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Factorio: Space Age

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Re: Factorio: Space Age

#201

Post by bombcar »

pmoriarty wrote: post #149
throwaway894345 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the Factorio source code available anywhere? I would be really curious to see how a game like Factorio was developed (e.g., what parts are 'the engine' and what parts are scripted? how does such a complex game have so few bugs?)

Factorio is closed-source, unfortunately. Still, you can read a lot about how the devs developed it on their "Friday Facts" posts: https://factorio.com/blog/

This is actually better than the raw source for understanding the development; you have to start at the beginning and read forward.

Basically - tests, reproducibility, and dedication to tracking down "weird minor bugs" before they become "major show stoppers".

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#202

Post by kzrdude »

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #190
pmoriarty wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried SeaBlock, but aborted my playthrough before long because it was too boring. I'm enjoying K2, though. Don't think I'll want to try Space Exploration if it's even worse than SeaBlock.

> Don't think I'll want to try Space Exploration if it's even worse than SeaBlock. I would really recommend SE above SeaBlock, IMO SeaBlock feels like it throws away almost all of the recipies you know & doesn't give you much new to reward you, I felt like it was more like some random fanfic. Where as SE felt like it was a poorly edited directors cut of the original movie. There's way too much & it's audience is real…

SE kind of has fantastic polish on its own - its new features like cargo rockets work flawlessly IMO, but sure, it has not been cut down to reasonable length.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#203

Post by bombcar »

oefrha wrote: post #147
mmastrac wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't put trains and smooth in a single sentence. The signals required a lot of patience to learn and I'm not entirely sure I still understand them. They are by far one of the most painful parts of factorio for me.

Vanilla trains are absolutely pitiful for megabases, and annoying even for midsized bases. I simply consider LTN part of the base game.

LTN is really nice, but it is "fun" (for some people, like me) to build a LTN-like network in vanilla before using LTN going forward.

Once you've "figured it out" it's much easier to drop down "smart stations" instead of building them yourself each time.

Just like I recommend players who want to do city blocks build their own blueprints instead of just loading up someone's (even if you later switch to someone's standard blueprint, you'll at least understand the why).

And of course, it's a sandbox game! You could just download a completed map, but there's no fun in that.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#204

Post by bombcar »

TuringTourist wrote: post #148
mmastrac wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.

I would argue that train signalling is not intentionally obfuscated as brainfuck is however. Just a different form of thinking.

I think it's pretty clear from the blog posts that they tried to make trains as simple as they could, and it's as complex as it is now because that's the simplest it can be without having actual errors and bugs.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#205

Post by babypuncher »

epiccoleman wrote: post #170
babypuncher wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might also recommend Satisfactory. It is essentially Factorio in first person. I think it actually has a better tutorial for people who are just getting into this kind of game.

I've been really interested in Satisfactory, but the last time I looked, they didn't have blueprints - and I really can't imagine playing one of these kinds of games without some way of repeating designs. It looks awesome though, and I'd love to get a server running with a few friends.

They have blueprints now, and they are pretty handy.

The game is still in early access, but it is feeling pretty close to a 1.0 product. The next major update is moving the game to Unreal Engine 5.

What I really like about this game is that you can build vertically, a feature afforded by being in 3D. It allows for some truly massive and beautiful factory designs.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#206

Post by bombcar »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #154
vessenes wrote: post #70

Oh wow, I'm very excited about this. The post author wrote the absolutely incredible Space Exploration mod for Factorio, pitching itself as a "100+" hour expansion, realistically closer to 1000 hours for an average player. Space Exploration has its quirks, but is fundamentally an absolutely outstanding puzzle game, among the best ever made. One of the most delightful things about Factorio for coders is that the game…

Space Exploration is a fantastic mod and I thought it was great news when the company hired the developer. Excited to see the result is pretty much exactly what I hoped for! I appreciate the dev's comments about the differences, how the new Space Age will be accessible to more players.

I really liked his distinction between "normal game" and "what the modded players want" - you have a similar distinction in Minecraft and it's important for modded players to realize and remember that the normal game shouldn't be the modded one, they are different markets (and the modded players are the ones who go out of their way to 'get more').

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#207

Post by res0nat0r »

birracerveza wrote: post #59
roydivision wrote: post #29

I have purposely avoided Factorio just because I'm convinced that I'll sink so much time into it. It looks super fun, but I have stuff to do. Maybe one day....

Stay away if you value your time. It's not a joke when they call it cracktorio. Especially on the Deck...

I really like this game but the colors are hell on my eyes. I'd like to play more but I have such a hard time trying to figure out sometimes what is connecting where. I wish this had some nice bright colors and I would for sure play much more.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#208

Post by MerelyMortal »

naillo wrote: post #106
birracerveza wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stay away if you value your time. It's not a joke when they call it cracktorio. Especially on the Deck...

Tangent but if you 'value' your time but don't use the time to entertain yourself I'm not sure you're using it right.

Entertaining one's self is not the end-all, be-all.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#209

Post by entropie »

aqme28 wrote: post #33
rvillanueva wrote: post #13

“Oh man the guy who made the Space Exploration mod is gonna be pissed they’re copying him” “Oh wait it’s the same guy”

Love when game companies just employ their best modders rather than fighting against them.

Factorio devs are exceptional. This game is so polished, well thought-out, optimized and unique. I remember I read some dev blog about belt optimization and got an idea how passionate the devs are about their game.

Still regular patches that just make the game better. Much love.

Re: Factorio: Space Age

#210

Post by _proofs »

Jenk wrote: post #87
pmoriarty wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with that is that there aren't nearly as many people who know Haskell or Erlang compared to those who know Lua. Lua has been a modding staple across countless games, so millions of gamers/modders are already familiar with it. I'm convinced that chosing Lua for modding is one of the main reasons Factorio has over 5000 mods now. If they'd chosen a more obscure language I'd doubt we'd have nearly as man…

My point for choosing AA as an example was that it uses an entirely bespoke language, modelling system, and the APIs are just horrendous. Obscurity has not prevented (some) great things happen with/for Bohemia but I do wonder what greatness has been missed out because of it. As for Lua I think it is rather chicken:egg. Lua is popular because it is used by mod APIs, or is Lua use by mod APIs because it is popular? My…

this is a strange take for me to read -- i've written quite a decent amount of lua, and it is the first language i used to learn (zero programming experience prior)

when i eventually got exposed to python (but more heavily C/C++, and even some lisp/pascal) and came back to lua, i was grateful lua did not inundate me with parens/primitives/modules/data-structures/grammars, and found the flexibility of the interpreter and also what lua tables present as a unified primitive for multiple container types to be so nice and accessible for getting right to flow-state.

i did not have to look up another API and read about a set of semantics provided with a desired module, i just needed to know 1. what i want to achieve and 2. a single API: the lua table

its small std library is performant and easy on the cognitive load, and then it plays so nicely with other languages and environments.

have you written much lua?

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