Friday Facts #271 - Fluid optimisations & GUI Style inspector

[Klonan]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-271

[Panderturtle]

I mean, the poster does not represent actual gameplay that makes sense, but this should propably be fixed:
(the cut off inserster "hand")

[ratchetfreak]

tl:dr the fluid system originally was oop and had the fluidbox data in each entity which turned out to be slow because of CPU cache when needing to simulate the fluid (touching just the fluid boxes).

Now fluidboxes are pooled per connected section to improve locality with additional upside that it's parallelizeable.

[trilader]

Also this gear on the belt is cut off.

cutoff_belt.png (488.77 KiB) Viewed 15388 times

[Rseding91]

tl:dr the fluid system originally was oop and had the fluidbox data in each entity which turned out to be slow because of CPU cache when needing to simulate the fluid (touching just the fluid boxes).

Now fluidboxes are pooled per connected section to improve locality with additional upside that it's parallelizeable.

"slow" is relative. You can still run a 1000 science-per-minute base at 60 UPS without issues. As you can see in the benchmark graph the pooling didn't actually help anything. The other improvements to the logic flow is what helped.

[dog80]

the robots "working" on the assembler reminds me on starcraft svc's when they work at building sth - pretty cool

[GuiltyBystander]

How do you plan on handling fluid systems with more than one type of fluid in them? It'd be great if that was somehow prevented, but I've also seen some pretty cool systems that exploit a universal fluid system.

[TreefrogGreaken]

Look cool!

Obviously at the moment these are looking like back-end changes to the fluid mechanics.

Should we modders just keep an eye on the api for anything to with how entites are interacting with the new fluid system, I saw a few changes in the 0.17 api.

[Ser_Optimus]

Is it just me or are the HD textures getting more and more clean and the game's general look gets more and more cartoonish and colourful and away from its initial "used look"?

[Amarula]

Thank you! I love how you take the time to share what is happening. The poster looks awesome, even if it is already revealing our group tendency to OCD Have a marvelous time at GDS 2018, wish I could be there to meet you. The fluid optimizations are clearly already showing worthwhile improvements, hurrah! Keep doing amazing things, counting down the days until 0.17

[Brathahn]

the robots "working" on the assembler reminds me on starcraft svc's when they work at building sth - pretty cool

thats a furnace

[Gergely]

Is that finally a Wube software logo?

[live22morrow]

Clearly the moral of this story is that cache optimization makes everything better. Looking forward to 0.17.

[Albert]

I mean, the poster does not represent actual gameplay that makes sense, but this should propably be fixed:
(the cut off inserster "hand")

Fixed, thanks for the hint.

[dee-]

Is it just me or are the HD textures getting more and more clean and the game's general look gets more and more cartoonish and colourful and away from its initial "used look"?

Agreed. Dieselpunk -> Comicpunk

Maybe some kind of additional "tint" could be selectable from the Options? Like "colorful", "normal", "dystopian", ...

[ohmusama]

As someone playing FluidWorld, pipe optimizations are greatly welcome!

[Optera]

You find the cut off inserter hand and gear, but but don't think the long handed inserter is totally wrong?
It removes from the furnace and places into the arithmetic combinator.

[pleegwat]

You find the cut off inserter hand and gear, but but don't think the long handed inserter is totally wrong?
It removes from the furnace and places into the arithmetic combinator.

And the refinery input is connected to the input side of a pump, which is filled with lubricant, and that is fed into a heat exchanger.

And the output of the heat exchanger is linked to one of the refinery outputs, and nothing else.

[Wakaba-chan]

Is it just me or are the HD textures getting more and more clean and the game's general look gets more and more cartoonish and colourful and away from its initial "used look"?

Agreed. Dieselpunk -> Comicpunk

Maybe some kind of additional "tint" could be selectable from the Options? Like "colorful", "normal", "dystopian", ...

We need special "toyland" style like in OpenTTD. (joking) Actually I love the way graphical style of Factorio develops. It's still rusty enough. Also I love idea to make biters cuter (I noticed one at the bottom of picture). I believe if Factorio been made in Japan or Korea, that biters would be some extremely adorable thing you would definitely like to take home. With appropriate IRL plush merch, of course. Say, like beefalo from Don't Starve. I have one, it's so sweet.

[Mike5000]

This is the kind of no-nonsense hard work that makes Factorio great. Thank you.