Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Regular reports on Factorio development.

iseebelts
Burner Inserter
Burner Inserter
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2017 5:57 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by iseebelts »

Great write-up as always!

That last gif makes me dizzy. :lol:

orzelek
Smart Inserter
Smart Inserter
Posts: 3911
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2015 10:20 am
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by orzelek »

Really nice special effects there :D

mmppolton
Long Handed Inserter
Long Handed Inserter
Posts: 58
Joined: Sun Apr 16, 2017 11:38 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by mmppolton »

i hope it increase ups for bigger mega base
more faster like 5k or 10k all belt some bots

Yehn
Fast Inserter
Fast Inserter
Posts: 111
Joined: Tue Jul 12, 2016 3:45 am
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by Yehn »

It's always nice to see that not only do we get new features, but the underlying code/foundation to the game is being looked after as well. I want Factorio to have a very long lifetime.

Esterni
Manual Inserter
Manual Inserter
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2018 7:00 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by Esterni »

[Moderated by Koub]

This sounds like an awesome step forward. Does this mean that there will be graphical improvements? Or is this more of a "better engine, more optimized, same look" kind of deal?
Last edited by Koub on Fri Feb 16, 2018 10:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Removed firsting ... well attempt of firsting.

doppelEben
Fast Inserter
Fast Inserter
Posts: 117
Joined: Thu Oct 27, 2016 6:21 am
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by doppelEben »

iseebelts wrote:Great write-up as always!

That last gif makes me dizzy. :lol:
imagine you get hit by a specific biter and from then on you see all things like that, for about 10-30 minutes :> :> :>

drugstorio <3


great work @ devs, as always

[Koub] Please look at the red light here ... Nothing happened



@ jitka/t-shirts: Do you have plans to make other colors? Or even a hoodie? Totally would buy a blackish factorio-hoodie, or a colorish factorio-polo

Esterni
Manual Inserter
Manual Inserter
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2018 7:00 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by Esterni »

[Koub] Please look at the red light here ... Nothing happened


I can feel special if I want to. Don't be that guy that calls out that guy.

Inglonias
Inserter
Inserter
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Dec 14, 2017 1:31 am
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by Inglonias »

I can't even bring myself to tear apart a factory to fix it, much less tear apart the rendering engine to a game that's been in the works for as long as this one. I would have shrieked in horror and ran away from your office screaming if you asked me to do that. Bravo, Factorio devs, for being made of sterner stuff than I.

And whenever anyone talks about computer graphics code, I have to bring up one of my favorite pieces of computer code that I've ever laid eyes on and failed to understand: the Fast Inverse Square Root function.

kellerkindt
Manual Inserter
Manual Inserter
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Feb 16, 2018 5:49 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by kellerkindt »

Please don't split the renderer. This just causes either more work for you or one renderer to be favored while the other runs bad and/or with bugs.
Please. think about OpenGL 4.5 only or Vulkan.

Frightning
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 807
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:27 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by Frightning »

Inglonias wrote:I can't even bring myself to tear apart a factory to fix it, much less tear apart the rendering engine to a game that's been in the works for as long as this one. I would have shrieked in horror and ran away from your office screaming if you asked me to do that. Bravo, Factorio devs, for being made of sterner stuff than I.

And whenever anyone talks about computer graphics code, I have to bring up one of my favorite pieces of computer code that I've ever laid eyes on and failed to understand: the Fast Inverse Square Root function.
That was fascinating!

Matthias_Wlkp
Fast Inserter
Fast Inserter
Posts: 123
Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2016 11:28 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by Matthias_Wlkp »

Does the new engine affects system requirements at all?

User avatar
ledow
Long Handed Inserter
Long Handed Inserter
Posts: 97
Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2016 3:00 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by ledow »

As a programmer, I could never get on with Allegro. It's history is older than SDL (I believe, I can't be bothered to Google) but it was always something that people ended up ripping out later on.

SDL, however, has always served me well and since 1.3/2.0 where OpenGL was an integrated component it's pretty easy and seamless. Its letdown - no in-built GUI library. But Factorio obviously has a GUI so that shouldn't be much of an issue.

I look forward to some performance improvements (hopefully) with the new shaders, but I won't hold my breathe. Since the latest stable, my poor gaming laptop has cut its Factorio FPS in half. I'm guessing it's not GPU-bound as I've had to turn the graphics options right down and its still not great.

User avatar
_alphaBeta_
Inserter
Inserter
Posts: 45
Joined: Fri Jul 29, 2016 3:27 am
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by _alphaBeta_ »

I appreciated the humor in this FF. There's nothing like firing up an initial attempt at a change or optimization and not quite finding what you expected.

On a more serious note, where are we with belt compression?

User avatar
Proxy
Fast Inserter
Fast Inserter
Posts: 165
Joined: Mon Mar 30, 2015 11:10 am
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by Proxy »

Image

tyc┴?L!o

I'm wondering why everything was flipped, red and just looked like literal hell.

but i think the answer would be too complex for me.

good luck with redoing all graphics, while doing so you could also make lighting more dynamic and make it seem like there is an actual sun in the sky? becasue it kinda gets weird to look at a lamp, lit, being right next to a shadow of a nearby object, or stuff like wire shadows being over objects themself.

User avatar
Gergely
Filter Inserter
Filter Inserter
Posts: 595
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2016 8:31 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by Gergely »

Wow. They are very good at this.

From what I can see on the screenshots, the first one was definitely unintentional, the second as well but the third...

I do not think the third was unintentional.
Matthias_Wlkp wrote:Does the new engine affects system requirements at all?
It will. It will be compatible with more things.

User avatar
QGamer
Fast Inserter
Fast Inserter
Posts: 213
Joined: Fri Apr 14, 2017 9:27 pm
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by QGamer »

Good luck with all the graphics
I always love reading the FFFs. Keep up the good work!
"Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy."

doppelEben
Fast Inserter
Fast Inserter
Posts: 117
Joined: Thu Oct 27, 2016 6:21 am
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by doppelEben »

Esterni wrote:
Esterni wrote:First!
Damnit...not actually first.
oh pleeease stop that crap already again; or better dont even start with it!
Please dont act like on hltv (or severall other fanboi-pages) where every article 48329 dudes/dudinas spam *first* just to try to be first Oo
I can feel special if I want to. Don't be that guy that calls out that guy.
since it is "cancer" in severall forums; no; you are not special with that. Just one of N others.... so sorry, you can't be a special snowflake with the fiiiiiiirst stuff ;D better luck next try tho

OBXandos
Long Handed Inserter
Long Handed Inserter
Posts: 52
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2017 5:53 am
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by OBXandos »

You should use the upside down Factorio loading screen for an April fools update :D
Good luck on that monumental task!

admo
Inserter
Inserter
Posts: 27
Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2016 1:07 am
Contact:

Re: Friday Facts #230 - Engine modernisation

Post by admo »

Not going to advocate DX12/Vulkan here but I do wonder how much of the game's CPU budget is eaten up in rendering code? From the start developers told us they wanted DX12 because the driver is too expensive (CPU-wise) because we do too much state tracking. Factorio is uniquely one of those games that can easily get CPU-bound so I'm hoping developers could weigh in on their experiences here.

From the driver's point of view DX12 drops half the work of the driver onto the apps to do themselves but the app teams are unwilling to put in the man-hours to do it right, so in the end they regress performance wise. Even big engines like Unreal are going about it wrong, but they have compelling reasons for that.

Post Reply

Return to “News”