Friday Facts #227 - Rendering, Trees & Scenario talk

[IronCartographer]

- Add an option to Switch OFF a team base if no player are connected so bitter will ignore it. I can't stress enough how important that point is since, right now, at least 1 player per team is forced to play on our server until the base is secure and autonomous. In our server, one player started to play one night by itself and when the two other team connected a few day after, their base were wiped out by bitter. And playing peaceful mode is boring!!

This is one of the few things Factorio could learn from Empyrion rather than the other way around: Offline protection field generators.

It would need adaptation for Factorio, and make people beg for vanilla force field generator tech, but should do the trick.

Players would need to tech up to a high enough level to build the OP/stasis field, and it would only stay active for a certain amount of in-game time (determined by the server admin).

[Tekky]

I generally like the idea of Factorio also allowing for competitive gameplay.

However, this makes it even more important that the gameplay is well balanced and that there are no exploits in the game, which would give the exploiting side an unfair advantage. One example of an exploit is that it is currently possible using the crafting system to circumvent your inventory space limit by filling the crafting queue, and then cancelling it later.

Also, if the gamplay is to become more competitive, the game should impose stricter rules on player layouts.

Currently, the most efficient layouts are often unintuitive and "hacky". For example, it is often possible to do things where the graphics clearly imply that it should not be possible. Examples of this are inserters interacting directly with underground belts and underground belts being used as belt lane splitters.

Up to now, this has not been much of a problem, because if you didn't like these unintuitive, "hacky" layouts, it was possible to avoid them. In single-player games, you are not forced to build these layouts, if you don't like them. However, in competitive game modes, you will be forced to also use these highly efficient "hacky" layouts, because if you don't, your opponent still will, giving him an advantage.

Therefore, the only way to prevent this unfair advantage would be to impose stricter rules on player layouts, as I have suggested in this thread.

[EntroperZero]

I remember a while ago, there was discussion of a scenario that starts you out with some power armor, a personal roboport, and some construction bots. It was just like vanilla, but you get to lay down blueprints to bootstrap your base more quickly. I liked that idea a lot, and would love to see it be an official "mode" of gameplay.

[Elok]

- Add an option to Switch OFF a team base if no player are connected so bitter will ignore it. I can't stress enough how important that point is since, right now, at least 1 player per team is forced to play on our server until the base is secure and autonomous. In our server, one player started to play one night by itself and when the two other team connected a few day after, their base were wiped out by bitter. And playing peaceful mode is boring!!

This is one of the few things Factorio could learn from Empyrion rather than the other way around: Offline protection field generators.

It would need adaptation for Factorio, and make people beg for vanilla force field generator tech, but should do the trick.

Players would need to tech up to a high enough level to build the OP/stasis field, and it would only stay active for a certain amount of in-game time (determined by the server admin).

The problem with this "force field" is that each team have to play long enough until their base is protected by that field (So if that tech is avalaible after an 5-hour average time of play, each team have to play non-stop for 5-hours). It's roughly the equivalent of laying down defence around your base with Bots to repair-replace everything.

I prefer the shutdown because of a few things :
1) It's avalaible right at the beginning
2) It doesn't protect your base while you're playing. Only when you're offline.
3) The base doesn't produce anything during the shutdown. So if you shut it down to protect it, you won't gain anything neither. But if your base is secure, you could take the risk to leave it Online and produces things...and be attacked by bitter.

I remember a while ago, there was discussion of a scenario that starts you out with some power armor, a personal roboport, and some construction bots. It was just like vanilla, but you get to lay down blueprints to bootstrap your base more quickly. I liked that idea a lot, and would love to see it be an official "mode" of gameplay.

I like that idea and it's quite easy to implement as a PvP option.

[Daid]

When I read the title of the FFF, I hoped to read something about the most neglected part of the whole game. But sadly, I was wrong.

Still noting to improve/add-on the campaign. Shame.

[Tekky]

When I read the title of the FFF, I hoped to read something about the most neglected part of the whole game. But sadly, I was wrong.

Still noting to improve/add-on the campaign. Shame.

Factorio developer Klonan has already stated that he is planning to rewrite the whole campaign and even make it co-op playable:

The campaign is a dead branch. I hope it either gets expanded or removed. It just sticks out like a sore thumb.

I am planning to write a completely new campaign, which will replace both current campaigns, have a proper story, and be co-op compatible and fun

Taken from here.

[bobucles]

Capture the flag.
- There's a thing on the map
- You can not pick it up or normally move it (like a tank that can't move).
- Bring it into your scoring zone.
- You can only use conveyors

I dunno how the flags should be set up. Once a flag gets captured, it may be impossible for the enemy team to reclaim it. Turtling in Factorio is very strong so getting the flag back might demand enough firepower to destroy the entire enemy base. We don't want a CTF game to turn into a deathmatch, we want players goofing off with belts and throwing grenades at enemy belts and generally making huge mazes of spaghetti like they're playing Tron or something**. If the flag respawns that means players will have a new round to reach out and fight over the flag again. If the flag respawns in a random area that means existing setups will be less effective at securing subsequent points and we can have a continuous match. If the scoring area moves, then players have to deal with a constantly changing landscape and defensive tactics break down.

I dunno how the team resources should be set up. Players might start with key techs unlocked like capsules and grenades and cars. They might start with a small smelting base so they can start building conveyors right away. A fixed stockpile of resources mean that players have to secure the flag in the most efficient way they can.

Hmm. Maybe there can be some kind of Tron game where players build conveyors and crash into each other in silly ways. I have no idea how that would work.

[AntiElitz]

What I think would really help people with Vram problems is just a setting in between medium und high sprites that is designed for people with a 2 GB Vram Graphics-card and uses HR textures for the most commen entities, but the LR ones for less frequent/important stuff, like it was the case in 0.15.
Once you are used to the High resolution, you really don't want to go back to the old medium ones. So this could be a good compromise, that fixes the issue very fast, without much workload for you until better solutions are found.

[steinio]

Seperating the shadows from the entities means hopefully we get a moving sun.

[bobucles]

uses HR textures for the most commen entities, but the LR ones for less frequent/important stuff, like it was the case in 0.15.

I think that mixing texture resolutions would create a very visible gap between the pristine and low res stuff. That kind of thing is visually jarring and doesn't look good. I think it'd be better to cheat the sprite atlas in some way such as skipping animation frames or reusing textures like trees. So instead of mapping all the sprites for trees 5 6 7 and 8 you cheat by having all those options show the same tree. Things like that are much harder for players to detect and it might fit the memory space that way.

Another, harder option is to find a guy who cuts clothing for a living and have him fit all the sprite patterns in the smallest space possible. They'll squeeze every inch of fabric pixel for what it's worth.

edit: That save draft button fools me every time.

[NotABiter]

However, this makes it even more important that the gameplay is well balanced and that there are no exploits in the game, which would give the exploiting side an unfair advantage.

What, you mean broken mechanics like being able to command 40 robots at the early modular armor stage by stuffing 4 roboports into your armor and using ZERO batteries and ZERO portable solar panels (saving time and resources, not to mention space for all those roboports) by using the robot charging cheat for unlimited free power?

Seems kind of pointless to bother raising these issues here when the dev asking for suggestions in this FFF (Klonan) is the very same dev that responded to a topic about removing the robot charge cheat with "I don't see what this [removing the cheat] adds to the gameplay".

[ili]

What do you think about "Factorio RTS" scenario?

It will be something like:
PvP.
You start in god mod without a character.
You start with a Roboport,a few bots, a chest of some starting supplies, and the necessary technology. (already placed)
You cannot place anything directly, only ghosts (for the bots to build).
The players start to build a factory and produce weapons (Cars, tanks, turrets, ammunition...).
We need to make a mod to let you control the Cars/tanks/(Biters? ) from god mode to move and attack. Maybe selection tool similar to the "Deconstruction planner".
We also need a mod that adds an "expending inserter" that take the vehicles from the factory and expend them from the small item to the full entity.

[Jap2.0]

Various things I've seen in this thread that I'd like to support:

• Yay, graphics optimiations!
• More tooltips, because I'm both curious and lazy
• I'm all for new scenerios, but I'm not a very creative person so I'll leave that to you guys and everyone else in the comments
• Yes, public servers please!

[provet]

What do you think about "Factorio RTS" scenario?

It will be something like:
PvP.
You start in god mod without a character.
You start with a Roboport,a few bots, a chest of some starting supplies, and the necessary technology. (already placed)
You cannot place anything directly, only ghosts (for the bots to build).
The players start to build a factory and produce weapons (Cars, tanks, turrets, ammunition...).
We need to make a mod to let you control the Cars/tanks/(Biters? ) from god mode to move and attack. Maybe selection tool similar to the "Deconstruction planner".
We also need a mod that adds an "expending inserter" that take the vehicles from the factory and expend them from the small item to the full entity.

sounds interesting!
Controlling AI vehicles is already a thing with mods like AAI,
not sure how it works to load a scenario and a freeplay mod though... hopefully it works?

[Tricorius]

However, this makes it even more important that the gameplay is well balanced and that there are no exploits in the game, which would give the exploiting side an unfair advantage.

What, you mean broken mechanics like being able to command 40 robots at the early modular armor stage by stuffing 4 roboports into your armor and using ZERO batteries and ZERO portable solar panels (saving time and resources, not to mention space for all those roboports) by using the robot charging cheat for unlimited free power?

Seems kind of pointless to bother raising these issues here when the dev asking for suggestions in this FFF (Klonan) is the very same dev that responded to a topic about removing the robot charge cheat with "I don't see what this [removing the cheat] adds to the gameplay".

I agree 100%. I don’t really plan on taking advantage of “PvP” but it certainly sounds interesting.

However, it’s going to absolutely usher in the era of “zomg balance already”. I hope the dev team’s ready for the proverbial can of worms.

I think all things would need to be balanced too. And cherry-picking the favorite balance issues will no longer be sufficient. I’d even toss belt-braiding into the pile of things that are potential “cheats”. So...I’m all for it. And I’ll even accept bot nerfs in the name of “PvP balance”. As long as all balance is considered equally then I think it is all fair.

[Gerdieman]

I think putting them on the mod portal is a great start. However, I think they do need to have them separately on the menu. Also I think the scenarios could be given more control of the game. It would allow for more advanced controls. My big thing is just having the ability to prevent blueprints being imported or transferred in a scenarios.

[Ractaros96]

It would be nice to have "production score" implemented in single player. This would be a nice measure of factory progression in-game.

[RocketManChronicles]

In PvP, it would be great to have a customizable option to set the distance between players. One idea my friends and I have is to start a MP game where each of us is REALLY far from each other, say 5000+ tiles away, and once we are able to reach each other, not only is it a great feat, but then we can trade between us. This just makes a cooperative game (even with each of us on our own team) more rewarding to push through miles of biters to be able to team up.

Along those lines, I also suggest having options to adjust resource existence in biomes. Say, for example, desert biomes are much more likely to have oil, barren wastelands more stone, etc. Just a simple way to force us to explore for other biomes to find the resources we need. In my PvP example above, it would give players advantages of resources over others to allow trade. Someone might spawn in a desert and has lots of access to oil fields, while another in a grassland has a lot of iron and copper nearby.

[Elok]

In PvP, it would be great to have a customizable option to set the distance between players.

Err there is one. It's called "Distance between teams". It's like the first option of the list : https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/k_EGb ... w1920-h949

[ActionJackson]

I've got an idea for a scenario for you. I really like the idea of having to craft certain things for points, but I don't like just leaving it at that. Eventually, people will find the best items or whatever to raise the meter and I don't think that falls within the spirit of Factorio. So, here's my proposal.

Each team is started with 2 identical, basic setups. Something like 10-20 steel furnaces with enough materials to keep them constantly moving, and a basic boiler setup with a decent supply of power just so they don't have to waste time on what I like to call the "chop tree" phase of the game.

They're then given some time, maybe 30ish minutes? Maybe that's too long, but some time to prepare for the rest of the match. Halfway thru this setup phase, the scenario picks an item that will be worth points and announce it. Something like "Phase 1: Green Circuits". The goal is for the teams to craft and place as many of that item into a "Victory" chest (which would consume the item and increase the teams' points). This would just be a chest somewhere close by that the teams have to insert their items into for it to count, and cannot be removed or destroyed so they have to work around that. This would run for a period of time, halfway into it would announce the next item that will receive points. Each phase a new item is picked, and you do it for 3/5/7 rounds, whatever works best (or make it configurable?). Here's the kicker: once you transition to a new phase, you can still insert the previous item to the chest from past phases, but the new phase gives more points than the previous phase, making the previous items less valuable. This would add some flexibility and risk to either improve a working solution, or scrap it and go for big points in the next phases.

Alternatively, you could say all the phases up front, and what items will count when. This would allow for a more focused approach, perhaps allowing teams to neglect early phases, and concentrate on hitting it big at the end, or staying steady the whole way.

Let me know your thoughts, and yes, I would playtest the sh*t out of this with my crew. Thanks for the inspiration