Friday Facts #385 - Asteroid Collector

[Cerberus]

I feel like given the topic trend of the types of FFFs that's been giving detail towards touching several areas of the games systems, whether passively by nature of the feature/in passing as a light mention, or wholly dedicated to the detail of how it interacts with X and Y.

I'm getting a little concerned given nothing has even been alluded towards grazing anything content related towards enemy forces, whuch is a core, non-superfluous part of the game. I'm very curious as to what or when there'll at least be even a smidgen or dripdrop of anything related towards efforts with that system as it is just as imperative to the game as having a train, new surfaces, or even having inserters & conveyor belts in terms of both their implementation, interactions, and integration if I were to dare to be bold. And asserting that shouldnt be bold.

I think there is a very good reason for that. Multiple even.

1) making the FFF's go incremental in interestingness. Fewer excitement would be made if research triggers was the last FFF instead of one of the first, right?
2) making the FFF's build on top of each other. New enemies and planets will most certainly be fought and mined with newer tech, based on new improvements. Seems hard to talk about how to combat enemies, when you haven't even explained all new tech. You'd have to explain many small things in one go then, or leave the reader with too much unknowns like "will be explained later".
3) new enemies and planets are the mosy spoiler-y of all. Keeping this information a secret for as long as possible ensures it all stays fresher when the game is released.

For me reason 3 is a major one. I would stop reading all FFF's as soon as they start talking about new enemies and planets because I want to experience these things for myself instead of being "spoilered" by having every little thing about them explained beforehand. And the earlier they release details about this content, the longer I have to unfortunately avoid the website and this community.

Kind of how Factorio 1.0 was fresh for me and seeing spitters for the first time was a surprise. I want this surprise and experience to happen again. I know this is personal and you might think differently about being "spoilered" but at least it can make you understand their choice, or at least my assumption why they choose to do it this way but it sounds logical to me. If not for 3 then especially reason 2 makes objectice sense instead of subjective reason 3.

[mmmPI]

I really liked the tentacle from the pictures, but learning part of how it's done makes it even more impressive. Good to learn you're allowed some creative freedom and not always going for the easiest/tractor beam thing. The paddle is fun too, could have been a giant baseball bat that's the number 2 on the list for me.

It's good to see the relation between the concept arts, the ideas, the prototype placeholder and the gameplay interactions. When it may look arbitrary to force the tentacle on the sides of the platform, we learn that forcing them on the front only, or having no restriction at all was studied and i suppose discarded in favor the the better gameplay alternative.

Funny to see splines being mentionned, i learned they are also used for rails, it gives an insight at all the complicated things one must know to make things that look nice. Maybe some appreciation for the hard work too. I think it's also one of the thing that set factorio apart as a game, feels like everyone is an engineer, even the artists

I have noticed there is one asteroid debris that isn't caught by the platform and it doesn't seem to inflict damage but it's hard to tell because it's sped up.

I imagine those tentacle are not very practical to use on planets with gravity, but otherwise, i imagined them throwing landfill in a lake before robots are available, or removing rocks in front of train and placing rails, like player would add a tentacle wagon for a sort of FARL Made me think there could be some space octotron , like a spidertron, but with tentacles !

Also seeing the pictures it made me wonder why the engineer is still using turrets, seeing those arms , can't they just grab small asteroid and throw them onto bigger ones to clear the way ?

I think the tentacles are great, it's wild and feed the imagination !

[heav]

Tentacles will always be hentai, sorry. The space platform looks like a menace to anime girls, not asteroids. Can't take it seriously.

"Mining lasers" are a video game contrivance that has been used for decades, everyone is used to it, it's fine.

this is such a you problem.

[computeraddict]

Tentacles will always be hentai, sorry. The space platform looks like a menace to anime girls, not asteroids. Can't take it seriously.

I give it two weeks after release before someone makes a Touhou mod

[gGeorg]

But, little off topic, can we build them (or variations) on surface for fishing a fishes od smal bitters to munch them into something useful?

Agree, definitely need some fish gameplay outta these bad-boys

Space fish confirmed ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo6ebIy4COw
Yoo, hee, joo Brunengee.

[gGeorg]

Bolide is a word for a bright or crater forming meteor and totally unsuitable to describe small spaceborne pieces of a larger asteroid.

Thank you for your creativity in explaining something while you have no idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolide
The IAU has no official definition of "bolide", and generally considers the term synonymous with fireball, a brighter-than-usual meteor; Astronomers tend to use bolide to identify an exceptionally bright fireball, particularly one that explodes

in short, - usual usage among astronomers - >> Bolide is an asteroid large enough to do noticeable damage.

[Qon]

"Mining lasers" are a video game contrivance that has been used for decades, everyone is used to it, it's fine.

I'm not convinced this is just a game contrivance. Probably just futuristic mining, I think I've seen actual asteroid mining concepts with mining lasers. Or maybe it was the asteroid probe that landed for scientific inquiry? A space probe is the kind of thing you want maintenance free, and lasers don't wear out like drill bits. And you need to heat the mined substance anyways to separate the things you want from the thing you don't want.
Searching for mining laser gave me results where this is actually investigated.

Maybe we will get a new and higher tech mining drill with lasers or something in SA?

[Qon]

Tentacles will always be hentai, sorry. The space platform looks like a menace to anime girls, not asteroids. Can't take it seriously.

"Mining lasers" are a video game contrivance that has been used for decades, everyone is used to it, it's fine.

this is such a you problem.

If you don't see the problem, can you even call yourself a nerd?

I hope someone makes a visual mod for this, it's immersion-breaking for me.

Fleshy octopus tentacles as a visual mod? Sounds kinda fun.

[FasterJump]

It would still be deterministic (i.e. no desync), whether or not a player is looking (simplified animations), right? Would it still works if a player starts looking while an arm (tentacle) is halfway through to reaching a mineral / space object / asteroid debris (please don't call them chunks )?

But, little off topic, can we build them (or variations) on surface for fishing a fishes od smal bitters to munch them into something useful?

That would be great if the fishs respawn!

[Qon]

It would still be deterministic (i.e. no desync), whether or not a player is looking (simplified animations), right? Would it still works if a player starts looking while an arm (tentacle) is halfway through to reaching a mineral / space object / asteroid debris (please don't call them chunks )?

Yes. That is what they explained.

Since we've ensured that the claw travels at a predictable speed, we do not need to update its position every tick. Once the desired path is found, we store its distance. Then we increment a single internal number which tracks how far along this path the claw has traveled. Only if the arm is visible to the player, do we evaluate the actual intermediate arm pose.

And of course they wouldn't make random animations that would completely corrupt the game state, replays and multiplayer.

[Danjen]

My first thought is how the collectors can be used in mods. For example, is it restricted only to space platforms?
Being able to slap it onto a spidertron as a module so you can walk past trees and automatically harvest them, etc.

(Which would also bring me to the thought of being able to regenerate trees or fish somehow - maybe another planet will have some further mechanics?)

[tuggertalk]

can we talk about how the picture for the collector is a face?

[deer_buster]

Personally, not reusing drone-like activities to capture and retrieve debris seems like a misappropriation of talent...a drone with reaction-controls or attitude thrusters seems like it would have been a great idea....imho

[Danjen]

Tentacles will always be hentai, sorry. The space platform looks like a menace to anime girls, not asteroids. Can't take it seriously.

"Mining lasers" are a video game contrivance that has been used for decades, everyone is used to it, it's fine.

this is such a you problem.

If you don't see the problem, can you even call yourself a nerd?

I hope someone makes a visual mod for this, it's immersion-breaking for me. I also find the rollercoaster tracks shown earlier completely ridiculous, but I can just not use those, so no problem. But it seems there's no avoiding the Flying Spaghetti Monster platforms.

I also support a mod to make asteroids blush and go "Kyaaah~!" when they're collected

[computeraddict]

Thank you for your creativity in explaining something while you have no idea.

You should probably check a mirror before deploying snark of this magnitude.

As I understand it, "chunk" in the context of the asteroid collector refers to tiny pieces of asteroids that have been broken down by weapons fire that can no longer do damage to the platform. They are the exact opposite of a bolide. You provided exactly the context I based my criticism on but interpreted it precisely backwards.

[PhasmaNL]

can we talk about how the picture for the collector is a face?

In the pictures they posted here it's not THAT noticeable. But they posted this on Steam:



A funny face obviously doesn't fit the industrial esthetic, so I assume this is just a bit of fun. I wouldn't want the final in-game version remind me of a face.

Other than that, I totally like the Asteroid Collector implementation!

[FuryoftheStars]

And of course they wouldn't make random animations that would completely corrupt the game state, replays and multiplayer.

• Wiggling each arm slightly at random to stop them turning a corner in unison.

Randomness is fine, as long as the same seed is used consistently. "Real" randomness is almost never seen in video games, for just the reasons you mention plus it's quite slow. Often very simplified pseudo-RNGs are used, since performance is usually more important than cryptographic security. Heck, early console games used tricks like "the number of steps the character has taken" as their RNG, which makes for some fun TAS runs.

I get the impression that the actual animation/graphics doesn't matter in terms of deterministic gameplay, but rather that all clients calculate the same arm intercepting the same asteroid chunk at the same time.

But even if it did, yes, they've already taken this into account. They've already said a long time ago they were doing MP play sessions with each other to test the gameplay and feel.

[Gemma]

Tentacle machine looks really fabulous but why are there air intake vents in space?

[Rebmes]

Great blog post. I also loved the main picture for it!

[Upserter]

I love the little bit of kickback in the prototype harpoon animation.