Friday Facts #143 - Nat Punching Again

[Ojelle]

Ewww..

Exactly the opposite is true.
Shit developer release final software early in a state far more shaky and wobbling then Factorio's alpha (rock stable as a Lighthouse today) ever was.

+1. I'm waiting too and I'm disappointed by the late releases, but being bad with dates is a developer sickness (I know it, I am one of them :p). And if you look at the product, which is what matters in the end, factorio is extremly stable, very well balanced and has a lot of features as well as superior modding support. They're also pretty open to the community and, counting all of this, you get more than your money's worth. Far more. Thank them for being so good and stop insulting these awesome people.

Nothing to add.
You guys are awesome!

I'm with this too
Looking forward to the 27th!

[Zeblote]

0.13, 0.12, 0.11, 0.10... they're all early access versions of the game and everyone playing it is testing it before the official 1.0 release.

I don't think any of the players see it like this

[Ojelle]

0.13, 0.12, 0.11, 0.10... they're all early access versions of the game and everyone playing it is testing it before the official 1.0 release.

I don't think any of the players see it like this

With the current atmosphere nearly 80% of al those 'start small get big' games stay in beta forever. Look at Minecraft, that was way before its official launch not a beta anymore. Even better example, world of tanks is (looking at patch numbers) still a beta while that thing is a cash-cow for the last 3 years at least. They keep updating it, true, but that isn't a 'beta'. Full version was supposed to start with 1, won't ever happen since no coming update will stand out enough to deserve that.

Edit: jej, 100 posts

[Islacrusez]

Redacted, because I was literally being a dick to pretty much everyone.

Bit not redacted:
Keep up the good work devs, late but good is far better than early and bad.

[Quoro]

Developers are doing great job. But that teasing with 0.13 (even though that could be unintentional) was a bit of annoying. Thank you for setting up hard date, though

[Islacrusez]

While people are just discussing how they see things in a polite way, you roll in and tell people what they should do with their time. That's what called negative attitude. Think of it.
/r/factorio would be awesome place for you, folks from there are big fans of downvoting everyone, who dare not to say, how cool game is and how cool developers are. Though, none even said that's not so, they just like reading between lines. Or not reading at all

You're right. My post is negative, and I can barely justify it. If you'd be kind enough to remove your quote, it'd be much appreciated. o7

Edit: still being a dick.

[lrb2_]

Wube could follow our practice, however, and release nightly builds of the new version with the caveat that they are not guaranteed to be stable. That way mod developers can begin to make sure their mods are compatible before release date.

That would be nice. I already asked devs for no-stability-warranty beta release for modders preparation (and also additionnal bug hunting), but they said it was not their politic. That's their choice and I respect it even if I do not fully understand it.

I also wish that the developers would do this. I think that they should ignore all pre-release bug reports and focus on their internal bug-testing only. However, without having implemented a way for them to do so, it would be a burden for them.

Also, that would make it that they couldn't have secret/unrevealed changes, like they teased in their "Factorio development explained in gifs" topic.

[Nova]

You know that is not the point, it's about making sure mods work ON RELEASE instead of months afterwards (yes, even early access releases).

Quick question: How should that be possible? If they release earlier versions for a new version only for mod developer, it will still take the mod teams months. There's no difference between that.
You can't make every new version compatible with old mods. This game is still highly in development, things change and things break. We can be glad that changes like from 0.12.10 to 0.12.11 don't break every mod and that savegames can still be used. Forcing the developers to only do changes that don't break mods would limit their programming capabilities drastically. This would make the game much worse because bad things can't be changed.

You're selling a game in the current state, working mods on each update is the least people may expect.

No, people can't expect that. I don't even know how someone could think that. It's an early version of the game, things change and things break. Especially mods which are a deep change of the game flow. You can maybe expect compatible mods when 1.0 is released.

[Ohz]

Devs,

no deadlines
no hype,
buggy game is not fun anyway,
Means you do an awesome job until today.

Take all the time you need guys.
0.12 is already crazy amazing in contents and possibilities, extremely stable, and mods available are gigantic of creativity and challenge.

Community: we used to be, and we are one of the most creative and passionnate people, with nice talks, ideas and suggestions with balance debates here.
Let's keep this very positive energy here, don't turn shit like Minecraft or League of Legend communities


Thank for all your time.
I remember I paid 7€, 2 years ago.
That's the cheapest ratio fun/cost I ever experienced.

Wait for 0.13 like you hope to see a shooting star, not like you wait for an expected paycheck.

[slindenau]

You know that is not the point, it's about making sure mods work ON RELEASE instead of months afterwards (yes, even early access releases).

Quick question: How should that be possible?

Access to nightly snapshot builds.

[Nova]

Wube doesn't want that because Factorio relies on good reviews with nearly no bugs - if people see the nightly build they will play it and complain about bugs. That will also affect the normal version, even if that doesn't make any sense.

[Unoxxis]

What some of you are obviously fogetting is that 0.12 is the "stable" beta version and it will remain so even in July.

What ist coming out with 0.13.0 is in a matter of fact the "modders prerelease version" of 0.13 you are demanding. And this will be until it is classified as stable with 0.13.x (go guess in the other thread...). Then the stable branch on steam will be updated and 0.13 goes to the major audience.

Obviously it is a naming thing, but I think that technically this is exactly what you guys want. Mods are supposed to be working when 0.13 is classified "stable" - which is still a bit out and will give mod authors plenty of time to get them working.

[Rseding91]

What some of you are obviously fogetting is that 0.12 is the "stable" beta version and it will remain so even in July.

What ist coming out with 0.13.0 is in a matter of fact the "modders prerelease version" of 0.13 you are demanding. And this will be until it is classified as stable with 0.13.x (go guess in the other thread...). Then the stable branch on steam will be updated and 0.13 goes to the major audience.

Obviously it is a naming thing, but I think that technically this is exactly what you guys want. Mods are supposed to be working when 0.13 is classified "stable" - which is still a bit out and will give mod authors plenty of time to get them working.

Alpha, the game is in alpha All versions currently available are alpha versions.

[bman212121]

I'm a little jaded with factorio. I was playing it a week ago, and I got to the point where the game couldn't run anymore because there were too many things going on. But there wasn't enough production to build the (vanilla) items I needed at a less than snail's pace. I have a good, beefy computer too, but for the first time Factorio just couldn't keep up.

We had this issue on our server, everything got really slow and the CPU was at 100% usage. What seemed to help for us with minimizing the amount of enemies on the map. We were heavily polluting so there were thousands upon thousands of AI creatures. Once we went on a big clearing expedition, the server speed picked back up. CPU usage on the server went from pegged at 100% down to 85 - 90% and everything was fluid again. (one core of course) Hopefully one day they might be able to offload some of that work into another thread so you can have even more going on at once!

Recently I also noticed that even on my pc, Factorio was going to town on the cpu. On the client side, it appears that it was threading 8 threads and using 100% of my cpu. I turned down the graphics a bit and after I restarted it was better. I'm not sure if it was the graphics or maybe something else, (debug can add a lot of cpu usage) but it was smooth again. I honestly give them a lot of credit for how well the game handles the number of items that are present. I can't think of another game that even comes close to the shear number of items that are on our map. Let's hope that more optimizations and threading come down the pipe so we can get even crazier!

[brunzenstein]

Anyone knows if the announced and badly needed "blueprint book" will make it into 0.13?

[brunzenstein]

I'm a little jaded with factorio. I was playing it a week ago, and I got to the point where the game couldn't run anymore because there were too many things going on. But there wasn't enough production to build the (vanilla) items I needed at a less than snail's pace. I have a good, beefy computer too, but for the first time Factorio just couldn't keep up.

We had this issue on our server, everything got really slow and the CPU was at 100% usage.

Try converting most of your (especially main-bus) belts to underground belts and see the difference.
It worked for me.

[vaderciya]

I'm a little jaded with factorio. I was playing it a week ago, and I got to the point where the game couldn't run anymore because there were too many things going on. But there wasn't enough production to build the (vanilla) items I needed at a less than snail's pace. I have a good, beefy computer too, but for the first time Factorio just couldn't keep up.

We had this issue on our server, everything got really slow and the CPU was at 100% usage. What seemed to help for us with minimizing the amount of enemies on the map. We were heavily polluting so there were thousands upon thousands of AI creatures. Once we went on a big clearing expedition, the server speed picked back up. CPU usage on the server went from pegged at 100% down to 85 - 90% and everything was fluid again. (one core of course) Hopefully one day they might be able to offload some of that work into another thread so you can have even more going on at once!

Recently I also noticed that even on my pc, Factorio was going to town on the cpu. On the client side, it appears that it was threading 8 threads and using 100% of my cpu. I turned down the graphics a bit and after I restarted it was better. I'm not sure if it was the graphics or maybe something else, (debug can add a lot of cpu usage) but it was smooth again. I honestly give them a lot of credit for how well the game handles the number of items that are present. I can't think of another game that even comes close to the shear number of items that are on our map. Let's hope that more optimizations and threading come down the pipe so we can get even crazier!

Unfortunately my cpu is nowhere near 100% usage, more like 20. I have a huge factory, but I have most of the enemies cleared out so there aren't very many to simulate. Thanks anyways though, itll probably help someone else

[vaderciya]

I think we really need to have a session or forum where the devs listen to the collective opinon on the late game and enemies in factorio, because they've announced that there really won't be that much more added or changed to factorio, specifically, that they want to refrain from adding as many entities as possible.

However, the late game and enemies systems are... mediocre. Not to say they don't work as implemented, they do.
But they don't actually add anything to the game, they're just placeholders.

Who knows, maybe the devs secretly have a bunch of plans regarding this, but it's been three years so without any indication of these things changing,
I think it would be a good idea to petition the devs to change these aspects of the game, as they bring it down, and after all, we want the best factorio possible.

[Kewlhotrod]

Alpha, the game is in alpha All versions currently available are alpha versions.

I don't know what "Alpha&beta" means anymore ...

[Sebb767]

People, do you prefer to play a game developped by :
1) A company that's expert in communication, hype managing, and stuff, but makes poor games
2) A company that's expert in making an awesome game, but doesn't master the complex mechanisms of communication, buzz making, hypr building and stuff ?

I'm the 2) kind of guy. Honestly, if you're more the 1), what the hell are you doing here ? there are literally thousands of dev studios that hype like pros, know how to communicate, and stuff ... and make bad to very bad games. You should definitely play theirs instead of bombarding goods devs that prefer releasing something playable for the next unstable release.

Just to be clear on this: I defended the devs beforehand and I still think they're awesome. I just pointed out what went wrong and that for me it really lowered my anticipation. I like this game, still, and I'll still play it at release if possible (but not long, now its released right into my test phase :p).

Alpha, the game is in alpha :) All versions currently available are alpha versions.

I don't know what "Alpha&beta" means anymore ...

The "old" definitions:
Alpha: Internal tests (like 0.13 right now)
Beta: Public test (like 0.12)
Release: Feature-complete tested product.

The new defintions:
Alpha: It shitty and buggy and we need an excuse*.
Beta: We're kinda on developing it, still don't blame us about bugs. And don't expect anything.
Release: F**k that shit, I'm out.



* Factorio really doesn't need that excuse.