Friday Facts #295 - New design for the chemical plant

[meganothing]

It may also offend some people actually working in a chemical plant.

Just wow.

[catma]

It looks very unnatural to me that they did that good for steam engines but that bad for chemical plants in the game. It may also offend some people actually working in a chemical plant.

Factorio steam engine's only exhaust is leftover steam, which is water. Because the boiler that does the actual fuel-burning doesn't show any exhausts. As for the chem plant...if you're stranded alone on an uninhabited planet and just want to get off the damn rock, why waste precious materials to build *any* filters at all?

Besides, pollution removal works nicely, just build enough walls and laser turrets. The pollution will come to you and you can shoot it down without re-spreading it to the environment irrespective of which chemical it is!!! The repair bots are barely inconvenienced for seconds after that...

[Kametec]

The new design is interesting. I am just wondering about the smoke. It looks very different from what the steam engines/turbines output right now. I hope it won't look awkward when you have the two visible on screen at the same time.

[Pin-Lui]

i really dig the little window and that you can see the fluid and the rotating thing. time to update the turbines!

[Wherelock]

It would be more interesting, also more works to do, that the "liquid" color matches the different material fed in.

[bobucles]

It may also offend some people actually working in a chemical plant.

Placing opinions in other people's mouths is certainly more offensive. Don't assume outrage out of a video game, that's a job for XBox live kids.

[catma]

It would be more interesting, also more works to do, that the "liquid" color matches the different material fed in.

It would be far more interesting if biters took on the chemical color, and had a color-specific bonus as a result. Anyone want to see / not see rainbow biters? BUILD ACCORDINGLY, lol.

[Aerudaer]

Why do people always think chemical plants are so dirty!? 99.9% of the time the only thing released is water vapor from a cooling tower. Any other waste is thermally decomposed in a flare system. Why do you have to add smoke? Even from a financial perspective, no one wants to waste chemicals. But people who work in chemical plants live in the community too. None of us want to hurt the environment either.

[Deadlock989]

Why do people always think chemical plants are so dirty!? 99.9% of the time the only thing released is water vapor from a cooling tower. Any other waste is thermally decomposed in a flare system. Why do you have to add smoke? Even from a financial perspective, no one wants to waste chemicals. But people who work in chemical plants live in the community too. None of us want to hurt the environment either.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm having a hard time appreciating the "financial perspective" of a fantasy video game which has no currency system and takes place on an alien planet inhabited only by giant impossible insects who are hell-bent on trying to eat a single individual who can handcraft and carry 5000 jury-rigged oil refineries in an effort to escape her predicament.

“Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things.” - Terry Pratchett

[Aerudaer]

You're completely correct. I guess my post was pretty silly. Just something that really bugs me in real life.

[fly]

I regret to say that Factorio seems to have the first thing I don’t like. I'm saying about this decision to make separate images for each rotation. I don't know, maybe it is used already for other buildings in game, but I never noticed it. While in this case I was starring at that picture in blog post for minutes trying to understand what's wrong with my eyes/mind. Why I see completely different buildings. And then I scrolled to last paragraph to read that these are indeed different buildings.

[Koub]

I regret to say that Factorio seems to have the first thing I don’t like. I'm saying about this decision to make separate images for each rotation. I don't know, maybe it is used already for other buildings in game, but I never noticed it.

Pumpjacks, refineries, these I know for sure. I think current chem plant also has it, but to a lesser extent.
I'm excluding all the structures that don't rotate at all, of course.

[catma]

I regret to say that Factorio seems to have the first thing I don’t like. I'm saying about this decision to make separate images for each rotation. I don't know, maybe it is used already for other buildings in game, but I never noticed it. While in this case I was starring at that picture in blog post for minutes trying to understand what's wrong with my eyes/mind. Why I see completely different buildings. And then I scrolled to last paragraph to read that these are indeed different buildings.

I see it as the engineer redeploying the same building components in a more convenient way to see its indicators best at all times --- not as a different building. It helps not lose "the game".

SPOILER:
you "lose the game" when you remember Factorio is a video game. You win it by not remembering that.

[bripi]

The new chem plant is **gorgeous**!!! well done devs!! Thanx so much for improving this design!

[bripi]

Why do people always think chemical plants are so dirty!? 99.9% of the time the only thing released is water vapor from a cooling tower. Any other waste is thermally decomposed in a flare system. Why do you have to add smoke? Even from a financial perspective, no one wants to waste chemicals. But people who work in chemical plants live in the community too. None of us want to hurt the environment either.

If you lived in China, you would not say this. I do, and I wouldn't ever again after seeing the clouds of shit they spew into the air quite recklessly. When the plants are running near us, we can **taste** the chemicals in the air. And most of them are 15-20 miles away. From what I understand, India is even worse.

[InstantMix]

Do we have a rough idea of when these new graphics will be implemented?

Are they in a "yeah we can push it next update" a la the new resource icons, or do they need quite a lot of attention paid to it over the next few months?

[Nova]

Two more months gone by and no new chemical plant. Is it still in development? (I'm not really impatient, but quite interested in the reason why it is delayed. )

[V453000]

We've detected some problems with the chemical plant graphics in some rotations - they didn't tile as nicely as we would like, so they are being improved a bit. They'll be released soon-ish(tm).