Friday Facts #227 - Rendering, Trees & Scenario talk

[Klonan]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-227

[Gergely]

Please help us make the right choices in the graphics settings by adding more descriptive tool-tips and for every option!

[Elok]

Damn, with a title like that I thought you were to announce that we can finally grow tree ingame...

• Do you have any ideas for new scenarios, or improvements to the current ones?

In PvP :
- Add an option to Switch OFF a team base when no players are connected so bitters will ignore it. I can't stress enough how important that point is since, right now, at least 1 player per team is forced to play on our server until the base is secure and autonomous. In our server, one player started to play one night by itself and when the two other team connected a few day after, their base were wiped out by bitter. And playing peaceful mode is boring!!
- New cool preset PvP Map like this type : https://i.imgur.com/WhvM2Kn.png. Preset for 2-3-4 players. Separate island so we have to shoot each other in distance (new weapons needed?) etc.
- After the game is created, allow character to change/create Team more easilly (if killed, respawn in new team's base). We use PvP so every player can easilly start their own base and sometime a player wil join his friend and eventually wants to start on his own. Changing the Team Color and Name ingame would be cool too (Team leader only). Also, add the possibility for the admin to change Team Leader (incase a team leader stop playing and doesn't connect anymore).
- Change the way evolution works in PvP so bitter evolution doesn't scale up for all team. Because if someone does start a new team in my server, he'll be fighting Behemoth on his first wave.
- Don't allow bitter nest in Team zone (The Team wall seems to do the trick but it will be nice if it wasn't needed as wall are annoying during bitter attack)
- Trade between allies in PvP! (using train station?) It would be great if teams could collaborate in some ways. And while we're at it, why not adding specialities to team? (ex.: Weapon Specialist, Science Specialist etc. So it will be cheaper for those team to build those stuff but more expensive to build others, forcing them to trades to be more efficient). It would be great is research could be traded as well.
- Admin option button -> Add more features!!! Add a confirm windows for the "restart server" (really too easy to click it and wipe the map). Also, add a "Save" and "Load" option so we can easily save game, destroy each other for fun then reload and continue the game (it's really painful to load a server autosave right now).

• Do you think developing a competitive aspect to Factorio will benefit us in the long run?

Yes, me and my friend doesn't play anything else than PvP now. More fun to play in the same server.

[Splitframe]

I would absolutely love to see a mod/Scenario that models Factorio after the Warcraft 3 custom genre "tech wars".
In TechWar maps you place buildings that produce units on a timer. You cannot control these units as they mindlessly
run toward the enemy base and attack everything in their path, like other units or buildings.

Together with the open map of factorio you could realize strategies like attacking from two different directions, or using
the terrain for choking points, which would also limit your own units on that path though.
And as always in factorio, the more resources you have the faster you can produce units. But you have to balance how much
you put into units and defense and how much into research and new resource procurement.

I guess you'd have to restrict map size somewhat and lock the map generator settings so it produces viable maps for this.
It would be a blast to play in equal teams. How insane would a 10v10 become? I could also imagine a slow version of the game
mode for headless servers that don't pause when logged out. It would be almost like a browser game then.

[OBXandos]

Please help us make the right choices in the graphics settings by adding more descriptive tool-tips and for every option!

Agree 100%! So many games don't tell you what their graphics options really do.

Will optimizing the VRAM usage also reduce loading times? It always surprises me how long it takes Factorio to load compared to other games.

[tehfreek]

I still think that we need to have some sort of "cosmetic" designation for mods such as WaiTex, Colorblind Circuit Network, and KingIon's mods such that they don't need syncing or prevent MP connection.

[lackyb]

I play factorio on an old 'non-gamey' PC with an OEM graphics card and it runs great (with SD sprites) and it's one of the reasons I love it, no budget for an upgrade

I've always had a significant frame rate drop when amongst large numbers of trees, even when standing still and zoomed in, will these changes help with that?

[Caine]

Do you think developing a competitive aspect to Factorio will benefit us in the long run?

Good question. I believe it will, but it will also create tension with some of the existing players.

Some players want to see Factorio as a sandbox game and resist balancing (see e.g. bots vs belts), while balancing becomes much more vital if the competitive nature is aggressively pursued (or you end up with very bland and one sided strategies). Personally I have been enjoying just watching the battles between team StealAxe, Not Anti, Moar Faster, and others on twitch and would like to see more of that.

It is interesting to me that the competitive nature also completely switches around what is considered to be the "best practice" depending on the game modes played. That indicates that it can diversify the metagame, which is good in my opinion.

[Gergely]

Since it doesn't affect the state of the game, the mod is completely ignored when dealing with mod syncing, and you won't have to worry about having the mod installed or not when joining any servers.

And what about Achievements? Will they be disabled when your mod is enabled?

[admo]

For your DirectX-using builds the new version of PIX has all kinds of memory reporting (https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/pix/gpu-memory-usage/). I have not had a chance to check it out yet but it was added for a similar issue DirectX 12 applications are hitting where they thrash GPU memory with paging. We tell the devs to use Pix to adjust their priority settings, you could use it to a very similar effect to adjust your atlas groupings to reduce paging.

[Inglonias]

First and foremost, alter the "Sandbox" scenario to spawn a character, please.

An accelerated start scenario would be nice. Something similar to those quickstart mods out there that allows us to skip the burner phase of the game.

* Give us enough starting gear to make a basic electrical base
* Research all red techs.

[ZwerOxotnik]

• Do you have any ideas for new scenarios, or improvements to the current ones?

improvements in scenario PvP: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/diplomacy

[DarkMatterMatt]

Production score: you will earn points for the amount of items your factory produces, and teams will compete to earn the most points.

Can you exploit the score by barrelling then unbarrelling? You'd really need to make reversible crafting pointless (give no points)

[wlfbck]

Do you have any ideas for new scenarios, or improvements to the current ones?

Instead of quoting a long list of ideas i would have myself: WC3 and SC2 fun maps. They should give heaps of ideas of what could be done in Factorio (in it's own style), especially on the PvP side which you seem to fancy.

[Lubricus]

Small note on shadows is that a stack of bots in the air leave a black shadow that looks strange. The overlapping shadows gets do dark and is to sharp. My ancient graphics card have problems with fps when zooming out but that is not strange...

[Omarflyjoemacky]

I run a 1080ti - bring on the sprites!!

[gamestefan]

Do you have any ideas for new scenarios, or improvements to the current ones?

Yes, It would be nice if the PvP Production Score and Oil Harvest modes would become available as single player versions. Ofcourse with all the relavant options . It would be nice for users that don't like joining in multiplayer games or users who just want to practice this game mode.

[Lubricus]

When watching the PvP scenario: Production score. I realize that the only real interaction between the teams is combat (shooting at things).
I don't think that is fitting Factorio I think some way of gaining land and taking over land from each other could be more interesting and add another level of strategy where you have to answer the enemy teams moves.
That could be done if you only could build on land that your team own and you have to claim adjacent land with science or building something expensive. Think more Stellaris than Starcraft.

[Bidoas]

A scenario similar to Sim City's sharing resources could be fun, each team has production penalties on certain items. Like x10 production cost of circuits for one team and x10 cost of copper wire in another. It could be fixed or random what the penalties are. It would really break the blueprint meta and promote cooperation in an interesting way

[CrushedIce]

Do you think developing a competitive aspect to Factorio will benefit us in the long run?

Personally I don't really need the competitive aspect. I'm playing cooperatively in the Sandbox mode and I'm happy with that
Things like the production challenge are nice too have and can certainly be fun but if it comes to PvP combat, that's just something I do not play this game for.

Rather than new PvP modes, I would like to see an enhancement of the end game content
Maybe a scenario where you build a spacecraft to escape the planet, requiring dozens of rocket launches.
Or supplying your homeworld with varying products and increasing demand or something like that.
That's something I'm missing a bit since I started playing years ago.

Anyway keep up the good work!