And it can't crash when paused when it's not doing anything. That is not really true, even if the game is not doing anything, the rest of the system is, and it is still sat in volatile memory. Power outage, system crash, user initiated system restart, low system memory, low disk space (done this be...

Thats not the same thing. Some people want the game to not run when there is no one connected, depleting resources, maybe getting overrun by biters. So you want auto pause. Now if the auto save time is 10 minutes, and every one leaves at 9 minutes, my understanding is that Factorio will not autosave...

When side loading onto an underground belt tile, the side of the belt nearest to the descent is blocked, items only move across the far side. I think this is highly counter-intuitive, as it is not explicitly called out in game, and the graphics suggest that both sides will be blocked. Similarly the ...

But if I have a GPL plugin, and i cant distribute everything, as required by the GPL, then I cant distribute the plugin.

Least that is my understanding from the normal C++ and Java work I do (both compiled). Is there a clear case for Lua to be different? You still require in Factorio APIs.

I see some mods using the GPL.

Is this actually a valid license for mods? It seems to me that as in-process plugins, that the viral GPL license would then include the distribution of Factorio and its source code, which is obviously not possible.

Well if you dont want to really worry about biters at all, you can reduce there spawn frequency and size, and use peaceful mode. For games with biters though, this was one of the reasons I made this https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=97&t=24143 . The main current feature is rewritten ba...

I think it adds a fair bit to the gameplay, because you have somthing other than just water to prevent construction, and differnt parts of the game would be affected differently. E.g. Id really need a decent flatish area to build my train station, and that might be hard to find near the start locati...

Actually, the fact that the game updates at 60 ups is quite surprising, and likely a challenge for the devs over 20 or 30. 16.6ms is a really small time slice to develop code within, things that seem simple like path finding a group of 500 biters could easily exceed the single frame limit. Going to ...

Most laptops do it at the driver level I believe, at least for basic cases (never tested in games) . You might be able to install extra software to do it again.


Also dont standard Apple mice for macs lack the middle button?

The real fix would be to get a new mouse :P http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005EJH6RW/ $8 As for why it "must be mouse related" -> the widgets on screen are setup to respond to mouse input (clicks) and not keyboard input. It's not idea and might be possible to change around but would require a ...

Well so by that, I meant the 2D grid has a height value / z-axis thats not constrained to a tileset like AOEII or SC2000, but that is largely free to vary (each grid cell has a height value that represents say the top-left corner), with the tiles being stretched/scaled as needed. Your still working ...

Bart wrote:Just read **multi-page document** and all will fall into place.

Is it really realistic to try and explain that to every new player so that they understand? Most of them wont even know what Perlin Noise is or have an understanding of the maths behind it.

For pure 2D graphics, I liked how games like TTD and Sim City 2000 did it with slopes on a 2D tile grid, or the CnC games that had both slopes and cliffs. Sim City 2000 made the rail tracks use 2 tiles for slopes, with a little structure thing to avoid the overly steep track issue. What about using ...

The question ofcourse is: why can't you forward ports? Do you have a modem with built in router capabilities? And behind that modem another router? Because then you have to forward the port on your router and your modem. Id note that there are lots of times when it is just pretty much impossible. e...

Fast belts cost a lot more than basic belts, and express belts even more so, making it a question of what is affordable.

Naturally a fast belt that is only 80% full is still moving more items per second than a packed basic belt, but at a much greater cost.

I think from the users point of view though that setting frequency to low just makes less ore patches, but with the same size. If they wanted less but bigger ore patches, then they would set frequency to low and size to high. The UI does not have to directly map to the maths function behind generati...

I suppose that games are usualy having "ticks" and the state is fully sync between ticks so it is a good place to perform fork() without any issues. Also the game already has "save" so it should be already happening. Usage of fork() could provide drastically reduced wait times a...

That is what the "writing the data out to an in-memory buffer" is. Ideally that would just mean a single iteration over the game state appending to a byte buffer, its then that buffer(s) that get handed over to another thread. And unless those dat files inside the zip have some extra compr...

I don't think slow projectiles will work. I am pretty sure that all projectiles are homing and will exceed the max range if the unit moves away. Also the game tracks how much damage it expects an entity to take, so once a biter has a slow "death orb" chasing it, no other turret will shoot ...

hmm, that is true. Generally when I am using them I fill one side of the belt with coal. The amount of coal used is pretty small, so generally I end up saturating the entire length of the belt with only a small number of coal miners.