Friday Facts #183 - Aiming for the release date

[lovely_santa]

I love the little tweaks you are all making while the bigger projects are finishing up, actualy, I don't even mind the delay...

I got one question : Do we get more achievements, like for example finish death world and other difficulties?

[Dev-iL]

When should we expect the new strings in Crowdin? (e.g. "Death World" etc.)

[vanatteveldt]

I love the little tweaks you are all making while the bigger projects are finishing up, actualy, I don't even mind the delay...

I got one question : Do we get more achievements, like for example finish death world and other difficulties?

What about: "finish death world using only flamethrower & flamethrower turrets" ("Hot as hell"?) and "Finish death world without building walls" ("Trumped!")

[Fyzz]

Awesome FFF, really looking forward to .15!

I REALLY like the idea for the map-to-world zoom feature, and I would probably be using that feature a LOT to just check around my factory without having to walk there. However, I personally think that in its current iteration it looks kinda awkward to see part of the screen like you would on the regular view and part of it in the pixelated map view. I think it would look much better if the part that was out of range of your radars/character instead appeared like the regular world, but darkened, kind of like the Fog of War that you see in many RTS games. Plus, I think it would make for a good transition to that RTS-style gameplay I heard you guys mention a while back that you would like to eventually implement.

Thanks for reading, and again, really looking forward to it!

[Darkas]

If there is some time for minor improvements right now, may I make some suggestions? There are some mods that do tiny jobs which I feel improve the quality of life a lot:

• Picker extended, which puts the entity you are hovering over with the mouse in your hand, if you have it in your inventory.
• Copy Assembler Pipe Direction, which copies the rotation of an assembler if it has pipes, which is very handy before you have blueprints.
• Minimap autohide, which hides the minimap if you hover over logistics chests, so you can see the info, if your screen is too small.
• I forgot the name, but there is a mod that lets you disable parts of your power armor, especially personal roboports and exoskeletons using hotkeys.

None of these need a gui (except in the settings), and I think they make gameplay a lot smoother in some cases.

[Mooncat]

Ah! Images! I love this FFF. I'm absolutely fine about the release date. In fact, I'm now expecting it to be in between late April and early May.

I love the map generation presets! Would be nice if it allows adding customized presets too.
Also please really consider the suggestion about adding technologies before unlocking different map info (especially the robot network info and train info).

[AcolyteOfRocket]

If you are not sure about how to colour map objects why not let the user decide ?

Just list all the objects in the game (bonus points if you include items from mods) with a simple RGB colour slider on a menu - you can set it up with some defaults.

Should be simple enough, while, you know, you wait for the art team to finish the nuclear stuff

[Kane]

Maybe for 16 there will be a multi player options from the start where you can allow players to spawn in their own locations, etc without having to be enemies and have these settings all adjustable via the interface without forcing a scenario.

For example:

Shared Research, Friend Turrets, Separate Starts.

[Twinsen]

If there is some time for minor improvements right now, may I make some suggestions? There are some mods that do tiny jobs which I feel improve the quality of life a lot:

• Picker extended, which puts the entity you are hovering over with the mouse in your hand, if you have it in your inventory.

*wink**wink*

[daniel34]

Any word on rotating the train stop names in the map view so that they are readable if you have multiple stops next to each other?

Apparently Rseding91 is doing something about it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... s/degen7o/

I wonder if the whole map extension implementation will eventually move Factorio into some god mode interaction model. I was always wondering, why I had to walk all the way to the south to fiddle with the belt arrangement there. Why not just scroll there and change it?
The more I can do in the map view directly, the less understandable it will be why I have to walk somewhere to do something in normal view.

Are there plans to get rid of the figure alltogether?

You can already play in god-mode by starting a new game using Play --> Custom scenario --> base/sandbox. You can also leave your player body in existing games and do things god-mode-like as explained in this thread.

[Matthias_Wlkp]

Are there any new terrain types considered for .15 or .16? I thought it was mentioned somewhere, that some "fake cliffs", like in early C&C series would be added eventually...

[Jarin]

I've said it before, but I just feel the need to reiterate...

I absolutely love the level of dev communication on this game. If some other games I follow did half as much, I'd be a very happy person.

[Sunder1977]

My takeaway from the FFF:

Single-headed trains.... son I am disappoint...

[KatherineOfSky]

If there is some time for minor improvements right now, may I make some suggestions? There are some mods that do tiny jobs which I feel improve the quality of life a lot:

• Picker extended, which puts the entity you are hovering over with the mouse in your hand, if you have it in your inventory.

*wink**wink*

Oh my! The winking is real! <3

I just started using the Picker mod recently, and it is just wonderful! Glad to anticipate it's arrival in vanilla! Woot!

The map changes look AWESOME -- I especially was delighted to see the icons in place over various assembly areas. The colors of the main structures are looking very clear and useful indeed.

As to placing things on map view -- that's a really interesting concept and would be quite good for plopping solar arrays, biter defense walls, etc. (Definitely a time saver). I can also imagine plopping a blueprint with a huge square of miners, belts, balancer, train station, complete with surrounding walls and lasers. The only thing needed would be a delivery of robots and a supply train!

[mattj256]

I am so excited for 0.15! (Even if it takes 4-6 weeks or whatever.)

Have you thought about releasing 0.15 without nuclear power? Nuclear power is exciting but I (personally) don't think it's worth delaying the release for weeks. You can push nuclear power into a much smaller 0.16 release, similar to the 0.14 multiplayer release.

We are considering whether it should be possible or not to build ghosts, blueprints and use deconstruction planner from the map

If you implement this, please allow an admin to disable it. I don't want a griefer to be able to easily deconstruct the whole base!

[MrGrim]

I wonder if the whole map extension implementation will eventually move Factorio into some god mode interaction model. I was always wondering, why I had to walk all the way to the south to fiddle with the belt arrangement there. Why not just scroll there and change it?
The more I can do in the map view directly, the less understandable it will be why I have to walk somewhere to do something in normal view.

Are there plans to get rid of the figure alltogether?

I hope not. It would completely change the feel of the game. At least things like map blueprint placement and train management feel like the engineer avatar interacting with the technology he's built. How would combat work? Vehicles would no longer be sensible.

The game offers a mode like this you can use as others have pointed out, but, in my opinion at least, the engineer is a critical part of the experience.

[cellular]

Have you thought about releasing 0.15 without nuclear power? Nuclear power is exciting but I (personally) don't think it's worth delaying the release for weeks. You can push nuclear power into a much smaller 0.16 release, similar to the 0.14 multiplayer release.

Nuclear power involves completely redoing steam power as well as I recall, so putting it off to 0.16 probably isn't an option any more - it would take more time to roll back than to complete. That said, I'd like to see it in 0.15 even if it means waiting a couple more weeks - it's one of the big flagship features, after all.

[hansinator]

It was overall much more complicated than expected.

Oh, I never heard that phrase from a developer before!

This is all very good news. I like the polishing work you're doing. It just makes the game a lot nicer.

About the release date: I personally don't care a lot about that it's frequently postponed. Devlopment isn't easy, it takes it's time and the last thing anyone wants is a software release where the developers couldn't finish their work properly because they had to meet a deadline. I know there are people who are desperately waiting for the next version or even complain that it takes so long and question if you're doing the right thing. So I felt this is a good opportunity to share my contrasting opinion

[nagapito]

If there is some time for minor improvements right now, may I make some suggestions? There are some mods that do tiny jobs which I feel improve the quality of life a lot:

• Picker extended, which puts the entity you are hovering over with the mouse in your hand, if you have it in your inventory.

*wink**wink*

AWESOME!!!!!!

Also, about the advanced map settings, you might be getting the recipe changes the wrong way...

First, increasing recipe costs does not make something more challenging, makes it more grindy! Challenge and fun comes from complexity not from having to harvest the double of the resources to progress. That is just grind.

Which take me to the second point which is early game. What most player seem to hate is early game.
Forcing a longer early game might not be the best. Why not have a normal early game and make only mid/late-game harder or even stupidly harder and challenging. We want to build big factories, so, once we have the tools to do it, make it be big. Forcing the players to struggle early game so they can have a late game challenge might not be the thing.

Just look how many skip-early game mods there is and the amount of downloads.... Might be a good indication.

Just something to think about....



And, while you wait for some of the .15 changes be ready, here is a suggestion that might be very easy to implement:

Change your random generator to have to two instances, one that is private and only used by map generation and the second for anything else and exposed to mods.
Give us the chance of having always the same world generation when using the same seed, regardless of the mods. The second generator would be used for mods and resource generation, seeded by map start time, so we could have different resource generations for the same world if we wanted.

[Ohz]

Thank you

This is exactly what was missing in Factorio. Anything else is adding more content, vanilla+ or make your life easier. But this gameplay mode/settings choice was definitely the last bit missing.

To me your game is now complete, anything you add is candies and fun <3

You rules!