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How do Achievements work?

Last post 07-29-2009, 11:28 by Glen Watts1. 6 replies.
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  •  03-29-2009, 16:33 3319966

    How do Achievements work?

    Somthing  always wanted to know how do developers make them work how does the game know when you got one? pretty much just the general basis behind it.
    *Warning 'Officially Awesome!' is a registered phrase of Fata1moose Corporation using it will result in lawsuit.*
  •  03-29-2009, 17:35 3319989 in reply to 3319966

    Re: How do Achievements work?

    I am more curious as why they put them there all they do is turn people ocd, creepy people who judge you by your score and make people achievment whores.
    garjian:

    the clincher... fable has always had erectile disfunction...


    its never been long or hard enough to have any fun with Stick out tongue [:P]

  •  03-29-2009, 18:20 3320003 in reply to 3319989

    Re: How do Achievements work?

    skormsweasel:
    I am more curious as why they put them there all they do is turn people ocd, creepy people who judge you by your score and make people achievment whores.

    My friends our achievement whores two of them Sad [:(]


    *Warning 'Officially Awesome!' is a registered phrase of Fata1moose Corporation using it will result in lawsuit.*
  •  03-30-2009, 8:58 3320129 in reply to 3319966

    Re: How do Achievements work?

    Interesting question. There are really two parts to the answer.

    Firstly, there's no single 'way' to do acheivements. The designers come up with what they want the acheivement to be, and then we code in whatever stat tracking systems we need in order to know when it's been acquired. There's no right or wrong way to do this part, it's much the same question as asking 'how do you make an AI walk?' or 'how do you make the camera avoid the ceiling?'. Some of the achievements were coded by the gameplay team (things like The Black Knight), others are detected in the scripts (such as collecting all the books in Knothole Island).

    However, once you have the means to detect when an achievement is unlocked you actually unlock it by making calls on the achievement system in the XDK. There's a standardised 'game description' file that all 360 games must have and this contains all the stuff you see about a game when you examine it on the dashboard. As part of that, it has the names and icons for the acheivements. There are functions in the XDK for things like 'unlock achievement number X for the profile active on quadrant Y'. The system automatically handles the rest of it (updating your profile, posting the data to the Live! servers etc...)

  •  03-30-2009, 18:37 3320298 in reply to 3320129

    Re: How do Achievements work?

    Glen Watts1:

    Interesting question. There are really two parts to the answer.

    Firstly, there's no single 'way' to do acheivements. The designers come up with what they want the acheivement to be, and then we code in whatever stat tracking systems we need in order to know when it's been acquired. There's no right or wrong way to do this part, it's much the same question as asking 'how do you make an AI walk?' or 'how do you make the camera avoid the ceiling?'. Some of the achievements were coded by the gameplay team (things like The Black Knight), others are detected in the scripts (such as collecting all the books in Knothole Island).

    However, once you have the means to detect when an achievement is unlocked you actually unlock it by making calls on the achievement system in the XDK. There's a standardised 'game description' file that all 360 games must have and this contains all the stuff you see about a game when you examine it on the dashboard. As part of that, it has the names and icons for the acheivements. There are functions in the XDK for things like 'unlock achievement number X for the profile active on quadrant Y'. The system automatically handles the rest of it (updating your profile, posting the data to the Live! servers etc...)

    Thanks for answering my question! that is cool how it can be done multiple ways.


    *Warning 'Officially Awesome!' is a registered phrase of Fata1moose Corporation using it will result in lawsuit.*
  •  07-29-2009, 2:29 3379681 in reply to 3320129

    Re: How do Achievements work?

    It's an interesting question, because some achievements are very obscure. Just look at team fortress 2 "While using the Cloak and Dagger (an item), kill the same enemy 3 times, all within the same area in a single life. "

    Where would the code go for that? I don't know how I would implement it without it being a hack.
  •  07-29-2009, 11:28 3379820 in reply to 3379681

    Re: How do Achievements work?

    Probably a watchdog script of some sort, maybe attached to the weapon entity.
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