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Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch

factorio.com

321–330 of 366 posts

Re: Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch

#321

Switch feels like such an interesting platform: not the most powerful out there, not by a long shot, but still has lots of great games on it, perhaps proving that graphics aren't quite everything. At the same time, with some clever optimization, there indeed are great looking games out there as well, in addition to lots of different ones being ported to it! I wonder for how long Switch will remain as a popular platfo…

I agree with most of what you said, but can't think of a single game that looks good on the Switch (by today's standards). Can you name some examples?

> (by today's standards)

I think this is the crux of it: if "today's standards" means every leaf on a tree is an individual element that moves under its own logic in a forest of infinitely visible trees, or straight photorealistic graphics, the Switch won't be there.

But most games don't need to go these lengths, the latest Splatoon 3 has way simpler graphics than that, but visually there's nothing that feels odd or hurts the eye. It looks "good".

Re: Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch

#322
post #17

Please no. Someone tell me it's just an unconfirmed rumor. Why would they do such a thing? I am at very high risk for Factorio addiction, and the only reason I haven't played it yet is because I don't play PC games anymore. But I do have a Switch, and having Civ VI on there was enough of a problem, thank you very much. Goodbye everyone!

This is tragic news. In the future they will point to this as the pivotal moment that lead to the downfall of my career, relationships, financial security, etc. Is there a 12 step program for infrastructure maintenance survival horror games?

https://web.archive.org/web/20051013074432/http://www.civano...

Re: Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait for the day we can ask a general-purpose gaming AI to optimize the production line for this game, learn from it, and then backport the theories to my codebase at work. Humans... or at least me... are so bad at this sort of multivariate optimization. Even if you cheat and give yourself infinite resources and all the technologies and set out to plan the perfect economy from the get-go, eventually something…

Constraint solvers have already been used to generate optimal belt balancers (and it's beautiful / incredible). The designs they come up with for 16-wide balancers are, I think, beyond anything a human could have realistically created in a single lifetime.

I have no idea what any of these words mean, lol... can you link to a post/video showing this? That sounds awesome :)

Re: Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a Steam Deck has absolutely destroyed my life. Plays mouse+keyboard games so comfortably and effortlessly.

What are the main games taking hours on the Steam Deck? I want one, but I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around what I would actually do.

Anything that has natural stop-off points pretty much.

Vampire Survivors is my most highest played one based on hours though =) You can play it with the sound and most of your brain off, so you can still listen to what's going on in the TV show you're "watching".

GTA V runs perfectly on it, I played through Quantum Break. And as soon as I get Heroic Launcher (Epic + Gog games) working, I'll start with Witcher 3 and CP2077.

Re: Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange that nowhere on this landing page does Mindustry advertise itself as "free software". In fact, there is a very prominent link to buy it on steam for $9.99. A bit off-putting. As developers of course we associate GitHub with FOSS, but would a layman? I guess the thinking is anyone who doesn't know to visit the repo and `git clone` probably requires the steam installation? $9.99 however is not cheap many places…

$10 is an absolute steal for a fully featured game with hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of play time in it. FOSS or not.

I don't disagree, but I'd add that this also pretty normal in modern games. AAA games charging $60 + $1000 in DLC make up a negligible chunk of the games market, yet receive nearly all the coverage, because that price markup is disproportionately directed towards advertising. Here [1] are the sales prices on Factorio by region (another benefit of using a distribution service), and keep in mind that they recently increased their prices by upwards of 50% after leaving early access! The cheapest its available is in Argentina where it goes for $2.80.

It's an identical story with the vast majority of games. For games in a roughly similar vein to Factorio you might also look at Dyson Sphere Program, Rimworld, and Satisfactory among many others. The obscure exceptions in price are AAA stuff and Japanese stuff.

Add in various sales, bundles, etc and it gets even more ridiculous. Epic is currently trying to become a viable competitor to Steam. The problem they face is that people would rather buy games where their games library already is. So Epic has responded perfectly naturally - just give everybody a completely free game library. Each week that give away 1-3 free games to people; that's included games like GTA V.

We're currently in an absolute golden age for games and gaming.

[1] - https://steamdb.info/app/427520/

Re: Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch

#327

Can someone explain to me why people enjoy Factorio so much? I finished it once because a friend told me it was awesome and I had time on my hands. I remember trudging through the beginning, spending a lot of time calculating ratio in a spreadsheet, a lot of time spent lying belts and a huge sense of relief when I finally got the bots. The whole experience felt like work to me. What am I missing?

...you finished Factorio without getting addicted or spending hundreds of hours optimising everything?

Clearly your brain lacks the "organising and optimising is GRRRREAT" -bit.

I can't play any Civilization-type games or - as I discovered - Factorio-type games. It rubs some primitive part of my brain just the right way and I can't stop.

Literally my first "let's see what kind of game this is" attempt at Factorio stopped when I saw the sun come back up. And with Civilization I almost got fired for playing "just one more turn" way too many times and turning up for work groggy, tired and late.

Now I only play games with plot that has a beginning, middle and an end and very little replayability.

Re: Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch

#328

Nintendo Switch, such an impactful device Valve woke up a little bit too late Sony made a mistake to abandon the Vita And Microsoft was stupid to not try, or maybe too scared Steam deck is too big for me, the switch is the perfect size, I'm still waiting for a proper Switch alternative I'll probably build it myself

I own a Switch and a Steam Deck. While the Deck _looks_ too big, it feels much better and is more comfortable for long gaming sessions.

The Switch feels like a Game&Watch after playing with the Deck for a while :D

Re: Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression is that it's memory-limited, and it has a builtin limit. Anyway, your factory size is FPS-bound, but any reasonable computer will run it well enough all the way to victory.

> My impression is that it's memory-limited, and it has a builtin limit. Factorio is primarily bound by memory bandwidth , believe it or not. You need a healthy amount of memory for really large factories, but the limiting factor ends up being the fact that a significant amount of it gets accessed every frame. There is no built-in limit on factory size. > Anyway, your factory size is FPS-bound Not at all. FPS is only…

> Not at all. FPS is only influenced by the amount of stuff on screen, which is bounded by the size of your screen. The most expensive scenes tend to be dense forests, not factories. :)

In factorio frames aren't interpolated, so always FPS ≤ UPS. This means that while you're not technically limited by the rendering speed the FPS does bound the factory size.

Re: Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch

#330

Switch feels like such an interesting platform: not the most powerful out there, not by a long shot, but still has lots of great games on it, perhaps proving that graphics aren't quite everything. At the same time, with some clever optimization, there indeed are great looking games out there as well, in addition to lots of different ones being ported to it! I wonder for how long Switch will remain as a popular platfo…

Nintendo is the company that turned game consoles into a profritable business and it was seen as the way out of the 1983 game crash, caused by lots of copy cats and wannabe garbage games. Hence why game consoles are like this, those 50 bucks better cover some basic expectations.

As for the graphics quality, that has always been a Nintendo mark that there is more to a game than how many tiles/triagles per second a console is capable of, which ironically means they are the only console vendor that doesn't sell consoles at a loss.

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