Hello, Pretty much half of the office has been sick in the past week, but that still hasn't stopped us from progressing in the development of your favourite pollution-generating game (though I have been playing some Cities skyline recently and there you can screw the nature around quite creatively as well).
Hello, Today we once again dive head-first into the world of fluids.
0.13 release is getting close. The programming guys are trying to finish the features so we can start internal playtesting and bugfixing next week. The art guys are working hard on the new trains graphics. In the meantime, here's some more information about the circuit network.
It’s been several weeks since we showed you the graphics for new high resolution circuit connector modules (FFF-202). However now is finally the time when we have them in the game. In this article I will briefly show you what was done both in the graphics and code, and what new benefits are there for you as players and modders. I find the 0.15 version of the circuit connector module has following “problems”: The wire connectors are different from the combinators. Wires sometimes completely overlap, making only one of them properly visible. Modularity - you can somewhat tell what is happening based on the LED states, but it could be much nicer. Connecting a belt always looks weird, while the yellow structure which holds the connector box could be made more specific. Some of the rotations are utterly useless. The Lua definitions are spread over every single entity, so revisiting them all is a big pain.
Hello, long time no see! Today we are going to talk about the expansion which is called Factorio: Space Age.
Hello, We have another exciting batch of facts for you today.
Mod portal features (Klonan) Sanqui has been quite effective these last weeks getting stuck in with the mod portal, so we have some interesting additions to talk about. Mod deprecation A modder can mark a mod as deprecated, which indicates they are no longer updating or maintaining it. The typical case is a mod will add something relevant for the current version of the game (E.G, a mod to scan the players starting area), and then an update to the base game makes the mod obsolete. Just deleting the mod could potentially cause problems for people playing an older version, people might ask what has happened to it etc. Marking as deprecated will keep the mod up on the portal, but it will be hidden from any public searches. This way people downloading using 'Sync mods with save' feature can keep playing, while new players won't stumble upon a mod that is no longer useful or up to date. It also preserves the downloads and discussions in case the author wants to revive it later. Collaborators It is often the case, that a mod author will want someone else to help them maintain and manage their mod, for instance if they are going on holiday when a major release is coming out. The way it has worked in the past, another modder would have to come and upload an updated version of the mod under their own name. Now a modder can set another player as a 'collaborator', which means they can help out will all the maintenance of the mod. Collaborators can do everything the author can do, except add or remove collaborators. You might also spot the other feature, transferring mod ownership. This lets the author give the mod completely to a collaborator, in the case that they are no longer interested in working on the mod at all. Discussions notice Mod authors can now display a notice above their mod page discussions, informing the users of any useful information. For example, an author might prefer you to report bugs on their GitHub page, so the notice will inform users of where they should go. An additional option allows the author to disable the discussions completely, in the case they have their own forum/thread somewhere for discussions. If you have any ideas for an improvement to the mod portal, please let us know on our Mod portal discussion subforum.
Hello, Welcome to our facts for the week. Sign posts or bulletin boards are a common sight in videos games, probably not far behind the ubiquitous wooden crate or explosive barrel. They are a nice clean understandable way to communicate with the player, and it was something we wanted to see in Factorio for a long time...
The launch party Klonan To celebrate the launch of the game later this summer (only 6 more FFFs to go!), we have decided to throw a party! It is going to be at the same venue as our 1 million sale party (FFF-192). It will take place on Friday the 4th of September, 2020, at Žluté Lázně here in Prague. We are inviting a lot of people to the party, such as other Czech game developers, Youtubers, and of course we will be there. As we want you (the fans) to be able to come, we have some tickets for sale. The reason to sell them, rather than give them away, is so that we don't have 'messers' saying they will come when they don't intend to. You can buy a ticket here. While the COVID-19 pandemic might be 'over' here in Czechia (Czechs hold 'farewell party' for pandemic), the reality is, the situation could change with great speed. It is likely many won't be able to come due to travel restrictions, or we may even need to cancel the event. Please keep this in mind while you are considering whether to come. We hope everything lines up in our favour, and we look forwarding to meeting you.
Hi there, the Friday 0.9.x release "mini tradition" continues by the release of the 0.9.7 today. Though the changelog is rather long, the amount of code behind those changes is rather small (they were all simple fixes). If the amount of stress and haste before the release would be a measure of release quality then 0.9.7 should do rather good. We released it before Friday lunch without any last minute hotfixes and without any complications. The pack in the post title refers to the scenario pack. The set of currently 3 "mini campaigns" available for the furnace attendant tier or higher. We finally got around to make it compatible with the 0.9.x release branch. So now there is a scenario pack 0.9.7 available that will work with the 0.9.7 binary version. The changes have been quite significant, because the Tight Spot and Supply Challenge had to be rebalanced to take the oil industry into account. The playtesting of these has been a refreshing experience and definitely a good motivation to think about new challenge missions and content for the scenario pack (we still take it as a work in progress). You can check out the main part of the factory that got me through the new Supply Challenge below. It was built in about 3 hours under constant pressure to provide 6 "hungry chests" in the center with new and new items - that is why it is called the Supply challenge. Alongside the bugfix branch for 0.9.x the work in the master branch has continued on some small features for the 0.10 (see the new roadmap). Namely things like environment sound playing and map generation strings. But this is now coming to conclusion and Kuba already started with design and planning for the multiplayer network layer. Immediately some scary technical issues showed up: floating point operations non-determinism across different platforms, peer-to-peer communication for players without public IP addresses, etc. We will definitely not be bored in the near future :) Recently a lot of old entities have been reskinned or remade. Things like inserters, transport belts or assembling machines are now (0.9.x) consistent with the artistic direction. This is all part of the plan to improve the visuals for our new trailer. It has been taking ages, but we are really getting close now. Albert is now working on doodads and aesthetic tweaks for the trailer map. Actually we just spent like 2 hours discussing some details of the map :) Please bear with us a little longer. In the meantime you can enjoy the "good-old" red cadillac in the old trailer, it is not going to be around for long. And here is the mentioned screenshot from the supply challenge close to the finish: If you have something to say, then say it at our forums.
