I'd agree with this style of placement. I'm constantly having to find a big stretch of belt and copy/paste (which is also a great feature) and use that to place a long run. A simple belt brush, or whatever it could be called, would not overly simplify this mechanic.vedrit wrote: βFri Sep 27, 2019 5:08 pmI think the belt "planner" would be a good idea....mostly.
The only thing I think it should do, though, is place regular belts - no underground - and place them as close to a straight line from A to B as possible with a grid (Any intersecting objects marks that belt as invalid. Do not "path" around it). Make it more a convenience tool for placing long stretches of straight belt, and leave figuring out how to belt inside a dense factory to the player.
Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
When I read Kovarex words I remembered to old Musicboxes. Who never saw one I describe it:
First you put in some money. That process alone was complex, cause you need to calculate how many songs you can play with the money cause you don't get money back.for 75 Pfennige (about 0,40 eurocent) you got 3 songs but for 1 Mark you got 5.
Then you need to choose the songs. On the box there where a big list of songs (written with typewriter, but sometimes also handwritten) and a number.
On the box where also a lot of keys: Letters and numbers. Let's say the song you want to play had the number "A 2" then you need to press (in the right order!) "A" and "2".
What then happened was the best part (in my eyes): In the box part you could look into and there where a lot of singles records in a rotating mechanism. And that rotates now, so that the record that needs to be played was in the position to be grabed by an arm. That arm moves the single out of the rotary and put it on a record player. The arm turns back, the record began to rotate, the player arm moves into position, sinks onto the record and the song begins to play.
And today? Nowadays the same musicbox would not be much bigger than a display on the wall, where you can choose between millions of songs and some loudspeakers and a bass box. The music quality would be miles better than then. It wouldn't take 20 seconds between the songs to play the next song.
.
.
.
Nobody would pay for that.
First you put in some money. That process alone was complex, cause you need to calculate how many songs you can play with the money cause you don't get money back.for 75 Pfennige (about 0,40 eurocent) you got 3 songs but for 1 Mark you got 5.
Then you need to choose the songs. On the box there where a big list of songs (written with typewriter, but sometimes also handwritten) and a number.
On the box where also a lot of keys: Letters and numbers. Let's say the song you want to play had the number "A 2" then you need to press (in the right order!) "A" and "2".
What then happened was the best part (in my eyes): In the box part you could look into and there where a lot of singles records in a rotating mechanism. And that rotates now, so that the record that needs to be played was in the position to be grabed by an arm. That arm moves the single out of the rotary and put it on a record player. The arm turns back, the record began to rotate, the player arm moves into position, sinks onto the record and the song begins to play.
And today? Nowadays the same musicbox would not be much bigger than a display on the wall, where you can choose between millions of songs and some loudspeakers and a bass box. The music quality would be miles better than then. It wouldn't take 20 seconds between the songs to play the next song.
.
.
.
Nobody would pay for that.
Cool suggestion: Eatable MOUSE-pointers.
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eradicator
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Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
That sounds like running the spotify app on a smart tv. Some people *do* pay for that regrettably.
Author of: Belt Planner, Hand Crank Generator, Screenshot Maker, /sudo and more.
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Mod support languages: ζ₯ζ¬θͺ, Deutsch, English
My code in the post above is dedicated to the public domain under CC0.
Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
I think "some people" is a registered trademark, you should be careful.eradicator wrote: βFri Sep 27, 2019 8:22 pmThat sounds like running the spotify app on a smart tv. Some people *do* pay for that regrettably.
Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
I'm enthousiast (and may go overboard xD) that we are on the same line about that convenience. It feels as a point others tried to make in responses earlier.
Excellent post about the juke boxes. It was reasonable to pay for a song on these machines because they required a lot of maintenance and manual updating. I could make a analogy to fluid mixing prevention. No fluid mixing prevents mistakes, but also prevents the succes of having a fragile and over complex system run fluently. (you even must start your factory with flaring now).
I'm not really sure what a belt bendy diving belt planner would solve, since iterating the right position of a bend or a underground belt is a process, and thereby small scale factory development ("Yes, i actually can fit a electric pole or a second inserter in there"). Drawing belts is the fun rewarding output of producing and transporting them. But i assume i missed some complaints about how tiring it is to scale up early on. In later states of the game the ghost printing of blueprinting are suffice strong tools, especially now we have copy paste.
But i see the point of a easier way to directly plot (multiple parallel) simple straight lines, missteps are annoying. Could/should that be implemented to walls aswell (or treat them like concrete)?
And +1 for evealuating the oil change or its shape.
Excellent post about the juke boxes. It was reasonable to pay for a song on these machines because they required a lot of maintenance and manual updating. I could make a analogy to fluid mixing prevention. No fluid mixing prevents mistakes, but also prevents the succes of having a fragile and over complex system run fluently. (you even must start your factory with flaring now).
I'm not really sure what a belt bendy diving belt planner would solve, since iterating the right position of a bend or a underground belt is a process, and thereby small scale factory development ("Yes, i actually can fit a electric pole or a second inserter in there"). Drawing belts is the fun rewarding output of producing and transporting them. But i assume i missed some complaints about how tiring it is to scale up early on. In later states of the game the ghost printing of blueprinting are suffice strong tools, especially now we have copy paste.
But i see the point of a easier way to directly plot (multiple parallel) simple straight lines, missteps are annoying. Could/should that be implemented to walls aswell (or treat them like concrete)?
And +1 for evealuating the oil change or its shape.
Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
The talk of inconvenience making gameplay more interesting actually made me think of landfill and cliff explosives: it's way more interesting to try to arrange your base when there's Stuff In The Way.
Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
totally agree on everything you said in this FF. Making things easier totally spoil the fun. Auto layer of belt would be TERRIBLE!!! i.e. SC2 is a great game ... but i am still a fan and keep playing BW for the reason mentioned in this post.
Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
You actually bring light to another principle: making a game more accessible can cheapen the experience. It sucks for some, but accessibility shouldn't be regarded as always a good thing. Albeit like most things it's a balancing act.deef0000dragon1 wrote: βFri Sep 27, 2019 2:20 pmOn some of the stuff brought up in the WoW section, I think that it is important to understand WHY they added the tools they did. If for example, you were the only person in your group of friends who plays, or if you aren't very good in chatting, being able to find a group to play this content might be almost impossible. With the tool however, that content is opened up to you. not to say that it doesn't have the downsides mentioned, but it DOES have it's upsides and it was made for a reason. Sometimes QoL for one person = Accessibility for another person.
Last edited by argbla on Fri Sep 27, 2019 9:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
I think this is a very introspective post, and have several observations based on my experience when I worked in IT, and also the large number of different types of games I have played.
I think what you are intending to do, working on several features concurrently, with each feature, in a different phase makes a lot of sense. Based on the depth of the Factorio in it's current state, this option is a good one. What I have learned from experience, is to minimize what I refer to as "scope creep". Scope creep is the process by which the original statement of requirements are changed over this. This change is usually 2% per month, but can be less on a well designed and managed project, or much more on a poorly designed and managed project. My experience, is that for a good statement of requirements about 40-50% of the time needs to be spent defining what the current situation is, what the final outcome should be, and a road-map of how to get there, i.e. the project plan. The more specific the project plan, the better it is. This is where taking a massive release, like going from .17 stable to .18 stable, and having several minor releases makes sense.
Regarding developers verses debuggers. Also from experience, the major "classes" of developers are managers, generators, debuggers, in the same way that in a massive role-playing games, like wow that you mentioned, there are tanks, damage dealer, healers. There are also some classes, depending on the game where the avatar will for example have some attributes of both a tank and a healer. That means that, if they are properly experience and resourced, they can fit either role. Developers are like that also, being able to function for example as an idea person, or a debugger. Like in role playing games, a pure healer will always be better then a half healer and say half a damage dealer, an IT professional who is a pure debugger, or a pure tester (Boskid) will excel in that role beyond everyone's expectations. This in term, brings up an observation and prediction, over time, as the Factorio team grows, over time there will be more focus on each developers innate specialization, where someone will be producing new ideas, and another person will be coding it, and a third will be focusing on testing and debugging it.
Over time, it is normal for a game to morph, via new releases. When a new type of game or a new genre is released, it is a what I call a game changer. Dungeon Master for RPGs, Ultima for PVP, are two such examples, along with Factorio for construction type games. As the game or gandre matures, it is important continue to enhance the game, but not at the expanse of that make that game so unique and special. It is important to keep the core of the game the core, and not try to "program the kitchen sink" by turning a game like Factorio, into force on force, a dungeon crawler, an RPG with classes and levels, and so on. I have seen way to many games, and game companies try to make their game everything in every category, and in the end, that company suffered. Examples that comes to mind Fallout or the Elder Scrolls franchises. Both those franchises moved their marque game away from what the core was, and as a result, the most current release has no were near the following that the first release had. On the other side of the spectrum, we have Civilization franchise, which in spite of fairly substantial changes possible victory conditions, is still fairly a very viable game. I would personally like Factorio to be in the class of long running fun games, with version 17, not 0.17.69 but version 17.0.0.
Personnaly, If I want to play an expansion game and research game, I would load up something like Stellaris or Civilization, if I want a dungeon crawler, I'll pull up something like Darkest Dungeon, or single user Diablo, or one of the many rogue like games such as ADOM or Stone Soup.
If I want to play a shooter, then Descent or Vega Strike. Old does not necessary mean bad, and I think it is great that the Factorio staff is looking at other games, and what other games did in the past, and what other games are currently doing. The key question when talking a look at functionality from other games, is does this "wiggit" from this other game make sense to be introduced to Factorio?
Hiladdar
I think what you are intending to do, working on several features concurrently, with each feature, in a different phase makes a lot of sense. Based on the depth of the Factorio in it's current state, this option is a good one. What I have learned from experience, is to minimize what I refer to as "scope creep". Scope creep is the process by which the original statement of requirements are changed over this. This change is usually 2% per month, but can be less on a well designed and managed project, or much more on a poorly designed and managed project. My experience, is that for a good statement of requirements about 40-50% of the time needs to be spent defining what the current situation is, what the final outcome should be, and a road-map of how to get there, i.e. the project plan. The more specific the project plan, the better it is. This is where taking a massive release, like going from .17 stable to .18 stable, and having several minor releases makes sense.
Regarding developers verses debuggers. Also from experience, the major "classes" of developers are managers, generators, debuggers, in the same way that in a massive role-playing games, like wow that you mentioned, there are tanks, damage dealer, healers. There are also some classes, depending on the game where the avatar will for example have some attributes of both a tank and a healer. That means that, if they are properly experience and resourced, they can fit either role. Developers are like that also, being able to function for example as an idea person, or a debugger. Like in role playing games, a pure healer will always be better then a half healer and say half a damage dealer, an IT professional who is a pure debugger, or a pure tester (Boskid) will excel in that role beyond everyone's expectations. This in term, brings up an observation and prediction, over time, as the Factorio team grows, over time there will be more focus on each developers innate specialization, where someone will be producing new ideas, and another person will be coding it, and a third will be focusing on testing and debugging it.
Over time, it is normal for a game to morph, via new releases. When a new type of game or a new genre is released, it is a what I call a game changer. Dungeon Master for RPGs, Ultima for PVP, are two such examples, along with Factorio for construction type games. As the game or gandre matures, it is important continue to enhance the game, but not at the expanse of that make that game so unique and special. It is important to keep the core of the game the core, and not try to "program the kitchen sink" by turning a game like Factorio, into force on force, a dungeon crawler, an RPG with classes and levels, and so on. I have seen way to many games, and game companies try to make their game everything in every category, and in the end, that company suffered. Examples that comes to mind Fallout or the Elder Scrolls franchises. Both those franchises moved their marque game away from what the core was, and as a result, the most current release has no were near the following that the first release had. On the other side of the spectrum, we have Civilization franchise, which in spite of fairly substantial changes possible victory conditions, is still fairly a very viable game. I would personally like Factorio to be in the class of long running fun games, with version 17, not 0.17.69 but version 17.0.0.
Personnaly, If I want to play an expansion game and research game, I would load up something like Stellaris or Civilization, if I want a dungeon crawler, I'll pull up something like Darkest Dungeon, or single user Diablo, or one of the many rogue like games such as ADOM or Stone Soup.
If I want to play a shooter, then Descent or Vega Strike. Old does not necessary mean bad, and I think it is great that the Factorio staff is looking at other games, and what other games did in the past, and what other games are currently doing. The key question when talking a look at functionality from other games, is does this "wiggit" from this other game make sense to be introduced to Factorio?
Hiladdar
Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
I wanted to bring up a point about this. Getting your mount in wow doesn't change the way you play. It gets you to the dungeon or questing area faster but it does not change your combat rotation/cycle. It changes how fast you can do things for sure and is super convenient to have(I love my ghost wolf), but I still have to kill the same mobs in the same way.Getting first mount at level 40 for 100 gold? You have to walk a lot before you get it and it might feel annoying at times. But when you actually get it, it means A LOT. Similar as how it is a game changer to get construction robots/logistic robots/power armor. Getting there isn't easy, and there are certainly a lot of moments where you/we feel like having these sooner might be more convenient. But it would just decease how great and valuable upgrade it is.
Logistics bots and to some extent construction bots DO change the way you play. Designing a belt fed factory and a logi-bot fed factory are two very different designs. I am sure this was brought up in the bots vs belts megathread but I will bring it up here again. Many users feel the need to get to bots to design a "proper" factory. You do not have all of the tools available to play the game until you have logistics bots. The further back that is pushed the more game you have to "grind through" to get to the actual game play experience.
That is the crux of that issue, at least for me.
PS - You have numerous typos in this FFF. Spell checker spotted 3 just in the limited text I quoted for this post.
Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
You know I have to push "play" on my tape loops, right? I promise to keep it short:The topic that connects it all is "Making things more convenient isn't always making things better".
Can we have the old assembler buffering behavior back? And if you're feeling generous the per-item splitters?
I miss the old Factorio, where getting absolute peak performance meant dealing with quirks that were a whole game level all in themselves.
Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
Okay so I made a bit of investigations. When using Gog Galaxy (I usually don't), the last version of Factorio is indeed 0.17.69. However when downloading directly from their website what they call the offline backup game installer, Factorio is still in 0.16.51. I suspect that it will get updated at some point. But I'm a bit disappointed by Gog, it's inconsistent and it looks like they force their users to Gog Galaxy, which feels more and more like a DRM non-free solution
Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
eradicator wrote: βFri Sep 27, 2019 8:22 pmThat sounds like running the spotify app on a smart tv. Some people *do* pay for that regrettably.
They pay for using. I paid for that, too, but also for looking how music is played nicely. Big difference.
Cool suggestion: Eatable MOUSE-pointers.
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Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
Blizzard: Why improve the game when you can improve your litigation process!?
Blizzard: Innovation through litigation!
Blizzard: Innovation through litigation!
Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
Nuclear pie
Grid of constant combinators (100x100). Grid outputs area left after nuking. Area is subtracted from 10k, to get nuked area. It's then divided by radius squared to estimate PI. (circuit doesn't yet automatically find nuked diameter; could be done by finding constant combinator row whoch outputs minimal number)
Grid of constant combinators (100x100). Grid outputs area left after nuking. Area is subtracted from 10k, to get nuked area. It's then divided by radius squared to estimate PI. (circuit doesn't yet automatically find nuked diameter; could be done by finding constant combinator row whoch outputs minimal number)
- Screenshot_2019-09-28_at_01.05.10.png (5.74 MiB) Viewed 6486 times
Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
That ranks with the most Factorio things I've ever seen.wellczech wrote: βFri Sep 27, 2019 11:39 pmNuclear pie
Grid of constant combinators (100x100). Grid outputs area left after nuking. Area is subtracted from 10k, to get nuked area. It's then divided by radius squared to estimate PI. (circuit doesn't yet automatically find nuked diameter; could be done by finding constant combinator row whoch outputs minimal number)
Screenshot_2019-09-28_at_01.05.10.png
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greasemonkey0042
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Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
+1 to Optera, RocketManChronicles, and T-A-R on revisiting the Basic Oil Processing changes, and I'm a player that had the sprawling-tank-farm problem in my very first factory. Once the evil fluid mixing was stamped out (THANK YOU DOMINIK), I always thought the multi-fluids puzzle was figuring out how to sink Heavy and Light Oil through Solid Fuel->Splitter->Boilers during that narrow window when you only need Plastic Bars. (Or maybe that's just me? I do like having flamethrower ammo as early as I can.) The power side-effects were always great too since Solid Fuel goes so much farther than Coal, and it helped me bootstrap into Uranium processing nice & smoothly.
(First time poster, so I have to include the obligatory: Thank you devs [and the awesome modding community!] for the 1200+ glorious hours I've gotten to spend with your work! 300 of those are down to Pyanodon alone, and I haven't even touched Space Exploration yet.)
(First time poster, so I have to include the obligatory: Thank you devs [and the awesome modding community!] for the 1200+ glorious hours I've gotten to spend with your work! 300 of those are down to Pyanodon alone, and I haven't even touched Space Exploration yet.)
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5thHorseman
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Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
They didn't say that to imply this. They said it to justify waiting so long for construction bots.
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factoriouzr
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Re: Friday Facts #314 - 0.17 stable
I'm glad stable is finally out and you guys are getting back to feature development.
I have been waiting for about a year and a half or so since you announced the improvements to the blueprint library for a polished blueprint library experience and as part of this it's crucial to have the ability to update existing blueprints by re-taking them but keeping all their settings, names, icons, checkboxes etc.
I'm also glad you guys are finally moving to faster feature releases and splitting the team so you can work on new features and bug fixes at the times time. I suggested this several times over the last few years. Glad you guys are finally trying it. I think this will be a big improvement to us, the players and to the staff in giving them variety. It's always easier to fix bugs on something that is fresh in your mind then having to come back to it a year later since it takes that long for every majour release of factorio.
It's all good stuff. Enjoy your vacations and please prioritize the blueprint improvements as it's such an important feature that bothers me that it's not implemented nicely.
Thanks
I have been waiting for about a year and a half or so since you announced the improvements to the blueprint library for a polished blueprint library experience and as part of this it's crucial to have the ability to update existing blueprints by re-taking them but keeping all their settings, names, icons, checkboxes etc.
I'm also glad you guys are finally moving to faster feature releases and splitting the team so you can work on new features and bug fixes at the times time. I suggested this several times over the last few years. Glad you guys are finally trying it. I think this will be a big improvement to us, the players and to the staff in giving them variety. It's always easier to fix bugs on something that is fresh in your mind then having to come back to it a year later since it takes that long for every majour release of factorio.
It's all good stuff. Enjoy your vacations and please prioritize the blueprint improvements as it's such an important feature that bothers me that it's not implemented nicely.
Thanks