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

What is interesting about Factorio

fuseki.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 312 posts

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#61

Post by pmoriarty »

TylerE wrote: post #29
kennu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to give the game some time. If it's good (like Factorio is) it might just pull you in. You also need to be in the right mood for that particular game. Sometimes you have to try a game many times until get pulled in.

I’ve tried several times but it just repels me. It has the worst tutorial I’ve ever seen and all the inventory management is just super awkward with weird UI. That’s coming from someone with hundreds of hours in OpenTTD and the like

"all the inventory management is just super awkward with weird UI"

That's funny, for me Factorio has one of the best and well-thought-out UI's I've ever seen in any game (especially for a game this complex).[1]

[1] - With the exception of the circuit network, which is too easy to turn in to spaghetti code and a nightmare to debug.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#62

Post by TylerE »

pmoriarty wrote: post #61
TylerE wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve tried several times but it just repels me. It has the worst tutorial I’ve ever seen and all the inventory management is just super awkward with weird UI. That’s coming from someone with hundreds of hours in OpenTTD and the like

"all the inventory management is just super awkward with weird UI" That's funny, for me Factorio has one of the best and well-thought-out UI's I've ever seen in any game (especially for a game this complex).[1] [1] - With the exception of the circuit network, which is too easy to turn in to spaghetti code and a nightmare to debug.

Part of it, frankly is that I hate pixel art. Give me antialiasing and decent kerning, dammit!

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#63

Post by hobofan »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #50
TylerE wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve tried several times but it just repels me. It has the worst tutorial I’ve ever seen and all the inventory management is just super awkward with weird UI. That’s coming from someone with hundreds of hours in OpenTTD and the like

What's wrong about the tutorial? It walks you through the first 5% of the game. The remaining 95% unlock in a way that makes it obviously an improvement to something you have already. Personally I really liked it.

To get beyond a certain point in this game you will need a exact understanding of certain mechanics and advanced patterns. I doubt most people would come up with advanced patterns (e.g. how to build a well working main bus, or a conveyor balancer that works well) by themselves and learn that from the wiki.

If you purely stick to everything you learn ingame, you will probably hit a wall after 20 hours or so.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#64

Post by tomcam »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #5
jfim wrote: post #2

> It's also extremely addictive to engineers. Quite the understatement. Pretty much every engineer that I've introduced to the game has played for at least 40 hours.

Interesting. I used to play video games but now I mostly 3D print stuff and design robots for fun. I don’t think video games are a bad use of time generally, but I feel so good about doing actual engineering for fun that I’m always a little surprised with games that are supposed to be fun for engineer types. I kind of wonder why actually doing engineering for fun isn’t more popular?

Parent is doing some very interesting work. Check out his profile.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#65

Post by spyckie2 »

fouc wrote: post #6

As someone that stopped playing games in university, I've found it weirdly hard to get back into games many years later. Factorio seems like the type of game I would've liked as a teenager, but now it just feels like work to me. As do most interesting games. It seems like there's a learning curve to games that I don't want to spend the time dealing with anymore.

I understand the need to treat life as a dichotomy between work and play, but I feel you might have lost some of the magic of your childhood. For me it's the opposite, I hated complex games as a child but really enjoy them today.

For me, the best feeling is working hard for something and really getting into the details and enjoying all the complexity of the experience / challenge.

I think that most human beings are wired to enjoy this kind of activity if they can get past the energy activation barrier.

I've been in situations where I did not value the above. Looking back, I believe I was:

- too mentally drained to enjoy anything

- any free time goes to diving into Random Access Media (reddit, hnews, youtube, etc)

- Never feeling full of energy or excitement and unable to find meaningful recharge

I saw a psychiatrist and got diagnosed with depression (systematically defined as not wanting to do anything at least once a week). Since then I've taking an active approach to monitoring and improving my mental state. Specifically:

1. Identifying true energy restoring activities: 3 of them are - 1) engaging in conversations where there's a decent amount of laughter 2) Sleep / naps and 3) exercise

2. Identifying energy traps - things you do when you have no energy but don't restore energy. Several examples: 1) Netflix, 2) social media, 3) reddit, 4) youtube

3. Figuring out my mental health dietary needs (what is it that you're longing for that is unconsciously affecting your decision making) and making active plans to get them in a regular way. This could be social validation, laughter, new engaging experiences, feelings of accomplishment or accolade, etc.

Instead of feeling like I don't want to do anything when I wake up, I more often find life as exciting and looking forward to the challenges and new experiences of each day. And yes, I enjoy Factorio a lot when I have the time to play (which is rare).

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#66

Post by TheGallopedHigh »

fouc wrote: post #6

As someone that stopped playing games in university, I've found it weirdly hard to get back into games many years later. Factorio seems like the type of game I would've liked as a teenager, but now it just feels like work to me. As do most interesting games. It seems like there's a learning curve to games that I don't want to spend the time dealing with anymore.

I feel it the same way, and for myself I’ve put not enjoying gaming down to getting older. I don’t mind watch some streams here and there but the thought of getting a gaming machine and actually following through with gaming is no longer appealing. Although I do have peers that still game.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#67

Post by kccqzy »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #32
percentcer wrote: post #9

I think the biggest hook for Factorio is that it's an _actual_ visual programming language. So much of what we do day to day ignores this (dominant!) mode of perception. It's extremely refreshing to be able to simply look at a system to reason about it. (as an aside, I think this is also why the Zachtronics games are so effective)

I seriously struggle with factorio, You have to have a seriously good planning ability to create something that doesn't instantly turn in to a spaghetti. I always end up having to scale up things and then having no room. I find text based programming to be much much simpler. If I need to add more somewhere, I can, my text editor will push everything else out of the way.

> have a seriously good planning ability to create something that doesn't instantly turn in to a spaghetti

If you only design factories from scratch by yourself, that's akin to being handed an assembler programming manual as your only reading material and building up every programming abstraction yourself. You likely won't discover the best abstractions.

After a while playing factorio I decided to watch experts play the game on YouTube, and that's like a programming novice watching an expert. They know how to create well-known patterns (especially with belt mechanics) and deploy them readily. Watching these videos is like someone handing you a library of programming abstractions your can put into your own code.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#68

Post by burntoutfire »

spyckie2 wrote: post #65
fouc wrote: post #6

As someone that stopped playing games in university, I've found it weirdly hard to get back into games many years later. Factorio seems like the type of game I would've liked as a teenager, but now it just feels like work to me. As do most interesting games. It seems like there's a learning curve to games that I don't want to spend the time dealing with anymore.

I understand the need to treat life as a dichotomy between work and play, but I feel you might have lost some of the magic of your childhood. For me it's the opposite, I hated complex games as a child but really enjoy them today. For me, the best feeling is working hard for something and really getting into the details and enjoying all the complexity of the experience / challenge. I think that most human beings are w…

> 2. Identifying energy traps - things you do when you have no energy but don't restore energy. Several examples: 1) Netflix, 2) social media, 3) reddit, 4) youtube

So, do you avoid them now? If so, what do you do when you're tired after work? It's hard to feel entire afternoons with exercise, sleep and conversations...

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#69

Post by emmanuel_1234 »

billfruit wrote: post #46

One annoying aspect in Factorio in the short time that I have played it was that there is a player character, who needs to move to each location before an object can be placed there. It adds a degree of tedium in building, if having requiring the player sprite to move about..

I agree, but it forces the player to do something about it.

After a few hours in a game, I typically develop an autonomous train network with various train stations. I build one for my own personal train (which gets loaded with all the stuff I might need for an outpost). I can call that train to my location, provided I'm near a train track, by setting a temporary station and manually asking my train to pick me up there.

I must admit, navigating my world in a high speed train (eventually, my train gets fuelled from nuclear cells) is exhilarating.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#70

Post by spyckie2 »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #32
percentcer wrote: post #9

I think the biggest hook for Factorio is that it's an _actual_ visual programming language. So much of what we do day to day ignores this (dominant!) mode of perception. It's extremely refreshing to be able to simply look at a system to reason about it. (as an aside, I think this is also why the Zachtronics games are so effective)

I seriously struggle with factorio, You have to have a seriously good planning ability to create something that doesn't instantly turn in to a spaghetti. I always end up having to scale up things and then having no room. I find text based programming to be much much simpler. If I need to add more somewhere, I can, my text editor will push everything else out of the way.

This is what I love about it - it's actually hard to do things elegantly.

It has a skill curve where playing at a high level is something you learn over a long period of time. It gives it immense replayability to delight in the opportunity to build something slightly more robust or scalable.

If you derive enjoyment from the learning part and set your expectations appropriately (so you don't feel frustrated expecting more from yourself than your skill level), it becomes really addicting.

PS: https://factorioprints.com/ is a great inspiration if you just don't have time to figure out things yourself.

Post reply on HN