Friday Facts #270 - HR Substation & Save/Load overview

[Klonan]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-270

[Dop3Dawg]

C'mon already! Soon isn't soon enough ;P

[SeigneurAo]

I wouldn't mind à 3XL or, let's get crazy, 4XL option for the t-shirts...
Is that something you'd consider at some point ?
Thanks in advance. Another very interesting FFF, as they almost always are !

[torham]

I have already nominated Factorio for "Labour of Love".

[Nova]

Nice new substation.

Some people said in the earlier time of the game that it didn't look good. That was the main reason why many friends of mine didn't want to try the game. With all of these new graphics maybe they now will.

[Sparrow-717]

Vote for changing the shirt's loading percentage to 40%, because everyone is *very* familiar with the 40% hang. Lol.

[Oktokolo]

Cleaning up the load code is probably a very good idea. Thanks for the linked in-depth explanation of what's going on behind the scenes.
And new substations are pretty.

[T-A-R]

First thought: I think labour of love fits better then fun with the machine. Thats reserved for cars and stuff imho like a racer/tractor/catapult etc. In Factorio Vehicle snap mod is needed to releave pita in simply drivingstraight in a car.

Second thought: Steam just created a award for Factorio: " engineering an unforgettable gameplay experience made possible by machines.. c'mon it make fully sense for Factorio too:D

I agree on the reddit that we're stronger making a choice. Imo labour of love can be voted (and becomes stronger) every year, like next year. (since devs will still be active next year). This year the specific machine award is a ultimate chance for Factorio. So my two cents are to promote "Most fun with machine"-award this year!
And make sure the steam dev page is finished next year, you deseratly deserve this best developer award imho!

It will take some time for me to get used to the new substation. Its better quality for sure , but changing a known thing is always hard.

Thanks again for another great update!

Edit: winter time is hoodie time ^^

[ledow]

Please make "saving" reset the autosave timer too.

It's so annoying to save, only to then have the game save again just a short while later. Or to load in again and a little while later it does an autosave. Especially if it's a save that you reload several times in a row while you try to resolve something time-critical.

And I'm on an SSD so saves are literally seconds, poor people on HD it must take forever.

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

Vote for changing the shirt's loading percentage to 40%, because everyone is *very* familiar with the 40% hang. Lol.

Oooooooooooooooh, the dreaded 40% sprites... quite often I've thought "Is it hanging?!?"

[bobingabout]

I don't really like the new substation graphic, but I'm sure it will grow on me.

The save file is more than a quarter decoratives? Most games don't even save those, just re-generate them on load, or when you re-enter an unloaded area. I don't see why you can't do the same. Is there any reason these need to remain perfectly in sync?

[Rseding91]

I don't really like the new substation graphic, but I'm sure it will grow on me.

The save file is more than a quarter decoratives? Most games don't even save those, just re-generate them on load, or when you re-enter an unloaded area. I don't see why you can't do the same. Is there any reason these need to remain perfectly in sync?

Determinism.

[eradicator]

I don't really like the new substation graphic, but I'm sure it will grow on me.

The save file is more than a quarter decoratives? Most games don't even save those, just re-generate them on load, or when you re-enter an unloaded area. I don't see why you can't do the same. Is there any reason these need to remain perfectly in sync?

For example concrete has a random chance to destroy decoratives. Could probably be made deterministic. Until a mod comes along and allows you to place them yourself. I bet there's also mods with "decorative cleaners" same as there are mods that make the concrete-removal chance 100% for people who don't want grass *inside* their facilities. By the same rationale one might think about not saving tiles (only changes to tiles). Boils down to CPU vs HDD, and i know which one is cheaper.

The new substations are great. They look a bit smaller than the old ones though, or is that an illusion?

[Oktokolo]

The save file is more than a quarter decoratives? Most games don't even save those, just re-generate them on load, or when you re-enter an unloaded area. I don't see why you can't do the same. Is there any reason these need to remain perfectly in sync?

My biggest save is less than 40 MiB on disk (game stores them as zip files), so i don't think, they need to reduce save file size. Syncing decorative stuff should not cost much performance in practice because it is only done when decoratives get created or destroyed (they don't hold any state that could change).
I also like, that every player sees exactly the same map. No corner-cutting for stuff that is not relevant.

For example concrete has a random chance to destroy decoratives. Could probably be made deterministic.

Random numbers are already deterministic in Factorio. They are based on synced state.

[Gergely]

Wait... decoratives take up almost 30% of the save?

[mexmer]

tbh, i like old substation more, this one looks like bunker with pole, old one, looked like pole with capacitors, but at least you got impression of central energy point, from bunker, you don't get that feeling.

i would not mind pole sticking from transformer block, or pole with ground connections, but this thing just feels weird.

btw. do you plan long sleeve shirts? i'm not tshirt person.

[Koub]

Wait... decoratives take up almost 30% of the save?

Such a pity knowing how pita decorations may be when trying to see what's beneath, or trying to see buildings' area of effect (power pole, mining drill range, ...). Yeah grass doodads, I'm talking of you.
Most of the time, I wish they weren't there, but I can't take them off without a mod, which would in turn prevent me from earning achievements on Steam.

[DanGio]

I don't really like the new substation graphic, but I'm sure it will grow on me.

Same here, and I already like it better than half an hour ago. Maybe too "roundish" /"toyish" ? In any case, amazing job. 0.17 will look really good!

[eradicator]

For example concrete has a random chance to destroy decoratives. Could probably be made deterministic.

Random numbers are already deterministic in Factorio. They are based on synced state.

I doubt you understand what you just said there. The results of random numbers generated during runtime are part of the savegame in the form of decorative positions. Not saving decoratives would mean recalculating all random numbers from the start of the save (i.e. running a full replay before every load) or completely changing how concrete determines which decoratives are removed.
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Most of the time, I wish they weren't there, but I can't take them off without a mod, which would in turn prevent me from earning achievements on Steam.

Steam "achievements" the greatest non-reason ever invented to play a game you like less instead of a game you like more .
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I was never very fond of the current substation, always looked too...flat? modern? Didn't have that "steampunk" feel written all over it. Not that the new one couldn't need some more of that too.

[WIZ4]

New substation looks too cartoony Maybe you should add more rust?