Friday Facts #150 - New Terrain Experiments

[slpwnd]

Weekly dose of Factorio news is here: http://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-150

[imajor]

Will different biomes affect the gameplay? Or is it just aesthetic?

[Blubberbub]

Code: Select all

start update thread(); //update all the entities: update the game state for 0, 1 or more ticks so we get 60 UPS

I hope that is a simplification and you don't actually start a new thread in the main loop.

[GewaltSam]

That red desert sure looks nice!

Like imajor asked, while reading I came to the idea that it may be nice to put new ores - if you ever plan on doing some - or other resources especially in one biome. There's something like that already in the game, in that it's way more difficult to find wood in the desert (although, of course, wood isn't really important in vanilla Factorio, especially in bigger quantities). Just an idea; something like that should of course only be for stuff you need very late in the game, or that's some luxury you don't need to progress.
Other than that, less CPU usage sounds great! That does mean that bigger factories with the same hardware are possible, doesn't it? Pretty sure we came to a halt on a factory because of my CPU.

Thanks for the new FFF! I'm very curious about the next FFF, and what your plans for the next two updates might be

[SomeDuder]

Will different biomes affect the gameplay? Or is it just aesthetic?

Doubt it, hasn't been a thing in the past either.

Anyway, good stuff, a little more variation in the browns and more browns can't hurt! Would like to see a bit more consistent terrain generation though, so less segmentation (Even on an alien planet, I doubt that desert > grassland > desert is a logical pattern) and more style.

[devilwarriors]

The last picture in the news is broken for me on steam.

http://steamcommunity.com/games/427520/ ... 8800542433

[brunzenstein]

I like that in Version:
0.13.14 - Date: 05. 08. 2016 - automatic updated for Mac
Optimizations: - Significantly reduced the high CPU usage caused by the main loop logic from 0.13.10.

[Klonan]

The last picture in the news is broken for me on steam.

http://steamcommunity.com/games/427520/ ... 8800542433

Its fine for me, must be a local steam cache issue, as the image is hosted on their CDN

[Grumpalo]

Thanks again for the updates dev team! Really looking forward to the multiplayer rewrite. (Crossed fingers for a ban list seperate from the map files!)

(although, of course, wood isn't really important in vanilla Factorio, especially in bigger quantities)

I don't know about you but wood is always important to me as a resource in vanilla!

[Xterminator]

Great FF this week! Always love to hear about performance optimizations and possibly more UPS gain.

New terrain would be great and would add a lot to the game, at least visually! The initial previews look nice, that reddish brown is great looking. Would be awesome if some new type of resource was added in the new biomes as well.

[TheClaw]

Nice!

I still favor the bot flight mechanics being reworkedabove terrain
Maybe the bots can be in 0.15?

[Mazth]

The doodad textures look a bit hazy, but I think the whole feel goes well with the trains; it has that wild west colour scheme going on and all. Definitely needs more yeti's though.

[Rahjital]

How about a swampy biome, one that would actually affect gameplay by slowing players down and perhaps even disallowing building?

[Drury]

How about a swampy biome, one that would actually affect gameplay by slowing players down and perhaps even disallowing building?

Those ain't good things.

[CobraA1]

To eat CPU or not to eat CPU

Because of the way it was written initially, the loop would eat up 100% of one CPU core. While it was quickly fixed for the headless server, our office was divided into two camps that would argue whether the main game should use as much CPU as possible to squeeze the best performance possible or sleep when possible to conserve CPU. You can read some more about this problematics. In 0.13.14 there will be a solution which uses much less CPU while sacrificing very little UPS.

I don't know how many people still use single core machines (I don't) - but using 100% of the CPU is a very bad idea on single core machines. It makes everything sluggish, and could lead to starvation of certain resources that aren't getting the CPU time they need.

It's less of a concern on multi-core machines, but still something to think about.

[Drury]

Seems like a bad idea for multicore too, in case something needs to use all cores to run properly for whatever reason. Or if there's another process that can't access the other cores and is stuck having to put up with Factorio stealing it's wind.

Just generally using 100% of available processing power doesn't seem like such a good idea.

[Zeblote]

Why not add an option? On some large maps you might have to use all available performance.

[ChurchOrganist]

Really looking forward to the 0.14/0.15 roadmap.

The new biomes look good, but I think it would be a great idea to be able to specify the dominant biome during map creation, so that you can have worlds that are mainly desert, mainly grassland, or mainly tundra etc

[Proxy]

why the Dolphin again...?

[Drury]

Really looking forward to the 0.14/0.15 roadmap.

The new biomes look good, but I think it would be a great idea to be able to specify the dominant biome during map creation, so that you can have worlds that are mainly desert, mainly grassland, or mainly tundra etc

Yep, as a huge fan of deserts and tundras in games the new biomes are great news. Really hope there are some gameplay implications, so that it would bolster trains as a necessity. Large biomes long apart, with various benefits and shortcomings to inhabiting each, requiring the player to have outposts in each for maximum efficiency.