Friday Facts #292 - Inching closer to stable

[Klonan]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-292

[Gergely]

You might as well call the post-stable-experimental-releases of 0.17 the following: 0.18 releases

[Blackraz0r]

The plan is that after the first 0.17 stable version, some of the team will be moved from fixing bugs to working on features.

I like to compare this behavior to the Space-Engineers-DevTeam...

"hey we have a realy shitty engine and our game is a totally bug-ridden disease. how can we fix it ?"
"we cant boss... wo dont know how, we dont have the skills"
"ok the lets just feature creep to get some last coins out of those costumers"

I love you guy's i love how ypu treat your game and how you treat us. You are the fxxxxng best dev-team.

[MakeItGraphic]

Props to rseding91 last week killing so many bugs for the latest release! Feel better everyone, and may the next few weeks be productive!

Edit: not to critique but you say over 250 bugs you only accounted for the main queue and assigned reports, and not the campaign bugs. Which would be actually over 270 bugs remaining thus far.

[dee-]

One thing that makes our progress hard to evaluate is that we don't know how many people are actually playing experimental. Most people play through Steam, and so far we have found no way of determining how many people are opted-in to the 0.17 experimental through Steam. It could be that the game is more stable, or it could be that less people are playing.

Isn't the used version part of the log I wonder?

[MakeItGraphic]

One thing that makes our progress hard to evaluate is that we don't know how many people are actually playing experimental. Most people play through Steam, and so far we have found no way of determining how many people are opted-in to the 0.17 experimental through Steam. It could be that the game is more stable, or it could be that less people are playing.

Isn't the used version part of the log I wonder?

Logs are sent automatically if opted in upon a crash, or a user submission. This still wouldn't account for the total number of players on a specific build.

[Sente]

Wow... that raycasting engine within Factorio just blew me away. I have no words.

[Ghoulish]

That video at the end is f-ing awesome. Incredible. Good luck with the bug bashing

[Bajter]

Can we have a blueprint for this beauty?

[MakeItGraphic]

Can we have a blueprint for this beauty?

Original post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... nilla_017/

viewtopic.php?f=193&p=425647

[BattleFluffy]

Once again Wube proving they are the best game developer in the world. :>

Squashing bugs is a hard slog, but these efforts are the reason that Factorio is so incredibly stable and awesome. I know it has been said before that when you spend all your time fixing bugs, it leads to the impression that the game is filled with bugs. So I just wanted to remind you again that on the whole it isn't filled with bugs, it's actually incredibly stable and bug-free and you guys are doing an incredible job !

Thankyou for everything you do, and please keep doing it :D

[Riktol]

At Paradox they get some fairly detailed information about player behavior in game, Hearts of Iron 4 specifically comes to mind. They mention it occasionally in their dev diaries (here and here for example). I'm sure if you ask they'd give you some idea on where and how they get it, they have their own store/launcher thing so I suspect it isn't driven via steam, although I might be wrong.

Also that ray casting: just wow.

[giantmechahamham]

Re: raycasting engine

What devs say: "Here's an in-game logic network that will allow you to fine-tune your factory. It's more or less Turing complete, so we're interested in seeing some of the unique builds you come up with."

What CS nerds hear: "You pansies can't POSSIBLY build a computer with these in-game parts, let alone any meaningful software. Nyah-nyah! It's impossible. You can't do it!"

Raycasting guy (in Strongbad's 'Stinkoman' voice) IS THIS A CHALLENGE?!!?

[MakeItGraphic]

At Paradox they get some fairly detailed information about player behavior in game, Hearts of Iron 4 specifically comes to mind. They mention it occasionally in their dev diaries (here and here for example). I'm sure if you ask they'd give you some idea on where and how they get it, they have their own store/launcher thing so I suspect it isn't driven via steam, although I might be wrong.

Also that ray casting: just wow.

Lots of games have user statistics like that, however I've always been one against such things. Use my computer to render the game rather then send statistics. It would be nice if you could fully opt out from non-essential network activity and vice versa.

On the flipside of that I love local user data, would love to see a more robust stat screen for current game, and all time. E.g. total hand crafts, total x made, total trees caught on fire, etc. But this would most likely have it's own performance impact as well. Especially with such a dynamic game such as factorio.

Not to verge further off topic but I love their forum layouts, often wish to "upvote" post here rather then commenting.

[H8UL]

Now I'm imagining using lights to render mandlebrot zooming:

viewtopic.php?t=26181

[bobingabout]

One thing about the multiplayer stress tests.

It's a good thing and all that, but you need to also do that sort of thing with modpacks, otherwise there's a whole heap of desyncs that could happen with mods that you're not going to find this way.

[AcolyteOfRocket]

Most people play through Steam, and so far we have found no way of determining how many people are opted-in to the 0.17 experimental through Steam. It could be that the game is more stable, or it could be that less people are playing.

How can you not know this ? is there any way we can help with this on our end ?

[Jonathan88]

This will probably be a weekly thing for a couple more weeks until we are happy with the stability and performance of multiplayer.

The number of Factorio players in the servers is just mind blowing... I remember when multiplayer was introduced, and we could just about hit 30 before it got unplayable...
...and now 300!

The thing is, even 30 players, is actually huge compared to most other games - but those are noob-numbers here

[Pepsilian]

About the stress test and the devs.

As a moderator of said Discord i would like to (once again) say "THANK YOU!!!" to the devs and all the players that joined. The devs worked with us on a weekend, in the middle of the Easter weekend to be exact, up until late into the night, now knowing they were understaffed to get an even more stable version of the game for something that is barely done (an MMO Event) with such high amount of players. So, THANK YOU for giving up some of your free time to work with us to make this beautiful game even better!

[nepp95]

One thing about the multiplayer stress tests.

It's a good thing and all that, but you need to also do that sort of thing with modpacks, otherwise there's a whole heap of desyncs that could happen with mods that you're not going to find this way.

I think that is up to the mod developers to fix. I think a lot of those desyncs occur because of small errors in the mod.