[2020] Friday Facts #302 - The multiplayer megapacket

Originally posted by NameLips

I think of these sorts of Friday Facts when people whine about Factorio's price. This isn't some quickly thrown together game that took a month for one guy to make, it has a team of paid employees who have spent years of their life (and career) developing it full-time. This dude spent 2 weeks hunting down a multiplayer bug that only becomes an issue in games with over 200 people in it. In so doing he tracked down a bunch of smaller issues that were probably a really good idea to fix. This is a bug that it's unlikely that any of us will ever personally experience, but it still was incredibly worthwhile to track down and squash. In the end multiplayer is more rock-solid for everybody.

And then people hop on Reddit to whine that $30 is way too much to spend on a video game. The ongoing sales of Factorio pay this guy's rent. It's why he could devote two weeks of his life to an issue most of us can barely understand. It's why we're getting such a solid product. But no, some people loudly argue that they would prefer an incomplete, buggy game that they can grab for $5 during a sale.

Originally posted by Rybec

I do not understand how which entity other players are hovering their cursor over is relevant to the global gamestate. Wouldn't including an entity ID when they actually interact with something negate the need for all these entity selection actions? I'm sure there's much more to it than this; you guys are not ones to have frivolous ineffeciencies. I'm just not seeing it.

Originally posted by audigex

Raise your hand if you feel personally victimised by Factorio’s multiplayer desyncs