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18 Oct

Friday Facts #317 - New pathfinding algorithm

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New pathfinding algorithm Oxyd

Last week we mentioned the change to make biters not collide with each other, but that wasn’t the only biter-related update we released this past week. Somewhat coincidentally, this week’s updates have included something I’d been working on for a few weeks before – an upgrade to the enemy pathfinding system.

Pathfinding

When a unit wants to go somewhere, it first needs to figure out how to get there. That could be as simple as going straight to its goal, but there can be obstacles – such as cliffs, trees, spawners, player entities – in the way. To do that, it will tell the pathfinder its current position and the goal position, and the pathfinder will – possibly after many ticks – reply with a path, which is simply a series of waypoints for the unit to follow in order to get to its destination.

To do its job, the pathfinder uses an algorithm called A* (pronounced 'A star'). A simple example of A* pa...

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17 Oct

UPS, Biters, & 17.70

Comment

Originally posted by Wargon2015

This is the first actually annoying bug that I've seen in a long time and you guys already have a plan hours after it was reported.
This is amazing.

Its not really a bug, just the way the engine works.

The blood particles are entities, and the dying animation creates a lot of them: https://gfycat.com/DeficientSadChimpanzee

In the engine, any entity search needs to iterated through all entities on the 'Advanced tile', which is 2x2 tiles.

The fire needs to check each tick (or every few ticks) to see what to damage... so it iterated through all the entities (including thousands of particles).

The biter pathing/collisions needs to iterate through all the entities as they walk through the fire.

So the result is the iteration takes a very long time, because there a bajilions of them: ...

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UPS, Biters, & 17.70

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We are aware of the problem with flamethrower turrets and UPS drops, it is to do with the blood particles (which are entities).

We have a plan, and the results are already very promising.

How can I unload chunks?

Comment

This mod will do you: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/DeleteEmptyChunks


16 Oct

Version 0.17.71

Comment

Originally posted by darthn3ss

Should I be seeing this in steam? I haven't seen .70 or .71 so far.

Its still in experimental, so unless you opt-in you won't get the update.

Saying that, we will probably mark it stable relatively soon, so nothing to worry about.

Version 0.17.71

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Bugfixes

  • Fixed a crash that would happen on loading certain saves made in previous versions. more
  • Fixed entity selection could desync from mouse cursor when switching to cutscene controller in multiplayer. more

Use the automatic updater if you can (check experimental updates in other settings) or download full installation at ...

Read more External link →

Version 0.17.70

Comment

Originally posted by PE1NUT

I'll try that when I get home - maybe it just doesn't work on Linux. Are you opening them straight from the changelog in-game?

Ah right, in-game changelog! We don't currently have link support in-game

Version 0.17.70

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Originally posted by DropboxKenshiro

Added ability to shift click a research in the technology screen to start that research.

Why this wasn't in game from the beginning?

The game wasn't finished at the beginning, still working on a way to traverse LQG spin foam in just the right way to send a USB drive with the full game back to 2013.

Version 0.17.70

Comment

Originally posted by NuderWorldOrder

Purely out of technical interest, what are "detached characters" mentioned in the last bug fix?

Characters that don't have any player attached to them.

Version 0.17.70

Comment

Originally posted by PE1NUT

Also read them every time they come out. Would be great if all the links to the forum posts in the change notes were clickable, opening in browser.

The links in the changelog are clickable, and you can middle-click the links to open them in a new tab.


15 Oct

Version 0.17.70

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Features

  • Added interface option to adjust the number of shortcut bar rows that are visible on the screen.
  • Added ability to shift click a research in the technology screen to start that research.
  • Allowed setting filters with the ghost cursor.

Changes

  • Biters and Spitters will no longer collide with other biters/spitters. (...
Read more External link →

11 Oct

this game runs on literally ANYTHING!

Comment
    posila87 on Steam Forums - Thread - Direct
Originally posted by Willoguns: my laptop has these specs:
CPU: A4-7210 quad core up to 2.2GHz
GPU: Radeon R3
RAM: 8GB 1600MHz ddr3L
and a really slow HDD

can happily say that even after all these updates I can comfortably get 50-60 fps on low-medium settings! :D
Hey, thanks for the message. We put non-trivial amout of effort to make the game run even on fairly low spec hardware, and I appreciate that you recognize it's not expected to run on "anything" just because it's a 2D game.

Friday Facts #316 - Map editor Lua snippets & Non-colliding Biters

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Originally posted by StarP0wer

Does that mean it's possible to spawn >1 spitter on 1 tile to create some sort of spitter explosion?

Something like that: https://gfycat.com/RichForthrightHyena

Friday Facts #316 - Map editor Lua snippets & Non-colliding Biters

Comment

Originally posted by hexagonhexagon

Do non-colliding biters increase performance at all? It seems like it would, but I didn't see anything in the FFF mention this at all.

Yes, it increases performance.

Friday Facts #316 - Map editor Lua snippets & Non-colliding Biters

Comment

Originally posted by cantab314

Is the biter change going to be put straight in the 0.17 stable branch, or will it stay in experimentals for a while? As your own gifs demonstrate it's given the biters a significant buff and IMHO such a balance change shouldn't be made to the stable branch.

We will release it as experimental, but we don't anticipate taking a long time to mark the release as stable.

Friday Facts #316 - Map editor Lua snippets & Non-colliding Biters

Post
External link →

What are the recomended CPUs/GPUs to play the game?

Comment

Your graphics card is no problem, but your CPU is pretty old.

If you want better UPS performance, I would recommend upgrading to a modern Ryzen or Intel chip, with some high performance DDR4 RAM

Friday Facts #316 - Map editor Lua snippets & Non-colliding Biters

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Map editor Lua snippets wheybags

In the last few weeks, we've really accelerated our work on the campaign. We've been pushing ahead a lot with both the scripting and blocking out the physical level design. One of the problems we've come up against a lot, is that we often need to perform custom edits to the map, which are quite tedious, but not common enough to add a new tool to the map editor for them. For example, something like "disable all the spawners in this region".

This kind of problem is easily solved with a little bit of custom Lua code, but getting the specification of the area we want to edit into Lua is a painful process of noting down and typing out location coordinates. It is also easy to lose track of these Lua snippets, as there is no good place to save them.

To solve this problem, we decided to add a Lua snippet tool to the map editor. This tool will let you drag your cursor over an area, and it will then run your custom Lua code on th...

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09 Oct

The current map editor is terrible

Comment
    posila87 on Steam Forums - Thread - Direct
If you want to have an infinite supply of an item, place down Inifinity Chest (it's in the "question mark" category in Entity Editor) and set its filter to the item you want (artillery shell) and set how much should be kept in the chest inventory. As you take out items out of it, the chest will respawn new items to fullfill the filter settings. So then you can Ctrl + click the chest and top up supplies in your inventory instead of having to pickup items from ground.

Also, did you know you don't need to save scenario and create new map, you can just type /editor in the chat/console and it will switch you to character mode? Type /editor again to switch back to editor mode. This also works in your existing saves (will disable achievements). Or you don't need to bother with switching to character mode, you can setup inserter to feed artillery turret from infinity chest and unpause time in the editor mode.

We make the editor for ourselves to develop the game. During ... Read more

05 Oct

For all the people who were worried that the repair turret didn't consume repair packs; This update is for you.

Comment

Originally posted by GoldenShadowGS

I found a bug with this mod.

The repair turret doesn't work on buildings that were already damaged in your inventory when you build them unless they take additional damage.

Nice catch, I will fix it for the next release




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