Friday Facts #268 - The modern Biter

[Oktokolo]

Of course would AI cost CPU time - but AI is relatively easy to parallelize and Factorio can't currently fully utilize 8 hyperthreads / 4 cores (wich i consider to be mainstream now). So additional biter AI could come for free (almost as Factorio still needs to get events to the AI and results to the renderer).
The reason to not improve biter AI for 0.17 is probably a todo list overflow.

You are forgetting the memory cost of accessing large swaths of the map to make your complex AI decisions.
Factorio is memory access bound.

Idle behaviour would probably only need data about the nearest chunks and only if a new activity is to be started. Also there is no need to make the biter do idle stuff if nobody is looking - so it only needs to be calculated when the chunk is currently on (or adjacent to chunks beeing) on the screen.

Other advanced AI could profit from having a highly optimized structure to use for the high-level decision making instead of scanning chunks directly.
A graph of biter bases, player bases and weighted connections between them could be used for detecting whether that biters that are nearby but separated by a lake should bother to react to clouds or not. Such a graph would only need updating on world changes (player uses landfill, destroys cliffs, bases get added or removed).
Rampant uses a scent map for keeping track of a chunk's deadlyness and uses that for attack target decisions.

There is no way, to make the world more believable without using some memory and CPU resources for it. There is no free lunch. But memory footprint of the required state and helper structures could be relatively small. AI also is something that is pretty easy to toggle on and off - by option or when the game detects UPS drops.

[Tesse11ation]

absurdness

absurdity

Nazis didn't consider themselves "bad", right?

Godwin's Law. You get nothing, you LOSE! Good day, sir!

[Tesse11ation]

For some weird reason I feel more for the biters than I do for that feminist in that red red game.

Well, yes, nobody likes feminists. The 2nd/3rd wave feminists are women who don't like expressing love for their families with anything other than words, or who are women who want to be men while keeping the privileges of being a woman.

You forgot the part where they claim that males have more privilege than females do, yet lose all words when someone compares the legal rights of both and finds that men get the short end of the stick.

[5thHorseman]

For some weird reason I feel more for the biters than I do for that feminist in that red red game.

Well, yes, nobody likes feminists. The 2nd/3rd wave feminists are women who don't like expressing love for their families with anything other than words, or who are women who want to be men while keeping the privileges of being a woman.

You forgot the part where they claim that males have more privilege than females do, yet lose all words when someone compares the legal rights of both and finds that men get the short end of the stick.

This seems like one of the least likely threads to start BS like this.

[Oktokolo]

This seems like one of the least likely threads to start BS like this.

There is no such thing like an unlikely place for political opinions. There are as many as there are different shapes of snowflakes. They are like invincible biters at maximum migration rate and don't honor any starting area. Metoo would like to build a wall to keep them out - but i doubt that they would pay for it.

[Koub]

People, please behave : I'm watching this thread, I'd rather not have to moderate everything that's offensive - or troll oil added to the fire.

[Jap2.0]

Eh, not much point to this random comment (hence me removing it). Apparently you can only delete posts if they're the last in the thread, so if a mod wants to delete this go ahead, if they don't then feel free to not go ahead and simply allow this (hopefully) less offensive tangent to grow as I try to find a good way to finish this sentence so I can stop typing and actually edit this post and be done with it.

[bobucles]

I've seen enough degenerate crap to know that most of those topics only exist as flamebait and go nowhere. It doesn't matter what website you go to or what people discuss them, they all turn into the exact same back and forth flame war in the end. So don't feel bad if a mod nips it in the bud, it's no different from cutting the fuse off dynamite.

Back to topic...

I think it'd be nice if the biters were more Bitey. Right now they're more like maulers.

[eradicator]

Sounds like a good time to post a video about how internet aggressions spreads.

[Hannu]

These biters looks alien compared to real arthropods. Biters look most like insects, largely because they have 6 legs and segmented body, but leg configuration is weird. Insects have pair of legs at 3 subsequent thorax segments (right after head). Also arachnids have legs in tight group in prosoma (front part of their body, they have no separate head). The last pair of biter's legs is clearly attached to much more posterior abdominal segment.

I have no unique opinion is it good or bad. On the one hand, weird alien look fits very well to alien monsters on distant planet. Evolution have lead to the same kind of efficient and practical structures like on Earth, but details are different, as one would certainly expect. On the other hand overall habitus of biters is so near the insects that they look like erroneous insects.

They are very fine work. The jaws look nice. I am anxious to see spitters and worms. I hope that enemy sprites in the game are rendered with high resolution and enough frames in all movements even it would cost some UPS (maybe option to choose is best for all).

[Daenoth]

the Factorio planet

on Biter's planet.

Hmm I think the Factorio planet needs a proper name: Factorium? Factination? Factinogo?
None of these seem quite right, I'll be interested to see what creative ideas the community generates

If we want to go traditional I our planet naming structure it would be named for a Roman god. I would vote for Vulcan (forges, fire, blacksmithing) or Athena (wisdom, war, crafts). Vulcan is, unfortunately, already used for a famous fictional planet, but the name could be messed with like Vulcania, or something like that. Athena isn't really used for much that I know of, Athene would also work as an alternative.

[Pi-C]

If we want to go traditional I our planet naming structure it would be named for a Roman god. I would vote for Vulcan (forges, fire, blacksmithing) or Athena (wisdom, war, crafts). Vulcan is, unfortunately, already used for a famous fictional planet, but the name could be messed with like Vulcania, or something like that. Athena isn't really used for much that I know of, Athene would also work as an alternative.

Sorry for the nit-picking, but Athena is a Greek goddess -- the Roman equivalent (more or less) is Minerva.

[featherwinglove]

I have to say, I really enjoyed watching the "Diggy" scenario. It reminds me a lot of Dwarf Fortress; I'm just imagining the real-estate potential of having something like that implemented in the game, and having a multilayered base with connected defenses and power grids...

...this featured the week after they removed the axe which makes it so interesting. How do I get enough iron for my next axe?

If you can stomach all the nonsense, there is Sierra-Online's Outpost from 1993, which has four layers of underground and most of your colony needs to be put there. I had a lot of fun playing it, but never reached the endgame because it was a buggy mess.

[featherwinglove]

Sounds like a good time to post a video about how internet aggressions spreads.

I got sick in the first two minutes and killed it...

[Creepopolous]

I think that particular part of their lifecycle has been slaughtered on the sacrificial altar in honor of his majesty Yuu Peyes the Alaccellerating.

Of course would AI cost CPU time - but AI is relatively easy to parallelize and Factorio can't currently fully utilize 8 hyperthreads / 4 cores (wich i consider to be mainstream now). So additional biter AI could come for free (almost as Factorio still needs to get events to the AI and results to the renderer).
The reason to not improve biter AI for 0.17 is probably a todo list overflow.

Wait, hold on. They do have something in the vein of idle AI. I'm sure I've seen a few run somewhere and stop for no apparent reason. Maybe it's just attack/colonization AI that's acting up, but it's something. But all I'm asking for is something that probably doesn't require too much coding. Just breathing or bobbing or something along those lines. They seem pretty fleshy now, so it ain't too strange for them to also breathe like vertebrates do. Although I did just realize that they'd have to create a set of animations for every single orientation they have for 8 of these buggers. They do already have tons of walking cycles, and I think a new rendering system, so they could do it if they really wanted to.

[foodfactorio]

"The modern biter (Albert, Einstein)"

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well, thats what my eyes first saw