Almost June & 0.5.0

[metzyn]

Its nearing June... excited to see 0.5.0!

[MF-]

Please don't push them. They are working on it almost 24/7.
Please build up your excitement and release it at the release day

[metzyn]

Where was the push? All I said was that I'm excited for 0.5.0 and it was last slated for sometime in June. I've noticed you're quite harsh with a lot of your posts, at least in my direction. First it was a negative critique on my FIRST mod and now blatant misreading of this post. Tone it down a bit.

[MF-]

Where was the push? All I said was that I'm excited for 0.5.0 and it was last slated for sometime in June. I've noticed you're quite harsh with a lot of your posts, at least in my direction. First it was a negative critique on my FIRST mod and now blatant misreading of this post. Tone it down a bit.

--> "It's almost june...." <-- there
Stating that it's near the release date is, for some reason, considered as pushing and will likely will have such effect to the devs.
Unfortunately the factorio library night wasn't recorded. You would understand the excitement timing importance better if it was.
You are the one who judges me by 2 posts out of more than 400 (and haunts me via by-default-enabled e-mail notifications)

Did any of my posts look like those below?

Did you notice my post under each your post? Because I think you did, even though they were not there.
PS: I actually do have an (irrelevant) problem with you - your activity in the modding section which cannot be blocked from the news feed ("view unread posts")
PS2: If you are used to people always agreeing with you, bad news, you are living in a bubble.

[metzyn]

All I was just trying to show my enthusiasm for the continued development. Devs, I am sorry if my excitement has caused any type of pressure.

I was only judging the posts that were in relation to me, those 400 posts weren't directed toward me thus irrelevant to concern. Why is my activity in the mod section a problem with you? I am only trying to contribute to the community. I do my best to get along with as many as possible so its not a bubble in which I live but a status of harmony (not agreeance) to which I attain. My only issue is that the 2 times you've commented toward me its been in some negative fashion. Please accept my apology and consider this my attempt to make amends with a fellow member.

[MF-]

I was only judging the posts that were in relation to me, those 400 posts weren't directed toward me thus irrelevant to concern. Why is my activity in the mod section a problem with you? I am only trying to contribute to the community. I do my best to get along with as many as possible so its not a bubble in which I live but a status of harmony (not agreeance) to which I attain. My only issue is that the 2 times you've commented toward me its been in some negative fashion. Please accept my apology and consider this my attempt to make amends with a fellow member.

@mod section: PHPbb does not allow me to monitor unread posts by-section. Any activity in a section I don't want to actively follow is thus lightly unpleasing.
Of course that does in no way condemn modding activities! It's nice to have that section so alive

@the comment at your first mod: At the time it looked as if everyone liked IC2. I decided to voice my opinion and chose a wrong place/victim.

@this thread: You would be surprised how much forms could "your work is awesome, really awesome, couldyoupleaseupdateNOW, just awesome" take.
I am glad it wasn't meant how it seemed. That wording would be a clear update request over at minecraftforum.

No problem. See you around!

[Beppe]

I´m also excited for next patch and I suppose I have to add: "no pressure" so I don´t offend anyone

[SilverWarior]

Where was the push? All I said was that I'm excited for 0.5.0 and it was last slated for sometime in June.

While it probably wasn't intentional the title of the topic itself gives impresion as pushing. As soon as I saw the title it was my intention to ask you to not push the developers.
As a game developer myself I know that there is nothing worse than desire to finish something in certain time no mater the costs. I also know that many times it is quite hard to correctly estimate how much time will you need to finish certain thing. So while you are estimating to finish something in a few days it could easily take you a few weks to do that or even more.

Anywhay it is never good to see rushed game becouse usualy such games are full of bugs. Want an example? Stronghold 3 is probably the best example for this.
When stronghold 3 came out it was so buggy that half of the pepole who bought the game werent able to play it without random crashes and in some cases even unable to run it at all.
It took FireflyStudios 5 or 6 patches before they managed to fix the game to a state where it was considered as stable (only some verry rare crashes). And up until now there were 10 patches made for that game so far.
So what was the result of this? Terible game sales and game reviews. How terible?
Unfortunately I can't find one article I read about Stronghold sales but aparently Stronghold 2 HD (HD graphic remake of original game) has soled more copies in just one month that Strongolhd 3 in three months time after it came out. I think that says enough.

I've noticed you're quite harsh with a lot of your posts, at least in my direction. First it was a negative critique on my FIRST mod and now blatant misreading of this post. Tone it down a bit.

While I can't read the first post towards you as it was edited I can say that this second posts is quite in place. Also I don't consider it to be agresive in any way.
But the argue that arose later was compleetly unnecessary.
@metzyn
As MF- sad there is quite big chance that pepole won't always treat you with gloves. This can be justified (you have done someting wrong) or unjustified (person maybe just had a bad day and released some steam on someone). Don't react to quickly or you would just get yourself into lots of unnecessary argues with other pepole. And yes judging someone on just two post is reacting too quickly. You can't judge pepole only by two posts alone. Now if there would be dozen of such posts towards you then you could say "MF- why are you so mean to me?" but not after two posts.
@MF-
The way how you reacted after first three posts was only pouring oil on a fire.

and haunts me via by-default-enabled e-mail notifications

As far as I know PHPbb does alow you to set your prefered configuration about notifying you of the posts in every forum. It even alows you to set prefered notification settings for each thread alone so if there is a forum you would like to be monitoring, but inside this forum is a thread that you don't like to monitor you can always disable monitoring of such thread by opening that thread and changing notification settings for it.
I suggest you take a bit time to actually figure out how notification system of PHPbb works. Yes it is cumberstone but with some work it can still be set up quite properly.

[Arkouda]

You're all stark raving mad.

He said its almost june (true!) which happens to be a month, full of days, he didnt say anything about a specific day.
The devs have said they are looking to release 5.0 in early june;

Factorio 0.5.0 (expected release at the beginning of June)

Now while they have said that, we all expect them to release it when it is/they are good and ready.

The only thing I gather from what metzyn wrote was that he is excited for the next patch of the game.
I myself have the same sentiments, I am truely looking foward to the next patch. There is no push in ones own personal excitement.

There is no push in this implied or actual.
As a developer the only thing I would take from this is that people enjoy my game enough to say that they are looking foward to the future of it.

EDIT; If someone isn't allowed express their joy I have no idea what the world has come to.

[kovarex]

We are pushed by our internal need to finish things, so don't worry, at least we know someone is looking forward to have it.

There will be almost no new gameplay content in the new release. It is mostly performance optimisations, new gui look (this was supposed to take 2-3 days but in fact it took more than 10 days overall and still is not completely finished, but at least the gui is stylable and the style can be modified by mods), bug fixes and graphics for existing pieces (locomotive, splitter, miners), electricity statistics (graphs ...), playability improvements and other small things.

But you know, hundreds of small things take a lot of time, we are going to approach the 5 000 commit mark have already more than 90 000 lines of code in Factorio

The order of things is really not random (the reason why we are not adding much gameplay now)
a) We need to redo and restyle the gui now, to save rewriting work as we expand the game
b) We need to do electric statistics now, so the player will have way to inspect what is going on when we extend the electricity (add more powerful and demanding machines etc)
c) We need to finish graphics of existing machines before making new machines, and new machines should always be already with good graphics.
d) We need to touch the performance along the way, as players will always make bigger factory when the performance is better, and when it gets to edge, we get better (bigger) saves to test the performance on.
e) We need to make the usability and gameplay for the existing stuff better, as it is always better to have less things usable than lot of stuff.

P.S. We have been discussing enemies today, and the next update 0.6 should have some first touch of the enemies.

P.P.S. Here is the preview of the network graph gui (and some miners in the background).

[FreeER]

I'll risk any further arguments about pushing in order to express how much I like the preview you've shown us
THIS LOOKS AWESOME! (my apologies for the caps lol.) And it will help solve a friend's complaint about the menu not looking good I'm sure
Also I'm assuming the 50h is 50 hours, but is this irl hours or ingame hours? Should I assume that you need more than a basic electric pole to get this graph?

P.S. 0.5.0 is not even out and already you have to make us want 0.6.0? You sir, are mean
P.P.S Just my humble opinion but I think someone should take the time and create a new factorio video to help attract people to the game after the 0.5.0 update is out (maybe even update the indiegogo page just in case, not sure how that works after the campaign is done though)

[MF-]

That looks really [s]good.[/s] awesome.
I remember I used to have a GPU that couldn't do some kinds of transparency. I really hope it's not the one I currently use. It probably isn't.

[slpwnd]

P.P.S Just my humble opinion but I think someone should take the time and create a new factorio video to help attract people to the game after the 0.5.0 update is out (maybe even update the indiegogo page just in case, not sure how that works after the campaign is done though)

We are aware that our current main video (the trailer) is getting rather obsolete. I think we will be ready for a new video in cca 1 - 2 months. Our graphic Albert is working real hard on the game looks and I think it is really paying off. We made some experiments in the graphical direction but now have a clear picture about where we are heading. And there are only very few "provisional" (= made by us) pieces in the game left (like enemy spawners, enemy turrets, etc.). Of course the overall look is still lacking (terrain, inconsistencies between machines, etc.) but we will get there.

As kovarex mentioned we haven't added much of the game content mainly because of the graphics. We really need to get the game into the state when it is presentable to the wider audience. And that means fixing what we have now.

Oh and any ideas for the trailer. I was sort of thinking about doing it in a different way than random shots from the game. Maybe we could have it like a mini story. The camera would follow let's say a piece of iron ore from the moment it is mined, slowly progressing through the factory to the moment it is used for instance in the turret. Any other ideas?

[Aza-Industries]

Is that my save in the screenshot? O.o
XD

I can see some nice new graphics for the electric mining drills too. =D

I have much bigger plans for my map. It's gonna be goooood.

EDIT: I'm looking forward to the next update. I'll be able to play again! current version I have isn't saving properly and if I revert to an older version my save is unplayable cause of my logistic bots. I don't feel like starting a new factory just yet either. =P
No rush though, this month I have a few other indie games to keep me interested for a while.

[ssilk]

Trailer:

Edit3: Begins with night. Dawn. A touch of red would be good here, to fake the Aurora.

You see a working factory. Everything is moving. No speaker! No stupid music. Just a little bit wind and the sounds of the machines. Slowly walk around a little bit so you see, that there is someone, which controls all.

Then, slowly, slowly zoom out. More machines. More stuff moving. Miners. Steam engines. Lokomotives comes in and is loaded/unloaded.

Zooming out. You see a border of the "engine"-area. See the woods, lakes etc.
Zooming out. The borders form a circle.
Zooming out. The circle forms a wheel. This is a really big factory!
Zooming out. More forms can be seen. There are other factories? You see it also working. Trains connecting the factories.
Zooming out. Hey, the factories are letters?! What the ....
Zooming out. You see the "Factorio" sign (see up ^^^^^^^^^^^^ ).
Zooming fades slowly out. And you see a whole continent.
The whole zoom should take 2-3 minutes. Speaker says some cool stuff. End.

Alternative: Zooming in instead out. Bringing fast cuts at the end with cool/tricky things built.

Current problem: Zooming should work in this way, that such smooth and slow zoom is possible and that it is possible to zoom out so far. But how cool would that be?

Edit1: Yes, follow some stuff! Mining a piece of iron. Then it is loaded for the train. Riding to the other station a long way. Then unloading it. But I think the whole process until it becomes e. g. a blue potion is another video, for those, which are more interested in the game.

Edit 2: hole with w now. Sorry, this is an ugly behavior I cannot get rid off.

[gr0mpel]

AWESOME new drill graphics!!!

so excited..

[MF-]

That sounds really good.
Do you think it would be possible to see the trains at further un-zoom stages?

Alternatively the final screen fade could be incorporated with falling night and enemies peeking at the screen edges, hinting the dangers a bit.

PS: The holes everywhere are disturbing me. Could you do me a favour and fill their beginning with "W"? (whole)

[MF-]

AWESOME new drill graphics!!!

so excited..

Oh, thanks for the catch. I totally missed them, they are pretty invisible.

[ficolas]

We are pushed by our internal need to finish things, so don't worry, at least we know someone is looking forward to have it.

There will be almost no new gameplay content in the new release. It is mostly performance optimisations, new gui look (this was supposed to take 2-3 days but in fact it took more than 10 days overall and still is not completely finished, but at least the gui is stylable and the style can be modified by mods), bug fixes and graphics for existing pieces (locomotive, splitter, miners), electricity statistics (graphs ...), playability improvements and other small things.

But you know, hundreds of small things take a lot of time, we are going to approach the 5 000 commit mark have already more than 90 000 lines of code in Factorio

The order of things is really not random (the reason why we are not adding much gameplay now)
a) We need to redo and restyle the gui now, to save rewriting work as we expand the game
b) We need to do electric statistics now, so the player will have way to inspect what is going on when we extend the electricity (add more powerful and demanding machines etc)
c) We need to finish graphics of existing machines before making new machines, and new machines should always be already with good graphics.
d) We need to touch the performance along the way, as players will always make bigger factory when the performance is better, and when it gets to edge, we get better (bigger) saves to test the performance on.
e) We need to make the usability and gameplay for the existing stuff better, as it is always better to have less things usable than lot of stuff.

P.S. We have been discussing enemies today, and the next update 0.6 should have some first touch of the enemies.

P.P.S. Here is the preview of the network graph gui (and some miners in the background).

OMGZQASASA that GUI iz awzum compared to the GUI that is ingame now
And fits much better with the game

And now that u guys are modifying the GUIs, will you add that "tabulation" that I was talking about some time ago for custom GUI buttoms on mods?
Lol I cant say anything in a update post without talking about modding

[Aza-Industries]

AWESOME new drill graphics!!!

so excited..

Oh, thanks for the catch. I totally missed them, they are pretty invisible.

Yah no problem.