Friday Facts #347 - New hope demo levels

[EnerJi]

Are there significant improvements to blueprints still planned? I'm still on 0.17 stable and I'm really looking forward to a proposed blueprint revamp that I thought I read about months ago?

The 0.17 blueprints implementation confuses, irritates, and bothers me in tons of small ways with the overall effect that I really despise using them despite knowing that I need to in order to advance my factory.

[Klonan]

Are you going to keep the level with the car/biters?

No, we decided just the first 2 levels are worth it,
The biter car combat level... wasn't very fun,
And the level after starts introducing oil processing and starts getting too deep, especially for a demo

So we decided to end it with the broken rail level,
It gets the players to the point where the midgame just gets rolling, (I think the early-midgame is some of the best fun), so it really gives a real taste of what more there is to come

[pichutarius]

thank you for including the train level! now i can introduce factorio demo to others, showing them what i enjoyed the most.

[nuke_it_from_orbit]

Are you going to keep the level with the car/biters?

No, we decided just the first 2 levels are worth it,
The biter car combat level... wasn't very fun,
And the level after starts introducing oil processing and starts getting too deep, especially for a demo

So we decided to end it with the broken rail level,
It gets the players to the point where the midgame just gets rolling, (I think the early-midgame is some of the best fun), so it really gives a real taste of what more there is to come

Klonan , I'm glad you responded. I feel very strongly about this. I think you should use all the demo levels and even consider adding more for 1. for bots 2. for nuclear power & rocket silos.

You can find my feedback in this reddit post. Please FWD to the other Factorio devs. Thanks.

https://old.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... ls/fqqpnkp

I LOVED the car level. Here's why. Factorio is a game about problem solving. I initially attempted to win the car level by building a small base on a land bridge across water. The base could barely fit assemblers and turrets but I was trying to automate ammo production while using the car as a gun truck to take out bases. It wasn't working. Then I realized I could build defender bots and I tried skipping the base building portion. I killed every biter.

It was one of those "oh! that's how you do it!" moments which is the CORE of factorio game play. It make me sad other people may miss these opportunities.

[Bilka]

Klonan , I'm glad you responded. I feel very strongly about this. I think you should use all the demo levels and even consider adding more for 1. for bots 2. for nuclear power & rocket silos.

You can find my feedback in this reddit post. Please FWD to the other Factorio devs. Thanks.

https://old.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... ls/fqqpnkp

I LOVED the car level. Here's why. Factorio is a game about problem solving. I initially attempted to win the car level by building a small base on a land bridge across water. The base could barely fit assemblers and turrets but I was trying to automate ammo production while using the car as a gun truck to take out bases. It wasn't working. Then I realized I could build defender bots and I tried skipping the base building portion. I killed every biter.

It was one of those "oh! that's how you do it!" moments which is the CORE of factorio game play. It make me sad other people may miss these opportunities.

For me personally I would not have bought factorio if not for the v.16 demo, and it makes me really sad that others may miss this enjoyment.

This post and your reddit post mention that you loved the car level in the 0.16 demo. But ... there's no car level in the 0.16 demo.

I still don't understand why they don't just xfer the entire v.16 demo to v.18.

First Steps
Level 1 = learn to mine, craft stone furnaces
Level 2 = smelt, and power gen
Level 3 = get radars and scan

Is exactly what is already present in 0.18 right now, and is also exactly what was present in the 0.16 demo. Anything after that in your reddit post:

Level 4 = automate science & build car, travel to distress signal via car
Level 5 = Arrive at abandoned base, re-build smelters, train network, stockpile supplies and car and leave base in car for new hope
Level 6 = Car only level (this was so fun!!!) Battle through hordes of biters to collect rocket parts
Level 7 = Oil / plastic production, engine, electric engine, lubricant - stockpile supplies and craft AIRPLANE to escape area

Was never part of the demo. We are now adding Level 4 and 5 to the demo, so the new demo will have more content than the 0.16 demo.

[juliejayne]

The New Hope demo levels/tutorial is fine, except that it begs the question of Backstory.

Who was here before us?
Where is/are they now?
Can we locate/rescue them?

If the Biters got so upset that they killed them, then why have the Biters calmed down again?
What is the story of the Biters?
Why are they happy to sit around being peaceful until we arrive?
If they calm down after killing us how do they/ why do they de-evolve?

Not all of this needs, or perhaps could be answered, but some of it needs to be filled in, surely?

[bman212121]

Great news! I've never played the new hope campaign, so it will be fun to fiddle around with these when they are released. I think you made a great decision just cherry picking the two best levels and using them. It adds much more value to the game than mass importing a bunch of content that wasn't nearly as fun.

[mudcrabempire]

The New Hope demo levels/tutorial is fine, except that it begs the question of Backstory.

Who was here before us? ---> Why another engineer, of course. And apparently a foolish one.
Where is/are they now? ---> Dead?
Can we locate/rescue them? ---> Haven't seen any necromancy in Factorio, but maybe we can find the corpse and loot it?

If the Biters got so upset that they killed them, then why have the Biters calmed down again? ---> Because all the pollution has dissipated.
What is the story of the Biters? ---> The natives and winners of the evolution race on Nauvis.
Why are they happy to sit around being peaceful until we arrive? ---> Because they have nothing else to do?
If they calm down after killing us how do they/ why do they de-evolve? ---> Because evolved biters eat too much. Presumably producing bigger biters is what they do to answer threats and when the threat is gone, they go back to the cheaper, more peacefull "civilian" version.

Not all of this needs, or perhaps could be answered, but some of it needs to be filled in, surely?

None of these answers have any claims to canonicity. I just made them up on the go.

[Eiermann]

I would separate the resources in Level 05 because it would just confuse new players when you end up with a mixed up belt and everything gets stuck.

[bobucles]

I would separate the resources in Level 05 because it would just confuse new players when you end up with a mixed up belt and everything gets stuck.

But that's also a good challenge for players to contend with. Better to teach it early rather than never.

[nuke_it_from_orbit]

Was never part of the demo. We are now adding Level 4 and 5 to the demo, so the new demo will have more content than the 0.16 demo.

OK I must have mis-remembered.

My point is, regardless of demo content, why not just restore the entire new hope campaign for retail version. It was a fun memory.

You could even have the airplane "fly" to "a secure location suitable for base building and defense" and dump the player into freeplay with the goal of builiding the rocket silo.

[Reika]

My point is, regardless of demo content, why not just restore the entire new hope campaign for retail version. It was a fun memory.

I second this. I have actually been waiting for the campaign release so I could go back and play the old campaign, as a sort of revisit of when I first started playing Factorio in 2015.

[Klonan]

My point is, regardless of demo content, why not just restore the entire new hope campaign for retail version. It was a fun memory.

You could even have the airplane "fly" to "a secure location suitable for base building and defense" and dump the player into freeplay with the goal of builiding the rocket silo.

If we had more time, we would definitely do it,
But we don't have enough time any more.

Your suggestion of just "Add it all back and then add more" is great, I would love to add more campaign levels,
However we need to finish in time, so we're settling for just the 2 most memorable and requested levels.

[Kyralessa]

I'm glad to see these levels will stay in the game. To be honest, I think I only completed the car level once, and I don't think I ever managed to finish the airplane level at all. But I played the get-the-base-going-again level often. (I remember playing it back in the days when tracks had to be laid out piece by piece.)

It would be cool to see a really elaborate campaign someday, perhaps in a future paid DLC or something.

[5thHorseman]

Are there significant improvements to blueprints still planned? I'm still on 0.17 stable and I'm really looking forward to a proposed blueprint revamp that I thought I read about months ago?

The 0.17 blueprints implementation confuses, irritates, and bothers me in tons of small ways with the overall effect that I really despise using them despite knowing that I need to in order to advance my factory.

Sadly it looks like they won't, at least it's very likely they won't. Seems internally the blueprint code is a bit of a horror show.

From viewtopic.php?f=6&t=83790

If only you both knew the insane complexity, bugs, corrupt saves, and still the blueprint library is just a wrapper around the blueprints and books which are items.

The game has no concept of world<>cursor interaction outside of items. All cursor interaction is done as items with items. Because that's how everything is written. Every time you click anything in the blueprint library the game materializes it as an item so it can actually make sense of it and use it with everything. Then it throws that away when you clear your cursor.

It makes no sense to try to tear down the fully functional, heavily tested, and known working item logic when it works perfectly. I've managed to avoid using the blueprint library for my blueprint needs since its creation without a single problem. To want to stick *more* stuff into that broken spiderweb of logic just makes no sense to me.

All I can say is I agree with you and hope they'll revisit it some time after release.

[Serenity]

For blueprints the most needed thing is the better handling of the books. Better sorting and putting books within books.

[iamwyza]

Maybe it's just a trick of the eyes due to how the cliff was angled and the bot flying away left, but it feels like the particles from the grenade are falling up and left in that last image. (or maybe that's intentional to have stuff behave that way depending on the direction of the throw and the thing being exploded.)

[5thHorseman]

Maybe it's just a trick of the eyes due to how the cliff was angled and the bot flying away left, but it feels like the particles from the grenade are falling up and left in that last image. (or maybe that's intentional to have stuff behave that way depending on the direction of the throw and the thing being exploded.)

I think what you're seeing is the shadows but yeah, that does look weird.

[Spiff]

If we had more time, we would definitely do it,
But we don't have enough time any more.

Your suggestion of just "Add it all back and then add more" is great, I would love to add more campaign levels,
However we need to finish in time, so we're settling for just the 2 most memorable and requested levels.

I would love lots more campaign levels, even if they are not in version 1.0. Can we have them in a version 1.1?

[factoriouzr]

This is all great guys, but where are the gameplay improvements? Where are the blueprint library improvements, the ability to put down blueprints and keep recipes set on assembly machines that aren't yet researched, where is the ability to add and remove robots from roboports that are full with robots already and contain only the wrong kind of robot?

Where is SPIDERTRON?