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Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y agoWhich means... I'm soon getting controller support for a bunch of games to play on the Deck. Oh lord, I'm doomed...
- nonoroazoro 4y ago2000+ hours in, will never paly on NS
- jader201 4y agoCurious to see how well it translates to controllers. I know there is limited support on the Steam Deck, but I'm guessing it's still subpar to traditional mouse/keyboard controls. From the link: Factorio was developed for 10 years with only keyboard and mouse in mind, so making sure the game is fully playable with controllers was no easy task. Playing with a controller is slightly slower, and will take some getting used to (just as it does when playing with keyboard and mouse for the first time). After becoming familiar with it, I find it very comfortable. I recommend everyone to play through the first levels of our tutorial campaign, as it's a great way to get acquainted with playing Factorio with a controller.
- bradhe 4y agoI bet touch adds a dimension to it. Touch-and-drag for belts, picking from inventory with touch...
- capableweb 4y agoSounds like a hassle. Good controller support would beat touch controller in both ergonomics and speed every day. I hope the Controller support been improved with this launch as I tried to play Factorio on my Steam Deck before but felt like it was just "emulated mouse" support basically which isn't nearly nice enough. I feel like Tropico-series did a good implementation of top-down+strategy controller for their games.
- bobthepanda 4y agoA fair amount of Switch games don’t use touch.
- BudaDude 4y agoHonestly I forget it's even there. For the most part, only mobile games ported to the Switch use it.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y agoAnd many first party games, of course. It's not a great experience, though - on the OG switch, at least, the screen is really low quality.
- bobthepanda 4y agoI feel like a lot of games optimize their UI for TVs, but at that size scaled down the touch targets would be too small to not fat-finger.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y agoSwitch games can actually target handheld mode vs. tv mode and give you a better experience to solve that problem. Few of them do, unfortunately, IME.
- hbn 4y agoSwitch games need to have non-touch control options cause it's also meant to be played docked
- bioemerl 4y agoUnfortunately the steam deck touch calibration is kind of bad. Mine is all over the place at times, and on kb/mouse designs it can be hard to be accurate enough.
- dom96 4y agoYeah... I hope the Nintendo Switch port is brought to Steam Deck too. I gave Factorio a quick go a few days ago and it was painful to play (at least with the default key config)
- goda90 4y agoThe blog post says they will focus on making controller play better on Switch, then make that generic for PC(which implies Steam Deck as well). The PC/Steam Deck version supports mods, which is better than Switch anyway.
- stingraycharles 4y agoDo you happen to know what the status of the Steam Deck ecosystem is? I would be in the market to get a more powerful version of the Switch, which the Steam Deck would be, but it seems to be discontinued.
- goda90 4y agoThe Steam Deck is not discontinued. It's actually quite new, with the first shipments going out to normal customers at the beginning of this year, and more and more going out now. I got mine in June. Valve made a reservation process that required an old enough Steam account and $5 refundable reservation to avoid scalpers. Regarding the ecosystem, the Steam Deck is a x86 PC. It comes with SteamOS, which is an open Arch Linux based distribution. You are free to install other operating systems like Windows on it. The out of the box Steam experience is quite good, with lots of games on the Verified list[0], and they play really well. People also install non-Steam games and software, including console emulators, and there are growing communities around that. [0]https://www.steamdeck.com/en/verified https://www.steamdeck.com/en/verified
- neoberg 4y agoFound the time traveler.
- havblue 4y agoSteam deck can be a bit of work doing things like getting epic games to run, file transfers, and setting up the controls for games that aren't fully supported. Many games work flawlessly like they're on switch, though. It depends on whether occasional issues that force you to tinker are fun or not. Elden Ring plays well. I don't plan on using my switch OLED until the next Zelda comes out.
- LinusU 4y agoI have >400 hours logged in Factorio, and almost all of that is on my laptop with an external Steam Controller. I think it works great, and play that way even when I'm home with access to keyboard and mouse. The touch controls on the Steam Controller are excellent though, so I'm not sure how good it will be on the Switch which uses joysticks...
- shakna 4y ago> The touch controls on the Steam Controller are excellent though, so I'm not sure how good it will be on the Switch which uses joysticks... Whilst lots of games ignore it, the Switch screen is a touchscreen.
- sgarman 4y agoYou kinda have to ignore it if you want your game to be playable docked.
- stingraycharles 4y agoI happen to be one of those switch users who almost exclusively use it docked. Initially I thought the concept was great, but the screen is just too small for my eyes on all the strategy games I play, I always defer to my iPad on holidays.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y agoI actually purchased multiple docks, the nice thing about the switch to me is being able to quickly move it to another room as needs arise.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- shakna 4y agoPlenty of games have multiple sets of controls. A handful of Switch games make use of both, to great effect. Like Cozy Grove. You don't have to completely ignore it, to allow for one playing style.
- Groxx 4y agoHopefully it'll support touch too... touch to drag out paths and move inventory things around is a wonderful experience in many games, and I'm always sad to see most Switch games not even support tapping on-screen buttons.
- sulam 4y agoI have a Steam Deck, and while it's playable, I'm not going to be setting any speed records with it. It's really kind of painfully difficult to things that I have down to muscle memory on a keyboard. Just as an example, copying recipes from one assembler to 20 more takes me 1-2s on keyboard. On the Deck the default controller layout doesn't even allow for doing it once. Early game tricks like holding z and using your mouse to drop individual pieces of coal across all of your miners and smelters in a row isn't a thing as far as I can work out. In fact I essentially had to fully load all my smelters rather than distribute it because I couldn't figure out how to split stacks. I'm sure a lot of this is familiarity, and if I force myself I will get more efficient with the Steam Deck, but I doubt I'd ever find it superior or even equivalent to keyboard and mouse.
- solardev 4y agoHere's hoping they'll backport some of the Switch controls to the Steam Deck
- rubyist5eva 4y agoOne game that I didn't think would work well on a controller was Rimworld but it's actually really great, and I love playing Rimworld from the couch. Hopefully the same amount of care for controller controls goes into Factorio.
- a_brawling_boo 4y agoPlaying minecraft on switch vs my pixel 6 is night and day. I can't imagine performance is anywhere near what it needs to be for an end game base? But I'd be curious to see what they've come up with here.
- countvonbalzac 4y agothe switch is better?
- bspammer 4y agoI'm almost certain that the Pixel is better given that it's nearly double the price, and the Switch is 5 years old now.
- MBCook 4y agoPlus the Tegra in the Switch wasn’t even new when the Switch launched.
- vorticalbox 4y agoMinecraft is slower on the switch than an android device though its most noticeable when on the market place once the game is loaded its not much different
- jader201 4y agoYeah, they cover performance too, but sounds like we will definitely see impact with mega bases: One of the first questions you might ask is how does the game perform. We worked on many optimizations to make sure the game performs as well as possible. You should expect 30-60 FPS (both in TV mode and handheld mode). As for UPS, the average player should be able to go through all of the content and launch a rocket, while staying at 60 UPS. But don't expect to be able to build mega-bases without UPS starting to drop, sometimes significantly.
- Night_Thastus 4y ago
- lake_vincent 4y agoPlease no. Someone tell me it's just an unconfirmed rumor. Why would they do such a thing? I am at very high risk for Factorio addiction, and the only reason I haven't played it yet is because I don't play PC games anymore. But I do have a Switch, and having Civ VI on there was enough of a problem, thank you very much. Goodbye everyone!
- booi 4y agoRIP in peace lake_vincent How many people must we lose before the government does something??
- hangonhn 4y agoThe government will do something as soon as the members of government are satisfied and done with growing their factory... Any day now...
- mastersummoner 4y agoActually, that... would explain a surprising amount about government dysfunction.
- bitdestroyer 4y agoSame, and I have a Steam Deck arriving today… Also, never play Dyson Sphere Project. It ruined me worse than Factorio. Jokes aside, it’s a fantastically beautiful and well done game.
- hackernewds 4y agoWhy would you threaten us with a good time?
- totoglazer 4y agoDSP’s best feature is that it’s windows only, so playing on a Mac is low key terrible. That’s helped keep me to only 200 hours played.
- VyseofArcadia 4y agoI'm surprised. I was under the impression that Factorio was CPU-bound. The Switch isn't exactly a powerhouse. For comparison, Civilization VI on the Switch was underwhelming. Playable, but taking a turn late game often meant over a minute on the CPU taking their turns.
- smoldesu 4y agoI've played Factorio at 1080p with integrated graphics on a dual-core Skylake chip. I think the Nvidia Tegra will be able to handle this just fine.
- smcn 4y agoHey sorry, it running poorly is the only way I wont get addicted to this. Is there any chance you could edit your comment and lie for me?
- smoldesu 4y agoNo need to lie, just set the internal rendering resolution to 1440p or higher and your machine will go up in flames.
- duskwuff 4y agoI must regrettably inform you that the game runs very well on a M1 MacBook Pro, with an effective render resolution of ~2880x1800.
- smoldesu 4y agoI don't doubt it does, my 12700k's iGPU handles it just fine at 1440p too. I was talking more about the old Skylake machine from earlier though, much different (see: slower) beast.
- voski 4y agoI noticed that performance issues arise from having large groups of biters attacking. Something with the pathing for the enemies uses a huge about of CPU
- baby 4y agoSomewhat related but I got a steam deck and decided against getting this game because from some discussions I read it’s too hard to play without a mouse and keyboard. Anybody has tried though?
- s3r3nity 4y agoFrom the developer's notes, it looks like they took some time to design the UX to better support controllers with this port. From what I read elsewhere, steam deck support was much more limited - meaning the experience should be very different on Switch vs. steam deck.
- falcolas 4y agoOn the Steam Deck, you're relying on custom bindings. It will work, though it's not a tailored experience. Hoping the devs will make the controller bindings available on the PC too. EDIT: That said, you can hook up a keyboard and mouse to the steam deck...
- jnwatson 4y agoI tried seriously for about an hour to play Factorio on the Steam Deck. It wasn’t enough. You need notes and specific study time. Steam controller configs can be way more information than you can fit in your brain.
- louwrentius 4y agoI have a 10 year old i5 and it struggles with my 10,000 SPM mega base. So I don’t think a switch is a device for building mega bases (Factorio points this out themselves).
- fredley 4y agoPerhaps there's a higher percentage among the HN readership, but the number of people who make it to 'just' a 1kSPM base is very small indeed as a fraction of the playerbase. Only 18% get as far as launching the rocket according to Steam stats!
- louwrentius 4y agoIt's a serious amount of both learning and building so I can imagine that a stat like that is true.
- duskwuff 4y ago> Only 18% get as far as launching the rocket according to Steam stats! One caveat is that Steam achievements are only granted to players who don't have any mods enabled. There's probably a nontrivial number of players who have only completed the game with mods.
- Comevius 4y agoIt's probably memory throughput and latency more than single core performance in your case. Factorio is primarily limited by CPU cache misses. It ticks 50% faster on a Ryzen 7 5800X3D than on an 5800X because of the extra 64 MB L3. Needless to say the Switch won't fare well for mega bases with it's 2 MB L2.
- louwrentius 4y agoWow, that's interesting[0] as I'm planning to replace the 10 year old i5 with something new to run my mega bases at 60 UPS. [0]: https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=d3c52cb60a225a29051060343c517816ee0f8655a52e1351fbc449da8e9ff0ea https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=d3c52cb60a225a29...
- tobyhinloopen 4y agoI can’t wait for proper controller support on PC
- falcolas 4y agoAgreed. You can fake it some with Steam's workshop controller setups, and it works well enough you can play Factorio on the Steam Deck. Official controller support on the PC would be more than welcome though.
- nargas 4y agoWould it be possible to not pay the full price if you already have paid the PC version ?
- hackernewds 4y agoWhy would it be?
- ascagnel_ 4y agoThe most you'll get is a way to indirectly play your PC saves on the Switch (by having the PC version act as a MP host).
- thomastjeffery 4y agoMultiplayer in Factorio has all clients running the whole simulation in lock step, so you are still bottlenecked by the slowest client.
- open-paren 4y ago95% likely that they will not. Factorio famously and deliberately does not go on sale.
- jader201 4y agoIt's rare that you get any game for free on one platform just because you own it on another platform. Almost any game I've seen on both PC & Switch, you have to pay for both. I don't care. Factorio devs can have my money.
- clowen 4y agoFor some background on why not. Nintendo didn't make any money from the PC sales, so it needs to have revenue from this launch. And for Factorio itself, the effort of porting to the Switch, and then the effort of going through validation with Nintendo. Even if they didn't want to charge you again, the company would need to cover the cost of dev kits, extra engineers, and a whole extra channel for development/release.
- TillE 4y ago
- unixhero 4y agoFactorio is a game I don't dare to get sucked into.
- rgoulter 4y agoI was surprised to see in a HN comment the explanation that not everyone finds Factorio enthralling. The gameplay experience is so similar to what many developers do in their dayjobs, that this leads to one of two responses: "...and I am not constrained/bound, it's so fun!" or "...but with Factorio, I get no tangible output from putting in effort."
- matkoniecz 4y agoOne nice thing is that you can build insane spaghetti and just freely abandon game if it gets unfunny.
- xani_ 4y agoI work in ops and a side of programming, have some related hobbies and that's exactly my feelings about Zachtronics games. "Why play some virtual computer emulating game where I have a dev board with actual computer to program" But it hasn't happened with Factorio. It just have that perfect blend of everything that I don't mind it being basically what I do for my day job.
- louwrentius 4y agoI'm approaching 3000 hours in this game. Your 'fear' is warranted. This is not a brag, it's sad, really.
- scottmsul 4y agoIt's unfortunate there's no mod support. As someone with over 2000 hours, for me it's really the overhaul mods that give the game endless variety and replayability. Might not be a bad idea to make certain overhaul mods available anyway, even if it involves hard-coding them in.
- _1100 4y agoCan you imagine a switch trying to load all the maps and resources for AngelBobs/K2/SE? I know they do some impressive work to port modern games on switch but even my state of the art computer struggles to run K2+SE at scale.
- arduinomancer 4y agoDo any switch games support mods?
- Melatonic 4y agoI don't think console games ever support mods? The only way to do this would be for the modders themselves to get sponsored by / work with Nintendo directly and probably the original dev team. You could then have some officially released "mods" (probably they would just call them DLC) and I they would very likely charge. Sounds like you want a Steamdeck
- Pyrodogg 4y agoMostly I'd just miss Squeak Through. It's like trying to play Skyrim without SkyUI. I barely think of these things as mods anymore, they should just be there.
- dexwiz 4y agoI don't think consoles like allowing interrupted code from end users. They just end up being a huge attack surface area, either for DRM exploits or attacks on other users. Nintendo pull a game for having a hidden Ruby interpreter a few years ago. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/05/game-with-hidden-ruby-interpreter-pulled-from-nintendo-switch-eshop/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/05/game-with-hidden-ruby... I wonder if this version of Factorio supports the console. You can execute LUA from the console, so I imagine it's disabled on the switch.
- TheDesolate0 4y ago
- mdtrooper 4y agoWell, we have https://mindustrygame.github.io/ https://mindustrygame.github.io/ that it is free software. And IHMO it is best that Factorio.
- jader201 4y agoI've been playing Mindustry a lot lately, and while I've been enjoying it, it's just a different game than Factorio -- they scratch different, but similar, itches. Factorio is about the long game, and your designs have to be able to scale, especially if you're going for mege-base scale. It's more about complex designs and a very deep tech tree and dependency hierarchy. It's about factory automation at its core, with some PvE/tower defense (optionally) thrown in. Mindustry is mostly a tower defense game at its core that uses automation/factory building to accomplish that goal. It simplifies a lot of things that are more of a challenge in Factorio. E.g. not needing inserters makes optimizations much easier. Also, the way building happens almost immediately and you don't need bots makes construction much easier. I like both quite a bit, but depending on what you're looking for, either game could be more enjoyable for you.
- mmastrac 4y ago> you don't need bots makes construction much easier I loved that part of Satisfactory as well. The more I play with instant building, the more I think it just makes sense.
- chitowneats 4y agoStrange that nowhere on this landing page does Mindustry advertise itself as "free software". In fact, there is a very prominent link to buy it on steam for $9.99. A bit off-putting. As developers of course we associate GitHub with FOSS, but would a layman? I guess the thinking is anyone who doesn't know to visit the repo and `git clone` probably requires the steam installation? $9.99 however is not cheap many places on Earth.
- ihuman 4y agoIt's under the GPL 3 license, so it's free software. Click the GitHub link on top for the source code. It's also free on itch.io. There's a link to that below the Steam link.
- 323 4y agoThere was a funny but insightful take about how Factorio is about a colonizing force going to a planet and taking all of it's natural resources while suppressing all the native inhabitants and how the player identifies with this evil entity as if a good thing.
- ftlio 4y agoThere's a space mod that has you jumping to different planets and allows you to ship things between them on rockets (or, more hilariously, effectively shooting them between planets). Definitely seals that vibe. That same mod also uses a tech tree mod that actually makes the burner phase slower, so you pollute more in the beginning to boot.
- kevinventullo 4y agoI definitely felt evil the first time I told my bot army to harvest a forest and they cleared the whole thing in about 2 seconds.
- PebblesRox 4y agoOr when I first built an auto-targetting missile-train to wipe out their nests from afar while I sat in my tank at a very safe distance.
- golergka 4y agoIn real life, we perceive colonisation as something bad because we have empathy to other humans — which is something we don't really have no control over, as hundreds of years of human evolution have made us this way. But as creatures in Factorio don't have triggers that force us to feel empathy for them, what objective reasons do we have to take their side over a protagonist, who is clearly human? The only reasons I can think of are violations of private property — which the monsters don't see to actually claim — and non-aggression principle, which they usually break first, giving the protagonist the right to defend himself.
- 323 4y ago
- titoo22 4y ago
- colpabar 4y agoThis game just keeps on giving.
- Emma_Goldman 4y agoEven though it is many orders of magnitude simpler than the real-world equivalent, I find that there is no better way of grasping the logistics of modern civilization than playing Factorio. In fact, it's probably in the Goldilocks zone: easy enough to play, but complicated enough to convey the kind of resource, energy and transport logistics involved in scaling a multi-step production process. It is like an illustrative toy model. The aliens even give the game a satisfying environmental and political dimension, though the mechanics in this respect are more straightforward, i.e., just kill the aliens. Though emitting less pollution with solar also helps.
- xani_ 4y agoIt's also in weird way analogue for development. You can just go for it and make a production chain for a product, but if next one needs same intermediates you'd be re-doing it. i.e. doing a spaghetti code. You can section off the each intermediate into separate factory and just chain them to eachother and have relatively nice order, but when you try to expand production of everything, there is no easy way to grow that complex, so the best you can do is just copy the same block around. Lastly you can build a rail network and put each intermediate anywhere you want without much problems, but wiring everything up will take a lot more effort, you will have to go to various places to debug any problem, any problems are less visible at first glance and lastly if you don't plan for capacity you might have bandwidth and latency problems
- mvexel 4y agoI wholeheartedly agree with this. The way I go about developing my base in Factorio reflects how I go about developing software. What's interesting is that in playing Factorio, the weaknesses in my approach are more readily apparent (because they are visual?) and consequently, I am learning to be a better developer from playing Factorio. This is coming from a hobby developer so ymmv, but this is how I justify sinking so many hours into playing this game.
- dexwiz 4y agoThe instant feedback of Factorio is also nice. Its much more like a Dataflow language or Excel where code (factory) and data (products) coexist
- przefur 4y agoGreat news, I'll have to buy Factorio yet another time! I do wonder about the battery life and performance of larger factories thou.
- jklinger410 4y agoWish someone could create a tracker for how many coding hours were spent porting PC based management simulation games to handheld systems in order to drive more revenue.
- nhumrich 4y agoAnd just like that I cancelled my stream deck order.
- jszymborski 4y agoI'm guessing you don't play with any of the (excellent) mods enabled.
- KronisLV 4y agoSwitch feels like such an interesting platform: not the most powerful out there, not by a long shot, but still has lots of great games on it, perhaps proving that graphics aren't quite everything. At the same time, with some clever optimization, there indeed are great looking games out there as well, in addition to lots of different ones being ported to it! I wonder for how long Switch will remain as a popular platform and a part of me hopes for games that could run in a lower graphics mode for Switch in the future and a higher quality mode for Switch 2 or whatever might come after. Personally, I just wonder why something like Genshin Impact isn't on Switch yet, because it seems like a great game for a platform like it! Oh, and also why Nintendo treats the console IP like others do: where you can't just do export from game engines like Godot for it, like you can with desktop computers/phones, but instead have to go the proprietary route.
- posedge 4y agoI agree with most of what you said, but can't think of a single game that looks good on the Switch (by today's standards). Can you name some examples?
- groovybits 4y agoOff the top: Monster Hunter Rise, Xenoblade series, Doom 2016 and Eternal, New Pokemon Snap, Zelda BOTW, Luigi's Mansion 3, Super Mario Odyssey, Astral Chain, Crysis, and Alien Isolation.
- rthomas6 4y agoThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey look amazing, because the whole art style of the game and everything in it is optimized for that specific console to not overtax its resources. You just don't get photorealism, but that's okay because the art style accommodates for that. There are a few other games I've played that have great ports or don't have high graphics requirements in the first place. Subnautica looked great, and Return of the Obra Dinn and Hades look great too, though those last two games don't have super high graphics requirements in the first place.
- rubyist5eva 4y agodammit, my life is over - goodbye family
- tombert 4y agoI bought Factorio about a year ago, but I still haven't played it because I'm afraid to. I nearly flunked out of college the first time around because of Minecraft addiction, who the hell knows what would happen with Factorio?
- lowbloodsugar 4y agoYou can order food online until your savings run out. You will only need food for one person.
- yumraj 4y agoI feel that games like Factorio, Dyson, Kerbal... are perfect games for when I retire. No time pressure, nothing to do, really, just this, the whole day. Till then, I must look at these games, marvel at them, but resist the temptation to play.
- throwingrocks 4y agoI am also waiting to do leisurely activities until I’m almost dead.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deskamess 4y agoIts time for some Zachtronics game to make the migration. If Factorio can happen, then I would think the Zachtronics games can do it too (performance wise).
- misnome 4y agoSpaceChem used to be on iOS - was nice to play on the iPad, but the maintenance effort was apparently too much to keep it on there and running. Zachtronics stopping game production is a painful loss.
- sorahn 4y agoI loved playing Space Chem on the iPad, Opus Magnum would have been awesome if it ever made it. But the iOS store is much harder to just “fire and forget” on.
- hcs 4y agoI think the only Zachtronics game to have a console release was Infinifactory on PS4. (And Hack*Match on NES, technically.) Agreed with the sibling comment that Opus Magnum seems like it'd be a good fit. But the economics of a port may not make sense. Infinifactory was Unity, while Opus Magnum and most (all?) of the other 2D games use a custom engine.
- neilparikh 4y agoIt's not a "Zach-Like", but Eliza by Zachtronics is on the Switch. It's a visual novel with an interesting story about AI and the gig economy. I recommend it highly, I really enjoyed it.
- dcdc123 4y agoI hope they do this purely because that means controller support will be improved enough to play it on Steam Deck.
- globalreset 4y agoLike we don't have enough problems in the world already, now Cracktorio will be more widely available to unprepared public. :/
- Kukumber 4y agoNintendo Switch, such an impactful device Valve woke up a little bit too late Sony made a mistake to abandon the Vita And Microsoft was stupid to not try, or maybe too scared Steam deck is too big for me, the switch is the perfect size, I'm still waiting for a proper Switch alternative I'll probably build it myself
- groovybits 4y agoNot sure if Valve 'woke up' too late, as opposed to simply taking longer to come to market, and with a much more grand vision than other manufacturers have. Valve recently released a promo booklet for the Steam Deck [1]. Page 14 of that booklet describes how each of their products have iterated in various verticals for their platform to make one cohesive device. Namely: * The Steam Controller: Produced the Steam Input system, one of the most flexible input systems in existence. * The Steam Link: Produced Remote Play, which to my knowledge has no relative competition on other platforms. * The Steam Machine: Produced SteamOS and Proton. * The Valve Index: Produced the first premium product from Valve, and the lessons learned from manufacturing, shipping, and support. All of these devices combined gave us the Steam Deck. Considering the pandemic's impact, Valve has made more rapid progress than Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony since 2015 in the gaming space. The usual market players have had years to make small iterations. Valve caught up in approx. 7 years, and with an open platform that provides more innovation to come. Don't get me wrong - the Nintendo Switch is a fantastic device, and sparked a new form factor and experience that others only hope to emulate. As usual, they define the handheld gaming market. But Valve shot for the sun and came very close. 1: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1675200/view/3401926123919972634 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1675200/view/3401926...
- ycta2334209 4y agoFormer PS Vita owner here, still burns me up thinking about it. It was the absolute perfect form factor and had "just enough" processing power to play some really interesting games, sort of like the Nintendo Switch today (but much smaller). Up until I sold my device to a collector in 2020 it was still my preferred platform for Stardew Valley.
- dcdc123 4y ago
- keepquestioning 4y agoIs this game like Dwarf Fortress?
- ehnto 4y agoIt's similar in that it's a game focused on systems, but in factorio you are a lone individual building a gargantuan automated factory. It does feel similar in a atmospheric sense, but they are very different games conceptually and in practice.
- ycta2334209 4y agoTangentially related but you can buy the game directly from the website, DRM-free which is the route I'd like to go buying this game. The only thing is that the supported macOS platforms are "macOS Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra; MacOS X El Capitan, Yosemite". Is anyone here playing the game on Catalina or Ventura?
- ezfe 4y agoThe Steam version runs perfectly fine on Ventura on my M1 MacBook Air: https://i.imgur.com/iw6CCzh.png https://i.imgur.com/iw6CCzh.png
- hankman86 4y agoIs there going to be a physical release or digital only? Looking for a Christmas present.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoNow it will take over even more of my life. I made fun of all the minecraft addicts...
- lloydatkinson 4y agoI wonder if it will get xbox support?
- darkteflon 4y agoIt’s a terrible idea to buy this on Switch for my 5-year old. Isn’t it.
- kristianp 4y agoWhat's UPS? Something to do with simulation speed?
- ehnto 4y agoYeah, Updates Per Second. Because Factorio works on a fixed cycle, it can't "drop" updates like physics engines tend to do. So it's tied pretty tightly to your CPU performance. Once you see a full factory in action, the mind will boggle at the amount of entities and actions being performed. I'd be impressed if someone could pull that off in a regular piece of (modern platform) software, let alone in a game context.
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoCan someone explain to me why people enjoy Factorio so much? I finished it once because a friend told me it was awesome and I had time on my hands. I remember trudging through the beginning, spending a lot of time calculating ratio in a spreadsheet, a lot of time spent lying belts and a huge sense of relief when I finally got the bots. The whole experience felt like work to me. What am I missing?
- robswc 4y agoSome people find join in making an efficient factory (and maybe defending it). Might not be for everyone though, even if you like those elements. I personally love Factorio, one of my most favorite games of all time.
- WaffleIronMaker 4y agoYeah, it's certainly not for everyone, but I can explain why I like it. In short: My brain likes to design systems. The prospect of accomplishing a clear goal with an unclear path is something I find naturally enticing, as I automatically start to anticipate ways to accomplish that goal, but then I find theoretical problem with those ways, which makes me want to play the game to see if my mental model is correct. Sometimes, I'm just playing the game for hours because I really want to see if the design I came up with would work. Basically, Factorio gamifies the process of building systems, where you have to progress through multiple roles such as gathering resources yourself, building the factories that produce the resources you need, and then being an architect for your factory at a large scale, all while defending against the threat of the "biters". In every stage, I often feel like I'm in a trance like state, where I'm almost playing multiple games at once, trying to anticipate the long-term ramifications of my immediate actions, while balancing that with the need to get something working quickly. Basically, to me, most of the game doesn't occur on screen. It occurs in my mind, as I try to design and optimize lots of different things, in a very similar way to the programming I do for work. So, I can totally see why that might not be appealing to you, but I hope that helps you understand what I find appealing, and I hope others can chime in with their experiences :) Edit: I also never really focus on the numbers directly, and I try to focus more on the rough proportions, because I find the game has a great system of not using up resources unless they're needed, so I'm okay with overproducing in certain ways. Taking the game too seriously can be tempting, but I do stop myself from micro-optimizing everything, and I focus more on just accomplishing something that's "good enough".
- fb03 4y agoTo everyone which is at risk for Factorio addiction, a warning: Please stay away from Rimworld :pray:
- everyone 4y agoI *love* factorio. But by game 3 or 4 I had invented a design pattern that was scalable, maintainable, and reasonably efficient, and after that, playing the game just turned into 'implementing the pattern' and I stopped playing. Anyway it's a great game + I'm so impressed with how it was programmed.
- birracerveza 4y agoI would be much more excited about this, if I didn´t buy a Steam deck last week...
- SigmundA 4y agoMaybe this will make it easier to port to native Apple silicon since the Switch is ARM based. It runs well on my M1 Mac Pro through Rosetta but would be nice to improve CPU usage even more so.
- parski 4y agoThe director of Factorio has a history of sexism, homophobia and racism; claimed that "statutory rape" is an "SJW term" https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-director-of-factorio-shown-during-nintendo-direct-has-a-history-of-sexism-homophobia-and-racism-claimed-that-statutory-rape-is-an-sjw-term.631622/ https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-director-of-factorio-sh...