Factorio Dev Tracker

Hello,
Welcome to our facts for the week.

Sign posts or bulletin boards are a common sight in videos games, probably not far behind the ubiquitous wooden crate or explosive barrel. They are a nice clean understandable way to communicate with the player, and it was something we wanted to see in Factorio for a long time...

Display Panel - DesignEarendel

The full functionality of the new display entity will be fully explained further below. For the design, all we need to know is that it is an entity that can display any icon of your choice (item, recipe, virtual signal).

The first version I saw was a signpost added by Klonan. It was a nice placeholder, and the general concept of the display entity as a signpost was something to consider. In theory a signpost could work, but there are a few detracting factors:

1. A signpost is primarily a 2D structure, and by that I mean it is tall and flat but doesn't...

Hello,
Today we want to share some exciting news!

Factorio: Space Age - Release date

We plan to release Factorio: Space Age expansion on October 21st 2024. The reasoning for this date is that it will give us enough time after summer vacations to polish the release, while also leaving enough time afterwards if we need to do bugfix patches before the Christmas holidays.

The price of the Space age expansion will be $35.00, the same price as the current base game.

You can wishlist the game now over on ...

Hello,
we usually show finished stuff in Friday facts these days, but I personally always liked to have a peek behind the curtains and see the (temporary) mess there. This motivated me to do some kind of overview of how the overall expansion development felt from my perspective. If you are like me, you might appreciate it.

Our story starts in February 2021 with ...

Hello,
Grab your best lube, because it's time to talk about fluids!

Reaching the breaking point

It is no secret that Factorio's fluid system is unpredictable, unintuitive, and at times, frustrating. Pipe throughput decreases over distance at an inconsistent rate, so the only way to reliably know how much fluid you can push through a pipe is to reference a table on the wiki. Furthermore, the throughput can vary depending on the order that the pipes were built. It is not a fun system to play with.

There have been m...

Hello,
While a lot of time of 2.0 development has been spent on new features and quality of life, we still take care of the smaller details and technical improvements.

Deterministic multithreading is hard

Recently a desync bug was reported to us involving the modding API and multiple Windows and Linux computers that the player was using. My first instinct was to blame the mod developer for doing something wrong but I've seen enough bug reports over the years to know dismissing one without first investigating is a bad idea and a great way to eat crow.

Hello, last week you've seen how Gleba looks, it's time to get a glimpse of what you can do there.

With the idea of being a biological planet full of life, it seems reasonable to expect our engineer is about to harvest some of that.

We already have ways of harvesting nature, specifically trees. On Nauvis we either just hit them with an axe enough times, or later our construction robots take care of that friendly forest devastation.

Mp4 playback not supported on your device.

These tools aren't quite up to speed to be a part of a mass-production chain in our factories, though...

Both of the Nauvis methods are initiated manually so not the best for automation, and the trees don't grow back - so once an area has been harvested, you need to move your operation further.

Agricultural tower

The Agricultural tower is a new machine unlocked on Gleba. It automatically harvests trees in ...

IntroductionAlbert

Making a new world in Factorio is relatively "easy", just create a new set of tilesets for the ground, add some new models of trees, create a bunch of new decoratives, some decals (optional), a new skin for the cliffs (optional), and bam! you get a new planet. Well, to be fair, you also have to play with the terrain generation noise and autoplace algorithms, experiment with proper LUT's, and adding some new shader won't hurt either if you want to succeed.

The problem of making it from this simplistic perspective, is the danger of falling into a superficial automatism. So probably all your planets will end up looking the same with just different colours.

Gleba is the one planet that has all the things needed to make a new Nauvis-like planet in Factorio, but it is still different on many other levels. What makes Gleba very special, at least to me, is how we twisted the core-concept of the planet and pushed the necessary elem...

Hello,
We have another exciting batch of facts for you today.

RedoStrangePan

The ability to Redo things has been requested ever since we added the Undo. Adding Redo was one of my first projects at Wube, and one I've been super excited to announce for a long time. Now in addition to using CTRL+Z (or ⌘Z) to reverse a build, deconstruct, or upgrade order, you can now use CTRL+Y (or ⌘⇧Z) to re-issue a previously undone order. You can also use the new redo shortcut in the shortcut bar. It works exactly like you'd expect.

The new "redo" shortcut lights up when there's something to redo, and is disabled when there's nothing to redo.

Undo information and confirmationStrangePan

One thing that is often super annoying and destructive, is undoing actions (sometimes by accident) and something far away from a long time ...

Hello!
Welcome to Fearghall's Factorio Friday Facts! (FFFF, if you will.)

Over the last few months, you have seen asteroids a few times as a background part of some other FFFs, but for all their understated majesty, they were actually quite a complicated trick to pull off! Come with me as I take you on a 3720 to 1 journey through this asteroid field.

Asteroids do concern me

We first started with placeholder asteroids that were just the same as any other sprite - a 2D pre-rendered image with lights and shadows as part of it. This worked, but it looked pretty weird that the asteroids were all orientated the same direction, and only moved in the XY plane without rotating.

Mp4 playback not supported on your device.
Early placeholder asteroids by v453000

So rotation is something that we were talking about going into the asteroid design process.

Aster...

Hello,
We know you love to blow things up, and the Space Age expansion will be bringing ever more advanced and powerful ways of bearing arms against your enemies.

Rocket turret

The rocket turret does what it says, it shoots rockets:

• 3x3 powerful long-range turret.
• Unlocked on one of the three initial planets.
• Minimum range of 15, and a max range of 36 (improved +10% for each quality level).
• Shoots any type of rocket (including atomic bomb).

Mp4 playback not supported on your device.
Graphics by Jarosław; Sound effects by Ian

It is very useful as an upgrade for Space Platforms, as laser and gun turrets alone start to struggle on larger asteroids. Each size of asteroid has resistances to different types of damage, but more on that another week.

Mp4 playback not supported on your device.

T...

Hello,
Today we're going to take a look at a feature some of us have dreamt of changing for years now - the beacon transmission.

The main purpose of beacons is to allow massively increasing your production in the late game while being more than just a module or a faster machine. To make use of beacons you need to adjust your building layout for them.

Beacons succeed in this role, but...

The Problem

We aren't so sure the resulting layouts are all that interesting - something both us and a lot of players have said many times before.

The...

Hello,
welcome once again to the world of facts.

StatisticsKlonan

Do you love watching your production graphs grow as much as we do?

Accumulator graph

It is a little bit tricky when you transition from Steam power to Solar panels and Accumulators, to know if you have enough capacity in the system to survive the cold dark nights. Generally you might just wait until nighttime and see if your factory blacksout, if so, build more solar and accumulators.

It would be helpful and convenient to see the statistics of accumulator charge levels, so we added such information:

Hello,
Today we continue our musical journey.

MotivationAlbert

Last week we presented a general approach to the Factorio Space Age music (...

It was November of 2021 when we started conversations with Petr Wajsar, a very talented Czech music composer, to create the soundtrack for the Factorio expansion. Since then we have been working together on the soundtrack of Factorio Space Age. Conceptualising and finding solutions to our not small amount of problems, and filling the expansion with quality music, specially designed for the best possible Factorio experience.

Petr is a very special musician, because besides being a proven master of electronic music, his education and experience in the conservatory makes him capable of composing music using the full range of a classic orchestra. His modern style of going to more experimental solutions, makes him very flexible at ...

Hello,
Today we have quite a range of new features and improvements coming in 2.0.

Whole belt reader

Often times, you want to read the contents of a whole line of belts. Maybe you're doing some sushi set up, or just want to get an accurate gauge on how much stuff you have without buffering to a chest.

The way to do it, is to read every belt, but this has some drawbacks:

• Ugly
• Inefficient
• Tedious
• Obscures the items on the belts
• Doesn't work for underground belts

So we decided to make it work nicer. Boskid added a new mode you can choose when selecting the 'Read belt contents' mode.

It will read all the belts in the same 'Transport line' as ...

Hello,
Today we have another dose of anti-frustration improvements for you.

Spidertron RTS tool

Lets be honest, the Spidertron selection and control in 1.1 is a bit janky. As fans of RTS games, we know we can do better, and its not like we're reinventing the wheel here.

So we have rebranded the 'Spidertron remote' as the new 'RTS Tool', and the control should feel very intuitive.

• It is activated using the ALT + A hotkey.
• Left click and drag to select Spidertrons.
• Right click to command Spidertrons to go to location.

Mp4 playback not supported on your device.

The RTS tool remembers the last selection of Spidertrons, so pressing ALT + A again will have the previous group of Spidertrons already selected. Another detail is that...

Hello,
When playing with trains, you tend to spend a lot of time building train stops. In my latest playtesting, I noticed a few annoyances and pain points, which we will go in to today, along with some other improvements for 2.0.

Train stop GUI showing on the way

The Train stop GUI got a new lick of paint for the 2.0 update. Generally this was to make it conform to the typical layout of the entity GUIs, but I also took the opportunity to add a feature we were missing a little bit, that is the 'Trains on the way' tab.

Now you can tell which trains are coming to this specific stop.

Train naming and train limit

There is an important order of operations when setting up a new train stop, and if you do it wrong, you can lead yourself to an unpleasant situation:

...

Hello,
if we have any circuit lovers reading, this is another dose of facts for you.

Radar transmission networkkovarex

It might be useful sometimes, to send circuit signals over long distances. I personally never used it for anything, but when we were playtesting a while ago, Boskid insisted that we include circuit wires into our rail blueprints, because you never know when it might be useful.

I felt uneasy about it, because it goes against the coding principle of "write it when you need it", as it adds a bloat for something which might not even be useful later. But I understand, that if it actually becomes needed, it would be way harder to fix later.

This is how our rail system looked "just in case".

To avoid this dilemma, we added a long requested feature of wireless circuit transmission using Radars.

...

Surprise! There are 5 new planets in the expansion.

The first planet you arrive on is a strange new land, rich with iron, copper, coal, stone, oil, and uranium. Everything a starting factory needs and more. There's also water, fish, grass and trees. Yes, this is a fertile land, and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land, and we will call it... "This Land" "Nauvis".

So yes, the new planet Nauvis is similar to the 1.1 version of the map, but there are some substantial updates. Hopefully this is a surprise for you, because updates to the base map weren't planned at all. It just got harder and harder to not make changes after getting more experience with the other planets and seeing things that were missing or broken.

For clarity, these changes affect the 2.0 version in gener...

Hello,
Is it me you're looking for?

The UI searchkovarex

When it comes to UI, one of the things we are proud of is the standard search feature in every window where it's even remotely relevant. It all comes nicely together. You stop thinking about it, and press the CTRL + F shortcut to search whenever you look for something.

But once we got really used to it, we suddenly started to want to search even when not in some window, but just in the game itself. This combined with the fact, that the most frequented question in multiplayer games was, "Hey, where do we make X please?" (especially once planets were added).

Which lead us to the most obvious complementary feature:

The map searchkovarex

Why not extend the searching to the whole map as well?

We were not sure about what exactly should be searchable, so we just started from the most obvious, the production search. ...