Friday Facts #269 - Roadmap update & Transport belt perspective

[Drury]

Awww.... what is this?!
Factorio.PNG

just a brotherly hug

[V453000]

Awww.... what is this?!
Factorio.PNG

Physics, yo!

[Devis]

The new belt "loops" looks really good, but this bothers me...
Will entities fall off the ground at the end of a belt, as there are no shown "boundaries" to keep them on place?

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

Is there any way you could release a beta right before Christmas?
I have very little time to play, but will have some times between Christmas and New Year.

I think there are more people who will have time to play for a bit then, but not in January.

Also, will v0.17 have the 'separate mods and settings per save' option so that we can have multiple saves?
Also, when hosting a server for friends, will the mods and settings be pushed?

Anyway, thanks for this great game.

[Tekky]

Thank you very much for the roadmap update. Although I am a bit disappointed that there will be no 0.17 release before Christmas, I guess it is for the best. It is better to release a high quality 0.17 in January than a half-baked one in December.

Will the temporary train stop (i.e. train hijacking) feature mentioned in Factorio Friday Facts #212 be available in 0.17 or 0.18?

[coderpatsy]

You accidentally a double word in the 0.18 plan:

All remaining high res graphics graphics and final polish

(emphasis added)

A very good FFF all around. Though I'm with others that it's somewhat sad if 1.0 means a long-term slowdown or even stop of development.

[SpyMaster356]

mirroring Devis's opinion, with these new graphics it looks weird that the items don't fall off the end of a belt now. When you're sideloading now, there looks to be a physical wall stopping the items.

Also I didn't like the sideloading mechanic previously, as it looked like a hack, or an unintentional side effect, but now with this change, it clears that up. Now I shall go and sideload everything!

[Serenity]

Looks neat. I agree about the underground belt skirts always only being the size of one lane. That could make the side-load-blocking thing a bit more intuitive

Are there are news about the improved map generation including the terrain (and especially the water!) instead of just the resources? You always mention improvements to resources, but it's the water that's really broken since the last release

[ratchetfreak]

The new belts looks really good, but this bothers me...
Will entities fall off the ground at the end of a belt, as there are no shown "boundaries" to keep them on place?

Yeah a barrier of some kind would make it immediately obvious that there is a stop there. It would make the belt end with items look more natural as well.

[Agamemnon]

Nice improvement. But now that the belts are more threedimensional I kind of ask myself why any items on the belt don't fall off the end. You can see in the pictures that the last piece of something just hovers while the belt swings away from under it. Maybe add some kind of blocker to the end pieces... I dunno...

Edit: eh, didn't read the thread before. You guys are already on it.

[V453000]

I’ll think about it and try something but no promises

[Speadge]

please take all the time you need.
For me, the game is finished already and eveything on top is a "nicetohave" but not essential nor a dealbreaker!

Thanks for your time!

[Drury]

If you come up with a unique texture for the barrier, you could put it on the side of the underground belt cover to make it more obvious that it too blocks items.

[Koub]

Very creative and clever solution you found. I'm always impressed on how you sometimes think out of the box, great job !

[meganothing]

Mmmh, the picture links on the FF seem broken. The links are to eu1.factorio.com, but the pictures seem to be stored on eu2.factorio.com.

[keyboardhack]

I remember when 0.12 was supposed to be the final release.
The quality of the game just keeps increasing so i can't complain

[dood]

Why did you insist on one huge megapatch that slams it all in our faces anyway?
Why not add small things such as the hi res laser turrets incrementally so we can focus on this one new thing and have more time catching bugs?

[WIZ4]

This belt is not enough engine

sf-K5LmHvlc.jpg (41.39 KiB) Viewed 10331 times

belt-engine.gif (216.95 KiB) Viewed 10136 times

[adam_bise]

Love the new belt graphics! Excited to hear about .17 as well. Thanks for the updates!

[<NO_NAME>]

The new belts looks really good, but this bothers me...
Will entities fall off the ground at the end of a belt, as there are no shown "boundaries" to keep them on place?

Yeah a barrier of some kind would make it immediately obvious that there is a stop there. It would make the belt end with items look more natural as well.

My exact though immediately after I saw the new graphic. I popped into my head even though I have a few hundred hours in the game and I know exactly how belts work.
The limiting bar at the end is a necessity unless you want to confuse the hell out of new players.