Friday Facts #113 - Better rail building

[kovarex]

How could we play without it? https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-113

[diego-fm]

Nice!

Damm, now i want to just skip time until 0.13 release...

Edit: Wohooo, first!

[Gandalf]

Damn those automatic curves are sexy.

[bobingabout]

Damn those automatic curves are sexy.

They're not the only curves that are sexy

[AnarCon]

new factorio minigame, dodge them trees

[sillyfly]

With every sneak peak of a new feature you torture us in expectation. This is no exception to this rule - I can't wait to play with it myself, as it looks awesome, and the possibility of more fine-tuned rail pieces (S-bends, wider curves etc.) is great news as well!

[Hakusho]

Please make an option to keep the pathfinding algorithm visible.
I would want to watch this for hours, it looks so calming

(also i might see where i need to chop down one single tree to make a shortcut)

[mngrif]

hhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggg

[hitzu]

One question: why this algorithm avoid trees? If it works like a blueprint doesn't it should just lay tracks on top of the trees marking them to be removed?

[dee-]

Okay. This is officially cool!
Nice usage of established algorithms like A* and entropy encoding.
Very much looking forward

[sillyfly]

So will this make it to 0.12? Gotta ask, because reasons.

The post starts by saying this is work in progress for 0.13, and continues by saying 0.12.18 will be a stable candidate.
So no, this probably has no way of making it into 0.12.

[kovarex]

One question: why this algorithm avoid trees? If it works like a blueprint doesn't it should just lay tracks on top of the trees marking them to be removed?

It will probably work the same way as blueprints. When you hold shift, trees get ignored.

[Narnach]

Sweet new feature! Let the 0.13 hype build up even further!

[hitzu]

One question: why this algorithm avoid trees? If it works like a blueprint doesn't it should just lay tracks on top of the trees marking them to be removed?

It will probably work the same way as blueprints. When you hold shift, trees get ignored.

Ah ok then. Thank you for the clarification.

[Mur]

+1!

[Barhandar]

I have a question. Which of the rail designs here the autolayer cannot do at least as quickly as manually laying curved rails? I'm asking because I'm interested in getting superior upgrades that are actually superior, and not just claimed as such.

[Gandalf]

@Barhandar Lemme also copy-paste my reply from reddit
As I understand it you should still be able to do the equivalent of how laying tracks currently works. You can just 'drag' your rails in very small sections. I.e. if you want to build what is currently a single curved rail you just click where the rail would start and then drag to where it would end.

I took the liberty of stealing this task as I find it quite interesting.

I know that feeling. After spending ages of mundane bug fixing it's the most amazing thing to finally get to work on something fresh that challenges you on a more abstract level. That's why Haskell is so much fun. x)

[Tev]

One question: why this algorithm avoid trees? If it works like a blueprint doesn't it should just lay tracks on top of the trees marking them to be removed?

It will probably work the same way as blueprints. When you hold shift, trees get ignored.

Nice!

Ok looking forward to it

[ratchetfreak]

I hope branching off a existing rails won't be a hassle...

[Marconos]

I'm concerned with not having curved rails that we can build ourselves it will make building tightly compacted depots much more complicated. I love the automation feature, but if I'm right and you are dropping curved rails from being built I'm concerned it will create more issues then it solves. Really curious to actually try it.

The other question I have is large lines that are going 2 - 3k straight lines in length. How do you see these type of lines being addressed?