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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hello, the atmosphere in the last week was kind of special. We experienced the feeling of the final release being on the horizon many times. And we were shown that it isn't the case time and time again. So it feels very special when it is actually becoming reality. We were trying to be especially careful with any last minute changes to make sure that we don't introduce major bugs into our precious 1.0 release. The image of all the players having the game crash on some simple stupid bug is horrifying.
0.18 mods will be loadable in 1.0 Klonan With 1.0 approaching, we want to ensure that the day of the launch goes as smoothly as possible, and shows the game in the best light. Something that would really work against that would be if the update broke a bunch of mods and disgruntled all of our most dedicated players. So we are making efforts to ensure that mods that work in 0.18, will work without any update needed in 1.0. Theoretically this isn't so difficult, as the 0.18 release structure has meant that mods have maintained compatibility with all the latest changes, and in essence 1.0 will just be a small update of 0.18. However it does take a bit of special handling: 1.0 will allow mods marked for 0.18 to load. The mod portal will show 0.18 mods when browsing in 1.0. Avoiding breaking mods also means we need to be very careful with changing anything, even something as simple as renaming a sprite can break dozens of mods. I think we never realised how easy it is to break mods before we started this new release structure. Big apologies and big thanks to all the modders who stuck with us through these breakages. We hope that what this effort means, is that on the day of 1.0, players new and old alike can login to the mod portal and have a very large catalog of mods they can enjoy right away, and that the modders can relax and enjoy the game instead of worrying about updating all their work. However, we cannot say 100% that all mods will work, it is possible one of the features in 1.0 (like the new nuke or alien decoratives) will break some mods.
