Factorio Forums

Hey there,

was just wondering what language factorio is being coded in and what engine you use (or is that a selfmade one?)~

edit: so one of the .lua files mentions a C++ backend so i'll go and assume C++ for now ^^

The indiegogo campaign states "The game is written in C++..."

C++, we have our own engine, we just use:

• Allegro library for graphics and input manipulations
• Agui (gui library platform independent with allegro backend)
• Boost for C++ and platform dependent stuff.

The agui was very risky step, as the library was used by only the creator at that time, and we had to solve lot of bugs in that library, but I feel that it has the exact ratio of configurability, simplicity and extendability we need.

When I was starting the developement a year ago, one of my ex co-workers that is also making computer games gave me some advices.
One of these advices was to never do my own engine and use existing one instead, or I will actually do the engine most of the time, not the game.
I did some small research, and I had this feeling, that none engine could actually meet my requirements, I was also afraid, that I will work half a year in an engine and find out it is not powerful enough in some way and I would have very complicated situation.
So I made my engine anyway.
Hard to tell if it was good choice, but now I have something I understand back and forth. I have something I know exactly how to tune and optimise, something that has been written with multiplayer/modding support and multithreading plans in mind and there are not going to be any "nasty surprises".

I can see where your coworker got the idea to not do it yourself, it's a lot of work I imagine.
But at the same time I share your though that it's a great advantage to have everything (or as much possible), made by yourself, that way you can optimize everything for your needs, and you know every functionality it has.

While I also figured it was C++ I wonder more about what libs they are using.
Also how do they handle cross-platform ?
And how did they end-up with json files, it's the first time I see this outside a web related project.


By the way I'm very curious about why with amazing things like MonoGame(XNA open source implementation and cross-platform even for mobiles) around that are supposed to help a lot game developers the Factorio Team choose a more classical approach .

EDIT: It seem like you actually answered almost all of my questions while I was writing them. So you even went as far as making your engine huh, hardcore mode .

Algent wrote:Also how do they handle cross-platform ?

Those libraries are multiplatform, so all we have to do is some small differences concerning directory structure.
Apart that, we need to have build system different for win/osx/linux (although linux and osx share the same Makefile)

Algent wrote: And how did they end-up with json files, it's the first time I see this outside a web related project.

We knew we need some user readable and open data format, and xml is too heavy, so we ended up with json.