So, the Steam Treasure Hunt is pretty awesome. They get you buying games and playing them for just a bit to make you like them, ad give you contest entries for it. I have loved it thus far, but today's Shatter challenge has me angry. So, I'm supposed to get 11.2 million points in Bonus Mode. That seems reasonable given how the contest has worked so far. I had to play the first 3 worlds in Story Mode to open up Bonus Mode, and that was tons of fun. But where I've fallen off the bandwagon is in bonus mode itself. 
 
I have played Bonus Mode for over 3 hours now, and I can't get that score. That alone isn't the reason I am mad, it is that Bonus Mode simply is not fun (especially for 3 hours straight). I also believe that Bonus Mode (and possibly Shatter as a whole) is broken in how the collisions are programmed. So many times in Bonus Mode, have I had the ball fly right through my paddle, giving me the points for the hit, but still causing me to lose that ball. When I say this, I mean through the center of my paddle. I'm not barely missing here, I am clearly not missing, but the game says I am.  
 
Here comes my programming complaint. This issue where the balls pass right through my paddle makes me believe that the game judges collisions based on when a frame is rendered showing the ball touching my paddle (or another ball or a wall), but since my game is running at about 25-30 frames per second, when the balls really get going (in Bonus Mode specifically) they skip through my paddle. So I think that for one frame, my ball is barely away from the paddle, and in the next frame of animation it is behind my paddle and is then hit downward. 
 
Sure, that 11.2 million points is asking a lot of players as well, but it has made me see the flaws in Shatter's design. I like that game, but this would be like me telling you to do the broken parts of other great games. I hate Bonus Mode now. It is the evil blue men from UC2 of Shatter. The game would be better without it, and I wouldn't know how they programmed the game if Steam hadn't told me to get such a high score on it. So I have given up.
 
Anyone from Giantbomb here having this issue? Or is it just me and my computer? If you have any tips, maybe I will still try to get this done, but I doubt it. I would rather play something I enjoy than continue to bash my head against this wall for a contest I know I won't win.

So, the Steam Treasure Hunt is pretty awesome. They get you buying games and playing them for just a bit to make you like them, ad give you contest entries for it. I have loved it thus far, but today's Shatter challenge has me angry. So, I'm supposed to get 11.2 million points in Bonus Mode. That seems reasonable given how the contest has worked so far. I had to play the first 3 worlds in Story Mode to open up Bonus Mode, and that was tons of fun. But where I've fallen off the bandwagon is in bonus mode itself. 
 
I have played Bonus Mode for over 3 hours now, and I can't get that score. That alone isn't the reason I am mad, it is that Bonus Mode simply is not fun (especially for 3 hours straight). I also believe that Bonus Mode (and possibly Shatter as a whole) is broken in how the collisions are programmed. So many times in Bonus Mode, have I had the ball fly right through my paddle, giving me the points for the hit, but still causing me to lose that ball. When I say this, I mean through the center of my paddle. I'm not barely missing here, I am clearly not missing, but the game says I am.  
 
Here comes my programming complaint. This issue where the balls pass right through my paddle makes me believe that the game judges collisions based on when a frame is rendered showing the ball touching my paddle (or another ball or a wall), but since my game is running at about 25-30 frames per second, when the balls really get going (in Bonus Mode specifically) they skip through my paddle. So I think that for one frame, my ball is barely away from the paddle, and in the next frame of animation it is behind my paddle and is then hit downward. 
 
Sure, that 11.2 million points is asking a lot of players as well, but it has made me see the flaws in Shatter's design. I like that game, but this would be like me telling you to do the broken parts of other great games. I hate Bonus Mode now. It is the evil blue men from UC2 of Shatter. The game would be better without it, and I wouldn't know how they programmed the game if Steam hadn't told me to get such a high score on it. So I have given up.
 
Anyone from Giantbomb here having this issue? Or is it just me and my computer? If you have any tips, maybe I will still try to get this done, but I doubt it. I would rather play something I enjoy than continue to bash my head against this wall for a contest I know I won't win.

I got 15 million yesterday on my third attempt, it really sounds to me like there's something wrong on your end...I definatly didn't see any of those issues at least. =/

Every time I tried playing Shatter, I got annoyed at it, but I thought it was my family distracting me and making me miss things I thought I was hitting.  I decided that the game simply wasn't really fun and gave up on it.

I can't even find 10 games to put on my wishlist.

That's weird.  I don't remember experiencing any broken collision mechanics at all during my 6+ hours with the game. And I never had any trouble getting that score in Bonus Mode either. I did it a long time ago so I already had completed the objective for this whole treasure hunt promotion.

I bought Shatter a few weeks ago and played through the whole thing. While I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it, I definitely encountered the same problem several times, in the campaign, Endless Mode, and especially bonus mode. The ball would just randomly go through the paddle every once in awhile, only when I was moving paddle towards the ball. It doesn't bother me too much in the campaign since you always get extra lives, but in the other modes it's just cheap and annoying. I also feel there's something about the movement speed of the paddle relative to that of the ball that is slightly off, making the game occasionally seem somewhat unresponsive. It's kind of weird, given that the game runs very smoothly on my machine.

It didn't seem especially broken in my attempts. I'm just not great at the game.

Yeah I noticed the same few times. Ball just went through the paddle.  
Btw if you really want that cheevo-thingo it is very easy to cheat on that game.

Man, I keep bashing my head on middle of world 2 stages. I don't get what I'm doing wrong. I've seen the shatter ball go right through my flipper on numerous occasions. It's going to be a long haul for me to unlock the bonus stage menu selection.
 
Aside from that, I really love this game though the music and graphics really tickle the techno nerd in me.

Shatter is like the only Breakout game I've ever played where the sides of the paddle don't count. Extremely counter-intuitive.
 
However the challenge itself isn't particularly hard - got 9M on my first try and 13M on my third try. Turn your settings way down to improve your framerate and turn the sound off to improve concentration. 

I'm with ya the best I've done is 9 million so I resign myself to not getting that one. While maintaining my game enjoyment.

yeah, I know what you mean, gave up on that one, I can't even unlock the goddamn bonus mode, because I can't beat that effin third boss...
 
And this is mainly because the game runs terribly on my laptop, even playing at the crappiest resolution on windowed mode... it's not that terrible, but the slightly laggy controls are already enough to make me suck at it, I have the game on PSN and have a huge bonus mode score on that.
 
And this pisses me off a little, I mean I know my laptop wasn't made for gaming, I actually never try to run too much on it, but hell it can run Mount & Blade warband, a full 3d game with up to 100 AIs battling at one time perfectly fine, one would think that a game which consists of breaking blocks on a single screen would run better... same deal with super meat boy, only in that case there's a -lowdetail switch that makes it run decently.

I picked up Shatter yesterday thinking, "Hey, I was pretty decent at the PS3 version!  I'll knock this achievement out of the park in no time."  Er, right.  I love me some Shatter, and I'm glad I now have it installed on my laptop to help kill a few hours when I'm away, but I will never, ever get this Steam treasure hunt quest, and I'm okay with that.  I tried for a full hour, and I'm done trying.  Not worth the frustration or the insane twitch reflexes needed.

At least you can play the bonus mode.  I can't even get it unlocked...been stuck on the level you have to beat to unlock the bonus mode since I bought the game months ago(haven't played it in awhile).   There is some sort of major disconnect between myself and the round stages...I just can't pass them for some reason.

" At least you can play the bonus mode.  I can't even get it unlocked...been stuck on the level you have to beat to unlock the bonus mode since I bought the game months ago(haven't played it in awhile).   There is some sort of major disconnect between myself and the round stages...I just can't pass them for some reason. "

Yeah, definitely the hardest challenge they've had in the treasure hunt so far. Took me a while to get it but I never saw any technical issues with the collision detection.

" I picked up Shatter as part of some package at some point in the past year. I don't even remember picking it up, really.  But, yeah. Right there with you. The story mode is great, I love the boss fights. The circle-shaped levels can fuck off and die in a fire, but otherwise, it's pretty fun. Also, hitting that rapid-fire blast button thing with a full energy bar is a great "fuck all this" button when you're getting fed up with a level.  Bonus mode though? Fuck it. The challenge sheds light on absolutely the worst mode for that game. If they're trying to get people to like it, they're doing a piss-poor job.  Same thing with Droplitz the day before. I came to loathe that game in ways I could barely articulate, and as soon as I got the objective, I could not Delete Local Content fast enough. But I also got Droplitz as part of some other package, if memory serves. I already had it on my steam list, at any rate, and ultimately, it's just that Droplitz was not my type of game. But I had it, and there was a challenge for it, so, fine, I'll give it its day in court.  Shatter went the other way. Trying to get that objective just got so ludicrously frustrating that I rage-uninstalled. I was dumbfounded. I don't even ragequit multiplayer games. "