Now, thanks to hard work from Vudix, these achievements have been updated with new names and new requirements. Expandaball is now called It’s Showtime! and is unlocked for completing level 100. As for Hey, Big Expander, this has been renamed to Nutriwhipped! and pops when a player completes level 200.
While it wasn’t unobtainable, Vudix also managed to update the buggy Big Shot achievement to get it unlocking more reliably. Previously, this achievement would unlock for growing the size of the ball 100 times. Now, this can be unlocked by completing level 50.
The Big Shot achievement in iO worth 9 pointsComplete level 50.After spending two-and-a-half years working with Gamious on a fix, Vudix says he is “ecstatic” with the result and explained that while the overall solution was relatively simple, it was a different fix from what was originally planned.
“We wound up filing for an exception to policy to allow us to implement fixes through the cloud service configuration in [Microsoft] Partner Center,” Vudix says. “This is a pretty niche solution we had access to thanks to the game being released between 2013-2018.”
As for what the fix actually involved, Vudix says he noted “issues with certain stats being deprecated and decided to use that error to repurpose the achievements.” These stats still worked but weren’t tracking as intended. Vudix said he used the “unintentional tracking to make it so the player is only required to complete certain levels with an additional ‘greater than’ check so that returning players could simply come in and complete level 202, for example, and get both achievements.”
For what appears to be such a simple solution on the surface, the reality of getting a fix like this out of the door is fraught with setbacks and hurdles that needed to be cleared. For Vudix, he says there was not only a “learning gap” as the fix wasn’t a traditional patch, but there were also legal difficulties and solution changes, all of which had to be juggled while trying to maintain his own career.
“My biggest obstacles were my personal life, changing solutions mid-process, and my military career ramping up,” Vudix says. “Initially, I wanted to perform a full-on code patch but came to opine the same thing Pim did. It was beyond ridiculous to fix all of the errors that would’ve sprouted up. With the game relying on an engine bug for physics, we would’ve essentially been redoing the entire game. I had talked about cloud fixes before and had plenty of interaction with developers who did those things as a result of our conversations, but I had never implemented a cloud service fix myself.
“All in all, most of that difficulty was legal. Getting the right paperwork and doing things the right way was very important here, and the ID@Xbox family was more than ready to assist.”
With iO’s unobtainable achievements now fixed, Gamious did promise Vudix royalties from new sales of the game. Unsure of taking Gamious up on that promise at the time, Vudix says he will now be passing on the offer. “I feel that the learning experience and potential for positive impact in the community far outweighs any of the monetary gains I would’ve received. Though it’s very likely I’ll be adding a title update to the game as a little victory lap.
“I would be remiss in not mentioning how helpful and permissive Pim was throughout all of this. This could not have happened without his support and trust.”
As for the future, Vudix notes that he has “more fixes in the works” and plans to “aggressively chase any and all cloud fixes for unobtainables” that he can. “Nothing is really off the table at this point aside from delisted products. I’d encourage any players with information about these types of games to come forward and share what they can either via message or [the Project Resero] Discord, where we have all of the cloud service-specific games listed out. I would encourage people who are curious about progress to check in there.
“This fix is much bigger than just iO,” Vudix added. “This is our gateway to positive second and third-order effects for the achievement system as a whole. Now that we’ve gone through this entire process together, I have no doubt we can scale this time of solution across several other cloud-powered titles.”
With the iO achievements all now working correctly, we have had three TA members officially post completions. Will you now be jumping into iO for the 1,000G? let us know!
