Planning on getting a better game engine?

[Blackjack1000K]

Do you guys plan to change your game engine? like MSTE
i know its in alpha.
but games like this should be able to run in netbooks.
i can run games with better graphics like gta sa,rimworld,prison architect etc.
mostly indie games.
(im no expert) but i plan to practice and develop a tile based game like this one once i reach collage.
an explenation will also help on why the engine is so buggy

i know rewriting codes is hard and you have to replace thousands of lines. but i really think its worth the try.

@game devs: good work on the game. hope you keep it up . but please think about the steps your taking.

EDIT: sorry for my bad english. english isn't my first language.

[DRBLN]

Just buy a laptop instead

[Blackjack1000K]

Just buy a laptop instead

yes i already own a laptop with quite a good system actually. i used netbook for just comparison.

[AlexPhoenix]

game use rather much computations for all objects in game.(so CPU power is needed, but Intel Atom not so good for this).
changing engine will not do anything usefull, the devs ill optimize the engine itself.(for multi cores using for example).

i dont see any points in changing working engine to another.

[Swadius]

Optimization is usually one of the last steps in development afaik. No use doing optimization on something that might not last to the final version.

[sparr]

i can run games with better graphics like gta sa,rimworld,prison architect etc.

The graphics are the slowest part of those games. The graphics are NOT the slowest part of Factorio. The simulation in factorio is much more CPU intensive than any of those other games.

[Darthlawsuit]

I'd rather he finish the game than spend half a year rewriting the engine so it can work on a light weight computer that was never suppose to run games. You are the only person i have heard of that tries to play games with a netbook.

[Gammro]

I know Math3vv plays on a lightweight small laptop, a netbook. However, I think he runs it in low-FPS mode. Then it's playable.

Anyway, unless the current engine has serious issues, there's no reason to switch engines and having to redevelop a lot of stuff. It will probably delay the game by another few months, for a tiny minority of people that are interested in this game. It won't even guarantee performance increase.
Even my laptop, which has a 1st gen i3 mobile CPU in it, can handle this game(although in low GFX mode, but on 60FPS). And that's considered low-end by current standards.

[Glockshna]

The game runs fine. Netbooks aren't supposed to run games, they are made for internet and basic movie/video streaming that's about it.

You are asking them to rewrite the game (Which most likely won't do much good for the time invested) to support what are for all intents and purposes, tablets with keyboards.

[Rathael]

Well, when I load up all the 0.9.1 mods the game has to switch to low graphics mode because it is using more than my 1 GB of vram.... I can play heavily modded Skyrim with 2k textures nice and smooth without running out of vram.. so something is wrong with the engine. It runs fine otherwise, but I can't see any way that this game needs more than a GB of VRAM to run O.O

[slay_mithos]

All I can say is that most of the people complaining seems to try playing on sub par computers.

1GB Ram, seriously? it was already not that good 8 years ago, and you are telling me you can play skyrim fine on a computer that old?


What needs to be kept in mind is that this game is mostly demanding in CPU and RAM, not so much on graphics cards, so any computer that have sub par materials in these domains won't run all that well.
It is also very much being worked on, and things like tuning the engine and performance are made when the rest of the game is mostly ready, so that they can make sure everything is optimized.

If it was marketed as a finished product, then you would be free to complain on slow downs, or low performance on your computer, if it happens to at least meet thee minimum requirements when the game reaches such stable state.

[AlexPhoenix]

1GB Ram, seriously? it was already not that good 8 years ago, and you are telling me you can play skyrim fine on a computer that old?

Video Memory, not simple RAM.

Well, when I load up all the 0.9.1 mods the game has to switch to low graphics mode because it is using more than my 1 GB of vram.... I can play heavily modded Skyrim with 2k textures nice and smooth without running out of vram.. so something is wrong with the engine. It runs fine otherwise, but I can't see any way that this game needs more than a GB of VRAM to run O.O

hm, this thing devs must optimize, for example unload unused textures.
problems with VRAM now caused cuz all textures loaded all time.
Skyrim unload unneeded resources.

[Darthlawsuit]

Alpha-> Adding new features and expanding the game
Beta-> Fixing bugs and optimizing code

We are in Alpha, things will be optimized later on once new, planned, features stop being added.

[Rathael]

All I can say is that most of the people complaining seems to try playing on sub par computers.

1GB Ram, seriously? it was already not that good 8 years ago, and you are telling me you can play skyrim fine on a computer that old?

What needs to be kept in mind is that this game is mostly demanding in CPU and RAM, not so much on graphics cards, so any computer that have sub par materials in these domains won't run all that well.
It is also very much being worked on, and things like tuning the engine and performance are made when the rest of the game is mostly ready, so that they can make sure everything is optimized.

If it was marketed as a finished product, then you would be free to complain on slow downs, or low performance on your computer, if it happens to at least meet thee minimum requirements when the game reaches such stable state.

VRAM, not RAM.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450
Video: XFX Radeon HD 4890

It may be getting older now, but runs the game just fine. I don't have slow downs or lag at all and my FPS never dips below 60 (vsync). The only time the game ever even hiccups is when it auto-saves. Yes, I can play a very heavily modded Skyrim including with ENB post-processing and still have 100 to 120 FPS. That is the reason I said that Factorio still needs some work in the graphics loading department. The devs should look at OpenTTD to see how they are handling the loading all of their sprites and such. I don't necessarily agree with the OP about the game needing a new engine. It works fine for me other than the VRAM issue when loading mods. (Pretty much every 0.9.1 mod, but disabling only Dytech allows it to run in high graphics mode)

[ludsoe]

Im playing factorio on a laptop. Has problems playing newer games, bad fps at times.
But in factorio i get a constant 61 Fps even when zoomed all the way out. The game runs silky smooth at full speed.
I fail to see why they need a better engine, Id consider the current engine perfect for this game. As for how mods impact the game I've only used my MoCombat mod, as Dytech caused my game to crash every other 2 seconds.

[Rathael]

Im playing factorio on a laptop. Has problems playing newer games, bad fps at times.
But in factorio i get a constant 61 Fps even when zoomed all the way out. The game runs silky smooth at full speed.
I fail to see why they need a better engine, Id consider the current engine perfect for this game. As for how mods impact the game I've only used my MoCombat mod, as Dytech caused my game to crash every other 2 seconds.

Hmm I'm using:
0-9-1-hotfix
AdvancedEquipment
Anti-Pollution-Mod
Dytech
Dytech-Graphics
F-mod
Industrio
OWL
quick-start
testingmode
TimeButtons
Treefarm-Mod
and a mod I'm writing.

I have had 1 game crash so far, but had played it almost all day that time with no restarts, just leaving it paused when I had to go do stuff... so that might have had something to do with it. The only reason for a new engine would be to do something like make the game 3D. That would better off waiting for Factorio 2 though.

[liq3]

i know rewriting codes is hard and you have to replace thousands of lines. but i really think its worth the try.

More like tens of thousands of lines of code. The game is already over like 120,000 lines of code.

But yes, your netbook probably dosen't have a powerful CPU, and factorio is very CPU heavy.

[slpwnd]

More like tens of thousands of lines of code. The game is already over like 120,000 lines of code.

At the moment the Factorio code is nearly 150,000 lines of code. This does not include the libraries, just the core.

Well, when I load up all the 0.9.1 mods the game has to switch to low graphics mode because it is using more than my 1 GB of vram.... I can play heavily modded Skyrim with 2k textures nice and smooth without running out of vram.. so something is wrong with the engine. It runs fine otherwise, but I can't see any way that this game needs more than a GB of VRAM to run O.O

Factorio is very VRAM hungry. Yes this is a real and urgent problem. The thing is that all the "animations" in the game are frame-by-frame expanded in the VRAM (internally factorio is a 2D engine). When we take into account different animations for biters in all the directions and sizes, rotations for the train (that is one of the reasons why locomotive doesn't have any animation), all the player animations in all the directions, etc. MBs start to add up real fast. The vanilla is assured to fit into 512MB easily, but with mods that add a lot of content (especially biters) this starts to be a real problem.

We plan to address this issue very soon. There are two basic things that we plan to do.

- simplify some animations - This means experimenting with using procedural generation for dying biters for instance, try using masks for biters to avoid cloning animations all the time, maybe use a bit lower resolution for the trains, etc.
- change the bitmap loading mechanism - At the moment all the data are loaded to VRAM at the startup, this is simple and fast (running speed) solution. We will play with having parts of the atlas loaded on demand (for instance most of the time you don't see biters or spawners dying on the screen and you also see very little trains actually) from the RAM.

Games like prison architect, rimworld, gnomoria, etc. have kind of simplified graphics compared to Factorio. I don't mean it in a bad way (I find PAs graphic really nice myself), but the point is that many of their animations are done by moving objects. So where we have animation spritesheets taking up MBs of VRAM they have a couple of images that are moved around. That is why they don't have these issues we do.

Edit:
Oh and "changing" the Factorio engine is NOT an option:) It is not like changing the engine of the car. Changing the engine would mean basically rewriting the whole thing from scratch for very uncertain benefits. The big advantage of Factorio engine is that we can make heavy custom optimizations for things that are running slow. And this is definitely needed because otherwise it wouldn't be possible to simulate tens of thousands of objects in the game.

[SilverWarior]

The devs should look at OpenTTD to see how they are handling the loading all of their sprites and such.

You can't compare Factorio with OpenTTD as OpenTTD has much smaller sprites and thus require much less Video Memory.
And as far as I know OpenTTD also loads all of its sprites into Video Memory. Don't cofuse ability to chose between different sprite sheats with on demmand dynamic graphics loading.

And some info about the game engine Factorio uses:
Factorio uses Allegro game engine which is a cross-platform compatible game engine with long history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegro_(software)

[slpwnd]

And some info about the game engine Factorio uses:
Factorio uses Allegro game engine which is a cross-platform compatible game engine with long history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegro_(software)

Yes, the low level operations (image loading, image drawing, sound playing, etc.) are handled by allegro. Actually Factorio code is designed in such a way that it should be possible to migrate to a different game library, but that would still doesn't solve the mentioned issues out of the box. That needs to be done on the application layer.