Moderator: JC Denton
by icycalm » 03 Dec 2017 23:10
by icycalm » 04 Dec 2017 15:16
Twinsen, Albert wrote:Several months ago TOGoS (Dan) half-jokingly mentioned that what Factorio really needed was mountains and cliffs. This was also suggested many many many times. Albert immediately got very excited and they started having some discussions about how to make it happen.
Fast forward a few months, and Ernestas had made some cliff graphics that looked really nice when layered onto pretty much any type of terrain. Fast forward a few more months and add a few months of programming and polishing, and cliffs are almost done, so we will be showing them to you today.
by icycalm » 15 Dec 2017 16:48
by Robomoo » 16 Dec 2017 14:30
Possible future content
There are plenty of ideas on our forums. Following list is just a couple of them we would love to see in the game sometimes (or maybe in the Factorio data disk).
Space platforms
Build and launch space platforms that can travel to asteroids or other planets. The platform would be a factory within a limited amount of space.Use the platforms to mine rare resources from the asteroids, supply goods to trade stations or land on new planets. But beware the space is full of threats!
Alien interaction
If you are nice to them, they are nice to you. Keep the pollution low and you can learn about the planet inhabitants.Maybe even trade or cooperate with them. Or just take advantage of them. Catch them, study them in research facilities so you can come up with better ways to "deal with them".
RTS elements
In the late game you have this monstrous factory full of machines, trains and flying robots. But you are still a guy running around on your own. Wouldn't it be cool if you could get into your command center and just give orders to your building / combat drones?
Moving underground
So you have tamed the surface of the planet. But how about going below the ground?
Food industry
Now you are alone, but there might be colonists coming here. Better prepare to grow some food for them. Or maybe feed the biters trapped in your research facilities? Also how about using bio-fuels for your factory?
by icycalm » 09 Mar 2018 22:17
Wube Software wrote:If your profile doesn't match any of the open positions, but you still believe you would be a great addition to our team, please contact us anyway.
I wrote:Job application (designer)
Hello dear Factorio people! I am trying to reach Mr. Kovarex. Could you please forward this message to him?
I want to start this off by saying that I believe your game is a masterpiece, and that in my 1962-2017 GOTY Awards I have declared it GOTY for 2012: http://culture.vg/reviews/awards/game-of-the-year.html
Having said that, I also have to say that I believe you are making a big mistake by continuing to work on the game after all these years. Six years is a LONG time to work on a game, even for a small team. So yes, your game is complex, but Sid Meir's Civilization was even more complex when it was released in 1991, and MicroProse didn't spend anywhere near as long on it as you guys are spending. In short, I am against this modern model of "infinite development", and I believe you are wasting your team's talents by chaining them to a game that's been basically done for years, and forcing them to spend their lives making tiny adjustments to it that only the most hardcore players will ever notice. What you should be doing instead, is wrapping up the game asap (and when I say asap I mean yesterday...) and working on a sequel, or a brand-new game altogether. Will your hardcore players get upset if they hear that you are ceasing work on updates? Some of them, probably. But when they hear of a sequel or a brand-new game from you, they won't care. No one can go from Civ1 to Civ4 via endless tiny updates; at some point, you have to draw a line and start from scratch. That's how games and companies grow, and it would be a shame if your company and the IP you have created failed to grow out of a misguided sense of perfectionism.
And here's where I would like to come into the picture. I am extremely interested in helping you make that sequel or brand-new game, and have a very clear vision of which direction you should head in. Your game is basically an idiosyncratic city-builder, which is essentially a blown-up version of the base-building part of an RTS. So for the sequel, or for the brand-new game (if you don't want to use the Factorio name), you should make an actual RTS. That is the only logical way forward for the Factorio concept, because the game is already missing a strong PVP component. The lack of adequately complex PVP mechanics is your game's no. 1 problem, and it is a problem that cannot be solved by incremental updates. (The number 2 problem is the lack of a good campaign, but we can solve that too in a sequel easily with some ideas I have thought up on that matter).
At this point I need to tell you that the best RTS of all time is Planetary Annihilation, and direct you to my in-depth review of the game: http://culture.vg/reviews/videogame-art ... ation.html
That's only Part I of my review, and there will be two more parts in the future (in a book I am writing called Videogame Art -- Factorio will also be featured), but you don't need to have read the other two parts to understand my thesis. Planetary Annihilation is the future of real-time strategy, and any game that wants to dethrone it will have to copy all its main features (i.e. spherical planets and strategic zoom all the way out to solar system level).
So what I propose is your own version of this concept, but with the base-building part complexified to the level of Factorio.
I have a lot more to say on the subject (and will indeed say some of it in my upcoming in-depth review of Factorio), but I will spare you the details until I hear that you are interested in pursuing a project of this kind. I am not interested in being hired by you guys to help with tiny updates on Factorio: I am interested in helping you make something even bigger and cooler. If and when you decide on doing that, I would be honored if you would consider me to be part of the team that makes it happen. Until then...
Best regards,
Alex Kierkegaard
http://culture.vg/
by icycalm » 15 Mar 2018 17:48
by icycalm » 29 Mar 2018 15:26
by icycalm » 30 Mar 2018 15:43
V435000 wrote:As you are probably already aware, some of our team members are going to attend PAX East in Boston next week.
We figured we need some representative prints for our booth, but what to put there? We could have just made a big mega high resolution render of the player character or some other entity, but that would not tell the viewer much about what the game is about. So we thought it would be much better to "just" take a giant screenshot of a working factory, print it, and done! Now of course it's much more complicated than that...
V435000 wrote:Imagine a friend of yours is trying to introduce you to this game, shows this screenshot to you and says: "Hey, this is the game I have been repeatedly telling you about lately..." What would be your response?
by Mike T. » 07 Sep 2018 15:44
by icycalm » 14 Sep 2018 14:15
I wrote:I swear to God I love Factorio but I am not reading all of that. Can you just tell me in two sentences what's wrong and must be changed?
by Mike T. » 29 Sep 2018 09:59
by Dead Man Talking » 02 Jul 2019 20:45
by icycalm » 15 Nov 2019 22:38
kovarex wrote:Hello,
we feel that the Factorio development is taking way too long. The approach "It is done when it is done" was serving us well to deliver a high quality product, but if we continued this way, we would be doing it basically forever. A lot of us don't have any problem working on Factorio for some more time, but the main problem is, that we would like to introduce new features and content instead of just polishing parts that are already present in the game. We also considered, that the game is quite polished now, and if we just pushed the button to release 1.0, it wouldn't be a catastrophe. From our perspective, a lot of things wouldn't be finished, but from the perspective of a new player, the things we are working on now are mainly nitpicks.
With this in mind, we decided to just specify a 1.0 release date publicly, so we have to stick with it. We will just focus on the most important aspects as we approach the date, and we just do whatever we have time to do. Once the 1.0 happens, we can have some rest and after that, we can finally focus on the content and features again.
The date is 25th September 2020.
Version 1.0 does not mean that development on the game will end, or that Factorio is 100% finished. When we have a better idea of what we will be working on after the 1.0 release, we will let you know.
by icycalm » 13 Mar 2020 15:38
Bilka wrote:After automating rocket launches there are three more tech cards waiting to be researched, two new resources waiting to be harvested, and many more useful items to be crafted. All that production and the win condition take a significant amount of power but thankfully the mod adds an effective power generation option to fulfill the factory's needs.
by icycalm » 04 Feb 2022 15:45
We still don't want to be specific about many things, not even the expansion name, but we can start by giving you some general idea about the scale of the project. The general goal is to make the expansion feel like as big an addition as the whole vanilla game. This is why we plan to price it at $30.00, and put in enough content to make it well worth the price.
Honestly, making the price (and thus the expected scope) a little bit more concrete in this way, motivates us not only to make enough, but also to not overshoot, so we wouldn't spend another 9 years doing it. Generally the fact that the team size has increased, and there are a lot of things in the engine that we already solved, should hopefully imply that the expansion takes way less time than the base game.
by icycalm » 04 Jul 2022 18:46
icycalm wrote:To sum up, I cannot stress enough how current and shortly upcoming Factorio features contain ALREADY all the ingredients necessary for PA2.
by icycalm » 12 Jul 2022 22:38
by icycalm » 14 Sep 2022 02:38
Twinsen wrote:For the past one and a half years I've been working on a secret Factorio project. Today we are finally revealing it.
As announced during Nintendo Direct, Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch! It's already in the final stages and the global release date is set for 28th October 2022.
Twinsen wrote:What about Steam Deck and PC controller support?
I actually started working on the port for Nintendo Switch before the Steam Deck was even announced, so first I will finish what I started.
by icycalm » 14 Sep 2022 02:59
aka13 wrote:Let's at least hope this is a step towards more builds for more architectures, and not "1.2 and all future updates will be oriented towards a 20W handheld console"
Xenomorph wrote:It's an april fool joke, again? Or is it real?
astroshak wrote:I suppose the biggest question I have is, why put it on the weakest dedicated game platform?
I would have thought that with built in mouse/keyboard support that either of the other two big platforms, both of which are stronger and more capable platforms, would have made more sense to port to? Referring to PlayStation and XBox, though with the way Microsoft is basically tying Windows and XBox together it may be practically on the XBox already...
gillonba wrote:I _do_ hope this is a cruel joke. We've been waiting for what, a year and a half(?), for even a hint on what the expansion is going to be, yet all the team wants to talk about is porting the base game to mobile? I mean, they can do what they want and good for them if they get some more sales but ffs. What a way to crap all over the original fans who just want more PC content. "Don't you guys have phones?"
ske wrote:What is this? A factorio for ants?
by icycalm » 17 Oct 2022 19:41
by icycalm » 03 Jan 2023 20:17
by icycalm » 03 Jan 2023 20:28
by schadenfreude » 01 Nov 2023 22:19
Earendel wrote:A lot of people are going to make comparisons between the Space Age expansion and the Space Exploration mod. I've worked on the game design for both: On Space Age I made the first space + planets prototype builds and plus I've been involved in most of the gameplay discussions since. On Space Exploration, well it's my mod, I made it.
I think that makes me the most qualified to talk about how these two things are very different from the ground up. Sure there's some overlap in the broader topics: you go to space, you visit planets; but these similarities end up being fairly superficial when all of the decisions along the way are made with different design goals:
- Target Audience: Space Exploration is targeted at a small set of challenge-seekers, it's not for everyone by design. Space Age is targeted at all Factorio players with better approachability in mind.
- Game Length: Space Exploration is a long-form adventure designed for players to gradually uncover many interconnected challenges over 150-500 hours (or more). Space Age challenges are more streamlined and self-contained for a faster pace of 60-100 hours (rough estimate).
- Complexity: Space Exploration challenges ramp up to a very high difficulty towards the end. Some of the last challenges cannot be automated without a set of arithmetic combinators, so it is not expected that all players will be able to complete it. Space Age has a lot of different challenges but they never get too extreme and the usage of combinators is quite lightweight, so we expect that most players will be able to complete it.
- Engine Support: There are so many things that Space Exploration just can't do because it's a mod. Space Age has very different capabilities because the game engine can be made to support it. Large parts of the expansion are focused on game mechanics that just aren't possible otherwise, so the gameplay will be unique and refreshing even if you're a Space Exploration veteran.
There are many more differences that will become apparent when we look at individual features of the expansion in upcoming FFFs.
by icycalm » 18 Dec 2024 21:40