14 ms·

Factorio 1.1 stable

468 points by OrderlyTiamat 6y ago

snthd 6y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20210129121156/https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-364 https://web.archive.org/web/20210129121156/https://factorio....
- willis936 6y ago
  I don’t think we have to worry about the HN hug of death. Wube posts their updates to their own subreddit that has 230k subscribers. Afaik their website has never been smothered by traffic.
  - basilgohar 6y ago
    There were problems early on when they were posting GIFs instead of videos. It was nice because they noted the bandwidth savings by converting over to WebM instead.
  - snthd 6y ago
    The website doesn't load for me on firefox on Android - some vague security issue (I'm guessing it could be related to OSCP Stapling?). factorio.com appears to be on cloudflare, so you are of course right that it's not a hug problem.
dubcanada 6y ago
One thing some people don't know is there is a ton of really cool mods - https://mods.factorio.com/ https://mods.factorio.com/ You can see some of the most popular at - https://mods.factorio.com/downloaded https://mods.factorio.com/downloaded and https://mods.factorio.com/trending https://mods.factorio.com/trending
- sdfjkl 6y ago
  Amongst the total conversions, I've quite enjoyed Krastorio 2. If you're into really detailed and complex factories, Industrial Revolution might be for you.
  - hanikesn 6y ago
    Had a blast with Krastorio 2. Thanks for your Industrial Revolution recommendation!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - 404-universe 6y ago
    As long as we're doing mod recommendations, I can also recommend the Space Exploration total conversion, which expands the game far past your first rocket launch. If you're looking for a really complex factory and are so inclined, it's compatible with Krastorio 2 (but it also works standalone).
- squiffy 6y ago
  Here are some recommended mods from a previous Factorio discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22933767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22933767 Mostly convenience/quality-of-life improvements. I "completed" the game using a lot of these and thoroughly enjoyed it but it was incredibly addictive.
- enraged_camel 6y ago
  Any good texture packs people can recommend? I can't stand the outdated graphics of the vanilla version. (Yeah, I'm one of those people.)
- coryfklein 6y ago
  Looks like the top of the "downloaded" list is basically all of Bob's mods? What's the story there - is it basically "Factorio but with an alternate game progression"?
  - Xavdidtheshadow 6y ago
    Yeah, that and "angels" mods are two very popular mod groups that make the game much harder and more complex.
- cwkoss 6y ago
  Some favorite mods (I've played a LOT of factorio over the years) Bobs Mods is a good "new game plus" after beating the base game. Space Exploration adds an amazing amount of depth, but it's somewhat intimidating. FNEI is a very useful recipe browser. Recursive blueprints are incredibly cool, but also hard to reason about. Fun to try though! Factorissimo add recursive space (buildings that contain more space inside than their footprint).
koolakalaban 6y ago
Recently discovered a less complex, open source alternative called Mindustry. Highly recommend it.
- bregma 6y ago
  Many of the more popular mods add complexity to Factorio. I guess there might be an audience that swings the other way, but I don't imagine the lack of the dopamine surge from solving the next problem is going to have Mindustry players putting in the same insane hours.
  - willis936 6y ago
    This is one of those cases where it is best to not judge it before you try it. Mindustry has a bespoke assembly language that lets you control the behavior of drones and buildings. The complexity cap is far above factorio.
  - user-the-name 6y ago
    Not putting in insane hours is a feature for many.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    While I completed it, I personally did not enjoy my time with Factorio. In my review I specifically used the term "complexity fetishist" to describe the kind of player who might enjoy the game too much. Which isn't to say there's anything wrong with the game. It actually felt kind of weird to not recommend it since it was a pretty darned good execution of what it set out to be, I just couldn't ever actually suggest to someone that they play it. Either they wouldn't like dealing with the needlessly ever increasing in complexity goldbergian monstrosity, or worse they actually would. I think the game's popularity among developers highlights a core problem with our industry. Look at Factorio, then look at all of the over engineering, the layers upon layers of abstraction, the obsessive need to keep making software larger and more complicated only to eventually tear it down and rebuild the exact same thing with the new-hotness widgets...
bregma 6y ago
Leading up to this the developers were pushing out twice-daily updates to the game. These guys give unheard-of levels of support to their base. They should be the object of study in academic courses.
- arkitaip 6y ago
  This seems to be the standard for indie dev studios [0]. They have to work harder and smarter than the big guys because their resources are in such short supply and they can't survive having a game that flops. [0] Just look at Edmund McMillen (The Binding of Isaac, Super Meat Boy), Eric Barone (Stardew valley), Cardboard Computer (Kentucky Route Zero), Scott Cawthon (Five Nights at Freddy), Extremely OK Games (TowerFall, Celeste) or The Fullbright Company (Gone Home) to mention a few.
  - bombcar 6y ago
    Indie dev studios also have the ADVANTAGE that they can do this - if Bob wants to post a blog he just needs to run it past Jim and Barbara - no need to run it through Legal, etc.
    - nip180 6y ago
      Also “management” and “devops” needs to trust every dev to push out a high quality update. Twice daily deploys don’t happen if QA goes through a 48 hour test process for every release.
      - meibo 6y ago
        Mind that the amount of QA you ought to have heavily depends on what game you're making - e.g. with a story heavy game, you 100% want give or take 3 weeks on every update for localization checks, or for a MMO you probably want to run new clients/servers with your testers first for about a week to make sure nothing catastrophic happens, which is especially important in online games(lots of bad PR and real money invested by players - you really don't want to have to roll back "saves"). All depends on budget and quantity of course, but this is what's usually planned for from my personal experience working in that sector.
jackdh 6y ago
Does anyone have experience updating servers to 1.1? Is it as simple as loading into 1.1 loading the old 1.0 map in single player, saving it as 1.1 then uploading to the server?
- Fabricio20 6y ago
  If my experience with old versions is to go by, you just update the server binary and fire it up. No need to download + upload! Factorio is a very stable game, do a backup and give it ago!
  - fendy3002 6y ago
    Beware that some mods haven't been updated to 1.1
sdfjkl 6y ago
Factorio is such a high quality game. Not just the gameplay, but the entire development process where every alpha release is actually really stable and playable, certainly more stable and playable than most big-budget games are on release day.
- linkdd 6y ago
  I don't think both kind of games are on the same complexity level. The gameplay is simple (aka: it requires few kind of user interactions), and the physic engine (source of most bugs in big budget open-world games) is far far far simpler as well.
  - serhatozgel 6y ago
    I believe you are mistaken, Factorio is an incredibly complex game.
    - linkdd 6y ago
      Do you really think a 2D physic engine is comparable to a 3D physic engine in terms of complexity? Yes Factorio is complex. No it's not more complex than a Witcher/Skyrim/Cyberpunk/whatever big budget game you can think of. When i say complex, I talk about code, architecture, gameplay mechanics. Not play time...
      - BorisTheBrave 6y ago
        I think it is more complex in most dimensions, except for render pipeline and asset size. Physics engines are off the shelf, even in AAA games, they're not really where the bulk of time is spent coding. Not to mention all the games you described have fixed maps and no multiplayer. Really, most of the budget of AAA is spent on art and level design. They have sophisticated tech, but often it is not on an unreachable level.
      - js8 6y ago
        I have to agree with the OP, Factorio code is actually pretty complex. Lots of it comes from polish and creating the seamless player experience. It might not be as technically complex as 3D engine, but no AAA developer would care about optimizing the fluid or belt system to behave in a scalable way. It's really well thought out. (Also, there is a saying that it takes a genius to do something in a simple way. So even if the resulting code might be simple, arriving to that point can be actually pretty complex endeavor.)
kzrdude 6y ago
Their multithreading story here was fascinating. Gratifying that they have such a visual explanation.
- willis936 6y ago
  They keep the discussion very high level. The topic is much deeper, but they appear to be constraining themselves to a single-timestep-state. If they loosened up the state to include two timesteps then a lot more could be parallelized. Since the simulation and graphics are in lockstep, this would add one frame of latency. One frame of latency is hardly noticeable against the 7-10 frames minimum added in multiplayer but the payoff could be massive. It’s hard work, without a doubt. An example I like to point to is the minecraft mod “tickthreading”. It was never stable, but the concept is there and sound.
  - JesseMeyer 6y ago
    The game Destiny went this route to increase GPU throughput by 50%. An extra frame of latency, the dev's said, was hardly discernible on a controller.
  - Netcob 6y ago
    I've always wondered, how exactly games do this. Do you have at least one "write" state and one "read" state, so that the simulation can write during its update and the renderer can read the previous state independently? I think copying the write state to the read state would probably take some time in a Factorio "gigafactory", while the renderer only has to access a tiny part of the state most of the time.
  - Chabsff 6y ago
    It's hard to tell for sure. Double-buffering game updates like that can involve a lot of memory copying. Considering that it would not surprise me in the least if Factorio was close to being bottlenecked by memory bandwidth, this could easily be counterproductive.
    - willis936 6y ago
avereveard 6y ago
this is great, the new train logic allows for completely modular factory building, can't wait to start all over again.
nindalf 6y ago
> some media picked up on it and presented it as a "fairly bugged release". This is so unfortunate. I've never used any software, game or otherwise that has been as bug free as Factorio. I guess it must have been "journalists" who didn't want to put in any time playing the game. Congrats to them on reaching 0 bugs and 0 open issues - I can only dream of achieving that one day! For people wondering why they see Factorio updates on HN when no other game makes it, I wrote about what makes this game appeal so much to HN users - https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/factorio-and-software-engineering/ https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/factorio-and-software-enginee...
- fao_ 6y ago
  > I guess it must have been "journalists" who didn't want to put in any time playing the game. I'm not really sure what you mean. I'm not even sure what the main article meant, because I could only find four mainstream reviews covering the 1.0 release. The first one by RockPaperShotgun[0] is essentially glowing and mentions how they've closed so many bugs. The second one by Game Enthusiast which seems pretty happy about it, the only reference to the word "bug" in the review is: Let’s just say, Factorio has always been a diamond in the rough. Or more like just a lump of promising coal. And after 8.5 years, 18,855 bug reports, 5,603 mods, and probably thousands of man hours, we can finally conclude that Factorio has become a spectacular diamond. Albeit, a diamond for gamers with a highly specific acquired taste. - GameEnthusiast review[1] The only other reviews I could find were both by PCgamer, and only one mentioned the number of bugs left, but was overall positive. Here is the reference to bugs, which is almost entirely factual, and seems mostly-positive about it aside from a single line: The rush to get it out a month early does mean that the 1.0 build is still a bit on the buggy side. According to Wube, there are around 150 reported bugs and 80 internal tasks that still need to be tackled, but they're apparently smaller issues rather than critical ones. You can see the known issues and current bug reports on the official forum. They'll hopefully be dealt with in the 1.1 update, which will focus on fixes and "filling the most obvious gaps" rather than adding new stuff. Factorio was pretty much feature-complete already—though Wube was also planning a campaign and some UI improvements that have been cut [...] - PCgamer review [2] The fourth review is particularly glowing. When talking about bugs they say: Factorio has been in early access for four years, so most of its creases have been ironed out. There are some minor flaws. Visually it isn't the most exciting game, with an odd penchant for beige and brown. The top-down perspective can also obscure potential spanners in your works, like a missing piece of conveyor belt or an inserter facing the wrong way. - PCgamer review[3] they give a 91/100, and have this particularly glowing passage at the start: Let's skip the preamble, shall we? Factorio is brilliant. If you're remotely interested in games about management, construction, and above all production chains, then hop aboard the nearest conveyor belt and grab yourself a copy of Factorio this instant. Then pick up another copy for the most important person in your life, because they won't be seeing you for a while, and at least this way they'll understand why. - PCgamer review[3] I'm honestly not sure why one line in a mostly-positive-but-factual review that is mostly not subjective, results in in the need to disparage the entire journalistic profession? Could you explain why? I'm extremely curious, thanks. [0 (RPS review)]: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-fantastic-factorio-has-launched-out-of-early-access https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-fantastic-factorio-has-... [1 (GameEnthusiast)]: https://game-enthusiast.com/2020/08/18/factorio-review/ https://game-enthusiast.com/2020/08/18/factorio-review/ [2 (PCgamer)]: https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/factorio-finally-leaves-early-access-after-4-years/ https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/factorio-finally-leaves-early-acc... [3 (PCgamer)]: https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/factorio-review/ https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/factorio-review/
irtefa 6y ago
This is super exciting! Going to be a fun weekend.
wesleytodd 6y ago
I bought the game late last year and have almost 700 hours already. This is a great game and the 1.1 update is awesome. Logistics, move queue, and follow for Spidertrons are game changing.
Phillips126 6y ago
Unrelated to the article, but I found clicking the rocket at the bottom of the webpage an amusing (and fitting) way to handle the typical "scroll to top" feature. Kudos! Also - Awesome game!
claw_howitzer 6y ago
The section on multithreaded belts hits on my biggest complaint with this game: I don’t like that the belts are multi-lane, I wish they were smaller and single-lane. I’ve tried to get into Factorio twice in the past but I always eventually run into some annoying issue where oops, I need resources to be on the other lane of a belt, or a grabber arm that should obviously be able to reach something isn’t, or something of that ilk, and I now need to scrap and rebuild my entire design. At that point, I feel less like I’m building a factory and more like I’m working around the game engine, and it just immediately kills my interest in going further.
- psyc 6y ago
  To each their own, but I find it an interesting dynamic. I’m having a hard time understanding the problem, but the game does have a learning curve. Suggestions: The majority of my belts carry one item. The remainder carry only one type in each lane. Those are neatly merged at the beginning, and consumed indiscriminately at the end. That is, the consumer wants both items so they can be transferred by one inserted. I never pack a belt to save on belts or space. I’d hate for this to be the nit that stops a person from going deeper into this amazing game.
- Xavdidtheshadow 6y ago
  You might check out https://shapez.io https://shapez.io, which is a simplified (an open source) clone with single-lane belts.
- Arnavion 6y ago
  >I wish they were smaller and single-lane. Smaller and single-lane as in individual half-width belts that can be placed independently? I think it would be more of a pain to play with, because now only would you now have separate left- and right- belt items, but also have more complex rotations to be able to convert one belt into another at a corner. Eg to convert a right-belt going east into a left-belt going south, you need to rotate just the tip of the right-belt, not the whole right-belt. --- >I need resources to be on the other lane of a belt A single splitter and a little space around it can swap a belt around if you need to. Or better yet, find the place where you're mixing the two items on the same belt and make the change there. A ╗ ╠══ A/B B ╝ A ══╗ ╔═╬═ B/A ╚═╣ B ══╝ (The ╬ in the second diagram is a crossing of belt and underground belt.) For single-item belts where everything's on one side and you want everything to be on the other side, it's even simpler. ═╦╗ A/- ═╝╚═ -/A -/A ═╗╔═ A/- ═╩╝ The ╦ and ╩ are a vertical belt feeding into the side of a horizontal belt. Because the horizontal belt has another horizontal belt to its left, the point where the vertical belt touches it does not make a corner.
jimnotgym 6y ago
Warning: this game is seriously addictive. I don't game a lot, but I tried this and lost a weekend. Just say no
- Jyaif 6y ago
  I can confirm. I downloaded the demo at 10PM. When I looked back at the clock it was 4AM.
kgm 6y ago
I taught myself linear programming because of Factorio. It is easily the single game in which I have spent the most time, probably close to 4,000 hours. It is delightful to see that the team is continuing to improve it, even after the 1.0 release.
DonHopkins 6y ago
Earlier HN discussions about Factorio: Factorio 1.0 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24155609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24155609 https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-360 https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-360 >Friday Facts #360 - 1.0 is here! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24163024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24163024 >Factorio (and also games like SimCity) are not actually pure CA rules, but they combine cellular automata techniques together with many other techniques like system dynamics, etc. Will Wright gave a great explanation of how simulation games combine different techniques together in three intersection dimensions: Topologies (agents, networks, and layers), dynamics (propagation, growth, grouping, order, allocation, mapping, specialization, and nesting), and paradigms (cybernetics, system dynamics, cellular automata, chaos theory, adaptive systems, network theory). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdgQyq3hEPo&t=35m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdgQyq3hEPo&t=35m50s >Lessons in Game Design, lecture by Will Wright, Computer History Museum, November 20, 2003. Understanding Kafka with Factorio (hackernoon.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20362179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20362179 >When I saw this title, I first thought it was about understanding the cockroach-like aliens in Factorio, but it is actually about queuing and congestion and parallel processing with conveyor belts and factories! https://hackernoon.com/understanding-kafka-with-factorio-74e8fc9bf181 https://hackernoon.com/understanding-kafka-with-factorio-74e... Von Neumann Universal Constructor (wikipedia.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22727228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22727228 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_constructor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_construc... DonHopkins 10 months ago | on: Von Neumann Universal Constructor https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738598 >Factorio players will recognize these tapes of construction instructions as 2D "blueprints" that construction drones use to build patterns of factories and conveyor belts, etc. In Factorio, after your drones have build a blueprint in the unpowered, unsupplied state, you can connect it to the power grid, hook up pipes to deliver fluids, and run conveyor belts in and out of it to deliver resources and products, and it will immediately starts doing its thing. Playing Factorio is uncannily like von Neumann 29 state cellular automata programming, not by coincidence. So it's a great way to get your head around cellular automata programming, gpu programming, parallel programming, queuing systems, and data flow programming in general! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738268 >Here's some stuff about that I posted in an earlier discussion, and transcribed from John von Neumann's book, "Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata". >His concept of self-reproducing mutating probabilistic quantum mechanical machine evolution is quite fascinating and terrifying at the same time (or outside of time), potentially much more powerful and dangerous than mere physical nanotechnology "gray goo" and universe-infesting self replicating von Neumann probes:
mbrodersen 6y ago
One of the best games I have ever played. It gives me the same sense of satisfaction and feeling of achievement that programming used to give me. I have been programming for so long now that there are very few interesting challenges left.
alexruf 6y ago
I purchased Factorio recently because this game looks amazing. Anyway I couldn’t manage to really get into the game because it’s just overwhelming. Can someone recommend any good tutorials or guides to get into it so I can start building my awesome factories?
- gastlygem 6y ago
  After a few failed attempts in the start I discovered Xterminator's series[1]. Now I just roll a similar map and try to imitate what he does. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fimGkeVVASA&list=PLwehwVVQirAffUXldmOIj1oW0kcw_rbSx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fimGkeVVASA&list=PLwehwVVQir...

468 points by OrderlyTiamat 6y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20210129121156/https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-364 https://web.archive.org/web/20210129121156/https://factorio....

willis936 6y ago
I don’t think we have to worry about the HN hug of death. Wube posts their updates to their own subreddit that has 230k subscribers. Afaik their website has never been smothered by traffic.
- basilgohar 6y ago
  There were problems early on when they were posting GIFs instead of videos. It was nice because they noted the bandwidth savings by converting over to WebM instead.
- snthd 6y ago
  The website doesn't load for me on firefox on Android - some vague security issue (I'm guessing it could be related to OSCP Stapling?). factorio.com appears to be on cloudflare, so you are of course right that it's not a hug problem.

dubcanada 6y ago

One thing some people don't know is there is a ton of really cool mods - https://mods.factorio.com/ https://mods.factorio.com/ You can see some of the most popular at - https://mods.factorio.com/downloaded https://mods.factorio.com/downloaded and https://mods.factorio.com/trending https://mods.factorio.com/trending

sdfjkl 6y ago
Amongst the total conversions, I've quite enjoyed Krastorio 2. If you're into really detailed and complex factories, Industrial Revolution might be for you.
- hanikesn 6y ago
  Had a blast with Krastorio 2. Thanks for your Industrial Revolution recommendation!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 404-universe 6y ago
  As long as we're doing mod recommendations, I can also recommend the Space Exploration total conversion, which expands the game far past your first rocket launch. If you're looking for a really complex factory and are so inclined, it's compatible with Krastorio 2 (but it also works standalone).
squiffy 6y ago
Here are some recommended mods from a previous Factorio discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22933767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22933767 Mostly convenience/quality-of-life improvements. I "completed" the game using a lot of these and thoroughly enjoyed it but it was incredibly addictive.
enraged_camel 6y ago
Any good texture packs people can recommend? I can't stand the outdated graphics of the vanilla version. (Yeah, I'm one of those people.)
coryfklein 6y ago
Looks like the top of the "downloaded" list is basically all of Bob's mods? What's the story there - is it basically "Factorio but with an alternate game progression"?
- Xavdidtheshadow 6y ago
  Yeah, that and "angels" mods are two very popular mod groups that make the game much harder and more complex.
cwkoss 6y ago
Some favorite mods (I've played a LOT of factorio over the years) Bobs Mods is a good "new game plus" after beating the base game. Space Exploration adds an amazing amount of depth, but it's somewhat intimidating. FNEI is a very useful recipe browser. Recursive blueprints are incredibly cool, but also hard to reason about. Fun to try though! Factorissimo add recursive space (buildings that contain more space inside than their footprint).

koolakalaban 6y ago

Recently discovered a less complex, open source alternative called Mindustry. Highly recommend it.

bregma 6y ago
Many of the more popular mods add complexity to Factorio. I guess there might be an audience that swings the other way, but I don't imagine the lack of the dopamine surge from solving the next problem is going to have Mindustry players putting in the same insane hours.
- willis936 6y ago
  This is one of those cases where it is best to not judge it before you try it. Mindustry has a bespoke assembly language that lets you control the behavior of drones and buildings. The complexity cap is far above factorio.
- user-the-name 6y ago
  Not putting in insane hours is a feature for many.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  While I completed it, I personally did not enjoy my time with Factorio. In my review I specifically used the term "complexity fetishist" to describe the kind of player who might enjoy the game too much. Which isn't to say there's anything wrong with the game. It actually felt kind of weird to not recommend it since it was a pretty darned good execution of what it set out to be, I just couldn't ever actually suggest to someone that they play it. Either they wouldn't like dealing with the needlessly ever increasing in complexity goldbergian monstrosity, or worse they actually would. I think the game's popularity among developers highlights a core problem with our industry. Look at Factorio, then look at all of the over engineering, the layers upon layers of abstraction, the obsessive need to keep making software larger and more complicated only to eventually tear it down and rebuild the exact same thing with the new-hotness widgets...

bregma 6y ago

Leading up to this the developers were pushing out twice-daily updates to the game. These guys give unheard-of levels of support to their base. They should be the object of study in academic courses.

arkitaip 6y ago
This seems to be the standard for indie dev studios [0]. They have to work harder and smarter than the big guys because their resources are in such short supply and they can't survive having a game that flops. [0] Just look at Edmund McMillen (The Binding of Isaac, Super Meat Boy), Eric Barone (Stardew valley), Cardboard Computer (Kentucky Route Zero), Scott Cawthon (Five Nights at Freddy), Extremely OK Games (TowerFall, Celeste) or The Fullbright Company (Gone Home) to mention a few.
- bombcar 6y ago
  Indie dev studios also have the ADVANTAGE that they can do this - if Bob wants to post a blog he just needs to run it past Jim and Barbara - no need to run it through Legal, etc.
  - nip180 6y ago
    Also “management” and “devops” needs to trust every dev to push out a high quality update. Twice daily deploys don’t happen if QA goes through a 48 hour test process for every release.
    - meibo 6y ago
      Mind that the amount of QA you ought to have heavily depends on what game you're making - e.g. with a story heavy game, you 100% want give or take 3 weeks on every update for localization checks, or for a MMO you probably want to run new clients/servers with your testers first for about a week to make sure nothing catastrophic happens, which is especially important in online games(lots of bad PR and real money invested by players - you really don't want to have to roll back "saves"). All depends on budget and quantity of course, but this is what's usually planned for from my personal experience working in that sector.

jackdh 6y ago

Does anyone have experience updating servers to 1.1? Is it as simple as loading into 1.1 loading the old 1.0 map in single player, saving it as 1.1 then uploading to the server?

Fabricio20 6y ago
If my experience with old versions is to go by, you just update the server binary and fire it up. No need to download + upload! Factorio is a very stable game, do a backup and give it ago!
- fendy3002 6y ago
  Beware that some mods haven't been updated to 1.1

sdfjkl 6y ago

Factorio is such a high quality game. Not just the gameplay, but the entire development process where every alpha release is actually really stable and playable, certainly more stable and playable than most big-budget games are on release day.

linkdd 6y ago
I don't think both kind of games are on the same complexity level. The gameplay is simple (aka: it requires few kind of user interactions), and the physic engine (source of most bugs in big budget open-world games) is far far far simpler as well.
- serhatozgel 6y ago
  I believe you are mistaken, Factorio is an incredibly complex game.
  - linkdd 6y ago
    Do you really think a 2D physic engine is comparable to a 3D physic engine in terms of complexity? Yes Factorio is complex. No it's not more complex than a Witcher/Skyrim/Cyberpunk/whatever big budget game you can think of. When i say complex, I talk about code, architecture, gameplay mechanics. Not play time...
    - BorisTheBrave 6y ago
      I think it is more complex in most dimensions, except for render pipeline and asset size. Physics engines are off the shelf, even in AAA games, they're not really where the bulk of time is spent coding. Not to mention all the games you described have fixed maps and no multiplayer. Really, most of the budget of AAA is spent on art and level design. They have sophisticated tech, but often it is not on an unreachable level.
    - js8 6y ago
      I have to agree with the OP, Factorio code is actually pretty complex. Lots of it comes from polish and creating the seamless player experience. It might not be as technically complex as 3D engine, but no AAA developer would care about optimizing the fluid or belt system to behave in a scalable way. It's really well thought out. (Also, there is a saying that it takes a genius to do something in a simple way. So even if the resulting code might be simple, arriving to that point can be actually pretty complex endeavor.)

kzrdude 6y ago

Their multithreading story here was fascinating. Gratifying that they have such a visual explanation.

willis936 6y ago
They keep the discussion very high level. The topic is much deeper, but they appear to be constraining themselves to a single-timestep-state. If they loosened up the state to include two timesteps then a lot more could be parallelized. Since the simulation and graphics are in lockstep, this would add one frame of latency. One frame of latency is hardly noticeable against the 7-10 frames minimum added in multiplayer but the payoff could be massive. It’s hard work, without a doubt. An example I like to point to is the minecraft mod “tickthreading”. It was never stable, but the concept is there and sound.
- JesseMeyer 6y ago
  The game Destiny went this route to increase GPU throughput by 50%. An extra frame of latency, the dev's said, was hardly discernible on a controller.
- Netcob 6y ago
  I've always wondered, how exactly games do this. Do you have at least one "write" state and one "read" state, so that the simulation can write during its update and the renderer can read the previous state independently? I think copying the write state to the read state would probably take some time in a Factorio "gigafactory", while the renderer only has to access a tiny part of the state most of the time.
- Chabsff 6y ago
  It's hard to tell for sure. Double-buffering game updates like that can involve a lot of memory copying. Considering that it would not surprise me in the least if Factorio was close to being bottlenecked by memory bandwidth, this could easily be counterproductive.
  - willis936 6y ago

avereveard 6y ago

this is great, the new train logic allows for completely modular factory building, can't wait to start all over again.

nindalf 6y ago

> some media picked up on it and presented it as a "fairly bugged release". This is so unfortunate. I've never used any software, game or otherwise that has been as bug free as Factorio. I guess it must have been "journalists" who didn't want to put in any time playing the game. Congrats to them on reaching 0 bugs and 0 open issues - I can only dream of achieving that one day! For people wondering why they see Factorio updates on HN when no other game makes it, I wrote about what makes this game appeal so much to HN users - https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/factorio-and-software-engineering/ https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/factorio-and-software-enginee...

fao_ 6y ago
> I guess it must have been "journalists" who didn't want to put in any time playing the game. I'm not really sure what you mean. I'm not even sure what the main article meant, because I could only find four mainstream reviews covering the 1.0 release. The first one by RockPaperShotgun[0] is essentially glowing and mentions how they've closed so many bugs. The second one by Game Enthusiast which seems pretty happy about it, the only reference to the word "bug" in the review is: Let’s just say, Factorio has always been a diamond in the rough. Or more like just a lump of promising coal. And after 8.5 years, 18,855 bug reports, 5,603 mods, and probably thousands of man hours, we can finally conclude that Factorio has become a spectacular diamond. Albeit, a diamond for gamers with a highly specific acquired taste. - GameEnthusiast review[1] The only other reviews I could find were both by PCgamer, and only one mentioned the number of bugs left, but was overall positive. Here is the reference to bugs, which is almost entirely factual, and seems mostly-positive about it aside from a single line: The rush to get it out a month early does mean that the 1.0 build is still a bit on the buggy side. According to Wube, there are around 150 reported bugs and 80 internal tasks that still need to be tackled, but they're apparently smaller issues rather than critical ones. You can see the known issues and current bug reports on the official forum. They'll hopefully be dealt with in the 1.1 update, which will focus on fixes and "filling the most obvious gaps" rather than adding new stuff. Factorio was pretty much feature-complete already—though Wube was also planning a campaign and some UI improvements that have been cut [...] - PCgamer review [2] The fourth review is particularly glowing. When talking about bugs they say: Factorio has been in early access for four years, so most of its creases have been ironed out. There are some minor flaws. Visually it isn't the most exciting game, with an odd penchant for beige and brown. The top-down perspective can also obscure potential spanners in your works, like a missing piece of conveyor belt or an inserter facing the wrong way. - PCgamer review[3] they give a 91/100, and have this particularly glowing passage at the start: Let's skip the preamble, shall we? Factorio is brilliant. If you're remotely interested in games about management, construction, and above all production chains, then hop aboard the nearest conveyor belt and grab yourself a copy of Factorio this instant. Then pick up another copy for the most important person in your life, because they won't be seeing you for a while, and at least this way they'll understand why. - PCgamer review[3] I'm honestly not sure why one line in a mostly-positive-but-factual review that is mostly not subjective, results in in the need to disparage the entire journalistic profession? Could you explain why? I'm extremely curious, thanks. [0 (RPS review)]: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-fantastic-factorio-has-launched-out-of-early-access https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-fantastic-factorio-has-... [1 (GameEnthusiast)]: https://game-enthusiast.com/2020/08/18/factorio-review/ https://game-enthusiast.com/2020/08/18/factorio-review/ [2 (PCgamer)]: https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/factorio-finally-leaves-early-access-after-4-years/ https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/factorio-finally-leaves-early-acc... [3 (PCgamer)]: https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/factorio-review/ https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/factorio-review/

irtefa 6y ago

This is super exciting! Going to be a fun weekend.

wesleytodd 6y ago

I bought the game late last year and have almost 700 hours already. This is a great game and the 1.1 update is awesome. Logistics, move queue, and follow for Spidertrons are game changing.

Phillips126 6y ago

Unrelated to the article, but I found clicking the rocket at the bottom of the webpage an amusing (and fitting) way to handle the typical "scroll to top" feature. Kudos! Also - Awesome game!

claw_howitzer 6y ago

The section on multithreaded belts hits on my biggest complaint with this game: I don’t like that the belts are multi-lane, I wish they were smaller and single-lane. I’ve tried to get into Factorio twice in the past but I always eventually run into some annoying issue where oops, I need resources to be on the other lane of a belt, or a grabber arm that should obviously be able to reach something isn’t, or something of that ilk, and I now need to scrap and rebuild my entire design. At that point, I feel less like I’m building a factory and more like I’m working around the game engine, and it just immediately kills my interest in going further.

psyc 6y ago
To each their own, but I find it an interesting dynamic. I’m having a hard time understanding the problem, but the game does have a learning curve. Suggestions: The majority of my belts carry one item. The remainder carry only one type in each lane. Those are neatly merged at the beginning, and consumed indiscriminately at the end. That is, the consumer wants both items so they can be transferred by one inserted. I never pack a belt to save on belts or space. I’d hate for this to be the nit that stops a person from going deeper into this amazing game.
Xavdidtheshadow 6y ago
You might check out https://shapez.io https://shapez.io, which is a simplified (an open source) clone with single-lane belts.
Arnavion 6y ago
>I wish they were smaller and single-lane. Smaller and single-lane as in individual half-width belts that can be placed independently? I think it would be more of a pain to play with, because now only would you now have separate left- and right- belt items, but also have more complex rotations to be able to convert one belt into another at a corner. Eg to convert a right-belt going east into a left-belt going south, you need to rotate just the tip of the right-belt, not the whole right-belt. --- >I need resources to be on the other lane of a belt A single splitter and a little space around it can swap a belt around if you need to. Or better yet, find the place where you're mixing the two items on the same belt and make the change there. A ╗ ╠══ A/B B ╝ A ══╗ ╔═╬═ B/A ╚═╣ B ══╝ (The ╬ in the second diagram is a crossing of belt and underground belt.) For single-item belts where everything's on one side and you want everything to be on the other side, it's even simpler. ═╦╗ A/- ═╝╚═ -/A -/A ═╗╔═ A/- ═╩╝ The ╦ and ╩ are a vertical belt feeding into the side of a horizontal belt. Because the horizontal belt has another horizontal belt to its left, the point where the vertical belt touches it does not make a corner.

jimnotgym 6y ago

Warning: this game is seriously addictive. I don't game a lot, but I tried this and lost a weekend. Just say no

Jyaif 6y ago
I can confirm. I downloaded the demo at 10PM. When I looked back at the clock it was 4AM.

kgm 6y ago

I taught myself linear programming because of Factorio. It is easily the single game in which I have spent the most time, probably close to 4,000 hours. It is delightful to see that the team is continuing to improve it, even after the 1.0 release.

DonHopkins 6y ago

Earlier HN discussions about Factorio: Factorio 1.0 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24155609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24155609 https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-360 https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-360 >Friday Facts #360 - 1.0 is here! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24163024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24163024 >Factorio (and also games like SimCity) are not actually pure CA rules, but they combine cellular automata techniques together with many other techniques like system dynamics, etc. Will Wright gave a great explanation of how simulation games combine different techniques together in three intersection dimensions: Topologies (agents, networks, and layers), dynamics (propagation, growth, grouping, order, allocation, mapping, specialization, and nesting), and paradigms (cybernetics, system dynamics, cellular automata, chaos theory, adaptive systems, network theory). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdgQyq3hEPo&t=35m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdgQyq3hEPo&t=35m50s >Lessons in Game Design, lecture by Will Wright, Computer History Museum, November 20, 2003. Understanding Kafka with Factorio (hackernoon.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20362179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20362179 >When I saw this title, I first thought it was about understanding the cockroach-like aliens in Factorio, but it is actually about queuing and congestion and parallel processing with conveyor belts and factories! https://hackernoon.com/understanding-kafka-with-factorio-74e8fc9bf181 https://hackernoon.com/understanding-kafka-with-factorio-74e... Von Neumann Universal Constructor (wikipedia.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22727228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22727228 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_constructor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_construc... DonHopkins 10 months ago | on: Von Neumann Universal Constructor https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738598 >Factorio players will recognize these tapes of construction instructions as 2D "blueprints" that construction drones use to build patterns of factories and conveyor belts, etc. In Factorio, after your drones have build a blueprint in the unpowered, unsupplied state, you can connect it to the power grid, hook up pipes to deliver fluids, and run conveyor belts in and out of it to deliver resources and products, and it will immediately starts doing its thing. Playing Factorio is uncannily like von Neumann 29 state cellular automata programming, not by coincidence. So it's a great way to get your head around cellular automata programming, gpu programming, parallel programming, queuing systems, and data flow programming in general! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738268 >Here's some stuff about that I posted in an earlier discussion, and transcribed from John von Neumann's book, "Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata". >His concept of self-reproducing mutating probabilistic quantum mechanical machine evolution is quite fascinating and terrifying at the same time (or outside of time), potentially much more powerful and dangerous than mere physical nanotechnology "gray goo" and universe-infesting self replicating von Neumann probes:

mbrodersen 6y ago

One of the best games I have ever played. It gives me the same sense of satisfaction and feeling of achievement that programming used to give me. I have been programming for so long now that there are very few interesting challenges left.

alexruf 6y ago

I purchased Factorio recently because this game looks amazing. Anyway I couldn’t manage to really get into the game because it’s just overwhelming. Can someone recommend any good tutorials or guides to get into it so I can start building my awesome factories?

gastlygem 6y ago
After a few failed attempts in the start I discovered Xterminator's series[1]. Now I just roll a similar map and try to imitate what he does. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fimGkeVVASA&list=PLwehwVVQirAffUXldmOIj1oW0kcw_rbSx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fimGkeVVASA&list=PLwehwVVQir...