Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The journey to Nintendo Switch

factorio.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 169 posts

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#21

Post by hbn »

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.

That jumped out to me too. I was hoping "let's not get ahead of ourselves" meant he'd explain why the startup time is so long but it's never mentioned again.

I just timed Breath of the Wild (cartridge version), and from the time I launched the game from the Switch menu to seeing the game menu was about 16 seconds, and the time from selecting a save file to loading the game world was about 18 seconds. What exactly about this game makes it take so long to load?

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#23

Post by Kukumber »

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.

If you target PC/Console and don't have an abstract GPU interface, then you should rethink your life choices

And all the graphics stacks nowadays are similar, Vulkan, Metal, DX12, all share the same ideas

Also there are countless opensource cross platform GPU libs, bgfx [1] or sokol [2] for example

[1] - https://github.com/bkaradzic/bgfx

[2] - https://github.com/floooh/sokol

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#24

Post by bombcar »

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?

Lots of things already are in progress on similar things: https://old.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/93cd1t/building_a...

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#25

Post by hoten »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #4

I was so excited when I saw the Allegro library in the 90s! I lost track of it later and believed it was dead (I believe the author went to Microsoft to work on DirectX). But lo and behold, I've just checked what libraries the Factorio guys used - and what a pleasant surprise!

Yup, allegro is alive and well as version 5. But it's pretty much entirely different.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#26

Post by neogodless »

bombcar wrote: post #22

It's still a year away according to the end of the blog, but it's nice to get an insight into the amount of work necessary for a port. (oops, that was the expansion, misread)

> But we are releasing on 28th October 2022

Unless I'm misunderstanding this section, that's about 5 weeks away.

> it still won't be ready sooner than in a year from now

This is a reference to the expansion.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#28

Post by MBCook »

kergonath wrote: post #5
mcphage wrote: post #2

This came as a total surprise... I'm impressed they managed to get the game running well on the Switch! Will I actually buy it again, just to have it on the Switch? ...yes. Yes, I will.

I would absolutely love an iPad version. Much more than the Switch version (which I am going to get anyway).

That sounds great to me. And the iPad has a better screen and still supports PS/Xbox/Switch controllers.

But there would have to be a touch only interface and that may be the killer.

Re: The journey to Nintendo Switch

#29

Post by rjh29 »

hbn wrote: post #21
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.

That jumped out to me too. I was hoping "let's not get ahead of ourselves" meant he'd explain why the startup time is so long but it's never mentioned again. I just timed Breath of the Wild (cartridge version), and from the time I launched the game from the Switch menu to seeing the game menu was about 16 seconds, and the time from selecting a save file to loading the game world was about 18 seconds. What exactly abo…

BotW got some after-launch patches that significantly reduced the launch time.

They did this by overclocking the Switch during load. I didn't see any mention of boost/overclock in the Factorio writeup, though.

Post reply on HN