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The journey to Nintendo Switch

factorio.com

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Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#11

Post by pjmlp »

mdmglr wrote: post #9

I’m not a game developer. What I would like to know is how does porting the code that draws the UIs and perhaps the game work? For example on PC one might use WinForms and DirectX so is this just a matter of writing wrappers to all your DirectX calls to the Switch equivalents?

It is a bit more involved than that, but yeah that is kind of basics.

The Switch supports OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan, and their own API NVN, which actually many engines make use of. Most likely Factorio is using one of the former anyway, so that problem is kind of out of the way, other that having to deal with the extensions and hardware/driver specific behaviors.

Then as they mention the blog, having to adjust the way the GUI works from a PC setup to an handheld.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#12

Post by Morgawr »

j_m_b wrote: post #7

Will the controller designs end up in the pc version? Would love to play this on my Steam Deck in console mode!

The article linked says this:

> Even after the launch, there is much to do. Next to my screen there's a stack of post-it notes with future improvements, possible features and technical debt I need to solve. As mentioned in the announcement last week, after the launch I will also work on controller support for PC and Steam Deck.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#14

Post by weberer »

mdmglr wrote: post #9

I’m not a game developer. What I would like to know is how does porting the code that draws the UIs and perhaps the game work? For example on PC one might use WinForms and DirectX so is this just a matter of writing wrappers to all your DirectX calls to the Switch equivalents?

Factorio uses SDL. Factorio has been cross-platform (Linux, Windows, Mac) from the beginning, so it makes sense that they're not tied down to Microsoft's proprietary nonsense. I'd imagine this choice made it a lot easier to port to the Switch as well.

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-230

https://www.libsdl.org/index.php

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#15

Post by jerf »

exebook wrote: post #10

Am I the only one who after seeing the title thought they are building Nintendo switch inside Factorio? Which makes me think can it at least run something like Atari 2600 at decent speed?

A Minecraft-based Atari 2600 emulator was running about 1 frame per second last I knew: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq7T5_xH24M

And that's heavily based on internal scripting with real code.

The recent "Minecraft"-in-Minecraft emulation was done with pure Redstone internal to the game, but has to be run on a specialized server that accelerates Redstone operations by several thousands to be even fast enough to record time lapses at a reasonable sped.

In-game simulations of logic gates that are generally running at fractions of a Hz are a pretty steep obstacle to overcome for any "real" computing like that. Just to calibrate your expectations.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#16

Post by fredoralive »

desindol wrote: post #13
glandium wrote: post #6

The Nintendo Switch has an ARM64 CPU, which means the biggest part of porting to that CPU is now done. Does it mean we can expect an Apple Silicon mac build some time soon(ish)?

No. It’s a completely different graphic stack.

There’s already a Mac OS version, so it they’ve presumably already handled that side of things.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#17

Post by Shared404 »

fredoralive wrote: post #16
desindol wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It’s a completely different graphic stack.

There’s already a Mac OS version, so it they’ve presumably already handled that side of things.

IIRC, Factorio uses SDL - which afaict already targets macOS.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#20

Post by klodolph »

candiddevmike wrote: post #18

> Now, the final startup time when the game is installed on internal storage is 70 seconds, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Maybe I don't notice this with other games but that seems like a really long time.

Some games, like ACNH, have a long load time.
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