Hello, the current week was the time of merges. Different branches with functionalities were merged into the master branch: traingulations(finally), combinators, robot beams, personal roboport and others. Every other day the game/tests didn't work, because some merge broke something. But now it is starting to be stabilised again.
Hi everyone, the 0.10.0 has been out for a week. We were not brave enough to release the 0.10.1 on Friday the 13th, especially when it is a full moon! So it is scheduled for the next Friday.
Hello, it has been long, but successful week, mainly because we gave our first tax returns containing Factorio earnings while keeping mental health intact, hopefully. As celebration of the 2^13 copies we are about to approach I made a Factorio version of the game everyone is playing now , the time you can spend on it should justify the shorter length of this text :) Apart playing 2048 we managed to make 2 bugfix releases this weak just to find out, there are still some small bugs left, but the version is close to be stable for sure. So we sit down and it took us few short minutes to write down the roadmap that will take us almost the rest of this year to finish. There are many smaller things on the way, but these are the milestones we would like to aim for. What we are still unsure about is when to try to hit the steam+bigger exposure button. I just read my post on the steam from half a year ago, where we stated, that when 0.6 is stable, we will get the trailer and we will apply for steam. Here we are waiting for the 0.9, the trailer almost finished, but still not sure whether we should really start the campaign now. When we start imagining the additions and polishing we have planned for the foreseeable future, the only rational thing that seems to be viable now is to wait for these. We still believe that we have just single shot for the first impression and if we shoot too early for it, we risk to hit our leg. The updated look of the belts We are always eager to learn what you think at our forums.
Hello, a large part of the team is attending GDS , if you are in Prague and interested in Games, you are welcome to come as well.
Hello, I will start today's Factorio friday facts with a famost quote: Only two things are infinite. The universe and the Factorio map. But i'm unsure about the Factorio map. Albert Einstein.
Good evening Factorians, today we had a presentation about the game at one of the universities here in Prague for the subject called "Video game development". It was focused on what is it like to develop an indie game. So yesterday we spent some time reflecting the past year and a half to come up with topics to talk about. We were thinking a lot about the period about a year ago before the Indiegogo campaign started, when the game was completely unknown to the public and we were close to burning out. The positive finding wat that as opposed to that period the work is now much less stressful and generally enjoyable. Maybe we (and people in general) should think about our down moments more often to better appreciate what we have ... Last Friday Facts promised a stable 0.8 release in the beginning of this week. Well, that was a false promise because couple of more bugs have been found that resulted in the new record for number of bugfix releases. Now we have the 0.8.8 in the experimental stage. If there are no serious issues found this will be made stable during the weekend. Having so many bugfix releases is rather annoying (and we plan to improve here by starting with automated testing) but it doesn't slow us down in the regular development. We have multiple development branches and the work on the 0.9 has been going for a while in the master branch, while the bugfixes are collected in the current release branch (the 0.8.x) and then merged back into the master. Talking about the 0.9, the work has been progressing well. Quite some internal rework of concepts is required for the oil industry and fluids in general. However, yesterday we already had an assembling machine that makes a recipe from some items and water supplied by the pipe. For this to work the recipe mechanism has been generalized and in the end (not yet done) following will be possible: The recipe ingredient can be a fluid. The recipe can have multiple results (both items and fluids). The results of the recipe can be randomized (there will be a probability of getting the result and a min - max range for the amount of the result). There might not be much more fluid content aside from the oil (and its variations) in the 0.9, however the mechanisms will be there for the modders to play with and take advantage of them. And we are curious what they come up with:) Kovarex has been working on the native blueprints for some time and he has the core functionality more or less finished. Of course that is just a small portion of the total work required (polishing, bugfixing, integration with other concepts, etc.) but it is something that can already be played with in the 0.9 branch. And it is actually quite fun to play with. The system is relatively straightforward now: You make the blueprint item. You select what to store in it (you get the blueprint preview on the item afterwards). You place it and the construction robots build it. You can check it out on the mini picture series below, where blueprints have been used to build the standard furnace line. If you would like to share your thoughts or ideas about this post, you can do so on our forum.
Hello, it is me, posila, with another technical article. Sorry.
Hello, We have had quite a peaceful week here in the office. Last night we went out for a burger and a beer as a last meal with Ernestas before he flies back home for another few months. It was also quite nostalgic, as we went to a place that we used to go to frequently near our old office, and the staff still remembered us.
Blog thoughts Klonan As the time goes on, the nature of our weekly FFF post has changed. At the very beginning (FFF-1) it was to let people know that "we're still alive and working on the game", and over time we've grown into covering a range of different topics: Communicating our progress and roadmap of the next releases. Showing new features and gathering community feedback on them. Diving into the technical side of game development and particular challenges we face. 'Meta-posts' about the company and the changes outside of the game. Community spotlights and interesting Factorio related news. It is always an interesting challenge each week to determine what topics we might be able to cover in the FFF. During the weeks of rapid development the FFF can feel like a triumphant reveal of what we have been working on, and we excitedly await the community response. Other times, such as when most of the team is on bugfixing, we can take the oppourtunity to explore other points of discussion, such as the marketing post last week. The graph of the FFF readership over the last year is quite informative to look into: We had a good run back in January and February, we had week after week of really interesting posts and a build-up of excitement for the 0.17 release. Now after the release, the readership has stabilized at around 40-45,000 views a week (note, that the graph does not include people reading the blog post through Steam). The FFF is close to its 300th post now, with no signs of stopping soon, and the continued audience of dedicated readers each week help to keep us on track and focused on our quest towards 1.0. As we get closer to completion of the game, the general nature of the blog post will no doubt change even further. The good times of showing a new feature each week might be over, but I hope we will be able to provide interesting insights into the game and our development processes. I would also like to thank all the players/readers who share their thoughts with us each week, it is really great to have so much support and care for our project.
