BadgeGen v3 vs v4

Why leave BadgeGen

We love BadgeGen and what Kyle, the original author, has created. But we wanted to evolve the system, not the least because many Geocachers had reached the Diamond level with most Badges. We wanted to create more feasible goals for the more hardcore Geocachers out there.

A few years back, pinkunicorn came up with the idea to add Loops to the badges, which Kyle agreed to implement. If you had reached Diamond level, you could start working on doubling that, to get a nice number two on your badge. Many of the badges supported up to nine loops.

A few years later (2018-2019) we had more ideas and felt that we had a hard time implementing it in BadgeGen. One reason was that the original was GSAK-macro, and that we were supposed to be aligned with that. It was also hard to fit our new ideas into the current design, and we didn't have access to the original vector files. On top of this we also had a license to comply with. Kyle, the original author wasn't Geocaching actively anymore which also added complexity to the whole situation.

By sticking to BadgeGen we felt a bit held back. In the end we decided to try to walk our own path. The original goal was to create something very similar. The badges were supposed to look similar, have similar requirements. The idea was that it should feel like a new upgraded version, not something new. For 1-2 years we kept discussing our ideas and making notes, and looking for an artist that could create the new badges for us. Finding an artist turned out to be harder than we had expected.

During this time we also started to realize that our ideas didn't really visually fit the original design. It was likely that we needed to create new badges from scratch. In a way this is also an advantage when using a new artist.

Finally we took the decision that we needed to get this task going and we created a concept. The focus was to show the new technical parts, and the design was more of concept art than a final design. The community in general didn't really like the design, which was expected, it wasn't ready. Most icons were just placeholder, and trying out completely different styles. The upside was that clappy, another Geocacher, didn't like what he saw. Instead of just adding hate to the thread, he sent us some concept sketches of his own. That's how he came to be the designer of the new badges!

New ideas

So what were the new ideas then?

First off we wanted to increase some of the Loops from 9 to 99. On others we wanted to remove the Loops since it mostly lead to misbehavior from Geocachers (The Author). We of course also wished to add a few new Badges to the system. A badge for Lab caches was obvious, others less obvious, but still great ideas.

Most of all we wanted to add something we by the time called Attributes, later on they got renamed to Addons. The idea was that once you had reached Diamond level, you should have some new tasks to work on, adding small mini-badges to your big badge. By time we realized that some of the Addons we implemented were easier than others and that it made more sense to enable the Addons already at Ruby level.

First release

We released our new Badge-system the 3rd of February 2020, by then there had been previews available in our Facebook group since November the year before.

As mentioned before, the goal was that the new Badge-system should feel like a new version of BadgeGen, but in the end we didn't really get there. Most badges were still the same, and most requirements as well. So the core was very much the same. But our new art design definitely made it feel like completely new. There wasn't much resemblance between the look of the old badges and the new ones.

But for those looking closer, there are plenty of similarities with BadgeGen, in fact, most of it is the same. It's just the visual part that changed a lot.

The first release was also met by quite a lot of criticism, mostly due to the new look. Most criticized was the "pale backgrounds". But the fact is, when having the old badges side-by-side to the new ones, one can see that the difference isn't that big. It's the eyes playing tricks due to the old badges having more contrast. What's important here is that the design wasn't 100% ready. Most feedback mentioned was known and will be worked on. It should be seen as the first live version, not the final version.

New Badges

• The All Around Cacher - Log Geocaches in 360 degree sectors from your home coordinates
• The Achiever - Log Challenge caches
• The Attribute Cacher - Log Geocaches with (almost) all existing attributes
• The Lab Cacher - Log Labcaches
• The Jasmer Cacher - Log Geocaches hidden on all unique year-month since Geocaching started
• The GPS Maze Cacher - Attend GPS Maze events.
• The Giga Social Cacher - Formerly included in the Mega Event-badge
• The Odd-sized Cacher - Log Geocaches of size Other or Not-chosen
• The Favorite Cacher - Log Geocaches with favorite points, and summarize them.

Other major Badge changes

• The Favorite Cacher - Renamed to The Favorited Owner
• The Travel Bug and The Coin Collector - Merged into The Trackable Lover
• The Head-In-The-Ground Award - Renamed to The Low Altitude Cacher
• The Head-In-The-Clouds Award - Renamed to The High Altitude Cacher
• The Lost & Found Cacher - Removed, will be rewarded through the Addon system instead