Friday Facts #288 - New remnants, More bugs

[Klonan]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-288

[Mylon]

Regarding remnants, how about making them as components and/or particles? Components can be rendered at different Y coords for better blending. Even better if these particles could interact with the world: Send debris flying everywhere. If a unit walks through the debris lying on the ground, these particles can be moved around.

Imagine a group of players driving through a wrecked factory in single file and leaving a channel where the debris/remnants are minimal relative to the rest of the ruins.

[Desjani]

You could apply some logic to it. It would require all remant set to have at least one that ONLY stays in its own tiles:

When (entitiy destroyed) Select (random remnant from avaliable list)
IF (remnant is on top layer of overlap stack)
DO nothing ELSE
Select (random remnant not tested from avaliable list)
Repeat

This will ensure randomization of remnants, but will check to see if you have overlapping problems and rectify before creating the visual remnant.

You could have another check in when things are placed around remnants:

IF (placed object) causes remnant to not be on top layer
Delete remnant

[JaJe]

Very interesting FFF about remnants.
However you need to do something about it while not having unlocked bots yet. I once had an attack by bitters which destroyed lots of my stuff and at the end I couldn't see the damage because of the bitters bodies and of course WHAT building they destroyed since It was not ghosted.

See this:

[Earendel]

Some remnants can be flat generic debits, you can walk on it, build on it, and otherwise ignore it. Example: Wooden box.

Some remnants can be floor-layer objects. You can walk on them, but you can't build on them unless you clear (deconstruct) them. Example: Transport Belt

Some remnants can be object-layer obstacles. You can't walk on them or build on them. They need to be cleared (deconstruct) them. Example: Robotport

Remnants that need to be deconstructed by default would give you nothing by mining them. Optionally some remnants could be given some scrap item(s) as a mining result. If you are trying to build over remnants with the same item that was there originally, that could work with quick replace so you can skip the deconstruction animation.

[Philip017]

@Rseding

Thanks for all the hard work you put in to fix the bugs, as a Bonus you have fun doing it. as they say, if you enjoy the work you do then it becomes less work and instead play. glad you enjoy fixing them because we sure dont have fun when they break things.

RE: remnants
I think that placing the ghosts down when things die is perfectly fine, having a collision box would not be fun, i have run over enough power poles and pipes with the robots to later fix them that if i ran them over and the remnants were still there preventing me from moving that wouldn't be much fun, also all the old junk goes in a wood box and shot to get rid of it, if those remnants had a collision box it would break anything we were gonna try and do where it happened, i guess we could adapt and not shoot said box near our factory, but it would present more frustration than fun imo. but if you all are enjoying putting in the time to do fancy remnants then i guess go for it, im already used to the ghost remnants and progress to having construction robots researched in a first couple of hours of the game, in most of my games that are 100+ hours each, the ghost remnants are the ones im used to.

[queerbutterfly]

What if the remnants would be the new ones only as long as nobody (player/bitters..) would walk through them. As soon as you enter a tile where a remnant would physically still block you, you crush the fragile remnant under you and the original generic flat remnant (or a specific flat one) would replace the one which you just walked on.

[Dry Hairy Tree]

1% of 1M = 10K players.

Not a figure for an accountant, 10 000 people who like your game.

[boksiora]

Regarding remnants, how about making them as components and/or particles? Components can be rendered at different Y coords for better blending. Even better if these particles could interact with the world: Send debris flying everywhere. If a unit walks through the debris lying on the ground, these particles can be moved around.

really great idea


its called "game props" in other games.
for example in Star Craft map editor you can place custom objects and the player can interact with them

this will allow the modders to go crazy


hope they implement this

[irbork]

Broken power pole looks sweet but I am happy enough with flat standard debris, especially if the nice one will impede my freedom to move.

[OBXandos]

As someone who has done QA and helps their friends QA I loved reading about the bug reports. I understand how you were able to reproduce some things but what boggles my mind is how someone did those things in the first place to cause the bug. They just seem so out of the way that I cannot imagine them being an actual use case scenario.

Thanks for the great work!
OBX

[IronCartographer]

The biggest opportunity with remnants seems to be allowing salvage of components/contents of inventories for a time window after destruction, though I could see arguments both ways. It would certainly help alleviate the pain of crashing into a chest or heavily-populated roboport if it had a corpse more like a player's inventory.

Mostly I agree with the (current) top reddit comment highlighting the usefulness of the remnants not looking too similar to a real entity in need of repair rather than replacement. Generic remnants may not resemble their original structures, but they look distinct as remnants which is valuable.

[quyxkh]

We realised how simple things can become complicated in no time with Factorio.

. . .

[bobucles]

You don't need wreckage if the biters eat it! :thinkingmeme:

[bonob]

Make remnants a real object, with collision box.
That certainly makes an impact on gameplay, how big I don't know. Making it difficult to move through ruins makes sense. Making it slow for biters to move through freshly destroyed walls again makes sense. Being able to scavenge materials from destroyed stuff also makes sense.

So yeah, good direction to head into..

[Jap2.0]

I'm kind of surprised the one train bug from a while back (FFF 182) didn't make the list.

As always, great work!

[invisus]

Regarding remnants, how about making them as components and/or particles? Components can be rendered at different Y coords for better blending. Even better if these particles could interact with the world: Send debris flying everywhere. If a unit walks through the debris lying on the ground, these particles can be moved around.

really great idea

Haha, I like this approach too. It leaves the "nice" remnant there so it's visually more appealing than the generic one, and yet avoids the collision box issue.

I for one would love to see these particles/game props flying about when walking through a recently destroyed section of the base. It would certainly add to the feeling of destruction/damage/decay. Kind of like the particles when a spawner is killed, or when mining ore by hand. They certainly don't need to persist long, and can quickly fade away, but I think they'd add a lot to the feeling of the destruction. These particles could also be thrown about when the replacement object is placed over the remnant by a bot or the player. Further adding to the feeling that the old object is gone, and a new one has taken it's place.

[BlueTemplar]

Wreckage Reclamation coming to Factorio?

Example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM85EP4GeBI&t=14m40s
Also featuring resurrection of wrecks (which costs no metal, only energy), and the cute little guys in the second spoiler

You don't need wreckage if the biters eat it! :thinkingmeme:

And spawn more biters?

Example2

Puppy : This fast-moving suicide [jumping] unit is good for raiding and sniping lightly-armored targets. When standing next to wreckages, it automatically draws metal from them to replicate itself, grey goo style.

What if the remnants would be the new ones only as long as nobody (player/bitters..) would walk through them. As soon as you enter a tile where a remnant would physically still block you, you crush the fragile remnant under you and the original generic flat remnant (or a specific flat one) would replace the one which you just walked on.

In Zero-K/Spring/Total Annihilation(?)/Supreme Commander(??) some wrecks are also bigger than other, some of the larger units (including Commanders) can crush (smaller/all) wrecks, and wrecks can also be destroyed by weapon fire...
Crushed/destroyed wrecks turn into even less valuable debris that can be freely walked over.

[ohmusama]

What if, when a building reaches 25% health it breaks, not functional, shows as damaged, but can still be repaired with repair packs.

When it reaches 0% it is destroyed, and remnants are left as today.

This allows you to have structures that are effectively dead but still render correctly and work logically in the world by providing blocking hit boxes untill they are utterly destroyed.

[regiscade]

Rather than having remnants completely block movement, you could have them reduce the characters motion significantly as if they have to spend extra time maneuvering through the rubble. You could make it worse for the player and vehicles to move through than the more nimble and sure-footed enemy.

Also, the idea of making some amount of resources recoverable from rubble seems realistic and cool. That also opens the possibility of a new function for construction drones to clean up rubble and recover any recyclable resources.