Hello We released the 0.11.0 exactly 3 months ago. And here we are, 3 months later, still far from the stable release. Our estimate is still the same: just one more month until the stable. There are more reasons of this: It looks like the new wave of people coming to Factorio discovered many new problems. Many of these were in the game from the very early stage, but just haven't been detected until now. All the code written until 0.11 (2 and half years of work) needs to work in strictly deterministic manner now for the multiplayer. We started to cover all of the bugged areas by automated tests. Sometimes it takes 5 minutes to fix the bug, but another 2 hours to make the correct test for it. I hope it will pay off in the future. And last, but not least, lot of bugs have this kind of life-cycle:
Hello, another week of tepid weather here, but the work on the final necessities to 0.15.0 continues with full force. More playtesting We started a new map on Monday, we wanted to see how the game feels with our new 'marathon' map preset, which (among other things) makes many recipes more expensive. What may seem like blasphemy to some, the expensive setting also changes a few of the normal recipe ratios, so new designs had to be thought up: Automated testing 2 A long time ago we talked about our automated testing in FFF-62, and over the last 2 years and 4 major versions, we've added quite significantly to our suite of tests. We have our server constantly running all these tests 24/7, and when something breaks it sends out a sternly worded email to the developers who made the latest commits to the repository. Its sometimes surprising how some innocent change can break some wholly unrelated tests, but it certainly helps us catch these issues before they make it out the door. This might be quite a short Friday facts, but we are trying to spend as much time getting things ready for release. If you have any thoughts or feedback, please let us know on our forum
Hello everyone, even though it is not Friday anymore here we come with yet another regular update. We didn't want to make a blogpost on Friday the 13th because for sure something would go wrong. And also I am on a skiing trip in Austria and I was too tired yesterday to do anything, after all the day going downhills. So the 0.8.0 has been succesfully released last Friday. We finished at the same time when first guests for the party started coming. We just crossed our fingers, pressed the release button (maybe we should have a real, big, red "release" button) and went off to drink beer and talk to people. The cake (see the picture in the last post) was delicious:) Back to the release - there were small issues, but nothing really major ("Pump cannot be built" kind of thing). We have already fixed most of the reported issues for the 0.8.1, which will happen in the beginning of the next week. We haven't worked on anything major aside from the issues. We took the time to relax after the intensive release sprint (says the guy who has been skiing all day long:). Kovarex was playing some games (including classics like Dune 2000) looking for inspiration. There was also a long conversation about how the new industry with oil and chemicals should work. Interesting things ahead. Originally we wanted to start the Steam Greenlight campaign before the Christmas. Now it is clear that this will not happen. The reason is that the music for the new trailer is not yet ready. The cooperation with the guy we hired for the music hasn't brought the expected result. So we are back where we started. Recently, we found a composer in Prague, who looks like a very good fit for the job, but he will not have time until after Christmas. At least Albert will have more time to work on doodads for the game (and the trailer) - things like trees, rocks, etc. Albert also took the opportunity to work on something completely different for a while and he came up with a proposal for the new Factorio logo. The old (current) logo has been done by me and then face-lifted by another artist. But still it looks painfully amateurish. The new logo doesn't have that problem:) Together with the logo Albert worked on the new forum style, this will be deployed sometimes next week. So here is the thing. We actually have two proposals for the logo. And we would appreciate some help and opinions for deciding which one to use. You can see the proposals below. They are shown on the potential loading screen of the game. We do have our preference but will not say which one that is to avoid influencing the outcome. They both work as links for larger versions. There are polls for you to vote and comment in the post on our forums, so go there and let us know what you think.
Hello, It is a busy time fixing bugs and cleaning up after the Space Age release.
Hello, we are in the phase of finishing the bug report stream, we expect to smoothly transition from the bug fixing phase to the work on 0.15 in the upcoming weeks.
Hello, these Friday Facts are focused solely on our view of gameplay issues in Factorio, and our plans to solve these.
Hello, another friday and another Facts. It has been 3 years already without a single friday facts missing. I didn't expect that!