Alt-F4 #56 - Factorio's Early Days

[AlternativeFFFF]

For the last Alt-F4 of the year, on the very last day of the year, we wanted to take a look back at *ye olden* days of Factorio. Back when it was still a diamond in the rough, with definite potential, but concrete issues and annoyances as well. We hit up various people in the community and got their hot takes on early Factorio, reminiscing about the time they got into the game, and about how things changed for the better.

Continue reading: https://alt-f4.blog/ALTF4-56/

[aka13]

Great read as always, although it's funny how different perspectives can be.
Never cared about multiplayer, never changed my playstyle, always did the mainbus, never voided liquids, never cared about speedruns.
What's even funnier, I don't remember the car, I don't know why, I have been there since the very beginning. I do remember the devs giving access to early concept arts, and giving our names to buildings.
I did like the old science, though, and alien artifacts. Biters nowadays feel like a chore, but if I disable them, I feel like I am cheating.

The most important update is also forgotten - marathon, and deathworld marathon, where you have completely different logistical overhead. I have never played anything else since deathwolrd marathon became available.
But it is logical, that a speedrunner would not care about that

I agree completely, that the early UI and graphics were painful, but I had to look past them, since a lot of factory building games at that time were even worse. And it was worth it - the core gameplay loop had me hooked after the first couple of hours, and the grace and delicacy of the devs, which grew the game over the years since were worth waiting for.

Soon it will be ten years since factorio came into my life, and it's funny to think, how many things happened and changed since that time.

[ssilk]

Is it ten years? AFAIK the ten years anniversary is about this summer. I hope something “interesting” will happen.

I remember I “joined” the game in February 2013. A college and friend told me to look for this game. It was a bad night. I immediately bought the game, because it was something I long searched for. I thought “Well, the graphics is really, really bad, but it has such a big potential”.

Later I found out, that Factorio is a “dangerous game”, because it hooks the player into this great flow. I played till deep into the night. I remember from that time that I was dreaming from moving belts and steam-engines and not much more. I really like the flow Factorio has, I don’t know any other game that does it so perfectly. But I still think that hard limiting game-time is sometimes a good idea, because when I see how much time some content-creators put into it, I think normal players with a normal job and normal family cannot afford that. And should not try to.

From the Alt-F4:

The same goes for direct insertion, as again this was something that just wasn’t done in the early days of Factorio. Copper wire went onto a belt before it was turned into green circuits; it’s just how things were done.

I remember that direct insertion of copper into green circuits was discussed in the forum long before. It was obvious, that transporting copper wire on belts built up this biiig bottlenecks….

[BlueTemplar]

Well, direct copper wire insertion and the 3:2 assembler ratio for green circuits *is* taught in the (both new and old) old tutorial, but it's probably more recent than that ?

----

AFAIK, the first public version of Factorio (0.1.X?) was released exactly 9 years before this Alt-F4, on the last day of 2012 :
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/demo-is-out

Posted by Tomas on 2012-12-31

After a lot of work we have managed to release the first version of the demo. It is not graphically complete and there might still be bugs and issues, but we nevertheless decided to make it publicly available. Go and get it. The demo consists of a 3-level demo campaign which teaches the basic game mechanics, controls and concepts.

Together with the demo we made alpha version of the game available 'per-request'. The alpha version contains 2 additional campaign levels, freeplay mode and map editor. On top of that there are many more game elements which are disabled in the demo (different inserters, assembling machines, faster transport belts, solar panels, weapons, etc.) If you liked the demo and would like to try the alpha version let us know by email.

We wish you all the best in 2013 and we will work hard to bring you Factorio as soon as possible.

(Note that this was two months *before* even the first trailer and the Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign (screenshots and links to first 3rd party tutorial videos by xisumavoid inside).)

[aka13]

Well, direct copper wire insertion and the 3:2 assembler ratio for green circuits *is* taught in the (both new and old) old tutorial, but it's probably more recent than that ?

It's 4:1

[ssilk]

Yeah, was released end of 2012, but development started IMHO in September (?) 2012. Or earlier?

Why earlier? I mean it would be a very good date to make a party. And to catch up the 1.0 release party.
(If no ugly virus comes into way again).