Friday Facts #406 - Space Age Music

[kjackson1998]

Obviously as always cool to see the process.

I'm curious how many people play with music on. Is there some correlation with hours played or session length? Some of these seem kinda intense and would distract me from how I play. I haven't had music turned on in Factorio for a looong time.

[GamerGuru]

In FFF 382, they mentioned "heavier weapons" for space platforms.

Even heavier than Artillery? ^^

What do they want us to fight? Cthulhu? ^^

Maybe space leviathans that attack the space station and throw biters on there. Maybe we're gonna have to put walls on our platforms or even something like shield generators. The "heavier weapons" could be familiar sci-fi weapons like plasma cannons or rail guns or a new kind of weapon. Very exiting either way.

[Linventor]

I have to ask - how deep-rooted is the engine constraint preventing the music from behaving dynamically?
I personally greatly enjoy when games have even the smallest dynamic elements in their music.
Many Nintendo games do this - jumping on Yoshi in most Mario games adds a layer of percussion, Mario Odyssey's power lines change key with the music, Pikmin (not that I've played), even Wii Play has dynamic elements.

I do think that having the standard "ambient track that fades into combat track" system tends to be pretty boring, but adding layers could be really cool.
Perhaps the bass of the space track could only come in while there's active thrusters on the platform, or a just struck lightning rod would have some musical flourish in key with the rest of the track.

Regardless, some damn good work being done for that music.

[bohtar]

The music is impressive and all (and I realise that we've only gotten a few snippets of the full soundtrack) but to me the new OST seems a bit distracting, idk. Like the thing I love with the OG ost as of now is how recognizable yet low-key it is. It's hard to pull something like that off. The melodies are stuck in my head even when I'm not playing but I never get distracted from whatever I'm doing when I listen to the OG ost. I don't get the same vibe from these songs you've shown us. Like rn the current soundtrack is one I use exclusivly for study (that and the ambient tracks from the systemshock remake as well). It just helps me focus so well.

Don't get me wrong, they sound good and the IRL orchestra is an amazing touch! I hope my doubts will go away upon playing the game. So for now I will stay skeptically, yet optimistically, excited!

[POPISowyNumer]

The first seconds of unannounced planets soundtracks made me think "Are we having surprise crossover with Genshin or something?"

[Criperum]

The first undiscovered planet theme sounds like some jumping frogs. May be a swamp with new jumping biters.
The second sounds aerial. My guess is something like flying islands from Avatar.

Am I missing something? I only see one "undisclosed" planet theme song. Where is the 2nd one?

I just misread the news and thought that it was two tracks in one.

[BrainFooLong]

There is a Jungle Planet and a Water Planet, thats what the music seems to me.

[programmer137]

The question is, will the Steam soundtrack be updated with these new pieces when Space Age releases

[Makka77]

Yum.

I play Factorio on my studio PC, hooked up to lovely DAC and monitors.

The new music sounds divine!

I've enjoyed all the interesting stuff you've revealed but this is the first FFF that punched me in the gut!

[Terrahertz]

An amazing Soundtrack befitting the Quality of the game.

I also like the casual reveal of the Rocket-Turret. Has anybody else noticed that it did not seem that interested in fighting the huge asteroid? Like it knew it would be spared.

Aquilo and Giebe? Did they just reveal the name of the remaining two planets?

Last week I was thinking about the Rocket-Silo speed as some nice addition, but nothing too game changing, because "Yeah now you need 4 instead of 8 Silos, thats neat", after seeing the last frame of the Fulgora-Video with 40 heavily boosted Silos, I not only understand why this change was made, but also have many more questions on the amount of stuff you have to send to orbit.

Could we get a more detailed look into the thrusters and/or the space logisitics in general? Because one thing that always strikes me as odd, is that all long videos of space platforms so far, show the thrusters running intermittend. Why? Do they need to cool down? Any other explanation I could come up with, just raises the question why one would build so many of them in the first place.

Next week we will speak about some techniques that we developed to not only cover this amount of time, but also surpass it.

That sounds like something big is coming our way.

[aka13]

Damn, that's amazing! I was hoping for more music, and this certainly overshoots my hopes by a large margin.
I do still think, that the first soundtrack, and the current ambient masterpiece still have a right to stand on their own, but I am curious, if the current ambient will not feel like too little after the orchestra is introduced.
looking forward to it either way.

[Upserter]

Gieba is Czech for "nope". Maybe it's not for a planet at all, but for what might be found in space...

Anyway, I thought the final 7-minute long piece was brilliant - exactly the orchestral-electro fusion described. It opens with hints of Sim City 3000 and a "cute forest creatures" vibe, then descends into mystery and epicness.

I also enjoyed the electric Fulgora as a piece of music, but I share the concerns of others that it's rather full-on for background ambient music.

The rhythmic bass of the space music worked really well.

But I have to say, I'm not in love with the Vulcanus music. The dark, sweeping orchestral theme is impressive, but it gave me a "generic blockbuster movie" impression, like it might be the soundtrack to the next Batman film. It would be right at home on the Total Annihilation soundtrack (certainly not a bad thing!) but it didn't give me any "tech" element like the others did. Perhaps if you mix in hints of a pulsating sub-bass line, (like Tron Legacy's Solar Sailer), it could be transformed into something quite special.

[Bi0nicM4n]

Gotta say, while I do appreciate the Vulcanus theme, it does sound as if it came from Star Wars episode 3 or Diablo 2. I can't say with any certainty that the whole new soundtrack is gonna be out of place, but from the samples provided I don't really feel it's fitting the classic Factorio vibe. To me, Factorio soundtrack always associated with machinery, with whirrs and clanks and electrical buzzes, with guttural roar of a mechanical beast, so to speak; at the same time it also gave that image of technician doing some routine work and the feeling of being stranded on an alien planet. What I heard today sounds more like a fantasy adventure score, something from Final Fantasy maybe (or any other RPG), both in it's atmosphere and expressiveness, as if you were a hero on a journey to slay the demon king, not an engineer that barely survived a crash landing on another planet, now breaking their head over how to get out of this mess. Something that is a fine piece of a background score, but maybe for some other game.

P.S. Fulgora theme sounds as the most fitting to me so far. It's still too expressive to click with my image of Factorio (although much better in this regard than the other two themes), but it can get there.

P.P.S. Sometimes the simpler is better. I feel like you guys went somewhat over-the-top on this part, and sadly it doesn't feel right.

The missile turrets are awesome though. Keep it up!

[Terrahertz]

Gieba is Czech for "nope". Maybe it's not for a planet at all, but for what might be found in space...

Could also be the first word the came to the engineers mind when discovering the Planet

[MeduSalem]

I don't know this must also take into account the relative speed of the platform and the asteroids, as if the platform move faster than any asteroid, then the "back" doesn't need any defence against incoming debris. I'm thinking of the triangular shaped starwars super destroyer. It would be an interpolation between that and a circle i suppose while the relative speed affecting it. I don't know how it would affect in game need for turrets if you have more thruster or less.

Sure, the asteroids will likely spawn in a linearly-increasing amount depending on your total speed.

I assume... Double speed = double asteroids. If it would scale non-linearly it would be weird and create another "optimum" travel speed to be in, ontop of the optimum platform shape itself.

Also no defense against incoming debris from behind isn't entirely true, it seems like if you are standing still asteroids can come from behind, so a bare minimum amount of defense there is necessary. But it definitely is not the main case to defend against.

That's forgetting about the iconic star wars empire destroyer which are triangular, like arrow pointing in the direction they are moving.

Well, Star Wars being science fantasy has no scientific/mathematical relevance. ^^

But even if a wedge like the star destroyer (or like many super-sonic airplanes) would be optimal on Earth, but in space it would have no relevance because there is no air resistance in vacuum. xD

I don't even know why a star destroyer would be optimally shaped even within Star Wars because in the end they travel using hyper space, using a shortcut through higher dimensions. Why the hell would it make a difference if the ship is shaped like a wedge. ^^

I disagree, you can make your long and narrow platform having a series of mini wings like airplane and birds have 1 pair of wings, but some insects like lullabies have 2 pairs of wings, and the spaceplatform could have 20 or 40 pair of wings, quite short to serve as attach point for thruster. Then the narrower your platform the fastest

It won't be fastest, because as you already realized yourself in the final parts...

The ratio perimeter/area is bad, and increasingly bad, so the defense is made more and more expensive.

... the more winglets you need to keep your "skeleton" platform together & defended, the worse the ratio of circumference to area will be. Increasingly bad. As a result you will need more thrusters & turrets & infrastructure to make it all work and to get it to a desired speed than if you would have made a more compact platform.

And if you cut the amount of thrusters and live with a slower platform instead, you get penalized by time. You will have to wreck more asteroids (and hence statistically more of those that can possibly destroy a platform) simply because the platform takes longer for the travel.


As said, you cannot beat a compact platform because area is a quadratic function. The optimum simply is where you have the least circumference in relation to area.

You will always need to invest non-linearly more energy or non-linearly more of another resource to move a platform that is outside that optimum, which is the case for rectangles or even weirder shapes. Quadratic functions as dependency are annoying. ^^

You either pay with more thrusters & turrets or with more time. ^^



But all that said, while I say there is an optimum shape to operate your platform at, I never said it may not be worth diverging from that optimum, despite incurring inefficiencies.

If I did that then I would likely add more speed because wasting time waiting for a platform to travel from one planet to another is more annoying to me than if I have to repair a platform more often. So I would likely also make the platform wider than narrower just to be able to add more thrusters. ^^

Because Kerbal Space Program mentality is never wrong. MOAR BOOSTERS.

[Terrahertz]

Another neat little detail is that concrete seems to take on the color of the planet its build on. So it's this red, purple kind of color on Fulgora and dark grey on Vulcanus.

Nice work

[Bi0nicM4n]

Another thing with soundtracks and all. Dear developers, may I humbly suggest that you take some time off of your tight development schedule and give a listen to Dyson Sphere Program OST? I'd like you to consider the way they dealt with expressing different planets and space. The specific tracks I'd like to recommend are Everywhere is Nowhere, Realm, Breeze, Phlogistic and Quantum Circuit (this one is expressive, but in a motivating way). I hope you find some inspiration in those.

[GreenQuantumCat]

"Listen to this track and imagine a remote and unexplored planet, full of..."
WATER!
I think that I heard water planet

[bnrom]

Sure, the asteroids will likely spawn in a linearly-increasing amount depending on your total speed.

I assume... Double speed = double asteroids. If it would scale non-linearly it would be weird and create another "optimum" travel speed to be in, ontop of the optimum platform shape itself.

I imagine there is some base rate of asteroids even at zero speed. Having a base rate is kinda realistic, but most importantly would avoid the platforms getting stuck forever every time they run out of thruster fuel (despite having, e.g., lots of energy and ammo).

[Donion]

I have to ask - how deep-rooted is the engine constraint preventing the music from behaving dynamically?

Pretty deep, the music player simply doesn't know what's happening in-game. So a system would need to be built from the ground up. And the music would need to be composed/recorded/mixed with such system in mind. A set of conditions/scenarios the music should react to would need to be defined.
Would it be possible? Sure, probably. Would it take a lot of effort? Absolutely. Will it happen? Since it didn't happen already, probably not.