Friday Facts #321 - Countdown

[BattleFluffy]

Congratulations to Allaizn on officially joining the team! That's so cool. He is a really awesome guy and one of the smartest people I know. I am sure he will be a massive asset to the team.

Ian, sound designer... oh my gosh, is it really finally happening? I've been lusting after the new sound effects (eg for the Artillery!) since it was first suggested many FFF's ago. I can't wait to see (hear?) some progress in this area! :D

Welcome aboard to both.. :>

[Ringkeeper]

9/25/20 is a good goal ....

go away witch with this unholy numbers..... 25.09.2020 !! Czech company, useful numbers

But yeah, i second the request for a paid DLC... your one of the only companies i ask for a paid DLC. Good companies need the support and the steady income to continue what they do.

[EnerJi]

Congratulations to Allaizn on officially joining the team! That's so cool. He is a really awesome guy and one of the smartest people I know. I am sure he will be a massive asset to the team.

Ian, sound designer... oh my gosh, is it really finally happening? I've been lusting after the new sound effects (eg for the Artillery!) since it was first suggested many FFF's ago. I can't wait to see (hear?) some progress in this area!

Welcome aboard to both.. :>

I'd love to see some more music, as well. Looking forward to the updates.

[Qasy]

that yellow underground belt going under the factorio logo in the new coverart is hurting my eyes/brain... the underground entrance is fully saturated everything after the exit is almost empty!

or is it just a easter-egg pointing to not yet announced underground-splitter?

as mmmPI mentioned before, the underground belt is too long to be connected, so the saturation is just normal...the items after the exit however, make me curious too ; )
...and why are there gears on both sides of the belt later on...hmmm... ;P

[raiguard]

I went back and found an older version of the same picture, and created a little comparison of before/after the color correction. Enjoy!

MP4 compression makes the new colors look worse than they actually are, but it's still fun to compare.

For a more accurate comparison, here are the old colors, and here are the new colors.

[Quarnozian]

"from the perspective of a new player, the things we are working on now are mainly nitpicks."
Ah, yes... the curse of being an indie developer. The ability to nitpick, at the cost of pushing back the release date.

I still chuckle a little at all the nonsensical factory arrangement on the cover art. Like the heat exchanger being fed lubricant.

[aklesey1]

What we can expect after releasing of version 1.0?
I think game have huge potential of small and small improvements and polishment in gameplay

[irbork]

The date is 25th September 2020

When I was reading up to this sentence I was thinking:
Yey, Factorio 1.0 for Christmas!

[irbork]

Has the site received saturation upgrades or am I imagining things?

[MEOWMI]

Honestly, the new cover art bothers me more than a little, but it works well artistically, and it's cohesive enough as long as no-one takes too many gameplay-specific ideas from it. It's not like the game's current cover in the Steam library represents the mechanics flawlessly either.

[kenmras]

But yeah, I second the request for a paid DLC... your one of the only companies i ask for a paid DLC. Good companies need the support and the steady income to continue what they do.

I disagree.. if the DLC you want is for more content go get a mod (or 25). If you want to support the Dev team find someone on your Steam friends list that wants the game and buy it for them. We already know the Factory must grow, Wube agrees the Factorio team must grow, now lets grow the userbase!
This also helps the team with greater "advertising"

[Hiladdar]

Grads on setting the official release date, announcing it to the world. This in it self is a great marketing, as well as actual release date.

Will there be an interim versions 0.18.xx, between 0.17.xx and 1.0?

I do have several questions about the picture in the FF321.

The refinery ... what is it outputting, and why is the output from the oil refinery going into the output of the boiler?
The pump ... why is it taking what should be input for the oil refinery and trying to pump what looks like lube into the boiler.
The boiler ... why is it accepting lube as an input? Why is a boiler connected to from nuclear reactor?
The nuclear reactor ... where does the expanded nuclear fuel go?
The centrifuge ... where is the input and what does it produce, and does what it produces go?
The lamp ... not a single circuit wire connected to it, and why is shining a bright yellow and not white?
The electric forge ... yep, it's working on smelting what is in the passive provider chest, but how is that passive provider chest being filled and where does the smelted product go?
The lower left hand underground pipe with lube ... I guess that is a dead end pipe, since the that underground pipe never surfaces
The arithmetic contaminator ... is it not connected to anything with circuit wires, so what is it trying to calculate?

There may be other inconsistencies with the actual base game. Other then that, the graphic busy and meets the standard of being appealing enough to entice new players to try the game out.

By the way, some of these inconsistencies, post game launch, may be used as a marketing opportunity where players identify the technical issues with the graphic compared to how the game actually plays. Winners could could be presented with some sort of prize, such as coffee cup, cap, t-shirt, future releases, as part of a well advertised marketing campaign.

Hiladdar

[pr0n]

I love you guys, you have given me so many hours of enjoyment but... September 2020 for just nitpicks?! Why not just say "soon™"? I feel like your nitpicks at this point are purely inconsequential and kinda ruin existing gameplay like renaming existing API calls for pedantics and redoing fluids and making perfectly compressed belts as easy as just add inserters. Minecraft is a great *because* those quirks are left alone and adopted. Please, don't let the pursuit of perfection take you over the other end of the bell curve. I LOVE factorio and I think you guys have done an amazing job with it but for a moment imagine if Michaelangelo couldn't stop trying to perfect David. One. More. Little. Chisel.

[Italian Cuisine]

The biggest visual problem I have is that the logo text still isn't vertically justified within itself! Please, please fix that before 1.0!

[DanGio]

IMO, september 2020 is a good choice. The word "polishing" really gives a small idea of the great amount of work that will be done until 1.0. We're gonna get a full campaign, and given the peeks we got in FFFs and the "Introduction" mission we have now, I expect a reeeally good experience from this. Also, every GUI, the sounds, the icons, .... the water ? we never speak about water, but it's still in low res, right ?

Can't wait to see the final product. But it deserves its crafting time.

[Filter62]

When game is ready for release even more than any AAA title years after release, and they still take another year to polish it... Dayumn maaaaaaaan... Best Developers ever. XD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAGokcw1ajk

[kachiun]

25 september? Will be a nice birthday present for me

[Oktokolo]

Would be nice if the cover art would show something that would actually work ingame.

You might want to research, what else is released xmas 2020 - maybe, delaying or rushing your release a bit avoids it being shadowed by a pile of "AAA" titles clogging the mainstream games media...

[Ohz]

Am I the only one who feel some anger on this 1.0 annoucement?
I hope everything is ok....

[ThunderFD]

25 september? Will be a nice birthday present for me

Another one!