Friday Facts #132 - Side Project

[Toomicek]

Any normal changes?

[KatherineOfSky]

Whislt I use an iPhone, and look forward to the day I can factorio on the phone, I personally disagree with running factorio in the background.

Why? Battery life.

I have my phone already optimised to the max to extend battery life and I have absolutely no interest in a power sucking app killing my already limited battery.

If this wasn't an April Fools' joke, I would humbly advise you that most programs that claim to "run in the background" actually don't. They calculate the amount of time you have shut down the program, then calculate all the production and whatnot that those hours would have provided if the game was running. (Unless it's ACTUALLY running, it won't consume any extra power, CPU, etc.).

In any case... very much an April Fool's joke. (Yay! I despise F2P!!!)

[tecxx]

you really got me with the "stop car to handle factorio notification". my head was like... "are you f**** serious?!"

probably the best aprils fools i have ever read, because of how subtle it was communicated. +1 to you.

[Holy-Fire]

Here's me reading the post:

we have been "secretly" playing with porting the game to the mobile devices!

Good for you.

The simulation will run constantly, most of the time in the background.

Hm, weird but interesting...

so you have time to get away from the meeting at work or pull over with your car when driving and properly handle the incoming biters.

Wait, what? I need to read that again...

so you have time to get away from the meeting at work or pull over with your car when driving and properly handle the incoming biters.

WTF? Do you really think people should and would do that?

so you have time to get away from the meeting at work or pull over with your car when driving and properly handle the incoming biters.

Are you Fing kidding me? Are you trying to ruin your game by turning it into another idiotic casual hook-the-masses game?

so you have time to get away from the meeting at work or pull over with your car when driving and properly handle the incoming biters.

I mean, this reads almost like a... Wait a minute... What date is it again?


I guess I've spent all my energy on my own (awesome) April's Fools joke so I had none left to detect other people's jokes.

[Mendel]

I am strongly opposed to pay 2 automate model in mobile version.
Instead you should do the complete opposite!
Pay to craft manually. automated production should always be free!
This will guide people towards automation and playing the game properly instead of "conveniently" making 100 more conveyor belts by hand because I need them right now and the cenveyor belt factory is a walk away or I didnt bother storing any in box or something like that.

edit: oh wait the whole thing was april fool´s right?

[Garog0201]

i saw the picture and was thinking "who to hell needs such a hex string".. oh wait.. nooooo.. let me check things first...

Code: Select all

0x417072696c20466f6f6c73

hex numbers to text : "April Fools"

really good one

[KingWut117]

I got REALLY upset for a moment xD

[FlyHigh]

April's fool Nice one!

[Factorio2016]

Factorio is dead! Rest in peace!

Let's hope that it's not!

[lyallp]

Damn, caught on an April fools, problem is, being on the other side of the world, April fools day was the day before, for me!

[wwdragon]

*Notices the date and just makes a face*
Weird thing is when I first saw this on friday and tried to reply, I couldn't even access this area of the forum and then most of the posts disappeared from the blog.

[n7m6e7]

Just adding a vote for Don't do free to play.....Its the trend, because, it's the trend. its a self-feeding destructive cycle....fed by every developer who gives up, and says "well... its more profitable to go with the flow."


If you absolutely must, i'd suggest the simple regular/no ad versions. one time payment to get it ad free, but those who just want free fun will endure said ads.

When you put in micro-transactions, you are feeding on people...who cant help themselves. 99% wont spend a penny....but that one percent... you may as well sell beer to an alcoholic. It's just plain not ok.

[Supercheese]

you may as well sell beer to an alcoholic.

Well, somebody's gotta do it!

In other news: Check the date it was posted, bro.

[Sammikins]

I would enjoy it if you maintained Keyboard/Mouse support, since I have a bluetooth set I use for my tablet. I also have two controllers for my tablet, so having controller support would also be pretty cool. Additionally (Totally a pipe-dream), local coop would also be really really cool.

[Brambor]

Hope that it was not an April joke!
And hope that the game will be the same as it is for PC (even thou you were saying something different) nothing like simcity buildit is what I want. Please do not make a completly different game! Thanks.

[jaxfrank]

I'm going to start off by saying that I absolutely love this game and for a while now I have been thinking that it would be awesome if I could play on my phone when I'm not home. However, going with a free to play model as described in the post makes the proposition of a mobile version of Factorio completely unappealing. I would like to be able to transfer saves between my phone and PC and so when I'm home I can play normally but If I want to play on my phone in the car or something I can transfer my file over and play there without feeling any real changes other than the interface. That sounds great to me and I would be willing to completely re-purchase Factorio at full price on my phone if I could do that. I understand that Factorio is addicting and a massive time sink but I do not feel that this is a valid reason to switch to a free to play model. Free to Play in my honest opinion is nothing more than a money grabbing fad. It works, but, it degrades the quality of the game to something that might as well not exist. I would not be willing to play a version of Factorio that followed the model as described in the post. And on top of that I wouldn't even feel comfortable telling my friends that a mobile version exists.

If, however, the free to play model is what you guys decide to follow, I would suggest that you guys provide the ability for us to do as I described before with no mention of in app purchases and no major changes between PC and mobile. This could be an upgrade to something like "Factorio Pro" or what I believe would be even better would be to put the non free to play version as a separate app entirely in Google Play. I don't know if that is even practical but I would like to not hear any mention of in app purchases when I load up Factorio.

I wish you all the best of luck in all further endeavors. Also, I do realize this was posted on April fools day I just hope(and don't hope at the same time) that this isn't a joke.

[SkyShaymin]

Please tell me this is a April fools joke?

[Molay]

I strongly suggest you highlight this post as an Aprils Fool. Reading it today I felt sick in my stomach. Literally. That tingly feeling one gets when anger is about to bubble up. I thought you guys lost your fucking minds and actually thought those ideas were good and innovative and whatnot. I had to read the whole damn article twice to really pay attention and finally it dawned on me that friday was the 01/04... Soooo err, that April's fools was brutally good, just, put a disclaimer on it (or at the end) or you will get many people very nervous and some upset to the point of never visiting your homepage again^^

[Mendel]

if you want, you can go here

http://www.rapidtables.com/convert/numb ... -ascii.htm

copy paste 0x417072696c20466f6f6c73 and click convert

They have April Fools written in hex code in the picture

[RobertTerwilliger]

If you absolutely must, i'd suggest the simple regular/no ad versions.

Yeah, how about a random chance to build a banner instead of assembler?
Or biters running in "try our new battery booster" pixel art pattern?