Friday Facts #270 - HR Substation & Save/Load overview

[Jelmergu]

Factorio, a game where automation is the key of the game

Factorio T-shirt packaging, no automation visible

[suprnova74]

The old one looked too polished and true to Earth designs (i.e. made in a pristine factory) . This version looks much more steampunk which would be what a crashed survivor trying to cobble things together would probably wind up making, imo. If I had to pick, I'd go for the new one. Sure, rust it up if you like

[Oktokolo]

For example concrete has a random chance to destroy decoratives. Could probably be made deterministic.

Random numbers are already deterministic in Factorio. They are based on synced state.

I doubt you understand what you just said there.

I am pretty sure i know what i just said.
Factorio uses a deterministic random number generater and ensures that its state always is the same for each player. Same state of the random, number generator leads to same random numbers and new state beeing generated for each player. The random number generator state is synced once on joining a game. Neither the random number generator state, nor the generated numbers have to be send after a player successfully joined a game.
The point is: Concrete's effect on decoratives already is deterministic.

The results of random numbers generated during runtime are part of the savegame in the form of decorative positions. Not saving decoratives would mean recalculating all random numbers from the start of the save (i.e. running a full replay before every load) or completely changing how concrete determines which decoratives are removed.

Yes. The need to save the event history would probably turn out to lead to larger saves for longer-lasting games.
Concrete could always remove decoratives. But then a list of cases where a decorative was removed by concrete but then the concrete was removed would need to be stored.
Also, mods can create/destroy decoratives in response to any event. No way of keeping track of that in general without having to store the complete event history and replaying it on load including executing all mod scripts (of the exact version of the mod as it was installed back then).
Just saving a snapshot of the map is the least complex and most straightforward way to do it. And that is, what Factorio currently does.

[OutOfNicks]

Please make "saving" reset the autosave timer too.

It's so annoying to save, only to then have the game save again just a short while later. Or to load in again and a little while later it does an autosave. Especially if it's a save that you reload several times in a row while you try to resolve something time-critical.

And I'm on an SSD so saves are literally seconds, poor people on HD it must take forever.

^this.
Also, as always pretty HD stuff.

[eradicator]

Concrete's effect on decoratives already is deterministic.

Obviously the effect is currently deterministic. But i was talking about determinism in a scenario where decoratives are not stored in the savegame. It's called a "thought experiment". Read up bobs and my original post if you're not just trying to troll.

[Mike5000]

Old substation looked like a substation.

New "substation" doesn't.

[bobucles]

The new substation is neat, but it seems to be very visually "noisy". I mean that it takes a while of staring at it to know what is going on and the important part- that it's a power system- seems to be secondary. Does it really need so many gubbins?

[SHiRKiT]

Honestly the new Substation looks a bit of a drawing. I personally don't like, although I will get used to it. Not to mention it looks like a Big Electric Pole

[Zavian]

Old substation looked like a substation.

New "substation" doesn't.

I'm also wondering how it looks beside some accumulators in a solar field. (That's the main place I use substations, so to me that is where it needs to visually blend in).

[Jap2.0]

Please make "saving" reset the autosave timer too.

It's so annoying to save, only to then have the game save again just a short while later. Or to load in again and a little while later it does an autosave. Especially if it's a save that you reload several times in a row while you try to resolve something time-critical.

And I'm on an SSD so saves are literally seconds, poor people on HD it must take forever.

^this.
Also, as always pretty HD stuff.

Yeah, I think this would be a good idea - especially in multiplayer where the server saves for players joining. There have been numerous times where I see "<server> saving the game for xxx" and only a few seconds later I see "<server> saving the game for <server>". I think it would be a big improvement if the server simply kept a copy when doing this - the only possible downside being the server sometimes saving far more often, but this could also be solved by having a setting for the minimum time between saves.

[ske]

Could we have a dual server setup without pauses? In bigger games, there's always people joining and sometimes the game seems to stop every 10 seconds.

The primary server that serves the active players are connected to never pauses for saving.

The secondary server is connected to the primary server like a client but it handles saving of the game and catches up to the primary server afterwards.

The downside is that you need the computing power to run two instances of the server but the upside would be that there are no pauses when the game saves or a player joins. The main difficulty I see with this is to deal with the hand-over of the clients and savegames when people join.

[AyleeJenn]

dear Factorio Team,

I feel it is very fair and considerate of you to make migration of saves from previous versions possible. I think that considerations in this go a long way with people who played and supported the game from the beginning. I only ever joined at version 0.16.39 so when version 0.17 comes out, I should be able to migrate my saved games (and maps in the form of saved games ) without issue.

Thank you for all your continuous hard work.

[deer_buster]

Tall sizes for the shirts would be much appreciated

[IronCartographer]

Regarding the HR graphic update and complaints that it looks too small / noisy / similar to a power pole...


I agree that it no longer looks like something I would call a substation, though the new graphic is nice in its own right. What if the mismatch can be resolved while using the new art?

How about a new name: Electric Transceiver! It fits because of the huge wireless coverage area, both sending and receiving power.

Parallel discussion on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... ?context=2

[mexmer]

dear Factorio Team,

I feel it is very fair and considerate of you to make migration of saves from previous versions possible. I think that considerations in this go a long way with people who played and supported the game from the beginning. I only ever joined at version 0.16.39 so when version 0.17 comes out, I should be able to migrate my saved games (and maps in the form of saved games ) without issue.

Thank you for all your continuous hard work.

they are not removing save conversion, just limiting from witch version you can convert saves.
version 0.15.x can convert 0.12.0 and newer.
version 0.16.x (current) can convert 0.13.0 and newer.
version 0.17.x will be able to convert 0.15.0 and newer.

from time to time you need to drop some old code to tidy up codebase.

[Mike5000]

Is it just me?

I'd much prefer to be able to zoom out further without using console commands and killing FPS rather than zooming in for the first five seconds of play to admire some hi-res graphics.

[MrGrim]

First thought: I think labour of love fits better then fun with the machine.

The reason I chose not to nominate Factorio for this category is that I feel it is inappropriate for a game in early access. I also did not nominate any other early access game as well. For such games, continued development is expected until they are complete and fully released. It seemed to me like this award was more meant for devs that go above and beyond post release.

Just my $0.02.

Love the new substation! This gives me hope for the other electric poles.

[AyleeJenn]

they are not removing save conversion, just limiting from witch version you can convert saves.
version 0.15.x can convert 0.12.0 and newer.
version 0.16.x (current) can convert 0.13.0 and newer.
version 0.17.x will be able to convert 0.15.0 and newer.

from time to time you need to drop some old code to tidy up codebase.

I know and I understand. I just wanted to drop a compliment and appreciation, hope it didn't come off the wrong way

[dog80]

the new substation design is awesome - it is much more realistic the previous was more a undefinable block of stuff with an antenna on top - this looks more like a bigger antenna with some technique at the bottom - great i love it!

( つ ◕_◕ )つ ( つ ◕_◕ )つ
( つ ◕_◕ )つ ( つ ◕_◕ )つ

[Durabys]

The save file is more than a quarter decoratives? Most games don't even save those, just re-generate them on load, or when you re-enter an unloaded area. I don't see why you can't do the same. Is there any reason these need to remain perfectly in sync?

My biggest save is less than 40 MiB on disk (game stores them as zip files), so i don't think, they need to reduce save file size. Syncing decorative stuff should not cost much performance in practice because it is only done when decoratives get created or destroyed (they don't hold any state that could change).
I also like, that every player sees exactly the same map. No corner-cutting for stuff that is not relevant.

For example concrete has a random chance to destroy decoratives. Could probably be made deterministic.

Random numbers are already deterministic in Factorio. They are based on synced state.

My own biggest savefile is 180 MiB. Also. I had a 0.14 200MiB file in the past.