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How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

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Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#241

Post by dbacar »

pjerem wrote: post #233
satvikpendem wrote: post #35

I know lots of people who play Factorio but for me, I guess it just feels too much like work? Whenever I play it, I get the distinct feeling that I could instead do the same thing but productively instead, such as by contributing to my OSS projects (sometimes, maybe even for profit instead). I never got into these types of programmatic games for precisely this reason but I'd like to understand other perspectives on t…

That’s why I prefer Satisfactory : it’s the same principle but it also allows you to build gigantic great and beautiful things. For me it’s the perfect mix between Factorio (for building factories) and Minecraft (for allowing you to create your environment) and, contrary to those two, it’s also aesthetically beautiful. In fact building production lines is not even what I prefer, what I prefer is organizing them in ch…

IMHO, Factorio is aesthetically beautiful.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#242

Post by ffsm8 »

pjerem wrote: post #233
satvikpendem wrote: post #35

I know lots of people who play Factorio but for me, I guess it just feels too much like work? Whenever I play it, I get the distinct feeling that I could instead do the same thing but productively instead, such as by contributing to my OSS projects (sometimes, maybe even for profit instead). I never got into these types of programmatic games for precisely this reason but I'd like to understand other perspectives on t…

That’s why I prefer Satisfactory : it’s the same principle but it also allows you to build gigantic great and beautiful things. For me it’s the perfect mix between Factorio (for building factories) and Minecraft (for allowing you to create your environment) and, contrary to those two, it’s also aesthetically beautiful. In fact building production lines is not even what I prefer, what I prefer is organizing them in ch…

You might want to try Dyson sphere program next ( ◔ ‿ ◔ )

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#245

Post by RandomThoughts3 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #35

I know lots of people who play Factorio but for me, I guess it just feels too much like work? Whenever I play it, I get the distinct feeling that I could instead do the same thing but productively instead, such as by contributing to my OSS projects (sometimes, maybe even for profit instead). I never got into these types of programmatic games for precisely this reason but I'd like to understand other perspectives on t…

It’s funny because I don’t enjoy Factorio for the same reason you do - it quickly feels like work - but I never get the feeling I could be doing something more productive instead. I just think the core gameplay loop of Factorio is tedious and that it’s specifically designed for people who don’t mind that.

The gameplay is fun at first. You have a ressource and something you want to produce. You look at the ratio of things, what the layout you will have to put in place, how fast things will have to move. You painfully build that. It works. You feel good. Then you realise it will just be more of the same ad infinity with the first time you do train design and liquids the sole inkling of novelty. It’s all fairly simple conceptually so it gets tedious and boring quite fast (at least to me). I think part of the issue is also that I tend to play it wrong by calculating and planning - literally work for which the in game tooling is not optimal - while I think I would have more fun just winging it and fixing things as they happen.

What I mean is I think it’s not a game for everyone but I can see why it’s catnip for its intended audience.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#246

Post by sanotehu »

medstrom wrote: post #225
0points wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It fascinates me how someone like you manage to build all these tooling to run your house, but still struggle with > need to remember to load the grocery list before leaving the house that has the server in it ^ remote access and > better hope your phone doesn't decide for you that the page needs to be unloaded on the way ^ unreliable tech

What would you do?

Syncthing to sync the grocery list to your phone whenever it is on the home WiFi. Any changes will be updated when you next get back home.

I use this with obsidian and it's a game changer, removing need for the cloud

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#247

Post by pjerem »

dbacar wrote: post #241
pjerem wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why I prefer Satisfactory : it’s the same principle but it also allows you to build gigantic great and beautiful things. For me it’s the perfect mix between Factorio (for building factories) and Minecraft (for allowing you to create your environment) and, contrary to those two, it’s also aesthetically beautiful. In fact building production lines is not even what I prefer, what I prefer is organizing them in ch…

IMHO, Factorio is aesthetically beautiful.

In a stylistic way, yes. Not in the « what a beautiful multi floor truck station I built there, oh and btw, take this stair then on the mezzanine, take the door at the left to access the commands of the station. » way.

It’s just different games. Factorio is excellent as building production lines while Satisfactory is excellent as making feel you « in » your creations with 3D, a lot of architectural options, a really immersive sound design (quitting your noisy machine room to a corridor and hearing the sound go down when the door closes).

It’s different. But there is one important common thing with Factorio though : they are both made with a lot of love and with a lot of attention to every detail. In fact, both games could be an exemple of design and ergonomics for even professional softwares.

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#248

Post by jimnotgym »

I don't play computer games anymore.

Factorio was the last game I played. I lost a weekend and ended up with a raging headache.

Before that an MMORPG did the same

A year before that it was Civilization IV, exactly the same, lost an entire weekend then never played it again.

I don't think I am suited to games. Or maybe I just need more free time

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#249

Post by vessenes »

fragmede wrote: post #199
mikewarot wrote: post #195

Is there a similar game that lets you place logic gates and do computing? Bonus points if it's open source.

Nandgame and nand2tetris both take you on a journey from discreet transistors to a computer, in the form of a game. There's also Zachatronics games' TIS-100, and Shenzhen I/O.

I'll offer some unsolicited rankings here for these:

Level of fun/addictiveness: FactorioBest story: Tossup for Shenzhen I/O and TIS-100, Factorio, nand2tetris, nandgame

Best order if you've never coded and want to get tricked into becoming an engineer: Factorio (but hard limit yourself here to no more than 2000 hours), then TIS-100, then Shenzhen I/O, then the Nands. I think Nand2tetris is more accessible as a learning tool.

Upshot - I highly recommend this list. :) Space Age (the Factorio DLC) has me wanting to do nand2tetris in Factorio now. Resisting..

Re: How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

#250

Post by piyuv »

jimnotgym wrote: post #248

I don't play computer games anymore. Factorio was the last game I played. I lost a weekend and ended up with a raging headache. Before that an MMORPG did the same A year before that it was Civilization IV, exactly the same, lost an entire weekend then never played it again. I don't think I am suited to games. Or maybe I just need more free time

I still play games but I lost my ability to “lost myself in time” while playing games, what you’re describing does not happen to me anymore. And I dearly miss it.
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