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, 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.

Blueprint library finishing touches kovarex At the time of writing the Friday Facts last week, not all of the planned changes were finished, here is the finalisation, so here we go.

2020 Vision Albert, Klonan 2020 is going to be quite an exciting year for us. We have our 1.0 date set to the 25th of September, and there is a lot of preparation to do. It is no doubt to any of us that we would not be able to have any success without the great community that has developed for the game over the last years, and the support of all our players and fans. As is almost tradition, Albert has prepared a commemorative postcard/wallpaper to celebrate the last FFF of the year. Click to view full resolution Here's to a great year to come!

1.0 date kovarex Hello, we feel that the Factorio development is taking way too long. The approach "It is done when it is done" was serving us well to deliver a high quality product, but if we continued this way, we would be doing it basically forever. A lot of us don't have any problem working on Factorio for some more time, but the main problem is, that we would like to introduce new features and content instead of just polishing parts that are already present in the game. We also considered, that the game is quite polished now, and if we just pushed the button to release 1.0, it wouldn't be a catastrophe. From our perspective, a lot of things wouldn't be finished, but from the perspective of a new player, the things we are working on now are mainly nitpicks. With this in mind, we decided to just specify a 1.0 release date publicly, so we have to stick with it. We will just focus on the most important aspects as we approach the date, and we just do whatever we have time to do. Once the 1.0 happens, we can have some rest and after that, we can finally focus on the content and features again. The date is 25th September 2020. Future edit: The new date is August 14th, 2020 (FFF-349). Version 1.0 does not mean that development on the game will end, or that Factorio is 100% finished. When we have a better idea of what we will be working on after the 1.0 release, we will let you know.

Hello, technically this post is the π Friday Facts, but unfortunately we can't think of anything special to do... maybe someone can make a Combinator cake... that can calculate π?

You might have noticed that a lot of rail related stuff was broken during these past releases, and now it is working more or less fine again. The story behind it is not so trivial.

More remnants Dom, albert As for the conclusion of the topic opened in the FFF-288 we finally decided to go for a balanced solution in which the player can recognize what entity was destroyed and also walk through them. The solution of going up in the Z-axis is really attractive for designing the destroyed models, but it gives a lot of headaches to the game designers due its need of a bounding box. We are planning also a generic set of remnants for the modders who don’t feel like making the destroyed version of their own machines. Here an example of how a factory can look after a biter attack: These remnants are still a work in progress, many of them are not yet finished and we are planning more iterations with this subject. By now you'll find a sneak peek in today's release (0.17.36).

Rail building changes kovarex The problem with rail building is that it has too many states. It depends whether you start building the rail with shift, to use the ghost mode or not, and then it also matters whether you still hold shift, to ignore trees or not. Moving from manual building to ghost rail building means cancelling the whole rail building and starting it again with the correct modifier. The problems were reaching the surface from time to time, and Twinsen even drew a nice little state diagram of the rail building system. It kind of peaked with this bug report. After some time, it became clear that we should simplify it. This is a nice example, where we can talk about change we just released (0.17.29) in a FFF. From now on, instead of 3 modes (building manually, ghost building, ghost building + tree/rock removal), we have only 2 modes, where the ghost building without obstacle deconstruction is not available anymore. So it doesn't matter anymore how you start the building, it just matters whether you are holding shift or not at the moment, which makes it consistent with the normal entity building and the ghost icon. Once the topic is opened, it is hard to leave it so easily, so we agreed that the rail building could be streamlined even more. The current model is, that you have to build one straight piece of rail first, and then you can use the rail builder on the edge of that rail. It is annoying generally, and especially for the new players, because he might miss the way how it is being used, as the straight rails are built exactly the same way as other entities. The reason we did it this way was mainly, because when we first introduced the (new at that time) rail builder, we weren't confident enough that it could replace even the basic straight rail building. But since the rail building is stable enough, we might go one more step forward. The plan is that the rail won't be used to build straight rails normally the way you can now. The rail item would be always used to build by the rail planner only. Instead of having to snap to an existing rail, you could just start building anywhere on the ground. Instead of showing the rail preview when holding the item, you would see the arrow as when starting the rail building, and you could rotate it with the R key. It would make sense, to make the arrow color/size different for starting a rail planner on the ground versus snapping to an existing rail, but other than that, it would be the same.