Friday Facts #324 - Sound design, Animated trees, Optimizations

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-324

[Alekthefirst]

that's not an insignificant increase in performance

[Silden]

The tree animation made my eyes water. Will there be a way to switch it off in game if I find it too distracting?

[CakeDog]

Animated water AND trees? AND even more optimization and performance increases across the board?

I'm not crying tears of joy, YOU'RE crying tears of joy.

[Shingen]

This is another nice example of "Factorio is not CPU bound, it's memory latency bound". More cores wasn't going to make this faster - because it was never limited by how fast the CPU ran.

uhh what? no.
more cores weren't going to make this faster, because no N-threaded program will run faster if you just "throw more cores at it" (i.e. if you already have N cores and add more).
number of cores != speed of the CPU.

and another thing:

1 of the 3 always takes significantly longer to finish than the others. That means that the others end up being essentially "free"; the game has to wait for the slowest to be finished anyway so the faster 2 of the 3 get a "free ride" to finish long before game finishes waiting for the slowest to be done.

i don't know what you mean by "free ride", they're still being computed, it's all weirdly worded.

if one of them takes significantly longer than the other 2, how about make it run parallel to the other 2 being run sequentially?
as in:

Code: Select all

------1------->
--2--> --3-->

this way they won't compete as hard for resources - however, of course, overall they will compete for a bit longer

[DanGio]

Yay, handful of great news. I like the bug walking sound. The "breathe sound" a little less, I think it sounds like a dog. IMO it should be more bug-like, lung-less. Like "chirp", or "ksss".

[BlueTemplar]

I've been suspecting that the reason why nuclear got (slightly) worse performance in 0.17 (while pretty much everything else got much better) was due to the heat pipe simulation - was I right?
https://mulark.github.io/tests/test-000 ... 00017.html

[seePyou]

"The blue triangle module-requesters had the same kind of checks"

The what?


" Electric networks... Fluid networks... Heat pipe networks... none of these interact with each other or anything outside of themselves. What happens if I just update all 3 in parallel? [...] Every save file I've tested ended up running measurably faster in the end. The most extreme one (lots of steel furnace based smelting) showed a 2.3x speed-up. "

So does that mean that each of these are now able to run on a seperate thread in our multithreaded processors?

[DanGio]

"The blue triangle module-requesters had the same kind of checks"

The what?

Place a blueprint of a machine containing modules. Build the machine. You see a blue triangle on it, saying that the machine demands modules (bots will insert them if they're available in the network)

[Allaizn]

The tree animation made my eyes water. Will there be a way to switch it off in game if I find it too distracting?

Yes, there is a toggle in the graphics settings. Though it pains my heart a little to see people jumping to turn it off - I hope you'll give it a chance at least

So does that mean that each of these are now able to run on a seperate thread in our multithreaded processors?

As far as I know, yes.

[Fusselwurm]

I love the patter of a thousand feet!
If you're not careful, people might start playing Factorio for its beauty alone

[Blacky007]

Yes, there is a toggle in the graphics settings. Though it pains my heart a little to see people jumping to turn it off - I hope you'll give it a chance at least

For the start of the game it will be good - but long time player want to switch it off - if you get motion sickness with this - from the new water or trees I will it off to save my eyes
I would like to get an older save of my megabase tested with this new optimized game. https://www.dropbox.com/s/stgbzdnu6jyfo ... T.zip?dl=0
Greetings

[mmppolton]

if it is ram latency bound what is the recomand ram to get for a new pc buld very hig end ram cost a arm a and a leg lot oand lot of mony over norml ram

[seePyou]

Place a blueprint of a machine containing modules. Build the machine. You see a blue triangle on it, saying that the machine demands modules (bots will insert them if they're available in the network)

Oh, I just called that module ghosts. Thanks

[Lubricus]

Wow. Sound, Animations and optimizations. I am looking forward for the changes coming out.
For the sounds, Ian: For me the sounds that happens when I am doing things is the most important. Just opening wooden chests feels great because the sound. I don't like the landfill sound and i do a lot of copy/paste settings of assemblers and chests that don't have any interact sound at all. At least changing the settings should have some sound.

Animations, Albert: I like the new water and tree animations. Somehow they feels a little bit like impressionist paintings. I't strange how making something move makes it feels like something static as a painting.

Optimizations, Rseding great work. I am thrilled how all the ridiculous factories the community have built will run. I didn't understand how the targeters elimited the need for the checks maybe someone else can explain? Could be I am just to stupid.

[seePyou]

if it is ram latency bound what is the recomand ram to get for a new pc buld very hig end ram cost a arm a and a leg lot oand lot of mony over norml ram

Get as fast a RAM module as you can afford, with as low timings as you can afford.

Fast is the rating of the dim. You will see a 2400, or a 3200 or any such number. Get the highest possible.
Timings are a collection of numbers, you could even see them as CAS LATENCY which is only the first one. Usually something like 14-14-14-14 or 15-15-15-15.
Try to get the lowest possible. Also look for price to performance value.
I was lucky enough to find a 3600 quad pair (four dimms) with 12-12-12-12. It was... not cheep...

For comparisson between how much to invest in speed or timings, you really have to do a deep dive and read up on previous posts of benchmarks done: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... ed_fpsups/

[Lubricus]

if it is ram latency bound what is the recomand ram to get for a new pc buld very hig end ram cost a arm a and a leg lot oand lot of mony over norml ram

For the latency the timings should be important. So higher speed RAMs with bigger timings is maybe not that great. I think the latency is timing/speed?

[luc]

As someone continuously struggling with performance issues (I like optimizing things in megabases, not the manual work in the beginning), I am very much looking forward to these optimizations

The sounds, I dunno, they sound kinda weird to me. Not yet sure if that's just because it's new.

[ledow]

We need a big bassy sound for the largest biters/spitters, something to invoke fear as you hear them coming towards you.

[cpy]

When we can see this awesome change in game?