period to test a newly bought weapon,or a way to resell it would be really nice.The way it is,spending cash to buy an unknown weapon is a costly gamble that usually goes sour.

    And this one is just my pedantry:
    – Missiles are not rockets.Missiles are guided,rockets are unguided.So having a weapon named missile be unguided is kind of irksome(and a bit misleading).

    1. CrushU says:

      Im sure someone said this,but Ill echo:
      ““ Having a grace period to test a newly bought weapon,or a way to resell it would be really nice.The way it is,spending cash to buy an unknown weapon is a costly gamble that usually goes sour.

      This annoyed me at first, but after a few runs, I’ve tried enough weapons to know which ones I like and will seek out. I avoid the Explosive Disk and the Sawblade like the plague because they’ve killed me too many times.

      I am assuming that your own explosion damage hurts you was a design decision, as is your own projectiles hitting you after a bounce is also intended…

      (Refractor Laser is amazing, as is Cluster Launch.)

    2. Syal says:

      My own gripe is color schemes don’t seem to imply anything. Submachine Gun pickup is the same color as the Trash Compactor pickup which is the same color as the Ballistic Missile pickup, but not the same color as the HE Grenade pickup.

      …also there’s a thing where sometimes the camera will zoom very slightly in and then not zoom back out and it’s frustrating and weird.

  13. kdansky says:

    My minor gripes with the game:

    1. Make bullets bigger and brighter.
    2. Allow me to rebind all keys to any keys, including firing from mouse to keyboard.
    3. Add visual clutter like smoke and debris, because of [1] you can afford it.
    4. Don’t let enemy bots hide so much behind scenery. Change their AI to run away from walls.
    5. Add Good Robot impulse to gun shots, like in Binding of Isaac. This would make running away worse, and rushing forward better, and improve the shitty short range guns.
    6. Remove damage numbers. Replace with small explosions.
    7. Have doors that lead to significantly more difficult zones with higher rewards, for advanced players, so we can skip over the slow early game to some extent.
    8. Bigger and brighter enemy bullets.
    9. Bigger viewing angle improvements when buying the upgrade. I can hardly tell the difference.
    10. Give a short period of invulnerability when getting hit. Sometimes I just explode instantly because seven missiles overlap and I don’t see it.
    11. Add a radar arrow pointing to the rough exit direction. Getting lost is not interesting.
    12. Think about how to increase the pace. The game is very slow at times because hiding behind corners is by far the strongest strategy.
    13. Seriously, bigger and brighter bullets. Look at Enter the Gungeon. They are doing a lot of things correctly, one of which is bullet colour (pink), size (gigantic) and brightness / depth value (on top of everything, and bright as the sun).

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      11. Add a radar arrow pointing to the rough exit direction. Getting lost is not interesting.

      This exists.The compass upgrade does exactly that.

      Though it may be a bit too expensive for what it does.While the cash magnet seems a bit too cheap.Maybe switch the two prices.

      1. Trix2000 says:

        Nooooo I need my cash magnet. :(

        1. Grimwear says:

          I’ll second this all the cash magnet does is instantly give you the money so you don’t have to pick it up manually. Honestly it’s a convenience piece and doesn’t affect being able to finish the game at all so no reason it shouldn’t be cheap.

    2. 11. There is a compass upgrade you can buy. It isn’t affordable immediately, but should be available later.

      Some of the other tweaks suggested will fundamentally change the game, so obviously I can’t say if we’ll end up doing those. We’re looking at some of the things on this list though.

    3. Bubble181 says:

      I don’t agree with some of these *at all* – even going so far as thinking they should do the opposite….That said, yeah, number 10, I don’t know if that’s the right way to solve it, but overlapping missiles/rockets are a huge annoyance. Getting blown up in one hit because of that gets old.

    4. Wide And Nerdy â„¢ says:

      I don’t want to lose hiding and methodical play as a strategy personally. Thats what makes this more bearable for an older noob like me. Using planning and patience to make up for dull reflexes.

      Fast progression should be the reward for people with strong motor skills, not a requirement that eliminates other styles of play for other types of players.

    5. Syal says:

      Enemy bullets are currently blindingly bright to me.

  14. Warstrike says:

    I’m playing on a craptop, so I get automatic bullet time whenever the screen fills with shots :)

    Now if I actually had any skill….

  15. Daemian Lucifer says:

    No cheating, video editing shenanigans, modifying game files etc. This includes means of cheating not listed here.

    Is it cheating if I deliberately use a crappy computer that slows the game down?

    1. Trix2000 says:

      Maybe, but I’d think that would show up in the stream, wouldn’t it? :P

    2. In achievement hunting or competitive gaming, yeah it could probably be considered as such.
      I wonder if Valves anti cheat stuff consider that as cheating or not though.

      Now in the reverse one might also say that somebody having a PC that can run the most demanding games at a perfectly solid 120FPS would be cheating compared to someone struggling with framerates ranging from 15 to 60 FPS in a shooter.

      Cheating is when anyone has some advantage that none or few others have.
      Then again, wasn’t there some noise some way back about Men vs Women in gaming and how one gender was superior than the other? In that case just being a certain gender could be considered cheating as the playing field is not actually level.

      So essentially cheating is just a defined set of parameters which when strayed from will be considered as cheating.
      But as you point out, is a slowass machine cheating? That depends, does the parameters consider it to be so? Shamus did say anything not listed was included as well. Though I guess that he (and the rest) will “see” it in the recording if the pacing/rendering seems odd in any way. But stuttering video capture can mean crappy capture or a crappy gaming rig.

      Maybe Pyrodactyl could go to some gamecon set up a machine and then have a competition to see which contestants finish the game quickest (achivements counted).
      That way there would be a even playing field.
      I’m not sure if Good Robot lends itself to competitive gaming, I guess it could though.

  16. Alrenous says:

    http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=31494&cpage=1#comment-1023939

    http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=31494&cpage=1#comment-1023936

    The weapon buy thing is mainly that weapons cost more than they’re worth. Temporary upgrades shouldn’t cost almost as much as a permanent upgrade, and as a result the correct strategy is to never buy a weapon, or almost never. That goes double for sidegrades. I’d hazard to guess the lowest tier weapons should be 300-400.

    The second thing is players apparently forget that in roguelikes, you learn about weapons by getting them and then dying. This isn’t even FTL where learning about a weapon can cost you 1-2 hours. In Good Robot, you’re going to die in a few minutes anyway. Accept it and then buy that weapon you’re curious about.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Except in ftl you know quite a lot about the weapon before you buy it.You know its cooldown,its damage,its armor penetration,whether it can cause a special effect,…..The only thing it doesnt specifically tell you is how long the beam is,and what exactly are the chances of a special effect to trigger,so what you are learning is how to effectively use it and what it synergizes well with.

      This system is way superior to how other roguelikes(like isaac) are doing.

    2. DeathbyDysentery says:

      I respectfully disagree in two ways with your point about weapons in rogue likes:

      First, Good Robot runs can take a long time. My longest ones have been in the 90 minute range, and those only got to around the end of zone 5. I would estimate that the average game-winning run of the game would take two and a half hours or so. This means that yes, death by bad weapon choice can waste a lot of your time, especially considering the later stages of the game introduce a lot of new, mysterious, and sometimes dangerous weapons. One of my longest runs was even ended just because I switched to a new and vastly inferior weapon that a boss dropped.

      Second, while rogue-likes in general have a lot of learning through death, they still give you enough information to make informed decisions most of the time. You can see all the different stats for a new weapon in your hold in FTL before deciding to use it, and if you decide you don’t like it you can at least still switch back to whatever you were using before. Dungeon crawling rogue likes will usually tell you how much damage a weapon does, and likewise you can switch back if need be. Good Robot’s little jokey descriptions are just unhelpful; players can’t know how much damage a new weapon does before they spend all their money on it, or go to the next zone and leave their current weapon behind. Buying an expensive weapon which you don’t end up using is basically as punishing as getting blown up in terms of cost, and it’s made worse by the fact that about half the weapons in the game are just terrible compared to rockets and machine guns. I assume that weapon choice in this game is supposed to be fun, interesting, and rewarding, and not just a trap like cursed items in dungeon crawlers to punish players.

      1. Two and half hour huh? Would be amusing if Good Robot had a extra endless mode that unlucked.

      2. Ranneko says:

        I agree, basically I will give a weapon about 30 seconds, then generally I will swap back to whatever is the most effective bouncing weapon of the two, that doesn’t damage me.

        I was especially disappointed to grab a laser weapon to find that it couldn’t shoot down incoming rockets and missiles for some reason.

        Also because some weapons don’t seem to benefit from firepower increases it seems like Fire rate is a much better choice, especially since I have no idea which weapons firepower increases will work with.

        1. I’ve noticed that about lasers! Do they not shoot down incoming rockets by design, or do you just have to be super precise? I feel like I’ve had lasers go right through rockets without shooting them down. Ultimately I’m finding that the best weapons are high-rof bolt weapons like machine guns, because the bullet storm coming out of you makes incoming rockets and missiles almost a non-issue – critical for hat runs. I was still using an SMG in chapter 4 on a recent run because everything that had come up was low-rof stuff like magnetic spikers and plasma thingies.

          My two big complaints about the game are both information-related – specifically, figuring out weapons and figuring out doors. To be clear, I really like not knowing what a door or weapon will do until I try it, but a lot of the fun is lost when I can’t figure it out after the fact, either, which is a problem for me with doors. I get that 1d6 = boss level, but I don’t know what the difference between 3d6 and 6d6 is – I’ve been operating on the guess that 6d6 is just a larger version of 3d6, but I’m not sure, and I have no idea if the door colors mean anything – when I’m choosing between green and purple 3d6, does that mean anything?

          As for weapons, having a new weapon drop that’s mechanically similar to what you’re using can be miserable. The only way to get a feel for which is better is to shoot enemies with it and try to see the damage value that pops up, but the text is small, fleeting, and often obscured by terrain, other numbers, and general bullet hell. Add to this that, practically speaking, I usually am not rushing out into the open to try a new weapon until I’ve killed the robots on-screen and sometimes I find myself with only one or two robots left in the level – or, more commonly, I get a weapon I don’t know anything about off of a boss drop and there are *no* robots left in the level. I can learn a little bit by shooting at walls, but I can’t actually field-test the new weapon until the old one is a zone behind me where I can’t pick it back up. I can’t count the number of times I’ve died because I switched to a downgrade and couldn’t figure it out until the next zone. This will obviously get better with time – I know now, for instance, that the magnetic spiker is literally just a better rivet gun. But I still can’t tell the difference between a lot of early-game energy-bolt-style weapons.

          Elsewhere on this page, Shpelly suggested having something pop up after going through a door telling you what kind of zone you were entering. That would be the perfect solution for me – I still get to learn about the doors by trial and error, but after the fact I know what I picked. Weapons are a bit more complicated – I’m not sure a popup with weapon stats would do the game’s feel any favors. Maybe have the damage number pop up when the weapon spends itself on a wall, so you can take a couple of potshots at a wall to find out how much damage it deals? It would make it harder to tell when you’re hitting your robot targets, but it would give us some basis for comparison between weapons, and many of the other important details (fire rate, bounces) can be determined without a bad robot to soak bullets.

          Another possibility could be to put a target dummy near the vending machines on some or all levels that acts like an immortal pacifist robot. Or let us shoot the vending machines! Just, not destroy them. The way I play there would never be a vending machine left at the end of the level if they could be destroyed.

          I realize I’ve just written a little over 650 words about my beefs with Good Robot, and I don’t really want to end on that note because I have also sunk basically all of my free time over the last few days into it. I really, truly, genuinely love this game. For one thing, it fits perfectly into the niche of podcast games – that is, engaging, highly replayable games with very little narrative and no voice acting, which I can play while listening to podcasts and audiobooks. That’s a huge selling point for me, because I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts and audiobooks and I really like having video games I can play effectively without them trampling over each other.

          More than that, though, it’s just fun. It’s my jam. Even when I get boned by a weapon swap, I love the variety, and it’s a lot of fun to have to adapt my gameplay strategy mid-to-late game because I got a gun which is too good to be ignored and radically different from the guns I’ve been using. I love the chiaroscuro aesthetic, and it’s a great fit for the experience of playing cat-and-mouse through the levels with bad robots. This is one of my favorite games in a long time. I’m going to go play it some more.

          1. /me writes extensive feedback post in comments for achievement bounty post
            /me loads next article in RSS reader, entitled “Good Robot and the Chaos of Feedback”
            Ah. Whoops.

      3. anaphysik says:

        “My longest ones have been in the 90 minute range, and those only got to around the end of zone 5. I would estimate that the average game-winning run of the game would take two and a half hours or so.”

        2.5 hours was in fact almost exactly the length of my first game-finishing run (150:11); the second was 2 hours. Although I feel like I played very slow-and-steady-ly, since my score was clustered around the other top scores (just shy of 400k; rank 3 at the time, but 6 at the moment; 2-10+have about the same score) I’d guess that that’s not an uncommon style. I agree that the length severely hampers weapon experimentation, especially for the higher-tier items.

      4. Alrenous says:

        I note that you died anyway. If you had chosen a bad weapon in zone 5, you wouldn’t have died 90 minutes earlier, but more like 3.

  17. DeathbyDysentery says:

    Here’s some feedback from me:

    WEAPON BALANCE: Rapid-fire weapons are by far the best option; their DPS is competitive with everything else and they have the added benefit of shooting down enemy missiles and grenades. Weapons like the early nail gun and trash projector need larger incentives to use, like massive damage potential per/shot. As it stands, the trash projector has only average damage and is incredibly difficult to hit anything with, and the nail gun will have its shots blocked if the enemy is using missiles. (As a side note, why do nail gun shots pierce through multiple enemy robots but are blocked by a single missile? I don’t think missile should stop nail gun shots at all). In addition, all short range and 360 degree weapons are basically useless as well. The riskiness inherent in using them should be rewarded with massive damage, because there’s no other reason a player would allow themselves to be right in the face of or surrounded by a horde of enemy robots (and in later levels, getting in that position at all is instant death). As it stands the sound wave blaster is just an inferior version of the machine gun and the radial heater is only good for tickling robots and destroying missiles.

    LEAP OF FAITH GAMEPLAY: I appreciate that you want the play experience to have a focus on learning the mechanics of the game through experience, but I also think you need to give enough information to players so that they can make informed decisions. When I defeat a boss and get a new weapon, for instance, there’s usually no enemies to test it on, so I have to decide whether to take it without knowing how much damage it does, whether it will pierce enemies, whether it will destroy missiles, etc… Similarly, the only way to discover that a weapon does friendly fire damage is to hit yourself with it, which is ridiculous considering how punishing friendly fire can be and how precious health is. Weapon shops are particularly annoying because you only have a jokey description to go on before committing to spending precious money on a new weapon. There should be a way to see stats for weapons for sale or in your hand, such as damage, penetration, bounciness, etc… Too many times have I crossed a level boundary only to discover that I left my awesome weapon behind for one that is crappy/low tier/unable to shoot missiles.

    UPGRADES: The relationship between attack speed and attack damage upgrades is broken, favoring the former over the latter. Part of this is due to the primacy of rapid fire weapons which do not benefit at all from attack damage upgrades, but even if I was using a rail gun or something, I would probably still just go for the attack speed. There are enough tiny enemies and missiles on screen that increasing attack damage would probably just lead to overkill and wasted damage with big weapons, whereas attack speed increases DPS while also making you safer from little enemies. I understand there may be some intention for players to pursue different ‘builds’ (IE: some of them upgrade damage because they use sniper weapons while other upgrade speed because they use machinegun weapons) but I think a better solution is just to combine the two stats into one ‘DPS’ stat that raises the attack speed and/or damage of each weapon as is appropriate. This way it would be impossible to ‘waste’ levels on upgrade which do exactly nothing (like a damage upgrade while using a machine gun), and it would make switching weapon types mid-game more rewarding. As it stands, the high missile count of the caverns and the ocean make players switch to machine guns or xenon blasters, which make them upgrade attack speed, which makes them want to stick with the same types of weapons. Also, I would appreciate more data on the upgrade menu so we know exactly what we’re spending our money on. Tell us exactly how faster we will shoot or exactly how much more damage (if any) or weapon will do. Like I said before, let us make informed decisions.

    VISUAL NOISE: The dull black background clutter is fine (although while using the bouncy xenon blaster it can get somewhat out of hand) but the green money asterisks and floating ‘explosion motes’ (?) are both very distracting, especially when the most dangerous enemy projectiles are cyan and greenish yellow. Anything that’s not a projectile, an enemy, a wall, or the player should be dull, dark, and in the background. Picking up money manually isn’t fun and slows the game down, and the magnet is always the first thing I buy in zone 1. Having money rush into you (which you’re meant to ignore) just provides smokescreen for bullets coming at you (which you cannot ignore). I would say just remove money as a visual element entirely, or at least let us turn it off. As it stands, the only way it impacts gameplay is that it forces you to buy a super cheap upgrade. I think most players would understand the relationship between killing things and getting money without the little asterisks; why not just add to the money counter when I kill things? If you need some kind of indication, why not just flash a little dollar sign and make the money counter blink when an enemy or a money chest is destroyed? At least then you aren’t sending confusing non-bullets at the player.

    One final thing, I don’t know if you guys know this but the utility available for sale in any blue shop changes every time you interface with the shop, which basically means you can choose from any given utility whenever you find a blue shop. Personally, I like this, because randomization in shops is only really cool when you’re picking from a huge list of different and varied items to stock the shop with (like with the weapons shops). When you’re just picking randomly from a list of four utilities to stock the shop with, there is no wonder and excitement at what you might find there, just disappointment and frustration when you don’t get the thing you wanted. I would hate it, for instance, if I couldn’t find a cash magnet to buy and I had to spend the entire early game running around collecting money. I would suggest just putting in the interface to select from any given utility at any shop without having to use this glitch/exploit.

    1. Ciennas says:

      The friendly fire enabled weapons could be solved in three ways.

      -Have it in the pickup name

      -Have it visibly different, say leaking red smoke or with a skull face or something in the icon

      -Have weapons color coded by that factor.

      Also, it would be awesome if there was a screen, say in the pause menu or something, where the player can review the actual numbers that are involved? Since like Borderlands this is about whittling numbers, getting some kind of feedback on how much better an upgrade is is crucial.

      This would also be a good place to check leaderboard exploits, where the numbers for a default game can be seen.

      Also, you forgot the farmer hat with the Portal 2 reference embedded: Requires the latest version of PotatOS.

      (In the name of joke explaining: a thing happens to GLaDOS involving potatoes. I have heard fans refer to her from then on as PotatOS. Am I not remembering right?)

    2. “Having money rush into you (which you're meant to ignore) just provides smokescreen for bullets coming at you (which you cannot ignore). I would say just remove money as a visual element entirely, or at least let us turn it off.”
      I saw Lets Players having some of that issue (or I had, watching them rather).

      A option would be one way to do it in that case the option should be:
      Show magnetized money (default) | Fade magnetized money | Do not show magnetized money

      Fade would show the money as normal but would fade out the closer they get to Good Robot.
      Do not show would just show them for a instant and then they’d just “pop” out of existence (they won’t move at all).

    3. Mephane says:

      Wait, attack damage does not improve damage of fast firing guns at all? Crap, I have been upgrading wrong all the time. :(

      1. DeathbyDysentery says:

        This is how it works as far as I can tell. Someone else in this thread posted that they appear to be 10% damage increases rounded down, which means that for the SMG, which does one damage base, it would take 10 upgrades to increase damage to 2. Since the SMG is clearly firing faster with every firing speed upgrade, and having more projectiles to soak up missile fire is handy anyway, this seems to be the better upgrade every time.

        Note that this is mostly just supposition based on the damage numbers we’re seeing. It’s possible that each shot is actually doing 1.1 damage with the first upgrade, for instance, and the displayed damage numbers just visually round themselves down. I didn’t really ‘feel’ this difference on my machine gun run when I upgraded damage a bunch, but we just don’t know. Also note that under the 10%-round-down model the heavy machine gun, which does 3 damage, gets a boost to 4 damage once you buy damage upgrade 4, which isn’t necessarily a bad deal if you were getting damage upgrades up to that point for slower weapons and then just switched to the HMG.

        But like I said, all of this would be a lot clearer if we were told exactly what the upgrades where doing.

        1. Abnaxis says:

          Yeah, I’m guessing it’s 10%, because I was using the Rail Gun for testing purposes, and testing 1 upgrade did no extra damage, while 2 upgrades increased it from 8 to 9.

          That means, assuming the rate is constant, that the % increase is somewhere between 6.25% and 12.5%. 10% is a nice, round, even number between those two.

          That is, of course, assuming that the rounding isn’t only on the interface (i.e., I was doing 8.8 points of damage, but feedback shows 8)

          1. Phil says:

            If I’m reading the files correctly, and you want to know what the actual damage increase is per upgrade, gameplay.xml is the way to go. Dunno about rounding, though.

            Spoiler: Looks like 7% of the weapon’s base damage per upgrade, with 1.56x when fully upgraded

    4. Noumenon72 says:

      Picking up money manually is supposed to be fun. See Ratchet and Clank, or Sector Strike for Android. Both have a magnet as well; neither one ever made me feel like I was being attacked by money.

  18. Really enjoying the game, and I’m (slowly) getting better at it.

    Had a few more mystery crashes today. Really no idea what’s causing them except that they appear to happen when mobs “wake up”. I give you guys huge, huge, HUGE kudos though, because when I did crash I was able to get right back in with almost zero progress loss (just back at the beginning of the zone where I crashed), so really they’re hardly even an annoyance.

    Some basics on my machine:

    Windows 10 64 bit
    NVidia GTX 970 (which, sadly, is not the most stable of cards)
    Running in fullscreen mode
    Keyboard/mouse configuration
    16G RAM

    Feel free to email me if there’s any more info I can provide to help with the mystery crash.

  19. Wide And Nerdy â„¢ says:

    Feedback about the music.

    If you have time at some point, some of us were talking and feel the music is good but feels a little off in context.

    I feel it almost works for a “I’m just a cute corporate robot doing his job” vibe. This could be juxtaposed by occasional robotic screams of anguish when badbots are destroyed to fit the darkly humorous tone of the writing. (Maybe notes for a sequel?)

    1. What, like the Twentysided readers recording themselves death screaming so Shamus can add to his collect… I mean use it for mobs? Pretty neat idea.

      1. Wide And Nerdy â„¢ says:

        Made me smile. Thank you.

  20. Trix2000 says:

    …I’m starting to wonder if I could manage one of these. I mean, I have most of the setup for streaming/recording anyways, and I’m apparently pretty decent at the game (got through at least a level and a half with a single hat already).

    Might have to give it a try this weekend, though I wouldn’t be surprised if I don’t manage it. Your game is devilishly tricky Shamus!

  21. Ciennas says:

    Also, what kind of shoot em up doesn’t have an item pickup feature? I mean like little bonuses that are either temporary or last until damage.

    Multishot or ablative armor or holographic clones that draw a little bit of fire, a temporary damage buff like suddenly your attacks set enemies on fire, or an electrical effect that can pause bigger or faster enemies, a short range allegiance swapper or what have you.

    It could be represented either with Good Robots color scheme or by a floating periphereal.

  22. Kian says:

    About the streaming, do you actually mean live, online streaming, or is it allowed to capture the video offline and then upload to youtube or wherever? If live streaming is required, is there a preferred platform to use?

    1. Live streaming is preferred, but if you want to you can record yourself and upload the entire unedited playthrough.

      Twitch is probably the easiest and seems to be what everyone uses, but youtube is fine too. Anything that works for you and is visible to the public is fine by me.

  23. DL says:

    I’m tempted to buy the game and try this challenge now. Not particularly interested in the gifts though.

    I’ve done a similar challenge for a different game and I’m interested in trying it again.

  24. Emlyn says:

    Stupidly hard achievements? Free T-Shirt? Ehh, why not. If anyone’s bored I’ll be streaming my attempts at https://www.twitch.tv/emlyn_

    1. Emlyn says:

      Well, that was fun. Someone even stopped by for a bit! Had 2 runs get into level 2 but lost them. One to friendly fire, the other to rounding a corner poorly. Here’s the VOD.
      https://www.twitch.tv/emlyn_/v/59431063

  25. Well , since Shamus asked: here’s the Twitch recording of me playing Good Robot for awhile. That one’s set to be deleted, so if I save the video elsewhere I’ll post a link to that. I rambled a lot about tabletop gaming and how much I hate Undertale, among other things.

  26. I’ve played 4 times now, just cracked my first 100k :) Here’s my first (unedited) play of the game for the team to see. If I happen to accidentally win without losing my hat I’ll yet y’all know ;)

    First Playthrough

  27. Emlyn says:

    Things I have not done in the game: beaten it. Things I have done: Gotten the Elite Hat Achievement!

    This was a pretty rough run overall. The RNG was not kind to me and I could not find a Tier 2 weapon to save my life, almost literally. Here is the link to the VOD and the link to my profile

    Now you will notice that neither the achievement nor the overlay display. This is because I had OBS set to Game Capture which apparently doesn’t capture anything Steam related. I’m assuming this is to protect streamers privacy. I’m guessing I should have used either window or monitor capture, but Game Capture was easier to setup. Hopefully this is still acceptable.

    Apologies for the poor audio, I wasn’t picking up all that breathing and rustling in my tests prior to streaming. Also, apparently the audio from the first level is muted for copyright reasons? For some reason is thinks that audio is Younger by Seinabo Sey. I’ve appealed and we’ll see what Twitch says.

    1. Droid says:

      OBS Game capture is the right thing to use and has a checkbox whether you want your overlays to be visible.

      1. Emlyn says:

        Is that the Anti-Cheat option? I didn’t see anything else Steam related and google seemed to suggest that Steam capture tended to causes issues.

        1. Droid says:

          If you don’t have it yet, download the latest OBS version and you should have an option “Third-party overlays (e.g. Steam)” under the Anti-Cheat tool option.

  28. Venryl says:

    Well, here’s that Elite VOD you asked for last night, Arvind!

    https://www.twitch.tv/venryl/v/59737384

    Run starts at 1:34:37 (I think, will edit if not)

    1. Gilfareth says:

      Highlight containing just the succesful run right here: https://www.twitch.tv/venryl/v/59815823

      Y’know, for those who just want to study technique or whatever.

  29. Halceon says:

    Well, I accidentally beat the game. Not with hat achievements, but I did beat it.

    https://www.twitch.tv/halceon/v/59720419

    1. Halceon says:

      And reading these comments I realise how wrong I’ve been about some things in the game. Huh.

  30. Phil says:

    Not trying for the harder ones, methinks, as I had enough trouble getting just Hattiquette.

    Here’s a pretty bad failure: https://youtu.be/yV-STwFTVMY
    And then (finally) a success: https://youtu.be/Y5hbuZN95J0

    Though, I might continue the second one, see how close to Elite I can get.

  31. Trix2000 says:

    I’ve managed to get Elite Hat. Video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tslIQZepM8A

    Even got through a good chunk of the fourth level before I got ambushed by buzz-saws and lost it.

    Unfortunately I found out after I finished that my current stream/recording setup wasn’t picking up the Steam overlay, so I had to restart the recording to pick it up. It’s in a separate video because it was easier than stitching it to the massive main video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A4Cs_uUFLQ

    Hopefully the fact that my score, money, and equipped weapons match the main recording will be enough to prove it was the same run. :)

      1. Trix2000 says:

        Just confirming I sent an email, in case it got caught in a filter somewhere.

  32. Cordance says:

    I got one!!! Its only elite hat. I had one crash fairly early but it is all streamed on twitch so hopefully people accept it as a legit play though. Here is the highlight VOD

    https://www.twitch.tv/cordance/v/59890541

    Just over an hour of game play the quality is not great because of my craptop. Hopefully you can clearly see the achievement pop up at the bottom of the screen when I shoot the first robot of the last level. The steam overlay really doesnt shot things that clearly although I only have two achievements left buy 10 weapons and hardest hat which is what is next on my lists of to do.

  33. Just completed my 5th run and got my first win with a 300k run :D Seems 2.5hrs is about the time to complete for most people. I cheesed the final battle and I’m not even sorry :p Those guided rockets are super useful for exploration as they tell you if enemies are ahead.

    First Win, 5th Run

    Final Battle

  34. Elite hat has been achieved by 3 people – thanks for getting that super hard achievement, everyone!

    Now on to Hardest Hat – if you dare ;)

  35. Ninety-Three says:

    Hey Arvind, question about what constitutes cheating. I’m 90% sure you’ll say this is cheating, but it is technically just exploiting game systems rather than doing any file modifications, so I’ve got to ask.

    If you play part of a zone, close the game (Alt-F4), and re-open it, the game starts you back at the beginning of the zone with all enemies respawned, but you keep your stats (cash, score, hat status) from where the game closed. I assume this is an attempt to preserve data in case of a crash.

    This means that a very patient, cautious player could reset the easy level 0-1 over and over until they had farmed $1,000,000, max out every upgrade, and play through the rest of the game on easy mode. I assume this is not something you would approve of?

    1. Shamus says:

      There are two ways to handle this:

      1) Save at the start, but also when exiting.
      2) Save only at the start of the level.

      With #1, it’s possible to farm, as you stated.

      With #2, it’s possible to exit the game when you’re about to die, or when your hat gets blown off, and then re-enter the game. Effectively, it lets a player erase the mistakes of the current level.

      It’s got to be one or the other. (There’s also the possibility of the game tracking XP gain and trying to detect and thwart farming, but that’s complicated as hell in a procedural game with random levels with random robots in random order.) We decided #1 is the least harmful of the two.

      1. Ninety-Three says:

        Oddly enough, you’re actually doing both. If you Alt-F4 the game, it saves your current status, if you just exit to menu and hit continue, it resets to a save taken at the start of the level (I wonder why that is, if anything I’d expect Alt-F4 to be the method that doesn’t save the game). Erasing the mistakes of the current level is absolutely possible with that method, and theoretically someone could use it pretty easily to video edit together a seamless Hardest Hat run.

        But anyway, my question was more about “If someone used this exploity method to farm and execute a Hardest Hat run, would you disqualify that as cheating?”

        1. Shamus says:

          The different save systems is technically a bug. I’ll add it to The List™.

          Yes, using repeated exit-farming to do a hat run would count as cheating. Although, shit. Nobody’s even come close. If the prize goes unclaimed for a long time we might relax the rules.

          1. Ninety-Three says:

            I tried for maybe five hours and made it to Elite Hat, but it was deeply un-fun. The safest way to play is to get a bouncing weapon and spend the whole game advancing very slowly, bouncing your shots around corners so that you never even get line of sight on a live robot (in my very first playthrough, not going for Hardest Hat, I beat the game with bouncing weapons and more bosses than not died without ever getting on screen).

            I think I could get it if I kept at it and played even more cautiously than I have been, but as much as I love a challenge, I don’t want to do that. Getting this achievement asks you to play the game in the least fun way possible.

          2. Trix2000 says:

            It’s incredibly difficult. I’ve managed four levels (and a bit of the fifth before the run was cut short by a VERY sneaky bullet) so far, but I’m a little worried getting all the way is going to be beyond me still – the worm level scares me the most.

            Still, I haven’t given up yet.

      2. WJS says:

        Why don’t you just⁽™⁾ update the save file achievement flags the moment you lose your hat, but otherwise not save player data except between levels? This would make both methods of cheating impossible, wouldn’t it?

Thanks for joining the discussion. Be nice, don't post angry, and enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*

You can enclose spoilers in <strike> tags like so:
<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

You can make things italics like this:
Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

You can make things bold like this:
I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

You can make links like this:
I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

Leave a Reply to DeathbyDysentery Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.