devtrackers.gg → Factorio
Factorio

Factorio Dev Tracker




All Patch Notes News Steam Reddit Steam Forums
View
View: List Card

21 Jun

Friday Facts #416 - Fluids 2.0

Post
External link →

Today is a sad day... Just found out Factorios current rating :(

Comment

Originally posted by narrill

No, I'm not confused about what inflation is. That's a fairly condescending suggestion.

Increasing game prices to match inflation simply isn't done, not even by reasonably priced, high-quality games with no microtransactions and free ongoing updates, and you're saying you feel you should be entitled to do it despite your studio not having any need to.

I don't know what you call that if not greedy. And Valve already adjusts their regional pricing recommendations every year based on consumer price indices and purchasing power, so you ended up hitting a bunch of regions twice for the same inflation.

I don't see any reason why games should automatically get cheaper with time

I do: you paid for the labor to make the game when inflation was lower, and distributing it to new consumers costs you next to nothing. So why should the price track with inflation?

If you'd waited until Space Age's release, which will actually add ...

Read more

"Increasing game prices to match inflation simply isn't done."

And what? Do you think that only things that are done already should be done? You should learn to stop using this kind of argument, because it is invalid. Regarding the adjustment, I think that everyone should do it because it makes sense, I hope that other game studios will follow.

"you paid for the labor to make the game when inflation was lower, and distributing it to new consumers costs you next to nothing. So why should the price track with inflation?"

There are 4 errors in this statement, let me explain:

1) The cost of labor has very little to do with cost of the product. You have the investment cost, the risk of the investment (the bigger risk the bigger rewards often), and also the the demand for the product.

2) The labor wasn't done, the game is being worked on. Which, by your logic, should mean it gets more and more expensive every year, even without the inflation.

... Read more

Friday Facts #416 - Fluids 2.0

Post

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...

Read more

19 Jun

Today is a sad day... Just found out Factorios current rating :(

Comment

Originally posted by narrill

What's baffling to me is the idea that you guys should be exempt from the very predictable blowback from increasing the price of your game for no other reason than to keep with inflation while:

I'm sorry, but this is something lots of people would see as greedy, and they're welcome to that opinion.

It's also baffling to me that most of the comments are defending you as pro-consumer while you're in here trying to paint "rent goes up every year, we should be able to do that too" as a noble cause, as if people are totally cool with getting gouged by their landlord every year.

I don't even have a problem with the price increase, but come on. In no un...

Read more

Based on the way you comment, I believe you are confused about the inflation.

We didn't increase the real price, we just adjusted for inflation, the price in real value was kept more or less the same. As inflation is still strong, I believe that in some time increase from 35 to 40 dollars will be necesary, again not our fault.

We are not in any way responsible for the fact that the goverments are printing a lot of money and decreasing the value of the existing money by that. If you have problem with that, talk to your goverment and try to change it. If your country, whatever it is, didn't have any inflation, the price could be kept the same in that country, and rents and price of everything wouldn't have to go up. Inflation is basically a multiplier to all prices, and it is a norm that it is automatically included in long term contracts.

I don't see any reason why games should automatically get cheaper with time, and even if someone decides to make their gam...

Read more

18 Jun

Today is a sad day... Just found out Factorios current rating :(

Comment

Originally posted by narrill

For it to be a reasonable argument to me personally one would need to explain why the devs nowadays deserve to be compensated less for the game than they did when it launched in 2018.

100% disagree, and frankly this take is baffling to me. Every game ever released is affected by inflation, but Wube are the only devs I've ever seen react to that by increasing the price of their existing product. Most devs just create and sell new content, which I don't think anyone has a problem with.

What is baffling you? I personally prefer fewer quality games supported for a long time rather than small sh*tty releases over and over. Also, games are getting cheaper and cheaper every year due to inflation, which is not a good thing. Again, as a consumer I perfer less more expensive games compared to a lot of cheap games, or more likely to microtransaction driven games, which are automatically corrected for inflaction.

This is why I believe that someone should make a first step and work towards this being the norm. When I pay rent, I get a letter every year that my rent was increased by X % due to inflation, and basically everything is getting more expensive, why would game devs should stay behind?


14 Jun

Friday Facts #415 - Fix, Improve, Optimize

Post
External link →

Friday Facts #415 - Fix, Improve, Optimize

Post

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.

... Read more

13 Jun

Why do productivity modules only work on intermediates?

Comment

Ok, I remember the process with modules quite clearly. In the very old days, I just added modules as a pet project to add more variability to the game, and instantly started to play with that.

In this version, you had beacons and module slots, and all modules could go anywhere.

It very quickly got to the point, where the best and only setups was 12 beacons with productivity modules around an assambler, to maximize the productivity as much as possible (because of the exponential aspect of it with the length of production chain).

It was clear, that it would affect the game too much this way, so we made the first limitation of productivity modules not going into beacons.

We played again, it was better, but in some cases, it was just weird, for example, we had this recipe where you made rocket, and another recipe, which had rocket + some extra explosives as an input to make the explosive rocket. Basically an upgrade recipe. But suddenly, with the product...

Read more

12 Jun

Pressing multiple arrow keys simultaneously shows confusing movement

Comment 
if (moveRightActive && moveUpActive)
  return Direction::NorthEast;
if (moveRightActive && moveDownActive)
  return Direction::SouthEast;
if (moveLeftActive && moveDownActive)
  return Direction::SouthWest;
if (moveLeftActive && moveUpActive)
  return Direction::NorthWest;
if (moveUpActive)
  return Direction::North;
if (moveRightActive)
  return Direction::East;
if (moveDownActive)
  return Direction::South;
if (moveLeftActive)
  return Direction::West;
return Direction::None;

07 Jun

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by Full_War_4717

Hm. If item transformation is indeed evaluated lazily, this might result in an interesting corner case with mods:

  • item1 should be turned to item2, which is also spoilable. For consistency the "overflow" time should be applied to item2;
  • which might trigger it spoiling as well, turning it into (also spoilable) item3, etc.  

This can result in significant hiccup, especially with short spoilage time and a loop in transformations, unless such spoilage loops are detected at initialization time, so that process can use module over total loop time to save repeated iterations.

Item transformation is evaluated instantly, but it is cheap, as it is basically once per item stack.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by CzTd

What does happen when the inventory is full with non-spoiled items and a spoil event occurs?

Like I have a chest filled with coal, and 1 stack with apples.

What will happen with the spoils? Will they get deleted? Chest will have additional slot?

The stack of apples becomes a stack of spoilage, the chest being full or not seems to be irelevant to me.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by Soul-Burn

What is the freshness value of a normal non-perishable item? Does it remember the freshness it was made with?

No, once it gets out of the spoilable area, it is all the same. And when you recycle it, it gets 100% freshness no matter you made it from.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by Smoke_The_Vote

Cheap, even with the need to re-average a spoilable item stack every time an inserter/robot drops another item into the chest?

Or, I guess maybe a stack's new spoil rating only get calculated when it's needed?

It is a small extra operation in the process of merging two item stacks, it is completely negligable.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by Soul-Burn

Which damaged items average in 1.1? 

In 1.1 buildings remember their damage, while ammo/science just merge, losing final item.

Is this a change for 2.0?

Read more

You made me unsure, so I just double checked in 1.1, and damaged items average indeed. Try to make 75% damaged belt and 25% damaged belt, mine them into the inventory, viola, you have 50% damaged belts X 2

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by SuspiciousAd3803

In theory, is recycling a method of un-spoiling an item? In other words if product 1 has like 5% freshness and I recycle it and get component 2, will component 2 have 100% freshness or will the freshness be derived from product 1

Freshness is always derived from product.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by Garagantua

Since we've seen new "infinite research" with just the Nauvis sciences, I assumed that there'll be _some_ infinite tech with pretty much every one (and maybe even combination of?) new science pack. Otherwise in my first solo playthrough, I might automate the first planet, go to the second - and my research either stops, or continues without the new pack I just managed to import.

If these "some but not all new planet science pack" infinite techs exist, then that's a really good reason to have *solid* production of the "usual" packs on your lab planet, and you just use whatever you can from the new ones.

...until you're at a point where you really want that shiny new infinite technoligy that uses _all the packs_.

More or less this. You can almost always research something infinite whatever route you do. There is the steel productivity research, which doesn't even use science production.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by 13ros27

Does that mean that gleba science only requires renewable resources (the trees and I guess water) and doesn't use anything mined somewhere in the recipe because if it did then it would surely still make sense to switch the factory off?

Only the materials to build the rockets take minable resources. But with all of the productivity researches and the super rich (and small) gleba resources paches, it seems to be completely negligable. (I didn't have to tap other than the 1st mine on gleba in my 300h playthrough)

Version 1.1.109

Post

Bugfixes

  • Fixed a crash when trying to hand-craft recipes that have fluid ingredients.

Use the automatic updater if you can (check experimental updates in other settings) or download full installation at https://www.factorio.com/download/experimental.

External link →

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by Kasern77

Okay I get it now, thanks. Although I don't see why anyone would use recyclers to get rid of only some of the spoilage when a boiler can burn all of it. Especially when the former uses power while the latter provides power.

It is mostly a consistency thing, as you can use recycler to void other non-burnable items (iron plate for example), so it would be weird if it consumed everything BUT spoilable items.

Also, the recycle to itself can be used to try to increase quality of products which can't be broken into ingredients if you use quality modules for the process.

Friday Facts #414 - Spoils of Agriculture

Comment

Originally posted by RoastCabose

In the real world spoilage can be mitigated, but it can't be stopped in most cases. Remember this is a game of abstractions after all. The brute force method is to send it as fast as possible, which encourages things like direct insertion, circuit use, hyper compact production.

Also remember that the stuff you're shipping in space likely has the spoil time of hours, and the stuff that spoils in minutes shouldn't last more than a few minutes in your production.

I do think the keeping things hot could be an interesting new thing, but that would be different in the sense that you can work on keeping things hot for it's whole existence, where as spoilage definitely has an end point.

I bet they didn't do refrigeration to keep the complexity down. Because if you implement refrigeration and it stops spoilage, than it is completely necessary and just adds extra steps without much design consideration. If refrigeration simply slows down spoilage, then that ...

Read more

Exactly. Generally speaking, the game with the expansion is big enough, and if something, we are looking for ways to simplify/shorten it a little because it was almost too much. This means, that at this point anything that adds to the amount of items/steps of things you should do to finish the game needs to have VERY good reason to exist. Refrigirators seems like just more steps, and the mechanics in the core would still be the same.




Subscribe to RSS
Get Discord notifications
Patch notes
Steam Store page
Launch game from Steam

When do they post?

(GMT +0)
Something missing? Let us know and we'll add it!