Friday Facts #343 - Environmental particle effects

[xARCHONx]

This is great.
Having a minimal loadable form of the engine will really help in creating standalone content.
One thing though, the way that mods are currently loaded still doesn't make it as flexible as Garry's Mod.
Imagine having to restart the entire game every time you load savegames or servers.
If we had some way to dynamically load/unload mods, it would allow for much greater flexibility, although I have a feeling that the way the current engine loads the sprite atlas complicates things.

[someone1337]

Please inegrate the rest of my mod into basegame too! @posila @dom

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Realistic ... ionCleanup

As in: why would bushes stay if you built for example an Assembly machine over them?

[Mooncat]

Imagine the devs also implement camera shake and distortion (shock wave), now the explosion is perfect.

[Omnifarious]

So... let me get this straight, currently, the methods for decoration removal are as follows:

1. Placing entities
2. Placing tiles (sometimes repeatedly to remove all decoratives)
3. Grenades (and possibly other explosions)
4. Assorted mods

Am I missing any?

Removing decoratives in the options menu. I've done this on low-end graphics hardware.

[N35t0r]

I somehow like that some decoratves remain after paving, but I would rather have stone bricks remove some, concrete remove some more, and refined concrete remove all.

[BattleFluffy]

I don't understand why laying tiles doesn't remove vegetation, or why would I prefer having craters instead...

Craters are temporary and disappear after a little while, leaving nothing but beautiful clean concrete.
As for why laying tiles doesn't remove vegetation? Well, maybe it should.. But from the perspective of "making an artisticly pleasing base" it's nice to have both clean and vegetated-concrete available.

I'm in two minds about whether placing background tiles should remove vegetation.
Placing concrete in real life generally means all vegetation gets removed. :p
When making a nice looking base, clean concrete is definitely more useful in a majority of scenarios. But not all scenarios.
Requiring large explosions to remove vegetation gives an additional purpose to the many different types of explosives available.
On the other hand, should there just be a filter in the deconstruction planner for removing vegetation?
Should right-click allow the player to "mine" the vegetation?

I'm not sure what's best. Going to watch the discussions with interest though. :>

[RobertTerwilliger]

There shouldn't be decoratives on paths/concrete in the first place. Placing down tiles should automatically pave over them. It's one reason why I turn them off altogether

+1.

At times like this, I wish there was just "thumb's up" button, 'cause posts like this one up to this paragraph feels just like flood

[MakeItGraphic]

Please inegrate the rest of my mod into basegame too! @posila @dom

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Realistic ... ionCleanup

As in: why would bushes stay if you built for example an Assembly machine over them?

that link abbreviation got me "Realistic Ion Cleanup"

[someone1337]

So... let me get this straight, currently, the methods for decoration removal are as follows:

1. Placing entities
2. Placing tiles (sometimes repeatedly to remove all decoratives)
3. Grenades (and possibly other explosions)
4. Assorted mods

Am I missing any?

Removing decoratives in the options menu. I've done this on low-end graphics hardware.

This wont remove them from the save game, so they still eat up like 20% of your savegame size...

[someone1337]

Please inegrate the rest of my mod into basegame too! @posila @dom

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Realistic ... ionCleanup

As in: why would bushes stay if you built for example an Assembly machine over them?

that link abbreviation got me "Realistic Ion Cleanup"

me to, had to double-check if I really posted what I wanted to

[FasterJump]

You don't have to respawn the vegetation every tick. You could apply the calculation just once every "day", I think it would be barely noticeable.

[DustFireSky]

Clearing decor with grenades seems more like an ergotherapy for the fingers and a lifetime waster. In my opinion is this an workaround for a broken cosmetic game mechanic. If u build a street, there is no grass/stone/animal after u placed them. Maybe weeks later! But regrown would also be shitty in this game. To much realism is shit and too few too. But if a game mechanic is just annoying, don't matter if this is realistic or not, this should be deleted or be optional.

I would love an option to deactivate/delete the decor, if I build a concrete tile over it. Currently, it looks shitty. I haven't the passion to clear all the decor in a megabase... Think about how long it takes to clear 1000x1000 tiles. Enjoy! And my base is bigger....

For all people who loves to run around and clear the grass again and again....fine. But give me the option to delete the decor with the concrete tiles.

EDIT:

I hope they add some weather effects (rain, snow, storm AND animals! The game lacks the real environmental effects that change the feeling of a game). That would take the game to a new level (not just small cosmetic particle effects that you wouldn't even notice if you didn't know it).

2 Cents. Over.

Factorio devs gets the "lazy bastard" award for this week. Don't take it serious.

[TheBrain0110]

I somehow like that some decoratves remain after paving, but I would rather have stone bricks remove some, concrete remove some more, and refined concrete remove all.

I like this idea the best. Gives a sense of progression, and realism as well. You can have your hastily-laid bricks that don't stop the grass much at all, your fairly uniform concrete with a few weeds poking through the cracks, and then for the real sticklers, the perfectly smooth nature-proof refined concrete

[Scherazade]

Guys, I do not want to sound like I complain; Factorio is a great game and I still enjoy it. But who is asking for environmental particle effects, fancy beacon and pump looks, audio or animated trees?
Seriously, are the people in forums actually actively wishing for this kind of stuff because that is not what I like at all.
I am open for opinions, but I feel like the development process is just the creators of the game playing around with technical capabilities of their software.
Without mods I would have stopped playing a long time ago and even Space Exploration, Angels or Krastorio start to get boring.
Factorio and its mods are amazing, my most played game of all time (maybe it is because of that that I am not happy with the course), but it is heavily lacking content for a long time now.
Can we please stop focusing on particles, sounds and glowing heat pipes and concentrate on content again?

[steinio]

Guys, I do not want to sound like I complain; Factorio is a great game and I still enjoy it. But who is asking for environmental particle effects, fancy beacon and pump looks, audio or animated trees?
Seriously, are the people in forums actually actively wishing for this kind of stuff because that is not what I like at all.
I am open for opinions, but I feel like the development process is just the creators of the game playing around with technical capabilities of their software.
Without mods I would have stopped playing a long time ago and even Space Exploration, Angels or Krastorio start to get boring.
Factorio and its mods are amazing, my most played game of all time (maybe it is because of that that I am not happy with the course), but it is heavily lacking content for a long time now.
Can we please stop focusing on particles, sounds and glowing heat pipes and concentrate on content again?

Yeah and the devs don't do it for you but potential new customers who are interested in a good looking and sounding game.
Not sure if you read the FFFs, you should do it if not, but the developement is reaching it's end with this polishing and pimping with eye candy.

[DanGio]

Can we please stop focusing on particles, sounds and glowing heat pipes and concentrate on content again?

You probably shouldn't expect more content in Factorio 1.0, have a look at the roadmap : viewtopic.php?f=3&t=678

Except, of course, the last-minute implementation of a spider-shaped vehicle which will surprise everyone.

[Optera]

Can we please stop focusing on particles, sounds and glowing heat pipes and concentrate on content again?

I tend to agree.
Polish is nice, but it seems misplaced when fluid mechanics should be rewritten.
Releasing 1.0 with what is basically a placeholder mechanic with tacked on fluid mixing prevention seems lackluster. I'd take the older fluid mechanics allowing fluid mixing over what we currently have.

[TheRaph]

Different particles on different tiles are a nice feature.
But...
Why are the craters always the same?

Throwing a granade on concrete should leave a crater with broken concrete edges.

The difference between particles are hard to see and last not long. The crater lasts even longer and should fit better in surrounding.

And also I would vote for destroyable tiles. Especially when it comes to artillery.
So on green tiles a crater may despawn after a while.
On concrete there might be that tile deleted on impact and replace by dirt. On top of it the sprite for concrete-impact-crater might be placed.
After despawning of crater, the dirt - tile stays visible and needs to replace with concrete by player (or bot).

[aljo]

Can we please stop focusing on particles, sounds and glowing heat pipes and concentrate on content again?

I tend to agree.
Polish is nice, but it seems misplaced when fluid mechanics should be rewritten.
Releasing 1.0 with what is basically a placeholder mechanic with tacked on fluid mixing prevention seems lackluster. I'd take the older fluid mechanics allowing fluid mixing over what we currently have.

I sincerely hope they don't allow fluid mixing again. That was the worst. Unless they provide an easy way to remove the random sulfuric acid (for example) from some long pipe you accidentally let it get into, or maybe pipes at 5+ train stations because you just forgot to do xyz, cleaning that up isn't fun. It's just tedious.

[Optera]

Can we please stop focusing on particles, sounds and glowing heat pipes and concentrate on content again?

I tend to agree.
Polish is nice, but it seems misplaced when fluid mechanics should be rewritten.
Releasing 1.0 with what is basically a placeholder mechanic with tacked on fluid mixing prevention seems lackluster. I'd take the older fluid mechanics allowing fluid mixing over what we currently have.

I sincerely hope they don't allow fluid mixing again. That was the worst. Unless they provide an easy way to remove the random sulfuric acid (for example) from some long pipe you accidentally let it get into, or maybe pipes at 5+ train stations because you just forgot to do xyz, cleaning that up isn't fun. It's just tedious.

When properly implemented fluid mixing can be great fun.
Take oni for example. Half the fun is designing fluid and air filters that don't rely on the power hungry built in automatic filters.