Hello fellow builders, There is this commotion about the paid mods on Steam. (It had been cancelled already). I understand that the implementation was far from optimal, as people would be suddenly expected to pay for mods that were free until now. It was also sad, that the modders were to get only 25% percent of the money. But I personally think, that there is nothing wrong about the idea generally. If a reasonable price tag on a great mod allows the creator to develop the mod full time, create professional content, and people are willing to pay for it, everyone wins. Free mods would still exist so it would be up to the players to choose. I'm NOT saying we are going to allow paid mods for Factorio anytime soon. But I'm not denying this possibility in the far future.
Hello, as you could expect this Friday facts is mainly about our fight with the avalanche of bug reports, which is actually not as huge as we expected it to be to be honest. We released 0.16.7 yesterday, and this will probably be the last update for a while. Most of us now are taking a break, enjoying the festivities, and visiting our friends and family.
Hello, most of the team is out of the office today attending the Game Developers Session here in Prague, if you're around you can look out for some people wearing Factorio t-shirts. As we were thinking about what to write in this Friday Facts, kovarex suggested "In the next Friday Facts we should write about how hard it is to write Friday Facts". Sometimes it is really difficult to find something interesting to write about. Thankfully we found some short things that that we thought you would like.
Hello time is flying by and we have started some serious preparations for the Steam release. Martin and Kuba are making sure that we have the Steam compatible builtds as soon as possible. This basically means that out automated build process time will be doubled (the Steam binaries are different because of linkage against Steam libraries). We haven't yet figured if all the experimental updates will go to Steam, or what exactly will be the model, but we are working on that. Albert is wrapping up the new gameplay trailer and based on the testimony of couple of "unbiased" testers you have something to look forward to. The trailer will be released when we launch on Steam. Ondra (Oxyd) has been working hard on the Pathfinder improvements. This time it is mainly connected to how our path cache works. He wrote the following to give you an idea of what he has been up to.
Factorio at the National Library of Technology Prague (Klonan) If you are in Prague this summer, and wanting to satiate your Factorio cravings, you can stop in to the National Library of Technology Prague, where Factorio is loaded onto 150 computers for all to play. Entry is free for all visitors Monday to Friday 08:00 - 22:00 until the 31st of August. The PC's are running Linux (Fedora), loaded with a custom build of the game HanziQ put together, and you can host LAN servers and play with your friends. On the 23rd of July we will be hosting our own Factorio LAN party at the library starting at 16:00 CEST (Prague time), so you can come along and play with us. It is advised to bring your own set of headphones if you are going to attend.
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, let me show you another dose of things we just can't stop ourselves from doing.
Water animation - Concept Albert Since the very beginning of the project, we have focused a lot in the side of the factory, providing better designs for the machines, and expressive animations that give a sense of life and credibility in this area. We put a lot of effort also in the environmental side, adding different tile sizes, improving textures, adding doodads, cliffs, trees, decals, and constantly improving the map generation for a better feeling. But apart from biters and the factory, nothing else moves in this Factorio planet. So the environment is nice looking but it feels somehow unreal due this lack of motion. Today we proudly present the first experiment in this area: Animated water. This animation doesn't try to grab your attention, it's just there. Slowly moving. I personally bet that this animation, with the proper sound design, will provide the natural feeling that the planet needs.
