Friday Facts #269 - Roadmap update & Transport belt perspective

[TigBits]

It's amazing how such a small change can make the game look so much better.

As a bonus, the underground belt structure has a variant which shows a hole when you side-load into the underground belt.

Now that this behavior is officially intentional I can stop avoiding it, although I have yet to find a legitimate need for it.

[5thHorseman]

Now that this behavior is officially intentional I can stop avoiding it, although I have yet to find a legitimate need for it.

Wow I don't think I've found a way to make a sizeable factory without it

[microbat]

Your update said to let us know what you think on the forum so there it is. I think you released an alpha that was an interesting little game but seriously lacked content, gameplay, and direction, which is normal for an alpha. But then you got turned into millionaires because you got lucky going viral with an audience of hysterical children that threw their money at you, and you basically abandoned the game at that point. Since then I've seen nothing but time wasting, graphical tweaks that add nothing to gameplay (that desperately needs something..) and the graphics tweaks barely even look any different anyway. Yet you spend year after year working on it. GUI tweaks too, add nothing and nobody even cared to begin with. I'll give you one thing, you are masters of propaganda. Maybe I am wrong and your intentions were good, but personally I think you are shady and just pretend to be 'developing' the game. I suspect you are claiming some sort of business welfare that stops when the game goes from being "in development" to being in the final release form, so for that reason you will keep putting off the release forever. Everyone who was interested in this game has already heard about it bought it. There is no reason to not just put it to 1.0 and anything extra could be added in patches or updates. But no, the early access shenanigans continues.

Normally I wouldn't care, it is just another building game... But this game had something special, the potential to add some real gameplay in addition to just endlessly building things. You have enormous maps with endless enemies that can attack and the player can defend their base with turrets. This fleshed out would have made this an amazing game. But it got zero development, so you spent all that time creating huge procedural landscape generation and enemy bases, enemy AI, etc. and then did nothing with any of it. To people like me this game is basically a con, pretending to be one thing and then you bait and switch.

I think you will end up like that DayZ dev, the Minecraft dev, and countless others, you get lucky with one game and then never have another success because you are a one hit wonder that got lucky.

Normally I wouldn't be this harsh but the endless Community Announcements that contain all those words yet no actual content, make me think my gut feelings are right.

[keyboardhack]

Not sure if you are trolling but here goes.

I assume you are angry because there hasn't been any updates for a while.
Here is a list of all the things that has been added to factorio over the last four years.

• New terrain generation
• Belt-optimizations
• Artillery train
• General update optimizations
• Allow loading games with different mod settings (and automatically download the mods if necessary)
• More mini-tutorials
• Nuclear power
• Blueprint preservation (Export/import blueprints)
• Update optimizations (belts + pipes)
• Research Revolution
• Combat balance
• Liquid wagon + universal barreling
• New 3x2 boiler
• Map interaction improvements, map tags and 'zoom to map'
• High res graphics introduction (This means just some parts of the game will be in high res in this version)
• Circuit network additions, improvements and optimizations
• New terrain
• Scenario pack extension - Wave defense and PvP scenario
• First set of interactive mini tutorials
• Multiplayer production polish (move from "usable if you try hard and overlook imperfections" to "just works")
• Modding support for equipment grids in vehicles.
• Proper tech tree.
• Second part of the circuit network extension (power switch, gate, train station, accumulator and logistic network integration to circuit network)
• Additional train conditions (wait until full, wait until empty, wait until circuit condition)
• Flamethrower turret
• Fire (forests can catch on fire)
• Basic Multiplayer matching server (allow listing running MP games via a central location)
• Better rail building
• Better train managing possibilities.
• Modules in blueprints.
• Centralized mod portal and its integration in the game
• Train graphics and vertical/horizontal discrepancy fix.
• Achievements
• Stack inserter
• Multiplayer enhancements (lag hiding, better pvp/forces support, IPv6 support, DNS names)
• First part of the endgame content. (Build rocket and send it to space).
• Chain signals (trains).
• Combinator and more circuit logic.
• Personal roboport
• Logistic trash fields.
• First part of nature destruction by pollution (only tree related now).
• First part of new ambient music update.
• Optimisation of the game simulation speed.
• New graphics of combat robots
• Buildable floors. (concrete + stone)
• Attempt of steam integration
• Multiplayer for the brave ones
• New player graphics (3 versions depending on armor and colored depending on the player color)
• The first (simple) instance of a tank
• Gates
• VRAM saving optimizations
• Finish the trailer. This is a #1 priority now Together with this we will work on presentation (finish new logo, new forum skin, new screenshots on web, credits page in the game)
• Functional replays. This will be a side-effect of multiplayer efforts.
• Improve Map creation process (shareable map generation string, simpler map generation settings.
• "Factory sound background". Entities in the game will have specific sounds that play when player is near.
• Blueprints.
• Oil/Chemicals industry.
• Biomes and doodads.

Obviously the list isn't complete as it doesn't contain all the awesome things that was added to the modding end of factorio and all the small things that was added to the game.
The list contains major things like multiplayer, nuclear stuff and fluid stuff that all take a very long time to do. Combine that with the fact that the factorio devs actually care about performance and you have to admit that they have done a lot in the past four years.

You may think that factorio doesn't update often but it does. There is just periods between major releases without anything new. You may find that annoying but that doesn't mean factorio isn't moving forward.

[offtheball]

Constantly amazed at the attention to detail of the whole team. I don't know who was complaining about this issue, but I know a lot of people are gonna be happy with your solution!

[BlackKnight]

Very excited to see the progress on the updated belt graphics and read about 0.17 pretty much right around the corner. Understandably you want to take the holidays off this time before having to deal with the tsunami of bug reports. Can hardly wait!!!!

Belt Stopper
Reading about how others also noted the missing stopper at the end of belts I realised this was something that would be great to implement. While you are working on these changes to the belt graphics it would be awesome (and be much more believable) seeing something at the end of a belt stop items from falling off. Please consider!

Made some concept mock ups to demonstrate...

fff-269-belt-stopper-concepts.png (106.01 KiB) Viewed 10379 times

[Paul17041993]

Gonna' say, if you weren't going to release any time soon I would've suggested splitting the update, as holding the next update for another many months would very likely harm your retention rates, and in turn sales...

Good to hear you did just that, wish it were done a bit earlier, but you're doing it now nonetheless.

[5thHorseman]

snip

Calls us all children, then goes on to prove himself an expert in the subject. Well done!

[Drury]

Your update said to let us know what you think on the forum so there it is. I think you released an alpha that was an interesting little game but seriously lacked content, gameplay, and direction, which is normal for an alpha. But then you got turned into millionaires because you got lucky going viral with an audience of hysterical children that threw their money at you, and you basically abandoned the game at that point. Since then I've seen nothing but time wasting, graphical tweaks that add nothing to gameplay (that desperately needs something..) and the graphics tweaks barely even look any different anyway. Yet you spend year after year working on it. GUI tweaks too, add nothing and nobody even cared to begin with. I'll give you one thing, you are masters of propaganda. Maybe I am wrong and your intentions were good, but personally I think you are shady and just pretend to be 'developing' the game. I suspect you are claiming some sort of business welfare that stops when the game goes from being "in development" to being in the final release form, so for that reason you will keep putting off the release forever. Everyone who was interested in this game has already heard about it bought it. There is no reason to not just put it to 1.0 and anything extra could be added in patches or updates. But no, the early access shenanigans continues.

Normally I wouldn't care, it is just another building game... But this game had something special, the potential to add some real gameplay in addition to just endlessly building things. You have enormous maps with endless enemies that can attack and the player can defend their base with turrets. This fleshed out would have made this an amazing game. But it got zero development, so you spent all that time creating huge procedural landscape generation and enemy bases, enemy AI, etc. and then did nothing with any of it. To people like me this game is basically a con, pretending to be one thing and then you bait and switch.

I think you will end up like that DayZ dev, the Minecraft dev, and countless others, you get lucky with one game and then never have another success because you are a one hit wonder that got lucky.

Normally I wouldn't be this harsh but the endless Community Announcements that contain all those words yet no actual content, make me think my gut feelings are right.

Going on a wild tangent only to land on your ultimate point of combat being inferior is kind of a weird flex, but ok.

But yeah you're right on that, with each passing update of things that aren't combat, combat feels more and more inadequate, and I used to repeat this over and over again, but you know what? I'm done, because as you said, 1.0 needs to happen already. I mean I get you're frustrated, I used to be too, but honestly I don't care anymore. The actual game of automation is fun, you can outsource combat to artillery trains and forget it even exists, and it's not gonna be any other way, and the sooner you accept that fact, the better for you, trust me. You may even learn to appreciate the "pointless" work they're putting into the rest of the game.

[XBBX]

small thing but still posting as you can see in image it looks like blue circuit will hit corner or underground belt

[Avezo]

New undergrounds look so cool I wish you put loaders with proper models into base game too.

[mexmer]

I like those new belt sprites, I can already see where we could attach the motor that makes them move!

The result was, that if it all goes well, we could be done in 6-9 months. This is probably not something you wanted to hear.

Actually this is much better than expected. Thanks for sharing your roadmap. I now expect 1.0 to be released on christmas 2019

no chance, most likely 0.18 will come out at that time.

[PaszaVonPomiot]

When you are already remodeling belts maybe it would be nice if the textures of multiple belts next to each other (which is very common in most factories) would connect to one wider belt. The colored arrows should still be on every single belt but especially with the 3D belts this might look really amazing. The only problem I see is that it could be a bit weird when routing a belt away from the wider belt or when using splitters.

EDIT: I added a picture of how it would look on 4 horizontal belts. It is just a bit of copy-pasting but it already gives a good idea. Just imagine a bunch of items flowing along. wide_belt_draft.png

That looks awful.

[PaszaVonPomiot]

Fantastic job DEVs! Keep it up and take your time.

[quaatal]

So the belts are now elevated

Are you willing to update the menu background as well?

[meganothing]

...and you basically abandoned the game at that point.

...Yet you spend year after year working on it.

I must throw away my dictionary. In EA the word "abandonement" is always used in a way that is absolutely incompatible with the definition in it.

the potential to add some real gameplay in addition to just endlessly building things. You have enormous maps with endless enemies that can attack and the player can defend their base with turrets. This fleshed out would have made this an amazing game.

Look at the menu background picture posted by quaatal. It will tell you what the developers probably have in mind with this game, and "the developers are sh**" posts will not change that. But I've got a solution for you: Some games include modding as a way to accomodate players with different tastes, this one too. Just ask on the forum and surely someone will recommend a fantastic combat-mod.

[Tekky]

I agree that more than a whole year between major releases is a bit much. However, the Factorio team had a very good reason for this: They decided to write their own graphics engine, because the existing one was causing too much trouble (for example this bug). For this, they had to rewrite major parts of the program (which is a lot of work).

Most other software companies would never have done this. They would have released their game "as is", and would have made a sequel with the new engine, for which all players would have had to pay the same price again.

Therefore, I would consider it inappropriate to criticize the Factorio team for not releasing 0.17 sooner. We should rather be thankful to them for what they did.

Also, most other software companies would have released Factorio already two years ago and would be charging for all of their new features in form of DLC.

[factoriouzr]

Thanks for the updated roadmap.

Didn't Wube say you will release more frequently? It's been a long time since the last majour release.

Can you please release whatever features you have ready mid or early December 2018. A lot of us will have time to play over the holidays along with spending time with friends and family. Then you can release the rest of what you planned in January or whenever you planned to. There is no need to bug fix over the holidays unless there is staff there not taking vacation. I suggest early to mid December for a release with whatever you have done and then you have a few weeks to fix any critical issues and leave the rest till the new year. Or you could release this month and then you have more time for bug fixes. Again, just release whatever you already have implemented as a start.

It would be great to get more frequent updates.

Also please don't forget about spidertron, improve biters, improve logistics and cosntruction robot automation.

[factoriouzr]

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.

I agree, with it looking more 3D, a stopper is a requirement or have the belt animation somehow stop at the end though that would be hard to see with a full belt.

[factoriouzr]

since the belts will have an "height" now - can i still walk over them without problems?

Actually this is a good point.

I'm assuming we will still be able to walk over them as otherwise it would completely change the gameplay and make it more annoying. I still want to be able to walk over them. However, that also makes no sense with them looking 3D.