Hey guys, we're considering putting in achievements and stuff for services like steamworks, and maybe even our own homebrew version. Having never used steamworks, I thought I'd see what you guys thought - what sort of achievements/highscore/rankings/etc would you like to see? What have you seen in other games that you thought worked really well?

a) does it work w/o steam?

b) achievements never kept me playing (well, I call them unlocakbles, I'm not "new age" or "yuppie-child" enough I guess.  :D  ).

c) the ability to change gravity & time/speed in the maps, change the mass of the goo-balls, stuff that can be used to "mess" with the goo's, like blowing them up, changing their size, etc.

That's the kind of stuff that would make ME play again.  Never cared for ranks & what not.

Hehe. The number of acheivements I could imagine are almost endless...
For example:

World Of Goo Corp Employee of the Month: Rescue 300 gooballs
The Price of Faliure: Drop 100 places in the WoG Co leaderboard in one swoop
Going Up: GO up 100 places in the WoG Co leaderboard in one swoop
The Means to an end: Kill 10 goos on a level and still finish.
He of the Maniacal laugh: Kill all gooballs on a level

You could also steal some from the challenges thread, although most of those are a bit silly...

oh, and I don't think that steamworks needs steam to run. But it might do..

Personally I think that distributing via Steam would be perfect for WOG - most Steam users check for updates daily, and of course the first thing they see is the front page with adverts for new games, especially up-and-coming indie games. I'd love to see it distributed by Steam, and you would certainly reach out to a much wider audience...all the more competition for us!

Having only been 'sort of' released, I don't think anyone is entirely sure if SteamWorks runs without Steam, but if you do decide to use the above delivery method as well as the standard secure download process, then the achievments and rankings system obviously needs to be compatible with both methods of delivery.

As for achievements...

Six Hours A Day - Complete all levels with maximum possible Goos.
Midlife Crisis - Destroy your WOGC tower to start afresh.
Safe Hands - Throw a Goo over 200m in the air, then catch it with the cursor.
Marathon Man - Complete every level in less than 60 seconds each.

Midlife crisis is a good one, far better than my 'The Price of Faliure' which would be got by everyone who got the midlife crisis award. Oh, and theres a Steam thread if you have an opinion on whether WoG should be on steam. It got quite... vocal for a while, but seems to have calmed down. Anyways. Yeah...

EDIT: 100th post! Woo! Erm. I spend far too much time here, don't I?

I really hope you guys go with the steam setup (if at all possible I would love to be able to download my copy of WoG through my steam account).

As for achievements:

Seeker of Wisdom: Locate and read all of the hidden sign painter signs.
Cultural Diversity: Discover & Rescube at least one of each goo of the races.
Quick-draw:  Place 3 goos on a structure in 3 seconds or less then successfully complete the level.
Rise'n'Shine!:  Wake up all sleeping goos in every level.
Doing Things the Hard Way: Complete Fisty's bog without attaching any red balloons to your structure.
Clean Getaway:  Float away from the Regurgitation Pumping Station without leaving a good behind (dead or alive).

[quote author=Sqrl link=topic=107.msg866#msg866 date=1209038663]
As for achievements:

Seeker of Wisdom: Locate and read all of the hidden sign painter signs.
Cultural Diversity: Discover & Rescube at least one of each goo of the races.
Quick-draw:  Place 3 goos on a structure in 3 seconds or less then successfully complete the level.
Rise'n'Shine!:  Wake up all sleeping goos in every level.
Doing Things the Hard Way: Complete Fisty's bog without attaching any red balloons to your structure.
Clean Getaway:  Float away from the Regurgitation Pumping Station without leaving a good behind (dead or alive).


Hehe. The Challenges thread still inspires, I see.
Also: you should claim the word rescube as your own. It's a good word.

[quote author=Ballisticsfood link=topic=107.msg867#msg867 date=1209063005]
[quote author=Sqrl link=topic=107.msg866#msg866 date=1209038663]
As for achievements:

Seeker of Wisdom: Locate and read all of the hidden sign painter signs.
Cultural Diversity: Discover & Rescube at least one of each goo of the races.
Quick-draw:  Place 3 goos on a structure in 3 seconds or less then successfully complete the level.
Rise'n'Shine!:  Wake up all sleeping goos in every level.
Doing Things the Hard Way: Complete Fisty's bog without attaching any red balloons to your structure.
Clean Getaway:  Float away from the Regurgitation Pumping Station without leaving a good behind (dead or alive).


Hehe. The Challenges thread still inspires, I see.
Also: you should claim the word rescube as your own. It's a good word.


I have no idea how a B got in there...its not even close on keyboard =P  Sad part is I have a spell check plug in =P

As far as I am aware, and this is based on what I have read about Steamworks so far, you can use the tools without using Steam as well. You can pick and chose which bits of Steamworks you want to use. So if they wanted Ron and Kyle could use Steamworks to make World of Goo use a unlocking system similar to what Half-Life etc. used.

Of course it is all up to the boys what they use, but there is a real load of stuff they can do with the tool.

https://partner.steamgames.com/

More info on Steamworks there. You can basically use it for free it looks like. You don't even have to sell your game over Steam to use it.