Factorio Dev Tracker

Hello,
we have shown some bigger things recently, so it is time to also show some smaller things, because the bigger things wouldn't shine that good without the smaller things working properly!

Billions of years' worth of Factorioraiguard

We had always thought that having a normal 32-bit unsigned integer to track the number of ticks passed would be enough for everyone. You have 60 ticks per second, which makes it 2.2 years of continuous playing on a single game save. But Factorio is a game about automation, so it was inevitable that someone would leave their factory running in the background and eventually overflow the tick counter.
This obviously will n...

Hello,
In the last FFF-386 we covered the natural landscape of Vulcanus which mostly showed the visuals, but as you are probably aware we always put ga...

Hello there,
I know a lot of you have been eagerly awaiting some solid information on the new planets, if so this blog is for you. Get comfy because it's a long one.

As you already know, there are 4 new planets in the expansion. We will take an in-depth look at each planet's terrain, challenges, processes, technologies, and new gear, but not all at once. In some cases the planet content will be split into multiple parts. To kick things off I'll cover the terrain and natural aspects of the planet that is closest to being finished.

I'll need to be in games master mode for this:

Welcome to Vulcanus

Allow me to introduce this toasty volcanic wonderland, conveniently sandwiched between idyllic Nauvis and the sizzling sun. Vulcanus is closer to the sun than most would dare to venture but trust me, it's a splendid place to start your interplanetary travels.

...

Hello,
we've already shown the space platform processing cycle in FFF-380. Let's talk a little bit more about the machine which makes it all possible - the asteroid collector.

Origin of tentaclesEarendel

When I was working on the early space platform concepts trying to figure out how movable ships would look, we knew that we wanted some way of getting parts of asteroids onto the ship but hadn't decided how that would be done. At this early stage all of the new structures had very simple placeholder graphics.

Although we start with grey boxes, it's b...

Hello,
we are going to focus on the general improvements of the way circuit network is used in the game.

I wasn't using it often, because all the problems combined made it too big of a hassle most of the time, which was an indication of problems.
So we improved each part of the process of using it a little, from UI, to feedback of what is going on, to stronger/more accessible combinator functionality.
I can say that it worked, at least for me. Once these changes were available, I used the circuit network way more in my latest playthrough, and it felt good, so lets hope it won't be just me :)

Circuit GUIs rework

We learned over the years that it is always better to use disabled/enabled state on control elements which can be turned on or off, compared to making them just disappear.
Circuit control GUI was one of the last places in the game where we didn't apply it properly:

Hello, welcome, take a seat...

Update from last time

The tile building animation showcased in the previous FFF is now integrated in the game, and this is how it looks:

Of course being in the engine doesn't mean it's completely done. It is still quite WIP and we have things we would like to improve with it, but showing a bit of progress week-by-week is also part of the fun.

Super force buildingkovarex

In the recent ...

Hello, today we will go over some of the details of Space platforms we couldn't fit into the last FFF, as well as some new features that will tie the whole system together.

Space platform clarifications

Without construction robots, do the things just magically appear on the platform?
Many things we show in FFFs these days are work in progress, including the space platform building visualizations.
Let me present the tiles building animation preview.

Mp4 playback not supported on your device.

We will have something similar for entities too, so things won't magically appear, but it will be as though the platform is 'building' them by itself.

If blue science leads to rockets do we get advanced stuff like low density structure and rocket control unit earlier, or are rockets different?
Low density structure is blue science. Rocket control units were removed an...

Hello,
Several FFFs ago we have shown you what a Space platform can look like (FFF-373), today we would like to explain how they work in a bit more detail.

What are Space platforms?

Space platforms are little (or not) flying factories that act as the means of transportation between planets, both for items and players.

Birth of a platform

You start by launching an item called "Space platform starter pack" into space. The item is inserted into the rocket silo in a similar way to the satellite.

This rocket is carrying a space platform starter pack, as you can tell from looking at the alt-mode overlay.

Space platform hub

The initial platform has only one structure - the space platform hub. The hub is a 1-per-platform central enti...

Hello,
we would like to talk about the remote view changes coming in the 2.0 base game update. This is one of the foundations to be able to talk about the space platform and planets later, so lets get into it!

Remote viewkovarex

In the ...

Let me show you around. That's our lab table and this is our work-stool. And over there is our interplanetary space-platform! And here's where we keep assorted lengths of wire.

Whoa! A real live space-platform!

We designed it ourselves. Let us show you some of the different lengths of wire we used.

Electric pole improvementsboskid

This will be more of a technical journey, a peek behind the scenes of what we have to consider when adding features, and it will be wired to one of the features I had to refactor in order to allow more features: manual ghost wires.

The technical starting point

Traces of the first implementation of copper wires can be seen in Factorio versions as old as 0.2.10 from 2013 and they actually survived up to the 1.0.0 from 2020.
Copper connections between electric poles were just a targeter pointing at another electric pole saying "I am connected to this electri...

Hello!
The code refactor of rails presented last week is great, but the motivation for such a task wasn't quite just some shape changes for rails.

As explained last week, we can now define any kind of rail shape, and we had some very specific shapes in mind all along...

Over or under?

We want multi-level crossings for trains, but how? Bridges or tunnels?

At first it would seem like going underground is the safer bet - we already have experience with belts and pipes doing that. Simple - we draw the entrance and the exit, the middle is magically connected, and that's it?

• The second layer of rails should also be able to use curves and rail signals, otherwise it would be quite limited.
• Sometimes you already want to interact with items inside of underground belts, with trains this would be a lot worse as they can run out of fuel, stop at signals etc.
• Building curves,...

Hello!
There are certain areas in Factorio that we haven't really had the courage to change for a long time. One of those areas has been the rail system...

The rail system needs change?

Whenever playing the game, we'd be reminded about two annoyances that are caused by technical limitations.

So called "S-bends" are not possible - two parallel rails would need at least 6 tiles in the perpendicular direction in order to connect.

How many times has it happened to you that two of your rails wouldn't be able to easily connect.

Signal positions are often very restrictive as soon as curved rails cross any other rail. So building junctions is a lot of trial and error to see if you can signal it properly.

How many ...

Hello,
This week we will talk about some technology and research related changes coming in 2.0 and the Space Age expansion.

Quality clarificationskovarex

It was rather interesting to read the reactions to the last FFF-375 about quality.
It sparked a lot of debate and we noticed a lot of misconceptions about it. So we would like to address some of the biggest ones:

• When you don't put quality modules somewhere, everything works as before, so you don't have to sort everything everywhere as some people thought.
• The random aspect of the mechanic seems to be very upsetting to a lot of people....

Hello,
Today we are going to talk a little bit about a big feature in the expansion, Quality!

What is Quality?

Quality is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

What truth?

That you are a noob, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into normal quality. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your factory.

You take the blue module, the story ends, you wake up in your factory and believe whatever you want to believe.
You take the white module, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Horizontal versus Vertical...

Hello,
today we are going to talk about some flying robot behavior improvements. Some of the problems we fixed were reported countless times, so I hope that some people will appreciate it :).

Quality of life versus flashy featureskovarex

I know that you are mainly looking forward to the new content, and that just quality of life improvements aren't the kind of things that make people buy the game and get excited for.

But I strongly believe, that if you want to add content, mechanics, and systems to a game, which already isn't simple, there is always a risk of just it being too much. By doing QOL improvements, we reduce the small hassles and annoyances, which effectively creates an extra mental space to enjoy more in the game. Its like cleaning your room before getting a new toy.

So to make things clear, the reason that we make and present these kind of changes is not because we don't want to make new flashy f...

Hello, long time no see!
Today we are going to talk about the expansion which is called Factorio: Space Age.

(Click here for static image version)

What is Factorio: Space Age?kovarex

Factorio: Space Age continues the player's journey after launching rockets into space. Discover new worlds with unique challenges, exploit their novel resources for advanced technological gains, and manage your fleet of interplanetary space platforms.

Vanilla Factorio ends by launching ...

Hello, another year has come and gone.

We know this year we were very sparse with any details about the expansion, and it is what you all really want to hear about. Trust me we really want to tell you about it, and in time we will. There are still major sections of the gameplay being changed and adjusted, and if we tell you about them now, the information would quickly become outdated and inaccurate.

For now, we can offer this Christmas postcard Albert has made, which has a sneak peek of some new item icons.

As well, we do have some other topics we can discuss.

Sales update

This year we have reached another sales milestone, with 3.5 million sales being passed this Christmas. We are still having steady and consistent sales of about 500,000 each year, which in retrospect validates the original no-sale policy ...

Hello, engineers! I'm a newer face at Wube and have been mainly working on expansion content for about one year now. Today, I'm here to share some exciting non-expansion news for our Mac players.

Factorio Runs on Apple Silicon

As of version 1.1.71, Factorio runs natively on Apple Silicon Macs! On these machines, the game should run faster and use less energy than in previous versions. You can see which binary version you are running in the top-left corner of the main menu.

x86_64 binary for Intel Macs

arm64 binary for Apple Silicon Macs 🥳

This has been a long time coming, but we were never in a good position to implement these improvements... until now.

Motivation

In February, I t...

As announced ...

We have a long history of trying to bring Factorio to other platforms, including consoles and mobile phones (not including ...