Friday Facts #267 - Experiments, Explosives & Extended tags

[Oktokolo]

And there hasn't been given any clue on when the announcement of the date of the announcement was expected to be announced either.
Here, have a painkiller for your headache

Any indication on when you will not make any announcements about the date?

Rumors are, that Wube will not anounce the final release date anouncement date tomorrow.
And i still hope, that we get a hint on the release date anouncement date timeframe around xmas 2018.

[bobucles]

I think either... point to something instantly gets information on the panel at the right and/or after 2/3 seconds, a popup appears at the cursor with the information.

I think a small delay makes the most sense. Otherwise you'll move your cursor across the screen and it'll flicker popups like mad. Besides while the info card may have a lot of hard data, there isn't a lot of information that matters to the factory. The most important things are to know the crafting status and to see if the electrical bar is healthy. The rest of the data isn't important unless you're learning things for the first time or playing with beacons/circuits.

[knightelite]

Since you're adding cliff explosives support to construction bots, is bot placed landfill going to be a thing in 0.17 as well? I recently built a train across an ocean, and that was an experience that could have been way better if shift-clicking my rail blueprint had placed landfill under it. I know there are mods for that (I think rseding is even the author of one of them), but I would rather see it in the base game .

[5thHorseman]

And there hasn't been given any clue on when the announcement of the date of the announcement was expected to be announced either.
Here, have a painkiller for your headache

Any indication on when you will not make any announcements about the date?

[Tallinu]

After making this system it has made me think if I could apply some variant of it to robots building things, so a robot could theoretically grab 3 inserters and build all 3 quickly in series. It's an interesting thought for another time...

This would be absolutely fantastic to see implemented! Make robots deconstruct multiple nearby items of the same type (up to their carry limit) as well, please? It would save so much wasted time playing the "stand still and wait for your giant swarm of robots to recharge so they won't run out of power and get left far behind as you run away from the small FLYING objects ON FOOT and somehow leave them in the dust" game... (Hint: It's not a very fun game)

Looking forward to map pings for multiplayer games, too!

[Light]

And there hasn't been given any clue on when the announcement of the date of the announcement was expected to be announced either.
Here, have a painkiller for your headache

Any indication on when you will not make any announcements about the date?

Sorry Sir, they're doing their best.

[bobingabout]

We were doing speculation in a discord group, and the general consensus was about 3 months, which boiled down to "Maybe we'll see 0.17 by Christmas." So I asked in Source Access of the official factorio group, and Klonan said "6 months", which would put it in February or March. None of the other Devs would say anything.

For those who don't know, Klonan can be a bit of a Joker, so, take this as "It'll be ready when it's ready, there is no date set."

[eradicator]

We were doing speculation in a discord group, and the general consensus was about 3 months, which boiled down to "Maybe we'll see 0.17 by Christmas." So I asked in Source Access of the official factorio group, and Klonan said "6 months", which would put it in February or March. None of the other Devs would say anything.

For those who don't know, Klonan can be a bit of a Joker, so, take this as "It'll be ready when it's ready, there is no date set."

Version 1.0: expected in summer 2019

[ske]

"It'll be ready when it's ready, there is no date set."

That's what worries me. They seem to pile feature upon feature and hope to be done "soon" and when they think they are ready they start to see the loose ends and need to rework some interaction things which brings up more loose ends. Working on those, they get good new ideas for features and implement them right away. Then you need to see how the new things interact and you need to re-balance, re-calibrate, redo and optimize. Don't forget to optimize before shipping.

[5thHorseman]

"It'll be ready when it's ready, there is no date set."

That's what worries me. They seem to pile feature upon feature and hope to be done "soon" and when they think they are ready they start to see the loose ends and need to rework some interaction things which brings up more loose ends. Working on those, they get good new ideas for features and implement them right away. Then you need to see how the new things interact and you need to re-balance, re-calibrate, redo and optimize. Don't forget to optimize before shipping.

That pretty accurately describes the development cycle of almost every game I consider truly, monumentally great that has come out in the past 6 years. Except FTL. They made that great in just 2(ish) tries.

[meganothing]

"It'll be ready when it's ready, there is no date set."

That's what worries me. They seem to pile feature upon feature and hope to be done "soon" and when they think they are ready they start to see the loose ends and need to rework some interaction things which brings up more loose ends. Working on those, they get good new ideas for features and implement them right away. Then you need to see how the new things interact and you need to re-balance, re-calibrate, redo and optimize. Don't forget to optimize before shipping.

I read another forum for an EA game where the same worries (and additionally accusations of abandonment or bad management) are posted every alpha because every alpha-release takes longer than the previous one.

And every alpha it becomes apparent that there was no feature-creep because immediately some players declare that they are dissatisfied with the small amount of new features in this alpha and that promised features A,B and C still are not implemented.

The points I want to make with this anecdote: For external spectators development always seems too slow. Often even when they are software developer themselves. And development cycles have a strong tendency to lengthen.

[mexmer]

i believe, we still get to Fatorio 1.0, before Halflife 3 ships.

[Oktokolo]

We were doing speculation in a discord group, and the general consensus was about 3 months, which boiled down to "Maybe we'll see 0.17 by Christmas."

I expected 0.17 to get released xmas this year too.
But they have a lot to test with the new campaign, editor, engine rewrite, GUI rewrite, balancing stuff, QoL stuff... Might as well be spring 2019.

[ske]

I read another forum for an EA game where the same worries (and additionally accusations of abandonment or bad management) are posted every alpha because every alpha-release takes longer than the previous one.

And every alpha it becomes apparent that there was no feature-creep because immediately some players declare that they are dissatisfied with the small amount of new features in this alpha and that promised features A,B and C still are not implemented.

The points I want to make with this anecdote: For external spectators development always seems too slow. Often even when they are software developer themselves. And development cycles have a strong tendency to lengthen.

You bring one point that I'm thinking about: The more features you have that interact the more complex everything becomes. There are unintended consequences and loopholes might show up everywhere when you're not careful. If you release early and release often, you have a better chance to catch those issues early in the process and to find mitigations. If you make major changes, though, you cannot release because it doesn't work. All the changes presented in the FFF sound rather medium or minor, though and most seem to be working fine internally.

You bring up another point that I was not thinking about: User expectations that build up over time.

They probably consider our high expectations and don't want to release alpha/experimental stuff because their alpha usually has the quality of a final release by other studios. Now this is difficult. They cannot release the new features bit by bit because they would break things all the time. Users and especially modders wouldn't be happy. On the other hand they should release smaller updates and test if they actually work in the field as intended. 0.17 will probably be quite fare away from 1.0 because of all the small things that will show up afterwards.

I have no solution to any of this.

[eradicator]

We were doing speculation in a discord group, and the general consensus was about 3 months, which boiled down to "Maybe we'll see 0.17 by Christmas."

I expected 0.17 to get released xmas this year too.
But they have a lot to test with the new campaign, editor, engine rewrite, GUI rewrite, balancing stuff, QoL stuff... Might as well be spring 2019.

We can only hope they don't repeat the christmas chaos of last year just to get "a release for christmas". Let them do it properly.

[Oktokolo]

We can only hope they don't repeat the christmas chaos of last year just to get "a release for christmas". Let them do it properly.

They always do things properly, so if they would (surprisingly) release at xmas 2018, they would certainly do it properly.
I do not remeber any christmas chaos though - so maybe i missed something.

[Jap2.0]

I think I guessed November quite a few months back, but now I'm thinking maybe February-March.

[factoriouzr]

I expect 0.17 will be released a week or two before xmas this year. I really hope they will release it a week or two before the holidays because I want to play it over the holidays

[Koub]

I expect

I really hope

Expecting and hoping are two very different things you know

[5thHorseman]

Expecting and hoping are two very different things you know

They can also both exist at the same time.