Friday Facts #116 - Strategy Guide

[slpwnd]

Still lost in all the Factorio concepts? Read about the 3rd party Strategy Guide: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-116

[Gouada]

I'm really excited for the server finding feature! The PDF explanation is also cool.

[Jonathan88]

Woohoo! Stable 0.12 release! They're coming quick and fast now

[SomeDuder]

Kinda weird to try and release a strategy guide for a game which is still heavily in its development phase.

Actually... a strategy guide in the year of our Lord 2015? Or did I take a timemachine back to 1995? It honestly comes across as a dishonest cashgrab. Why bother with a strategy guide when there's a wiki and approximately 1000+ Youtube channels dedicated to Factorio?

[y.petremann]

I can't see any image in the blog post

[daniel34]

I can't see any image in the blog post

For me it works, but here you go:

[Gandalf]

Yay FFF!

I have to say though, I doubt that a lot of players who are new to the game are happy to spend an additional 5 bucks on a strategy guide after they already bought the game. Then again maybe that's just me being stingy.

More importantly though, there are two features the multi-player games browser definitely needs:

• The server name filter input always visible (not behind some tab)
• A favorite servers list!!

There are many more things that can be added to improve it, but from my experience the name filter and favs list are the most important (and really the only) features I use in these types of server lists.

[y.petremann]

I can't see any image in the blog post

For me it works, but here you go:

The image link I got is
https://eu2.factorio.com/assets//img/bl ... es-gui.jpg

what link do you got ?

[cpy]

Will game automatically download mods from server that is trying to join if client is missing some? For people that use custom mods that can't be downloaded anywhere?

[daniel34]

I can't see any image in the blog post

For me it works, but here you go:

The image link I got is
https://eu2.factorio.com/assets//img/bl ... es-gui.jpg

what link do you got ?

Yes, your link gives a 404 error for me too.
I am shown the image at https://eu1.factorio.com/assets//img/bl ... es-gui.jpg (which works)
Seems the blog post did not propagate correctly to all servers

Will game automatically download mods from server that is trying to join if client is missing some? For people that use custom mods that can't be downloaded anywhere?

From the FFF: In the future we are very open to extending this futher (integration with Steam Friends, automatic mods downloads to match the game mods, etc.).

[sillyfly]

Nice

One thing that is missing from the screen, which I think is a must for a game like Factorio, is (average) ping to server. You wouldn't want to connect to a server too far away from you, and have constant lags

[ludsoe]

So unless there are quite a few people who have been holding the bugs reports back (out of pure mercy with us of course=)) the game should be rather stable.

Ive been holding onto a bug report, since its only replicatable with mods, and is very specific. (But reliable and crashes the game every time. (Like the entire game))
Ill make a bug report about for it now I guess. (Oh boy Ludsoe, ruining the excitement.....)

[RuFrozen]

Hey,

Steam provide good API for creating servers, network and communication.
Actually you duplicate Steam services. Did you plan use Steam Services?

[MrDoomah]

Hey,

Steam provide good API for creating servers, network and communication.
Actually you duplicate Steam services. Did you plan use Steam Services?

And talking about steam, will you use the steam workshop to distribute mods?

[CrushedIce]

Great to see that you are working on a better multiplayer experience!

I think there is another point which you should take a look at:
In my oppinion, the most annoying thing about multiplayer right now is the transfer of the map at the beginning.
I'm currently playing a map with a friend which has ~30MB and it always takes more than 5 minutes to transfer. We even try to expand the map as little as possible in order to increase the size not even more.
It is even worse if you play with more players because (based on my experience) the players should join after each other.
I would love to see a feature, which allows to continue playing without transferring the whole map if the players have the same state of the map saved.

I think that wouldn't be too difficult to implement. For example the game could be paused by default after loading and then check whether the player who tries to join has a save with the same checksum.

Keep up the good work!

[MeduSalem]

Well somehow I am against the idea of selling that guide. I mean an optional donation may be fine to cover some of the work that went into it but outright selling a strategy guide as the only way to obtain a semi-official guide is something I am not really that fond of.

I frankly think that selling How-To's for money was an option back when internet was not a thing and there were no real sources on how to beat a game. Especially in the year 2015 where everyone who is able to buy and download Factorio MUST have access to the internet in some form anyways it sounds kinda ridiculous, because all of the stuff that will be covered in the guide one can probably find for free either here on the Forum, the official Factorio Wiki, on Reddit or elsewhere and in multiple different fashions and viewpoints.

Somehow it just remembers me of Nintendo Power times where Nintendo eventually went so far that some of the games could not be beaten without buying a damn magazine first because everything got more and more cryptic over time. I think we have progressed beyond that point.

So it seems like a rip-off for inexperienced users who might not know that all the information is available for free too for one part and on the other hand someone is making money with the ideas other people probably had first, which honestly I don't find okay either. And one will never be fully able to determine where a particular approach to something really originated from. Crap like that only causes bad blood and causes the community to split in seperate parties with opposing opinions.

Since we are not patenting strategies or something I don't think anyone should make a profit out of that because I think sharing strategies is something that happens on a good-will basis and not on a profit basis. If that good will stops in fear of someone taking the next step by slapping it into a guide and selling that information then people will eventually stop sharing strategies which is a lose-lose to everyone.

I mean we are talking about a game here. There have to be limits on what should or can be monetized.


Anyways I would have thought that a link to the official Factorio Wiki might be included into the game menu eventually so more people would use that as a source of information, which is the case with most games nowadays which can't just be explained with a single table of keyboard controls. They all have either links included to official Wikis that the developers either maintain themselves or are hosted by gamepedia.com or wikia.com and maintained by the community in something like a partnership.

[Klonan]

Well somehow I am against the idea of selling that guide. I mean an optional donation may be fine to cover some of the work that went into it but outright selling a strategy guide as the only way to obtain a semi-official guide is something I am not really that fond of.

I frankly think that selling How-To's for money was an option back when internet was not a thing and there were no real sources on how to beat a game. Especially in the year 2015 where everyone who is able to buy and download Factorio MUST have access to the internet in some form anyways it sounds kinda ridiculous, because all of the stuff that will be covered in the guide one can probably find for free either here on the Forum, the official Factorio Wiki, on Reddit or elsewhere and in multiple different fashions and viewpoints.

Somehow it just remembers me of Nintendo Power times where Nintendo eventually went so far that some of the games could not be beaten without buying a damn magazine first because everything got more and more cryptic over time. I think we have progressed beyond that point.

So it seems like a rip-off for inexperienced users who might not know that all the information is available for free too for one part and on the other hand someone is making money with the ideas other people probably had first, which honestly I don't find okay either. And one will never be fully able to determine where a particular approach to something really originated from. Crap like that only causes bad blood and causes the community to split in seperate parties with opposing opinions.

Since we are not patenting strategies or something I don't think anyone should make a profit out of that because I think sharing strategies is something that happens on a good-will basis and not on a profit basis. If that good will stops in fear of someone taking the next step by slapping it into a guide and selling that information then people will eventually stop sharing strategies which is a lose-lose to everyone.

I mean we are talking about a game here. There have to be limits on what should or can be monetized.


Anyways I would have thought that a link to the official Factorio Wiki might be included into the game menu eventually so more people would use that as a source of information, which is the case with most games nowadays which can't just be explained with a single table of keyboard controls. They all have either links included to official Wikis that the developers either maintain themselves or are hosted by gamepedia.com or wikia.com and maintained by the community in something like a partnership.

I think you're forgetting that this is a piece of work that must have taken hundreds of hours to put together, countless nights and time searching compiling and disseminating the game and its mechanics so for the communities benefit. Xterminator has already contributed so much to this community, asking nothing in return, and now for this project he wants to ask for a small amount to cover his time and effort.

I don't think its fair in the slightest to say it 'seems like a rip-off' when it's a really nice guide (which i'm assuming you haven't actually read or looked at) and the fact that a portion of each sale goes back to the factorio devs shows that this isn't about greed or trying to mislead people into parting with their money, but to help the game and the community.

[ske]

Joining in multiplayer with a big map indeed is a major pain right now. But I think it could be doable to make joining happen without any interruptions for the running game by using a second server instance for joining players.

Normal mode:
* The players are connected to the main server and a second server instance follows the game by applying the game state updates received from the main server.

Player joining:
* Current players still play on the main server without any interruptions.
* The second server stops updating but places the updates in a queue. It then transfers the map to the client and afterwards both apply all updates until they match the main server. At this point the player is handed over to the main server and other players can join.

I think this would be pretty easy to implement by creating a headless server instance and some management code to switch between the servers. (Inb4 kovarex tells us that headless servers are not possible or the network code does not allow for two servers running in the same process or an even better idea is already in trello buried under 1000 other ideas.)

[madpav3l]

Well somehow I am against the idea of selling that guide. I mean an optional donation may be fine to cover some of the work that went into it but outright selling a strategy guide as the only way to obtain a semi-official guide is something I am not really that fond of.
...

I think you're forgetting that this is a piece of work that must have taken hundreds of hours to put together, countless nights and time searching compiling and disseminating the game and its mechanics so for the communities benefit. Xterminator has already contributed so much to this community, asking nothing in return, and now for this project he wants to ask for a small amount to cover his time and effort.

I don't think its fair in the slightest to say it 'seems like a rip-off' when it's a really nice guide (which i'm assuming you haven't actually read or looked at) and the fact that a portion of each sale goes back to the factorio devs shows that this isn't about greed or trying to mislead people into parting with their money, but to help the game and the community.

I agree, nowadays when people buy stupid skins for games for 5-10$ is 4.29$ for a strategy guide nearly nothing...

[Vile]

Another thing that would be a good idea to add to the matching screen: how far along the server is. If I'm looking for a brand new server to start fresh, I would hate to have to download each map until I found one by luck. Maybe a map size or current research completion would work for this.