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PC|MAC|SW Factorio

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Unread postby icycalm » 04 Dec 2017 15:16

Friday Facts #219 - Cliffs
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-219

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.


fff-219-cliffs-02.png
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Unread postby icycalm » 15 Dec 2017 16:48

From Discord:

icycalm
Do you think Factorio would be good PVP?

Robomoo
I don't think so, really
The combat in the game is very limited

icycalm
I am just thinking it would be more fun having the pressure both from enemy attacks, and from the race to finish first
So that you will REALLY need to optimize your shit to win

Robomoo
It would be cool to play it like that
I've been thinking about how it could be made to work
It would probably need to be modded quite heavily
At the moment, for instance, you can make grenades very cheaply and you need 2 of them to destroy most buildings
So you would be able to completely ruin the enemy's base very quickly

icycalm
Sounds like an easy mod

Robomoo
I mean, that's one of several issues
The game is not really built with combat in mind

icycalm
What are the others?
I get that it's not built for combat, but neither is They Are Billions, and yet the pressure from the zombies is the only reason I am playing the game
Ctiy building for no reason is boring
The pressure gives you a reason
These games are not PA, but they don't have to be as long as the city building is cool and the pressure is adequate

Robomoo
The main thing is I think it would be too easy to kill players

icycalm
Again, you just buff their HP, or lower the weapons' effectiveness(edited)
Piss easy modding

Robomoo
Maybe it could be made to work
We'd need to experiment with it
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Unread postby Robomoo » 16 Dec 2017 14:30

Cool stuff from the game's website:

https://www.factorio.com/content

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?


Other issues I can see with PvP:

-You can zoom out very far, which makes it too easy to see other players coming.

-Guns use auto-targeting, so two players with the same level of armour and enough ammo to kill each other, who can see one another from well outside of shooting range, will be completely equal.

-Rockets I think have infinite range, so there's nothing to stop you just spamming them in the general direction of the enemy base once they're unlocked.

-Base destruction in general is far too powerful, and there's nothing in the game that can block grenades and rockets. Having your intricate circuit network you spent an hour on levelled in two seconds should only be something that happens in endgame. It would be bad enough just having someone with no items run through your base picking stuff up.
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Unread postby icycalm » 09 Mar 2018 22:17

I sent the devs a message because of this:

https://www.factorio.com/jobs

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.


This is what I sent them:

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/
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Unread postby icycalm » 15 Mar 2018 17:48

He replied at great length. Maybe I will post it some day. The gist of it however is that he is taking things too slowly for my liking, and we basically should not expect any exciting news from his studio for several years, and even then it might be a Baldur's Gate type game (his favorite game of all time) rather than the super-complex RTS that I would want to see from them given their background.

I think I will try emailing ideas to a bunch of studios. I'll treat it the same way I treat pick-up: as a numbers game, and see what happens. Merely alerting all these studio heads to my GOTY feature will be worth the effort. He read everything I linked him.
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Unread postby icycalm » 29 Mar 2018 15:26

Factorio version 0.16 - Now stable
http://steamcommunity.com/games/427520/ ... 6945534169

Game has got a bunch of high res art, among other things, and by the time 1.0 is ready the plan is to have everything at high res.
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Unread postby icycalm » 30 Mar 2018 15:43

Friday Facts #236 - Building a rollup
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-236

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...


The "rollup": https://eu3.factorio.com/assets/img/blo ... p-trio.jpg

The forum would not let me attach it, but I plan to make an Insomnia gallery and feature it in there, so I'll be manually uploading it together with all the other artwork.

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?
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Unread postby Mike T. » 07 Sep 2018 15:44

Work is progressing on the high-res versions of the enemies, among other tasks: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-259
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Unread postby icycalm » 14 Sep 2018 14:15

More autistic updates from Factorio instead of wrapping it up and moving to a sequel like I told their director via email that they should.

New fluid system
https://steamcommunity.com/games/427520 ... 4019609833

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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?
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Unread postby Mike T. » 29 Sep 2018 09:59

They've added/will add (not sure if it's already in) a robot sidekick named Compilatron.

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Friday Facts #262 - Hello my name is: Compilatron
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-262

I wonder if that means that with say a six-player game you'll have six robot sidekicks running around.
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Unread postby Dead Man Talking » 02 Jul 2019 20:45

In other factory game-related news, Factorio is still being updated regularly with cool new stuff and features. Check out what they've been doing with the crash site, for example: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-301

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Not as graphically intense as Satisfactory, but still impressive for a 2D game that's been running on placeholder assets for close to a decade now.
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Unread postby icycalm » 15 Nov 2019 22:38

Did you realize Factorio is in Early Access? I certainly didn't. But it is, and they just announced that it's coming out of it September 25, 2020.

Friday Facts #321 - Countdown
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-321

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.


They also updated the cover art, and the new piece is killer. Must be using the new high-res assets.

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Reminds me of a grittier They Are Billions.

I look forward to setting up the CULT server again and finishing the game once my life settles down a bit, hopefully in the coming weeks, so that I can finally get around to writing the VGART review of this.

P.S. I hear that PVP is now better integrated in the game, so we should give it a try at some point.
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Unread postby icycalm » 13 Mar 2020 15:38

There's a new mod coming out for Factorio today, Krastorio 2, highlighted by the official devs themselves in their latest update, that "adds a significant amount of content beyond the rocket launch, including a new win condition".

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.


The star of the show is probably fusion power:

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Read the entire official blog entry here: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-338

And check out the mod here: https://forums.factorio.com/82122

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Unread postby icycalm » 04 Feb 2022 15:45

Crazy Factorio news today. I’ve known for ages they are working on a major DLC (the director told me via email), but they are now saying it will be huge and cost as much as the base game and have as much new content!

Friday Facts #367 - Expansion news
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-367

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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.


The new alien concept art tells me the military part of the game might get a boost too, which means more possibilities for trying a PVP war between us. Don’t forget that also with our new server we could set up an enormous difficulty game with all the coolest mods and features turned on. I see that in our future after the expansion drops and possibly also before. We definitely need Factorio installed on our server again.

I am hoping this expansion will spur the Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere Program teams to do better. And btw we also need to install Satisfactory on our server and try a huge run; I think they’ve put in dedicated server support by now plus a ton of other things we haven’t seen yet. I am not sure if DSP supports dedicated servers; will have to check. Probably not for now.
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Re: PC|MAC Factorio

Unread postby icycalm » 04 Jul 2022 18:46

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Factorio 3 = Planetary Annihilation + Dyson Sphere Program
https://www.patreon.com/posts/68649278

icycalm wrote:To sum up, I cannot stress enough how current and shortly upcoming Factorio features contain ALREADY all the ingredients necessary for PA2.
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SW Factorio

Unread postby icycalm » 14 Sep 2022 02:38

Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch™
https://factorio.com/blog/post/factorio ... ndo-switch

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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.


This is what happens when a programmer is in charge of a studio. One and a half years of work down the drain.

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.


Note also when he realizes the Steam Deck is out. He still carries on with his original plan, because "first I will finish what I started" even if it's stupid and pointless.

Remember kids, you must always punch programmers in the nose and dunk their heads into the toilet to teach them their place in life. Never forget this. Don't ever let them think they're normal.

At least there's an upshot to all this bs: I just realized that Factorio is probably one of the few games that is perfectly playable in 8K right now, and will benefit massively from it. It's so light it should be doable even on an average card. This is the exact opposite to playing it on a handheld, which is why it just occurred to me. I'm going to go check for 8K TV prices, haven't checked them in months and they should be way down, unless supply issues are fucking with this.
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Re: PC|MAC|SW Factorio

Unread postby icycalm » 14 Sep 2022 02:59

Quite some fun in the forum. And note this is the official forum, so the guys are scared of getting banned and they're self-censoring.


https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.p ... 62#p573862

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https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.p ... 78#p573878

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"


https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.p ... 81#p573881

Xenomorph wrote:It's an april fool joke, again? Or is it real?


https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.p ... 93#p573893

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...


https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.p ... 16#p573916

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?"


https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.p ... 24#p573924

ske wrote:What is this? A factorio for ants?


Nailed the entire Switch playerbase.
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Re: PC|MAC|SW Factorio

Unread postby icycalm » 17 Oct 2022 19:41

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Comment taken from:

India's Semiconductor Failure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isBYV6QWDIo

Part of my philosophical research on why Asians suck so much. I thought it was a fun comment to share here.
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Re: PC|MAC|SW Factorio

Unread postby icycalm » 03 Jan 2023 20:17

Friday Facts #372 - 2022 recap
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-372

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No news on the expansion apart from this image that shows "a sneak peek of some new item icons". No idea what these icons are. Some kind of molten metal and some kind of power generator, maybe fusion?

There is some speculation in the forum thread that the expansion will flesh out the oceans with aquatic content. I don't see any indication of this in the two images we have got so far, but it would be a logical and great addition. It's a bummer that you can't be attacked at all from the water or do anything with it. And the modders haven't touched the water much. They've made a couple ships I think and that's it. So if the expansion focused on water, it should work well with the Space Exploration and Krastorio 2 mods without many changes.

You can see their thread here, it's just 18 posts so far: https://forums.factorio.com/104584
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Re: PC|MAC|SW Factorio

Unread postby icycalm » 03 Jan 2023 20:28

I just noticed the green submarine-type thing. I don't know how I could have missed it. So yep, naval content is coming. So probably also underwater aliens.
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Re: PC|MAC|SW Factorio

Unread postby schadenfreude » 01 Nov 2023 22:19

Friday Facts #373 - Factorio: Space Age
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-373

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The long-awaited Factorio expansion's title was announced about two months ago, with a release date "about one year from now", which would be August 2024. As the title implies, it's about space exploration, which seems disappointing because I thought we already had a mod for that, but there is a section in the announcement explaining the differences between the two:

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.
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