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Friday Facts #369 - To the moon πŸš€πŸŒ˜

Posted by Twinsen on 2022-04-01

This post was written as a joke for April Fools' day. Nothing written here should be taken seriously. No doubt you have heard about NFTs, the latest Blockchain innovation. With some big gaming companies exploring NFTs, where does Factorio stand? We have received many offers. Some of the offers were quite silly, others very tempting. Since we have many Blockchain enthusiasts on the team, we decided to explore the subject ourselves. After consulting with some industry-leading experts on Discord, this is what we came up with: Non-fungible blueprints One of the many subjects of debate within the team is the blueprint library. Allowing players to easily share big blueprints (blue science, nuclear reactor setup, etc.) ruins the fun of figuring out how to build those things yourself. One of the best things about the blueprint library is that it contains your unique blueprints, which are almost like unique pieces of art. So it only makes sense to make them truly unique, using the Blockchain, NFT, and Smart Contracts technologies. What this means is that every blueprint in the blueprint library will now be stored on the Blockchain, and they will be truly unique across all of the blueprint libraries of all players. Just like NFTs, they can be traded on the Blockchain, also making them a great speculative asset. In essence your blueprint library will become your personal wallet, containing only the unique blueprints that you own. Unlike most NFTs, blueprints are created (minted) by the players, making it a truly decentralized system, controlled by the smart contracts we created. In order to guarantee uniqueness we will use AI and Machine Deep Learning to analyze any new blueprint before it is minted, this way you won't be able to just move one power pole and mint a copy. Once again, making blueprints truly unique. Our own Play-to-earn cryptocurrency Limiting the creation (minting) of new blueprints using just the AI will not be enough. To ensure the Blockchain is not flooded with useless blueprints, we will also create a cryptocurrency called Factorio Blueprint Token βš™οΈ. You will need to pay 1,000 of them to mint 1 new unique blueprint. Factorio Blueprint Tokens βš™οΈ are earned from Space Science using a variable conversion rate we will control. Since you can now earn crypto by just playing the game, the game basically pays for itself. Factorio Blueprint Tokens βš™οΈ come with all the advantages of a proof-of-work cryptocurrency, and all the fun of playing Factorio and optimizing factories for maximum UPS. Some say that Factorio offers so much value for money, that they paid more for the electricity bill than they paid for the game, so we are happy to take it to the next level. We will host an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) for Factorio Blueprint Token βš™οΈ, so make sure you invest as much as you can and HODL it, in the hopes that someone will tweet about it making the price go to the moon πŸš€πŸŒ˜. Click here to take part in the ICO.

We support Ukraine

Posted by Factorio team on 2022-03-02

We are a games company based in the Czech Republic. Russia's invasion of Ukraine affects us directly. We have team members there, we have friends there, and we get information first hand. There is no excuse for the actions of the Russian army, they have little regard for civilians including children. We support Ukraine and have made contributions to relief efforts. We support Russians that stand against the actions of the Russian government. You can help too, even if it is just with your voice. World leaders are listening: every voice counts. The Czech National museum, which has bullet scars from the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Please, keep the discussions about the world events (if you can't help it) specifically in threads related to this post, as we want to keep the rest of the content on topic.

Friday Facts #368 - Steam deck, Ghost bugs, Docs improvements

Posted by Twinsen, Genhis, Therenas on 2022-02-25

Hello, Today is actually the 6 year anniversary of Factorio launching on Steam, and just recently too we passed 3 million total sales (and we're even past 3.1 million at this point), so it is quite a milestone. It is great for us that the game is still selling consistently year on year, even though we never take part in sales or bundles.

Friday Facts #367 - Expansion news

Posted by Klonan, kovarex, V453000 on 2022-02-04

Hello, long time no talk, we've got some catching up to do... Almost 1 year ago (FFF-365) we said "we don't think that [the expansion] will take less than a year to develop". Well it has been less than a year and it is not finished, so we kept our word on that :). But while it might not be finished, there is a still a lot we have done so far.

Friday Facts #366 - The only way to go fast, is to go well!

Posted by kovarex on 2021-06-18

Hello, long time no see :) We obviously have a lot to talk about when it comes to the game changes we recently did, or plan to do, but we don't want to share any of it yet. Yet, there is currently a topic very relevant to us and we can share it without revealing any specific changes to the game. Today's post will be quite technical and related to programming, so if you just came for the game news, you can safely skip this one.

Friday Facts #365 - Future plans

Posted by kovarex, Factorio team on 2021-02-05

Hello, the 1.1 release is the final release of the vanilla game. It will be maintained, so bugfixes, simple modding interface additions, or minor tweaks can happen, but that's about it.

Friday Facts #364 - 1.1 stable

Posted by kovarex, Klonan, boskid, Rseding on 2021-01-29

1.1 stable kovarex Hello, we have a stable version! When we were releasing the 1.0 FFF-360, we actually stated that there were "around 150 bugs on the forums and around 80 internal tasks to be solved". These were obviously minor issues, things hard to reproduce or very rare problems. In other words, it was quite reasonably stable, which normally goes without saying when it comes to Factorio stable versions. But it proved to be a mistake wording it this way, since some media picked up on it and presented it as a "fairly bugged release". So I'm pretty thrilled to finally get to the point, where we actually have 0 known issues and 0 active bug reports on the forums. Its like cleaning the kitchen properly, so you can start cooking something fresh. More about that next week! For now, we want to go over some of the features of the 1.1 that you might have missed until now if you've been sticking with stable 1.0.

Friday Facts #363 - 1.1 is getting close

Posted by kovarex, Klonan, V453000 on 2020-11-13

1.1 is getting close kovarex I have been tracking the amount of tasks and forum bugs required to finish 1.1 since the 1.0 release. This allowed me to get quantifiable feedback whether we are actually keeping the timeframe of the 1.1 release reasonable, or digging too deep and expanding the scope too much. If we extrapolate the graph, the 1.1 experimental should be ready next week.

Friday Facts #362 - Menu simulation, Spidertron, Ghost building, Confirm button

Posted by kovarex, V453000 on 2020-10-30

Menu simulation V453000 In the last FFF, we presented that we now have the capability to show real game simulations in the Tips and tricks. Naturally we asked ourselves what else could we use this new technology for... We've dreamed about this multiple times in the past, but the technical roadblocks didn't make us think too seriously. We'd like the main menu background to be a real animated simulation of the game, similar to what Transport Tycoon or Rollercoaster Tycoon games have. Instead of things like cinematic trailers, we always present the game in its true form, and the menu background does not follow this logic. Also, any time we improve any graphics, a static image immediately gets older while a real game simulation is updated automatically. We've created a variety of scenes that each demonstrate some feature(s) of the game, from first miners all the way to the artillery and Spidertron. The screen is quite zoomed in and the factories are rather small, so it's more of a demonstration of the game's features rather than a showcase of "the best things anybody has ever built". The scenes are randomly rotated, where all of them have to play once before any repeat. The main menu should include both Factorio and Wube software logos. The Factorio logo has been used in many places from prints to trailers many times already. Its concept is that the logo is an entity like any other, and integrates itself into the world by being built there if at all possible. The Wube logo is different, both graphically and in concept, so we can't represent it as an entity. It makes a lot of sense that Wube is in a layer underneath the world of Factorio, so we're using it as a special water tile. From now on, the Factorio entity and Wube water tile are both buildable in the map editor without the use of mods. The "water-wube" only works well in specific positions, as it repeats in a 8x8 tile pattern, so fitting it in an existing factory can be tricky. To make it clear that behind the menu is not your factory, every scene has the logos in the exact same position, and the screen has a vignette-like shader on the edges.

Friday Facts #361 - Train stop limit, Tips and tricks

Posted by Klonan on 2020-10-09

Hello, we finished with the regular Friday Facts series, and yet, there is still so much we want to talk about. I want to clarify, that we are not going to release FFF every week, but there are a few of them coming in the near future.