Akka Arrh ( And here it is ! )

[Darwock]

I came here to applaud the PSVR2 release, that was what I was waiting for so bought it as soon as I heard, but I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t read a comment on another forum. It’s not getting a lot of promotion.

So I came here for that, because I absolutely love the game, but now I also want to know what the Egg toggle is.

And is it true that NOBODY has finished the game in pure Hard mode? Oh god, another impossible platinum.

Edit - while I’m here, there is a sample that first appears in the Vicar of Wibbly level that is really really familiar to me, kind of an ambient oscillation that ebbs and flows… makes me think of a forest even thought it’s clearly not. Does anyone else recognize this and know where I might have heard it?

[Darwock]

I had a proper long session today in VR using touchpad controls today. Mind blown. This is an amazing experience, and deserves way more attention than it has been given. I hope it was financially worth making for you guys, but if not, know there is one gamer here that is very grateful indeed that you continue to make stuff like this. It’s landed a spot in my most memorable videogames of all time.

I hope hard mode doesn’t upset the beautiful balance with too much frustration, I’m going to have a crack at it later.

edit - to fix a mistake in my last post, that sample actually appears in one of the tutorial levels first (maybe gunnery?) much clearer there too.

[Darwock]

Just a hairs breath off 200 million in Pure (Normal) Mode - I love the last 3 levels arent the hardest but the funnest - you'll know when you get there.

Could you elaborate? I made it to 47 and there was no hope at all of surviving the dozens of yellow flowers, died in seconds once they started on my pods.

[Deckard]

Just a hairs breath off 200 million in Pure (Normal) Mode - I love the last 3 levels arent the hardest but the funnest - you'll know when you get there.

Could you elaborate? I made it to 47 and there was no hope at all of surviving the dozens of yellow flowers, died in seconds once they started on my pods.

It just goes major retro with large super pixellated enemies and the the nasty killer yellow dragons from atari 2600 adventure...and the audio follows suit.

[Darwock]

Just a hairs breath off 200 million in Pure (Normal) Mode - I love the last 3 levels arent the hardest but the funnest - you'll know when you get there.

Could you elaborate? I made it to 47 and there was no hope at all of surviving the dozens of yellow flowers, died in seconds once they started on my pods.

It just goes major retro with large super pixellated enemies and the the nasty killer yellow dragons from atari 2600 adventure...and the audio follows suit.

That didn’t happen in my game?!?

[Darwock]

Ahhh, never mind - level 48 is not the last level.

As for the egg toggle, I found a screen about eggs when scrolling through the acknowledgments - it said ‘sorry no, eggs’ and I clicked x which just started the game. Next time I saw it the message was different - no trophy though but it might be related.

[Darwock]

I think the scoreboards are a bit broken on the PS5 version - you can’t view any positions other than top 10 and then 23-32. Scrolling up and down just jumps between these two ranges. Can’t see positions 11+, or anything after 32.

I’m driving myself insane with this egg thing. I have spotted the chain text changing to ‘sorry, no eggs’ several times and recorded the moment for analysis, but I can’t find anything consistent in when or where it does so. I’m just playing the game normally. Haven’t seen it on hard mode though, and usually somewhere between levels 6-13. Whoever has unlocked it must have done so by accident, but is that likely to happen in normal gameplay?

[Deckard]

Just had my best game of Akkr on the Switch - completed with 218 million - had several end of runs ending with over 2000 bullets too

[gilesgoat]

I think the scoreboards are a bit broken on the PS5 version - you can’t view any positions other than top 10 and then 23-32. Scrolling up and down just jumps between these two ranges. Can’t see positions 11+, or anything after 32.

I’m driving myself insane with this egg thing. I have spotted the chain text changing to ‘sorry, no eggs’ several times and recorded the moment for analysis, but I can’t find anything consistent in when or where it does so. I’m just playing the game normally. Haven’t seen it on hard mode though, and usually somewhere between levels 6-13. Whoever has unlocked it must have done so by accident, but is that likely to happen in normal gameplay?

REALLY

.. and I tought we tested those kind of things 'at nauseam' ..

The "Sorry No Eggs" been found by someone in another thread so it's definitely an achievable achievement.

[Darwock]

Oh my god, I have just taken the headset off after my first ever clear of pure hard mode, all the way to the end. I didn’t get the ‘anorak’ trophy.

Now, the anorak trophy description says you have to play from level 0 to the end in hard mode - but you can’t do that, because if you select any level less than 4 it forces you back into normal mode. Selecting level 4 and switching difficulty to hard does indicate you are in pure mode, and this is the same actual challenge in terms of difficulty so I assumed it was just a poorly worded trophy description.

What do I actually have to do to get the trophy? This is surely a bug? If it is bugged and needs a patch, please make it check for pure hard completion retrospectively because I CAN’T DO THAT AGAIN!!!

(This is PS5 version btw)

Also, yes I can confirm the egg toggle trophy can be got, because I got it - however after doing so the in-game achievement list did not get the purple text to show I have done it. So that trophy is registering on the Playstation, but not in the game.

[gilesgoat]

Oh my god, I have just taken the headset off after my first ever clear of pure hard mode, all the way to the end. I didn’t get the ‘anorak’ trophy.

Now, the anorak trophy description says you have to play from level 0 to the end in hard mode - but you can’t do that, because if you select any level less than 4 it forces you back into normal mode. Selecting level 4 and switching difficulty to hard does indicate you are in pure mode, and this is the same actual challenge in terms of difficulty so I assumed it was just a poorly worded trophy description.

What do I actually have to do to get the trophy? This is surely a bug? If it is bugged and needs a patch, please make it check for pure hard completion retrospectively because I CAN’T DO THAT AGAIN!!!

(This is PS5 version btw)

Also, yes I can confirm the egg toggle trophy can be got, because I got it - however after doing so the in-game achievement list did not get the purple text to show I have done it. So that trophy is registering on the Playstation, but not in the game.

HUM .. I can only say "I did not make the achivements assignement" so I have to re-watch the code and check what's going on.

Would help me to understand if there's anyone else that in any other non-ps5 version could tell me if he/she/* got the achievement or not.

Achievements are always super hard to test because you need to insert some special 'cheat modes' ( that could 'hide' some 'real-life conditions' ) and/or you have to repeat some really hard condition to see if they trigger correctly.

I'll have to have a look into the code because there's no other way to know "when/how/why/where it should be assigned".

JEESUS I *HOPE* it's NOT a case of a thing like "IF MODE == HARD && STARTING LEVEL == 0 && GAME == COMPLETED THEN" .. because as you say that can NEVER happen ...

Anyway I'll dig into the code.

NOTE : the code of Akka Arrh ( and generally ALL the other LS games ) is VERY long/complex .. "I do all the portings" AND "the various publishings (*) in various consoles" and deal with the CERTIFICATION ISSUES and debug of various sort .. which is .. "a lot" .. Jeff normally does/tests "all the game logic" .. which is .. A LOT as well .. Akka Arrh been "one of the most tested LS games" .. it really had "external" ( paid ) testing stuff gone for MONTHS .. so you see "despite all this" there still MAY be things that slip away ..

(*) "if you think that making a game ready for sale on a console is 'just getting a .exe and some stuff and put it somewhere" you'd be up for a HUGE SURPRISE" .. FIRST you have to pass "all CERTIFICATION ISSUES/TESTING/CONFORMALS" .. but even before that you need all the "Metadata" and "Store/Game assets" AND .. there's a "level of beureacracy/procedures/forms/etc." that "you would never believe they exists". From "I have a game that FOR ME is completed and works" to "it passed all this" it means AT LEAST 1 MONTH of INTENSE work, usually 2 .. assuming LITTLE mistakes .. now multiply this by N consoles and/or trying to do "all N at once" you'll get an idea of "the madness".

"Big companies with LOT of money" can have dedicated teams/external companies for doing this ..we don't .. we do it all by ourselves.

Anyway I'll try to have a look, don't ask me now "If I know/think what it could be" .. because without studying the code I have NOT A SINGLE CLUE in this world how/when/where Jeff put that "GiveAchivement(n)" and it'be TOTALLY POINTLESS I'd ask him "How do you .." .. the answer would be "I DON'T KNOW ! THAT WAS TOO MANY MONTHS AGO !" ..

[gilesgoat]

...... ......... ........... ..........

....... ........... ............ .............

... I checked the code .. ...

.. I found the line ...

Code: Select all

			if (harder)
				giveAch(ACH_ANORAK);
			else
				giveAch(ACH_COMPLETIST);

.. .. looks okeish .. ..

... until you see what comes before it ...

There's a bug ..

.. it could be fixed with 3 lines of code or such ...

"If only someone could have found it earlier .." ..

"It's weeks of ( hard ) work to make a patch for everything" ..

*SOB*

[Darwock]

Thanks for looking into it and I’m sorry to have ruined your day.

I respect you guys a lot for creating what you do with just a two man team. You had to trust the testing team to do the job. I have to wonder what the hell *they* were doing though, my total game time split between two profiles is around 50 hours and I’m just one person!

Buying the PS5 version gave me the PS4 version too, so I could play that and try to clear pure hard mode there as well to find out… but it’s bloody difficult!

(and if it’s never fixed I wouldn’t want to have another trophy list permanently stuck at 91% on my profile, I have completion OCD lol)

[gilesgoat]

Thanks for looking into it and I’m sorry to have ruined your day.

I respect you guys a lot for creating what you do with just a two man team. You had to trust the testing team to do the job. I have to wonder what the hell *they* were doing though, my total game time split between two profiles is around 50 hours and I’m just one person!

Buying the PS5 version gave me the PS4 version too, so I could play that and try to clear pure hard mode there as well to find out… but it’s bloody difficult!

(and if it’s never fixed I wouldn’t want to have another trophy list permanently stuck at 91% on my profile, I have completion OCD lol)

As I explained you in PM there are 2 types of testings "Conformity Test" and let's say ( I think it's called that way ) "Functional Test".

"Conformity Test" is where they test the game is "Fully compliant to technical certification requirements" .. which imagine a PDFs with 200 .. 300 pages full of stuff like "If the user does this, the game must behave like this" .. now 90% of that stuff is "WEIRD UI/'user experience' stuff" and stuff like "You should have written Playstation(TM)Network" instead of "Playstation(R)Network" or "the font in this case must be pale blue RGB 0,0.3,0.7 and the font size 11.5 points" or "if the user presses 'Button Cross' while spinning the gamepad clockwise at 3.5mil per minute during friday 13th at 8.30 am in the morning a beep of 1200Hz for 5 seconds should play" ..

"Weird shit like that" and THERE'S A TON of it, including "Art guidelines" "Terminology" ( which says things that in France you have to say "Joystick gauche" but in Canada "Manette gauche" or "Croisette directionelle" ) or that you can NOT say "Button cross" but you HAVE to say "Cross button".

"Functional Test" should be "they test the game in-out-play the shit out of it they found all the bugs".

"Normally" we had - not paid by us, we could NEVER AFFORD IT - some "external company" ( normally from 'far away' ) doing VERY DEEP "Conformity Test" and SOME "Functional Test".

But "Conformity" apart SOME part that says "The game must not crash" .. it does not say anything else about "what the game should do" .. so they game could be even "completely broken" and still pass "Conformity Test" ..

Now in this case "there's a BUT" .. because "Achievements" are part of "conformity" .. so I am really SURPRISED they DID NOT find this one ! And to be honest "I had all else to deal with" I mean "I had more than enough to find/fix/listen/etc. to all their bug reports" that "I was already fixing all they were reporting me" if they don't tell me "this achievement doesn't work" I already had my hands full fixing all the rest to say "oh uhm let's test if this very complex to get achievement works".

As I said SOME bugs CAN be found/fixed "in 20 minutes" BUT MANY BUGS even if you tell me "look this is how I made it" could take me a WEEK, sometime even over that, to find out what the real cause is and how to fix it !

And meanwhile I had "pressure there and there" of people finding other things, wanting me to fix that or modify this .. I always had to make a "priority/time list" about what to fix first, what later/etc.

Anyway all this to say "it's quite an amount of work", multiply all this for N consoles/versions and you get a picture.

And yes prepare all the "Assets" "Metadata" and FORMS ! FORMS ! FORMS ! FORMS ! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH !

So yeah "some things can slip throught" .. as you saw "it took quite some time for someone to find it out" ..

That's why "I never sleep well enough" in the back of my mind there's always the "Have we found ALL that had to be found ?" .. it seems the answer will be ALWAYS "NO !".

*sob*

[edit] Also I really want to point out that "in essence both me and Jeff are CODERS not BEUREAUCRATS" .. now I CAN *GUARANTEE* YOU if you ask 99.99% of CODERS if they know/ever done "how you go from the game is completed - as CODE - to the game now is on the console XXXX store ready to download/play" .. I CAN *GUARANTEE* you the answer will be "I DON'T KNOW" ! "I NEVER DONE IT ! " "WE have A TEAM that does that!" "We have an external company that does it" .. *I* am "one of the very few ones" that knows "ALL of it/done it by himeslf" .. and let me tell .. it's a MASSIVE PAIN IN THE ARSE / TIME CONSUMING / NERVES WRECKING THING !! "And they change the rules ALL THE TIME" .. BIGGEST *LIE* THEY EVER TELL is "We changed the process so to make it easier/faster" => "it's even more convoluted than before and now you changed all procedures I have to re-learn it all again" ...

It's like in the army .. "you can't win it" and when you know it all "they change the rules" ...

[Darwock]

I did send a list of about 5 or so things that I’ve noticed to your email last week, giles - not sure if you ever saw it as we ended up talking about the scoreboard feature which was a separate email.

Is anyone on this site an owner of the US region PS4 version?

I’ve been looking at the trophy/achievement websites and SOMEONE has the platinum/anorak trophies for the US PS4 version. They are not a member of the trophy hunting website so I don’t know who it is, and I have the European version which has 0% on those trophies so looking at the scoreboards in that doesn’t tell me anything.

But, from what Giles has said… and what I have done, this isn’t possible. As far as I know the PSN doesn’t have a big problem with people cheating to unlock trophies, as any jailbroken machine has to stay offline. Also I can’t imagine anyone hacking trophies would pick Akka Arrh as one of their target games…

Does this mean there is a way to glitch the trophy back into being possible? Or is the PS4 version using different code? Does anyone have any theories?

I would love to get giles opinion on this but don’t want to write another email just yet as I’ve harassed him enough.