[Feature Request] Challenge / puzzle mode (or mod) with Zachatronics like leaderboard (bar chart & score)

[1000i100]

Idea : Optimisation challenge

It's like level goals but with an empty map and depending of the challange :

• hub, colors and shapes ressources pre-placed on the map (like in normal mode)
• user placable one square hub (like #685), and sandbox color and shapes generator
• quota by element (for exemple : 2 stackers only, 0 splitter and infinite belt)

The challange have 3 step :

1. build the factory Like we allready do in shapez.io
2. run it (to be able to collect metrics on a unmutable factory) reset/clean the shapes and run in a reproductible / determinist way with edition disabled.
3. leaderboard / review / compare scores / metrics This time/try/run scores/metrics/acheivements compared to :
   • other time/try/run personnal scores
   • steam friends best scores (or non steam if also possible)
   • overall community best scores (with bar chart to see where we are compared to other and not only to the top 10)

Metrics :

• occuped space (tiles occuped by something)
• bounded space (the smallest rectangle including the entire factory)
• cost (number of factory part used (excluding conveyor/belt)
• time (ticks from start/run the challenge to complete goal)
• rush (tick number from the first extraction to the first correct shape in the hub)
• max speed/bandwith (max shape production by second)
• score : time/space (or something like that)

Leaderboard examples :

From Zachatronics games, with bar chart & score.

With context : https://ilovevg.it/2018/11/nerd-and-dev-zachtronics/#gallery-1 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3837813&pagenumber=4#post477638069 https://www.reddit.com/r/infinifactory/comments/8xjjob/any_cheaper_solution_i_will_be_very_surprised/

Directly as embed images :

PS : there could be official challange and community created challange, and a rating system :

• [manual] subjective difficulty (to reach goal)
• [manual] fun
• [auto] popularity (number of score submited/stored from distinct users)
• [auto] recent popularity (today or this week score submission number)
• [auto] published date
• [auto] goal difficulty (how many run before reaching the goal for the first time (if challange edit mode is in pause) with chart bar with min/avg/median/max and default sorted by median)
• [auto] score optimisation difficulty (how many run for a user since the first successfull goal reach to the last score improvement)
• [auto] metric specific optimisation difficulty (same but to the last improvement on a specific metric)

Do you like the idea ? for a next major update perhaps ?

I see some distinct parts technically :

• Quota (probably the easyest)
• Game modes selection (Demo, Classic, Sandbox, Challange), mainly UI/UX/design
• Challenge distinct build/edit mode
• Challenge distinct unmutable run mode
• Leaderboard UI (bar chart, personal/friend/global tab...)
• Leaderboard cloud storage security/anti-cheat (for this, re-run server-side the unmutable detrminist step 2 could work, and if it's too ressource intensive, pick a pool of random user and make them silently run the check re-run to validate score submission could be a way)
• Community content workshop (ideally not steam limited, perhaps with https://mod.io/ with rating and sorting system + leaderboard view before try)

Here is what i wish for this game to reach my dream (with #963, #972 and probably some advanced wire stuff and what i will imagine next...).

[tobspr]

I have something like this planned: https://trello.com/c/oxO5JIuU/39-puzzle-mode

[1000i100]

Big up to "resource constrained challenges" named in #1142 ! It could be another leaderboard metric (how few resources you've used to reach the goal) !