Abandoned colonies/urban areas to explore ][Huge map proof of concept included with preview and download][ WIP

[lilstrip]

I would really like to point out that I have been already told that you land on a planet and you are alnoe. Despite this fact, this seems to be a bad choice considering the possibilities of finding really interesting things while exploring which are thrown out of the window without being explored first.

Finding new bitter/spitter bases is cool and all but humans have always had a an interest in finding ruins of ancient civilizations and what not and this would be PERFECT for factorio. For the pas few months ive been working in this crazy abandoned colony map which is huge and whenever I show pics of it people are really amazed at how insane it looks and the immense size of the project!

The first problem of making abandoned rail lines and building abandoned highway networks without the proper sprites and the lack of tools to allow me to randommize decay means it takes huge amounts of time to actually build only a small abandoned sub-urban area that looks like those rich houses that players tear down in the game brigador. It takes upwards to 20 hours just to finish only a 500mX500m area! So far ive only finished around 1% of the total area and even thats a stretch.

The second problem.is that to make a city layout that actually looks practical means it needs to also be somewhat both fun in gameplay and look immersive and not just look like I copied and pasted entire sections or layouts. This diversity further increase the challenge by forcing me.to constantly get creative with the already very small amout of human tech sprites like crates or walls that mainly look like they dont fit in a proper abandoned colony! I would love to be able to work on making my own modular sprites using the cliffs system so I could at least make buildings that look believable but since theres no tutorials on how to make them look vanilla-like and both lack the funding to purchase a course and the software to make that possible I cant do this on my own... I need help and this comes to the last problem.

Whenever I mention on discord to ANYONE how much help could speed up such an map to the point where anyone could enjoy it (large minecraft maps like greenfield city and whatnot come to mind) everyone shys away and leaves the discussion! Without better tools and sprites to speed up such a project it can't be done yet the new map editor, despite the new copy and paste tool which has forced me to actually stop working on the map due to how much faster it will make the building process, I still don't see whats the point of making that an easier tool to use if there arent quality sprites to make any factorio community map that will be more complex than the stuff we see with bitter bases bigger than the moon surrounding a small ressource patch... those kinds of maps will dominate the forum threads because thats going to be the only thing that people will take the time to make!

Now what I think needs to be added might not be simple task but I can assure you with more than 2000 hours in the game, without proper exploration finds that could help the player expand and constantly find new abandonned railroad networks to simply explore the only fun thing to do is expand a boring base with robots.

Now imagine how cool the following scenario would be: you are riding you nomadic train fitted for long trips with all the stuff you need. the only interesting thing to find are the occasional ressource patches but boredom starts to settle in... all of a sudden you find this random rail line with a de-railed train and it looks like its easily 12 wagons long! You decide to hook up your train to the rail line you just found and you start driving for a few minutes. After 15 minutes of relaxing and looking at the beautiful landscape zooming by the single train line starts to spilt. Looks like you are approaching and installation that got attacked a long time ago with plants growing on top of really badly decayed stone paths and cracked concrete. Then you enter what looks like this dark rotten urban area that has been leveled off by years of abandonement with the occasional bitter nest just triggered by your mere presence so they start chasing your train so you train equipped with gun wagons start to shoot away to save you precious cargo. Then BAM! you didnt notice the convoy of military tanks blocking the train track, surrounded by very agressive aliens slowly getting closer to your position you will die if you dont keep moving to get the hell out of there!

Thats just one of the things you could do... you could build a base in a desertic post oil extraction site filled with rusty trash covering the land to building in the middle what used to be a giant production plant with walls that could serve as strategic choque points to concentrate fire... This would really make gameplay fun and if players could have to option to turn off individual features like roads or certain types of ruins to get the specific kind of gameplay they want it would still be possible to simply have wilderness like we have now.

heres a list of sprites needed to achieve this goal:
-different wall sprites using the same system as cliffs (with different styles and decay levels for the different kinds of styles) also, to make it less of a pain, each "building" could have a mask filter to apply different textures to the same 3d models like switching from tacky yellow outside walls to brick walls etc.
-ruins(collapsed roof sections, bent metal beams, doorways with surrounding walls collapsed)
-varying car carcasses with different oriantations
-truck and other heavy vehicles that look abandoned
-de-railed trains
-electrick pylons, overhead train track signal racks found in urban areas
-lamp posts with varying levels of decay
-road signs (maybe)
-sunken ship wrecks and coastal industrial/fishery kinds of styling
-hangars and such for possible airstrips
collapsed or functional interchange ramps or other roadway sections that require vertical visuals (because using boulders to replace collapsed concrete roads really isnt convincing...)

Honestly I would find it very frustrating to know this idea would be shoved asside because I know that not only would this make the game WAY more fun no matter how big your factory is or the total time spent playing the game. The procedural system already in place would only need an extra level of complexity and not a whole reworking and custom maps could get alot more immersive since newr sprites would allow for really ellaborate maps to be created and I think alot players who play cities skylines would hop in to start creating huge ubran landscapes to survive in!

This would obviously have to wait to another large release and if the procedural generation system would be too complex or financially profitting at least sprites would make a HUGE difference for map makers and honestly would be probably be a big deal breaker for new players. Alot of people bought building games just for shared maps because exploring them never gets old but right now the new map making tools will just serve as an advanced cheating copy and paste option which makes no sense!

Please consider this as this game is honestly going to stay in my library for a long time and I easily see myself still building huge factories I can get lost in in 10 years from now... I would actually find it really cool if I didnt have to spend as much time in the editor and spend that time.to actually explore around and build even larger factories. You guys built an amazing game and I cant wait to try out the newest update!

Edit:
also I would like to mention the fact that some mods already exist that add a very rough system of abandonned settlements and it made it much more fun to actually look around for stuff to find and retrofitting them ti quick start your factory speeds up gameplay a lot and made the proof of concept work out insanely well!

I'll show pics of the map ive been working on just to show you what ive managed to accomplish using very little sprites that would make actual sense and just to give you an idea, it took OVER 1000 hours working intensily to achieve this level of progress since last spring. ive had to put the project aside due to college and without the new map editor it will easily take over 3 years to finish it but the new copy and paste will speed up the road building parts of the project since its mostly similar in style. This is far from done and I dont think it can show the full potential of what could be possible because having to place everything individually in the editor takes more time than using robots and blueprints. So please keep that in mind!

edit (again):
I will try to attach the 500mb (yes that big because I had to future proof the terrain generation changes to the future map areas) but I dont know how if the foruma will support it. It will easily be the biggest map created in the map editor I believe and when complete it might be larger than the 1 minute rocket base built by another player since theres going to be a lot of crop fields, regional roads and theres already a few practical highways... and yes, the map is so big using them saves time lol


MAP DOWNLOAD LINK BELOW
heres a link to download the current map version. It is far from done and not ready yet for actual playthroughs. Alot of the areas playtested were actually rebuilt so its not balanced anymore other than ressource patches in the quarry area. Thats the only spot where ressource management is somewhat okay so yeah you guys try it out for the first time I guess...
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CHTyu ... bbs4jhG_eL <=====

to install it go to C:\Users\Poste\AppData\Roaming\Factorio\scenarios

make a folder and put the file in there. If you have trouble doing that you can always PM me

[lilstrip]

good thing I shared pics on discord... heres a few areas that got alot of work put into them:















doing this on a cellphone is a pain... anyways hope this shows what can be done with a really outdated tool and also keep in mind this isnt even near 1/10 of the whole thing. that city (not the coastal industrial parts with the huge train-about) was built on top of a whole desert... I had to do EVERYTHING on screen and it drove me mad. I also think that newer sprites would really help make some of the areas alot more realistic!

[steinio]

I like how you mocked the trucks.
The pictures are looking interesting.

Will this map come to life and produce rockets?

Cu, steinio.

[lilstrip]

the map is not functionnal other than train tracks. its up to the player to use it to its advantage as he crash landed after he over slept his trip by a few decades and when he arrived there wasnt any sattelites to guide re-entry. Since this used to be a major trading hub and manufacturing facility in top-end biological engineering shit got out of hand and they just took off with what they could.

Basically theres a few outposts left behind by those who didnt make it to the evac sites and had to stay behind but thankfully the lack of human meat reduced bitter numbers so now its possible to survive but theres still major infestations of the experiment that went wrong all over once populated areas.

Theres alot of balancing left to do to force the player out of very well built areas since giving rich stuff in the begining is just too forgiving and I want to make it so large that over time as you fight through streets and other areas you can really see the decay spread since scorched earth actually unpaves the streets since the yellow lines actually use the sand texture which will wear down the surrounding tiles over time depending on the use of certain roads. With the power grid mostly intact this map will allow people to really jump in and have fun just turning on entire sectors and shut others off and I would like to make it connected to a nuclear reactor that if not taken care of will melt down after a certain amount of time. So power at first will be there but if people relax too much everything can go to shit in minutes

Theres still alot of work to do but honestly the new update will speed things up so much and theres good chances my college best friend will buy a gaming laptop and we could co-op build the map together if no one on the forums wants to help out because its just so massive... in fact, I will try to hook the file up to this reply

anyways, the reason i didnt make it functionnal (as in nothing other than scenery/power/rails) was because all these things go dormant! so no matter how HUGE the map is, only loading times are increased and ram usage is 8GB minimum I believe. Since I have 32 gigs my system might use more than needed but basically even my laptop runs it fine. SSD will actually speed up the 1 minute saving time so yeah... be patient and reduce save intervals to 30minutes and make a coffee or something in the mean while as 1 minute is long while waiting lol

Ive tested the game after making sections to make sure its actually fun to play in these areas and so it wont be one of those impressive but non-playable maps. Hope that answers you questions :3

[lilstrip]

file is too big, ill have to figure something out this weekend.

[Darinth]

So, to start off I'll simply say that this all looks really cool. Kudos to you on making something that simply looks cool and fun to explore.

However, who kind of gameplay does this style of map offer? Factorio, as a game, is all about the gameplay itself. The level design is all procedural, there's no extensive story, but the gameplay is what sells it. So how would things like this change the gameplay? What would be the benefits of exploring areas like this? Resources? Science? Technologies? Gear variants?

It would be really interesting to play in a map where you don't actually have access to the ability to research things, or maybe have certain research locked, and by exploring these settlements you unlock those key sciences you couldn't otherwise explore. The difficult comes in keeping such an objective enjoyable (for me, that probably means challenging, a sufficient amount of variation also helps.)

Dectorio will probably help a little bit with the sprites, but you're still looking for me I understand.

[lilstrip]

So, to start off I'll simply say that this all looks really cool. Kudos to you on making something that simply looks cool and fun to explore.

However, who kind of gameplay does this style of map offer? Factorio, as a game, is all about the gameplay itself. The level design is all procedural, there's no extensive story, but the gameplay is what sells it. So how would things like this change the gameplay? What would be the benefits of exploring areas like this? Resources? Science? Technologies? Gear variants?

It would be really interesting to play in a map where you don't actually have access to the ability to research things, or maybe have certain research locked, and by exploring these settlements you unlock those key sciences you couldn't otherwise explore. The difficult comes in keeping such an objective enjoyable (for me, that probably means challenging, a sufficient amount of variation also helps.)

Dectorio will probably help a little bit with the sprites, but you're still looking for me I understand.

You bring a fair point which I have actually explored and tested to see the difference in gameplay that this would add. Ill color code the different aspects since over 6 months ive compiled alot of criticism from both my own and others which I play tested the map in MP to see what they thought so I havent only been brain storming alone without looking at what this adds to the game for me but if this would actually mean anything to other players and not just what I want in the game. Adding all these things would really be a risk if I didnt make sure that it would make it better by only a tiny bit.

Combat: the way combat works in the game is mainly through power suits and turrets. The car and the tank have no use once you have a powersuit and they are a bitch to use when the only places you can use them efficiently is mostly on long exploration trips since they blow up at noth. Having urban areas would not only make them useful, it would make them fun to use since theres already paths you could use to get from on areas to others and since you wont take tree damage in the car it would really be helpful in long term because at least you can bring extra stuff you you. Now street combat is actually a thing on this map and when its well balanced making barricades to block off bitters and just build ammo supply lines is just really fun to use and since bitters are forced to use streets to go around walls combat is very intense compared to battles fought in open space where you get bored of having to actually clear building area vs freeing infested built areas! Add mods to this and when you have to drive a train through an infested city with gattling guns... ENDLESS fun!

I play tested that aspect with a few people and they actually had alot of fun at first but once I actually used them as guiny pigs I kinda forced them to only do that for 1 hour and didnt settle a base down so they got bored but that wasnt because of the boring factor and rather because I had to test these areas and they wanted to explore and build bases before I started making that aspect functional (iron and copper patches were non existant in the map area since i had to hand place them in areas like quarries or other industrial areas not done at the time).

So for combat it was actually a pass and that comes to my second point which was also tried out which worked: loot from scavenging

LOOT $$$: Its now been a few months since I tested that and only one area was tested since thats mostly a last step to the map making stage so I havent had opportunities to really make it better which I easily could. When we were tank platooning through the infested city in the only completed section at the time I tested to see how giving random loot to quickstart a base early game would play out. Since I didnt have the time to really build a base I was quite generous by giving 1 power suit and other stuff like random uranium ammo clips left behind dead soldiers and alot of other gear so it wasnt as beneficial as a system with random chest items found in random building (dont have the time to do hundreds of random chest loot) and in the end if I could use a program like vechs used in his minecraft maps it would really map fun!

Again this is months of play testing and map building so I already know the flaws from all the stuff tested and I know how to overcome them easily but that takes a lot of time with the current editor! I am sorry if this is long but I can't simplify a big experiment like this which effects so many gameplay aspects.

So I guess its time to cut to the chase and talk about exploration (I can always answer to questions but if it questions the entire idea it wont be a short yes or no sadly)

Exploration: As stated in the original post, train gameplay could be enhanced DRASTICALLY! I have play tested this the most and the reason why it would change train gameplay that much is that you would have a choice to either scout existing abandoned trainlines at a high risk/high reward and be able to convert alot of them to automate them! If rails are already built, it will be really tempting to have longer train lines that are already connected to open mines with loading stations that have to be fixed up over building train lines yourself to patches everytime. You will have also the fun of finally being able to use trains manually to serve a purpose instead of risking collisions with automated ones so this is also another really fun part of the whole thing. And considering the fact exploration mixes both combat, loot and factory expension all at once and not only a waste of time it ads alot to all of these aspects! And the best part all this fun can be had without the use of mods! Add guns to trains and plowing through bitter nests blockint train tracks or driving up to an infested area means you can use those canons all the time to clear the way just to keep going!

Now theres alot more than that could be done but I think this is long enough already and I hope I answered your question about what it adds to the game. Even my friend who thinks factorio is a stupid game wants to try it out because I made this map simply because it allows other gameplay types than just factory building! Now add multiplayer and it gets even more fun :3

[adam_bise]

Things like this are desperately needed. As it is now, the world is an endless expanse of boring-ness. After exploring a few chunks, you've pretty much explored the whole world because it all looks the same.

Perhaps abandoned sites could be added to the perlin noise system, where an abandoned site wave could select a site location based on amplitude and the site itself chosen from an array using a function of interference from other waves, or the radius of the peak. The resolution would depend on the size of the library, and could be added upon by modders. In this way, the sites and their location would always generate the same for a given map seed.

I would suggest also vastly increasing the terrain types. Things like snow and ice, big rocks, climate, storms, canyons and rivers, life-forms.. ANY life-forms other than biters lol.


Sorry for the tangent. I just really think things can be greatly improved in this regard.

[lilstrip]

I really agree with you on that Honestly I hope they do add this because factorio would pretty much become an endless exploration sandbox and it wouldnt get boring! New biomes should be put aside on the other hand considering theres already alien biome for that and it really does a great job at adding diversity (in fact this map is 100% vanilla but some sections branch off so that new terrain gen can actually be compatible with the map).

I don't see why this idea hasnt been suggested before, this game is DYING for this to be added!

[Engimage]

Not sure about this level of complexity.
But I am pretty sure that dropping random structures (or combination of them) sometimes intact and sometimes partially (or completely) destroyed would be really nice.
Like our factorian is not the only one successfully landed on the planet. But he is the only one successfully surviving it.

Such structures might be based on common design blueprints and could incorporate some design hints for a player. And the further you go from starting point the more complex stuff you might encounter (and partially salvage).

[pleegwat]

If you use blueprints, you could even randomly use some from the player's own blueprint library. Of course limiting the value and tech level of the generated working buildings.

[Trebor]

If you use blueprints, you could even randomly use some from the player's own blueprint library. Of course limiting the value and tech level of the generated working buildings.

Neat idea, because it wouldn’t have to work or even be complete.