Friday Facts #211 - The little things

[Klonan]

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-211

[unobtanium]

I dont really mind no additional features. I accually want to see more QoL improvements, i always felt like Factorio did a really good job on allowing the player to interact with the world in faster and efficient ways and enjoyed them a great deal. Keep them comming!

edit: Hm, shouldnt the drawing and gamemechanics of entities be seperated to the point to use them independently? I am curious, since it sounds like you are using three different systems now to draw entities in the gameworld, in the blueprint preview and as ghost entities. Or at least three different systems to determine their sprite based on adjacent entities.

[Mercury044]

this will be great as I have had to stop and think about where stuff is going looking at blueprints and ghosts but now side loading vs a turn will look different and that's great!

[chris13524]

the work on the artillery train has already started and it is probably going to be epic

It better be epic! I've held off on playing until this is introduced

I hope this will prevent aliens from creeping onto tracks and destroying the trains?

Great work guys, very excited!

[noliVe]

and, why always adding stuff!
make the small silver things to gold and polish them into diamonds!

things i´m still missing is

- AUTO-Download(activate) Mods you need to connect to a server or your own-save.
- Chat-LOG to easily do more with IRC, Discord , PHP (SQL)

als always thanks for working this many hours on your game

[IronCartographer]

People certainly notice and appreciate the little things.

I don't know who is behind the oil patch highlighting while holding a pumpjack, but little things like that are beautiful touches. Thanks!

[innesm]

>shouldnt the drawing and gamemechanics of entities be seperated to the point to use them independently?

Imagine how great Factorio was if the commenters on here were writing it...

[Proxy]

noticed that unrotated pipes are larger than rotated ones...

especially saw this when lagging on a server when you had the big pipe you placed standing around for a bit before shrinking and then rotating acordingly to the pipes nearby

[chris13524]

>shouldnt the drawing and gamemechanics of entities be seperated to the point to use them independently?

It's generally good design to decouple things as you suggest; but apparently Factorio is so highly optimized that everything needs to be tightly coupled.

[maniak1349]

Little things like this actually are what makes Factorio what it is. Looking forward for loads of those in 0.16.
Also can we expect anytime soon in depth FFF about UI changes that are under way?

[MeduSalem]

We might either just not do it for pipes, use some special trick later, or wait until the fluid flow gets optimized. The optimizations would probably mean that the fluid control logic would be handled externally like belts, which might simplify things regarding the fake connections.

I'd actually be interested to know more about what you guys plan to do about the quirky/weird (not to say somewhat horrifying) Fluid mechanics. Would be interesting to have a dedicated Friday Facts about.

[TheTom]

We might either just not do it for pipes, use some special trick later, or wait until the fluid flow gets optimized. The optimizations would probably mean that the fluid control logic would be handled externally like belts, which might simplify things regarding the fake connections.

I'd actually be interested to know more about what you guys plan to do about the quirky/weird (not to say somewhat horrifying) Fluid mechanics. Would be interesting to have a dedicated Friday Facts about.

Yeah. There is something broken there, including the rounding issues. And performance.

PLus add a lot of interest in.... performance optimizations

[kovarex]

Little things like this actually are what makes Factorio what it is. Looking forward for loads of those in 0.16.
Also can we expect anytime soon in depth FFF about UI changes that are under way?

Yes, the next FFF will be about that (although it is for 0.17).

[tazdu29]

Yeah ! This blueprint thing was bugging me too !

About the pipes, why don't you just check if there is another pipe nearby, and where (top/bottom, left/right), to rotate the tile accordingly? That won't break fluids behavior, but will look way better!

Also, Is it just me or it's impossible to control which way underground belts goes when in ghost placing mode? Because when I blueprinted my (ghost) prototype, and then placed it, all the underground belts were in random ways.

Hope to see some other great news fast, anyways!

[dasiro]

I'd imagine that modplayers would love the option to actually see which mod is required for the blueprint, as some have so many mods installed, they lose track of which one they had to enable for a specific blueprint to work

[5thHorseman]

Little things like this actually are what makes Factorio what it is. Looking forward for loads of those in 0.16.
Also can we expect anytime soon in depth FFF about UI changes that are under way?

Yes, the next FFF will be about that (although it is for 0.17).

First off, cool I look forward to any official discussion of fluid mechanics.

Second, I thought .16 was to be the release candidate?

[Jap2.0]

Little things like this actually are what makes Factorio what it is. Looking forward for loads of those in 0.16.
Also can we expect anytime soon in depth FFF about UI changes that are under way?

Yes, the next FFF will be about that (although it is for 0.17).

0.17 CONFIRMED ?!?

Sorry for the big letters and caps, but this is exciting... except if it's a joke, in which case I'll be really sad.

[TeDeum]

we are focusing on polishing and finishing the game.

Good! Please finish it already and start Factorio 2 in 3D and VR

[AlienX]

I like these types of things, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that something that pissed me off so much (the BP belts, eg) is now going to be fixed

If you were not so far away Mr Factorio Dev, i would give you a big hug lol

[MeduSalem]

Good! Please finish it already and start Factorio 2 in 3D and VR

Hopefully they don't ever go that path.

That said if it's pseudo-3D using sprites in some kind of axonometric projection I might be able to live with it.

I have that opinion because in the past so many strategy/simulation/building games started to suck when they made a full 3d transition. For example I'd rather play SIm City 4 another 10 years because of its sprite charm (especially with community content)... than to consider playing one of the modern full 3D city builders which completely lack soul and which I'm losing interest to play after only a couple of weeks and which I never feel returning to.

Full 3D needs a crapton of post-processing shaders which kill performance and detailed artwork to make it appealing to the eye and to give it a unique feeling... and for me it's one of the main reasons why even a lot of the Triple A gamedevelopers who could afford going full 3D return to using a mixture of 3D and Sprite graphics.