Friday Facts #283 - Prepare to Launch

[arrow in my gluteus]

this line scares me

The Rocket Silo without the rocket uses sixteen 8192x8192px textures which makes our 1080Ti run out of VRAM to render.

i have only 4GB 1050Ti

anyways, looking forward for next week release.

btw. i don't like opening animation on logistic boxes, but ... guess that's just matter of preference.

This applies to them rendering the textures that our game will need. Actual players will only need to get the result of that render into memory. So don't worry about that.

[dRaMaTiC]

Omg Omg. Its real. Iam so excited. Didn't play over six month. 0.17 might be the version i'll finally bet the game first time. Let's go
Btw. I love the HD wall textures! Sweet!

[Plytas]

Please add ease-in ease-out on the rocket raising animation

[Mathematician]

The new rocket silo looks good, but it would be even better if the lights kept flashing all the time (and maybe a bit slower, to feel more "heavy"). Also the abrupt linear upwards movement and stopping of the rocket looks a bit fake, like it doesn't have any weight. Would it be possible to make it start rising slowly, pick up speed, and then slow back down into its final position?

Agree. The rocket started to raise too quickly. Also, I actually expected the lights being still and only flash when silo is opened and the rocket raised. Those are in fact just 'notification lights', not 'light up the silo lights'. As I see them: they flash as an indication of something important happenning.
One question though. Since silo size is changed, what will happen with it when converting 0.16 save to 0.17 ?

[roothorick]

I'm going to miss the spotlight on the rocket silo, I really liked that one.

Indeed, first time I saw a silo during nightfall I was kinda wowed.

It'd be neat to have spotlights added to the new silo, so the rocket is a shining obelisk in the dark.

[xfir01]

They actually did completely scrap the engine.

Yes, they rewrote the graphics engine and replaced rendering libraries, but that's not the same as scrapping the game's engine.

For example the sounds are still the same:

Regarding 0.17: it uses the same sound engine as 0.16 and all previous versions.

But this is just beating a pedantic horse. I think we'll agree that there are myriad changes at all levels.

[BlueTemplar]

One question though. Since silo size is changed, what will happen with it when converting 0.16 save to 0.17 ?

Since it just got one row (or is that column?) smaller, I guess that the worst case scenario would be that your inserters/power grid won't "connect" anymore on one side... (until you move them).

[Light]

As you can see, there are a lot of things happening at the last moment, but it seems that there shouldn't be a big obstacle in the way of release next week.

What about the 65 unassigned bug reports?

They were all fixed with black magic once the rocket received an HD graphic. Unfortunately, posila uttering "nasty words" opened the gates of hell and now there are hundreds of unaccounted bugs for them to find.

[V453000]

The new rocket silo looks good, but it would be even better if the lights kept flashing all the time (and maybe a bit slower, to feel more "heavy"). Also the abrupt linear upwards movement and stopping of the rocket looks a bit fake, like it doesn't have any weight. Would it be possible to make it start rising slowly, pick up speed, and then slow back down into its final position?

Agree. The rocket started to raise too quickly. Also, I actually expected the lights being still and only flash when silo is opened and the rocket raised. Those are in fact just 'notification lights', not 'light up the silo lights'. As I see them: they flash as an indication of something important happenning.
One question though. Since silo size is changed, what will happen with it when converting 0.16 save to 0.17 ?

Since the size change is only by 1 tile, the silo just gets to be off-grid by half a tile in 0.17, but inserters can still reach it fine so it functions.

[Omarflyjoemacky]

So Monday the 25th... right? Early Christmas!! I. AM. EXCITED.

[5thHorseman]

cool, i can't wait for the update.

one minor thing bugs me, however, and it's that weird difference that i can't put into words of the logistic chest "doors", between them being closed and during the opening animation...
new_log_chest_cut.gif

the color changes slightly, and it loses its 'depth'.

Weird, I don't see it. It looks exactly the same to me (except the one frame is slightly open of course).

[Hiladdar]

I have played around with the "Dissipation rate" in several of the games that I played. Especially those where I think the pollution generated was to high.

I do like the changes to biters and their spawners. The limit of how much pollution can be stored by a spawner makes a lot of sense to me. Excess pollution will then just continue to the next spawner, and subsequently the next base. This in theory should increase the amount of attacks on a base, adding realism to a swarm attack. The second thing that I like, are the changes to the spawner bases. That should make significant improvement to spawner pathing.

The one question I have, "Are biters still so stupid that they attack piles of rocks?"

The second thing I like about the biters is that they are not going to be at the effect of belts used defense mechanism. I always felt that belts were not really designed for that.

The new chests and the new rocket silo looks great.

[BlueTemplar]

The one question I have, "Are biters still so stupid that they attack piles of rocks?"

Aren't the biters only attacking rocks (and power poles ) if they feel that they can't move anymore ?

The second thing I like about the biters is that they are not going to be at the effect of belts used defense mechanism. I always felt that belts were not really designed for that.

Those look like small biters - I guess that the effect of belts on larger, slower biters will be more noticeable ?

[Drizak]

holy shit it looks great

[DanGio]

[Avezo]

So, during playtesting no issues were observed with much harder progressing into blue science?

[HalfPastZulu]

The Logistic Chests need a tiny attenna! Now they can open and close, but how do they transmit their content-information to the logistic network?

They don't need to transmit anything, the particles in the chest are entangled with particles in the network so each particle knows what every other particle is doing depending on whether it is being observed or not.

[Jap2.0]

As you can see, there are a lot of things happening at the last moment, but it seems that there shouldn't be a big obstacle in the way of release next week.

What about the 65 unassigned bug reports?

I'm sure they're VERY thankful that you mentioned bug reports. I suspect they're so unfamiliar with releasing a successful game which has hundreds of thousands of sales, that they completely overlooked the concept of 'bug reports.'

Perhaps they're looking for an office manager?

I wasn't telling them about it, I was asking about it. Because the number was increasing (was about 50 at https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-278) I was curious if the were planning to leave it for after the release, or if they simply expected to get through them that fast.

you don't need to be that sarcastic about it.

Some bugs are now obsoletes. For example if there is a bug report for the fluid system, it's probably don't exists in their new fluid system engine.

And a good number aren't. I've seen a lot of bugs related to the graphics engine already moved into the fixed for 0.17 folder, and while there are a few things relating to fluids, the gui, the graphics system, input handling, and the campaign, there are also plenty that probably won't be magically fixed with 0.17.

Addendium: and a write this, switch to another tab, and post it, and three new posts pop up. Nice job by the way. Now to get to updating that roadmap...

[fishycat]

So much love for Albert's work (and everyone who participated). All those new graphics are just awesome!

One thing about the animation of the new rocket-silo: the lights blinking indicates for observers, that the silo is about to open, so shouldn't the lights also blink, when it's about to close again?

[DanGio]

The Logistic Chests need a tiny attenna! Now they can open and close, but how do they transmit their content-information to the logistic network?

They don't need to transmit anything, the particles in the chest are entangled with particles in the network so each particle knows what every other particle is doing depending on whether it is being observed or not.

I thought logistic chests were 3D printers