Friday Facts #219 - Cliffs

[Dev-iL]

Not without sacrificing performance by a large amount.

Do you not pre-render the shadows? Does it not just entail re-rendering everything with a consistent light source direction? Why would it affect performance...?

[Andrzejef]

Factorio and cliffs - my life is now complete

Ok, seriously now - does this mean we could make bridges (or tunnels) and draw pipes overhead?
And about the blowing-up part - it would be perfect, if first you would have to tidy the demolition zone up (for example, using bots to carry the boulders away - to the lake, or drop them on the closest biters' nest, just somewhere) before you could use the "freed space" at all. Just my two cents.

EDIT: Or, you could use the same system there was in Perimeter game. That in order to fill land, you needed to dig it from somewhere. So say (using my idea above), blow one cliff, tidy the zone, dump it to the chest, fill some lake by some amount, rinse and repeat
You could even get bots to do it (some special terraforming drone)

[aka13]

This is amaying even from a purely cosmetic standpoint. Great job guys!

What will happen to old saves, when switching to this new terrain system?

[posila]

What will happen to old saves, when switching to this new terrain system?

As in previous updates that contained map generation changes, you'll get sharp transitions from originally generated chunks to chunks generated in 0.16

[CptnPenguin]

My brain seems to process some of the cliffs in the screenshots as sticking out of the ground like a wall, instead of being an elevation. Especially next to the player in the screenshot with the turrets.
I think it's because the ground pretty much just continues the "terrain pattern" across the cliff graphic. I hope you understand what I mean by that.
I'm sure you have capable grahic designers who can tweak the graphics some more to improve the impression of elevation. Because other than that, I really like the concept!

[aober93]

Why not make landfill clear out cliffs?

And the cliff tops need some shadow , because it looks like its floating. Makes the terrain not look elevated.

[Fumelfo]

I'm not into it, will nuke them all. Still pretty tho.

[Jonathan88]

Inspired by Andrzejef, I think a terraforming drone would be a really cool idea:

It would work similar to existing bots but instead on moving items or de/constructing buildings, it uses landfill or cliff explosives (or whatever other landscaping items get added).

I understand why current robots aren't allowed landfill - you could just blueprint the entire map with it and stop worrying at all about water.

This is why terraforming drones would be needed - they could be very expensive, quite slow and maybe visually much larger than normal bots. They could also require a specialised roboport and there could be other things to make them more expensive/less easy to mass blueprint.

This means it is possible to automate them, but only at a small scale mid game and nowhere near the amount of normal bots used endgame.

...plus they could look pretty cool: (ignoring the driver obviously)

[Rseding91]

Not without sacrificing performance by a large amount.

Do you not pre-render the shadows? Does it not just entail re-rendering everything with a consistent light source direction? Why would it affect performance...?

Because sprites are rotated runtime to save on video memory which also rotates the shadows.

[septemberWaves]

I have to say, I am seriously looking forward to those cliffs. It looks like it'll make things far more interesting, and I imagine there'll be some mods that make good use of them too.

[Faerindel]

Count me in the "not so excited" camp. Landscaping hasn't been a major part of Factorio and don't think it's needed to be.

Adding a 3d layer on a 2d game is not an easy task by any mean, it's a hefty map generation overhaul. Between that and related obvious features (terraforming overhaul, climbing/flying enemies, and, well, planes/UFOs for the player) it could be an entire version cycle by itself and a long one. Beware the feature creep.

[jape3]

This seems like an interesting addition. While you're on it, why not also add water cliffs (water falls), which could be harnessed as hydro electric dams and water reservoirs

[Durabys]

Looks more like the Starcraft Cliffs to me.

That was my first thought as well.

Would be interesting if similar damage/visibility modifiers also applied as in SC

Reminds me more of the Age of Empires cliffs/hills. It has similar computer logic implementation like Factorio ones.

[Piroko]

So when are you going to reveal the RTS game you have been creating in the past weeks?

[Jan11]

Really nice. I can`t wait anymore.^^

[SiC]

Awesome stuff, and something that Factorio really needed to make the terrain more interesting!

However, I don't like the idea of being able to blow up cliffs. The reason cliffs are exciting to me is because they require you to think outside the usual box. It makes it so that each factory you design becomes more unique and memorable, to think of solutions to work around the terrain. I'm sure many players have lists and designs of things that work for them and which they like, which will become very hard to do thanks to cliffs... but that is a good thing, not a bad thing, because then you have to think about those choices again, or design something new. It might even lead to players figuring out new designs that work even better. The design of your factory becomes an interesting choice again. Of course, since that research won't be available right away you'll still be able to make those designs over time, but honestly, to me, after having worked around it and having found a solution for it, I don't want to tear that down later on and replace it with the same old design I've always used, because that's pretty tedious, and boring because it deletes an interesting choice you had to make.

Maybe you could have that research as optional when starting a new map.

Also, I'd also like to ask you to allow us the option to have cliffs generate inside the starting area, not just outside of it. Make it something you can toggle on and off. There are several building games that I love and have put hundreds of hours in, and some of them I'd still play more (like Anno 1404) if there was just more difficulty in setting up the usual designs. Finding a design you like, and always being able to build it on every playthrough becomes boring fast. It becomes routine, there's no real choice left to make after a while. Factories start to look alike, cities in Anno start to look alike, and then the interest fades.

[quyxkh]

Love this.

Have you considered recursively adding map noise to the map parameters themselves, so the various levels vary over larger-scale regions?

[Engimage]

While I really love cliffs I should definitely point out that player should be able to deal with them either on map generator level or by in-game tools.
Factorio is all about great scale designs late game and cliffs being permanent entities will definitely mess with big bases.
Landfill was introduced to deal with water being in the way of our hero engineer and what tools will our hero have to deal with cliffs?
So I do agree on a requirement to turn their density/completely off in map generator as well as introducing in-game tools to flatten the landscape. This might be some late game tech but it should be there.
Sure thing in early game a player can do nothing with them apart from using underground belts (which will be a pain as well due to short reach distance of a player.

[Tomarev]

New terrain with cliffs looks great!

P.S. My association

[Gixen]

Holy Geography, batman! Cliffs, do they look neat!