Friday Facts #130 - Steam release side effects

[slpwnd]

Read about some side effects of releasing a game on Steam: http://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-130

[Thunder]

First!

I hope we'll only have these kind of negative "side effects" of steam release.
And on top of that... guess which game is (still!) top rated on steam? :>

[Xterminator]

Very interesting stats shown. It's amazing how many copies the game has sold already!

Also, well deserved community spotlight for Will and Xeteth, the tutorial will indeed help a ton of people I bet!

[onebit]

I uploaded that 25mb gif to imgur and it turned it into a very small gifv. You should look into using a CDN for images and also run an optimizer on them to reduce size.

[roy7]

Another idea if you are faced with a large animated GIF is to just make it a short video clip instead and put it in YouTube.

[self-same-spot]

.

[Hamster]

I uploaded that 25mb gif to imgur and it turned it into a very small gifv. You should look into using a CDN for images and also run an optimizer on them to reduce size.

+1. Re-saving the gif with transparency enabled in Photoshop (gifsicle is a free tool that works just as well) brings the file to 10MB, and limiting colors to 128 can halve that even further.

Quick example: http://i.imgur.com/Ny7gXFz.gif
(64 colors - perceptual alg. with some colors locked, 2/3-rds of frames dropped, static background, 985 KB, 95% decrease)

Or you could just let webm/avc video codec to do all that job for you.

Well done sir

[kingoftheinternet]

As long as we're all talking about image sizes... hosting things like this on S3 instead of your own server is likely to save you far more attention in the long run than any amount of image formatting or optimizing (though converting gifs to HTML5 video is also a good idea).

[onebit]

Images should be optimized even if you have unlimited bandwidth. It makes a difference in page load times.

[Yaua]

It seems that even when you're trying to think about everything, there will always be one thing who will cause issues XD

First "issue" made me laugh honestly (not laughing about you, but about it : such a small detail (a gif) who finally can be so annoying)

Concerning steal of accounts to have steam keys and using stolen credit card number... That's really not cool, and amongst all other things, this must add so much more work... Concerning this point : how to know if someone has connected to our account to steal our steam key for people who haven't redeemed it ? (to report it to you if it happened)

And for possibility to give access of the DRM-free version to steam customers (and trying to fix things demanded since steam launch)... Really awesome, that's why I love your team so much

And that's nice to see this success ! You really deserves it.

Edit : Good idea to spotlight this tutorial about trains

[Gandalf]

Is that munin or am I seeing things?

[TheTom]

Re Gifs - besides the fact that it seems you totally lacked any optimization...

* Get real about a decent web host. My business site would have cost me a TON more money for 8tb traffic. 80 USD. 10 USD per Terabyte. Get a decent host.
* Learn basic web knowledge - deploy a CDN. Put the site behind CloudFlare (Free) and see this gif being loaded from CloudFlare. And a lot more too - with distributed worldwide caching.

Especially the later will likely TOTALLY eliminate the spike as load on your server.

[transportman]

So as we all know, when you first go head to head with the train system in factorio, normally the train comes out on top. The whole process from placing rail, plopping down locomotives and setting your first stations can overwhelm many players. It gets even worse when the player starts to play with many trains, trying to understand the difficult task of signalling their rails for multiple trains. So this week a pair of guys by the name ColonelWill and Xeteth posted a great tutorial on youtube, which i think will immensely help any new players trying to learn the train system.

I remember when I played the campaign (which is some time ago, so maybe things have changed in the mean time), no real info was given on how to build the train system, and only later figuring out in free play how it should work. I think tutorials should be part of the base game, giving them the information they need, instead of relying on the community to do things. While it is good that the community picks up these things, and can help with providing the information, that information should be part of the base game.

How the information can look? Simple save games, the tips with screenshots at the start of the game, access to those tips and topics through a menu.

[Chaoseed]

So as we all know, when you first go head to head with the train system in factorio, normally the train comes out on top.

It's good to hear that. I don't feel quite so stupid any more. ^_^;

I remember when I played the campaign (which is some time ago, so maybe things have changed in the mean time), no real info was given on how to build the train system, and only later figuring out in free play how it should work. I think tutorials should be part of the base game, giving them the information they need, instead of relying on the community to do things. While it is good that the community picks up these things, and can help with providing the information, that information should be part of the base game.

Well said!

[RobertTerwilliger]

Another idea if you are faced with a large animated GIF is to just make it a short video clip instead and put it in YouTube.

Was going to suggest exactly the same.

I'm not a youtuber, but as I understand, you will even make some money for commercial banners at youtube, which aren't watched by anyone anyway))

Making short video with small commentary probably won't take much longer than making GIFs

[bobucles]

I think it'd be a good idea to take advantage of those scenario packs to teach more advanced concepts. Stuff like belts, bots and trains can be tricky to start out, but they can get into crazy levels of complexity. If a player had a playpen map where things like train stops, intersections and line balancers are set up directly, then the player can see them directly in action and learn how they work at their own pace.

[Yaua]

I remember when I played the campaign (which is some time ago, so maybe things have changed in the mean time), no real info was given on how to build the train system, and only later figuring out in free play how it should work. I think tutorials should be part of the base game, giving them the information they need, instead of relying on the community to do things. While it is good that the community picks up these things, and can help with providing the information, that information should be part of the base game.

How the information can look? Simple save games, the tips with screenshots at the start of the game, access to those tips and topics through a menu.

I agree, but for me, save games aren't the best idea (even if of course it couldn't hurt). I would personally prefer an extended campaign who goes further in explaining basics while giving playing goals (this way, you learn how to play, but you discover by yourself how to do complex things). Actually in the campaign, there is a lack of explanations concerning : trains, oil, circuit networks, logistic chests, flying robots, blue/redprints, combinators (and with the upcoming 0.13, there will be even more). And explanations/tooltips of technologies when you click on one tech into the tech-tree needs to be more developed for some of them, to give more informations/"how it basically works" (to remind basics in game, or for people who don't play the campaign). There are already some explanations... but for now, some needs further detailing, especially to help newcomers to the game.
But I know that this asks a lot of work : creating missions, tutorials and long explanations need a lot of time. So I understand if it's not one priority, but I think it could improve a lot the game for newcomers, so something to not forget.
In my personal side, I infinitely prefer to see the game teaching me basics while playing than see video tutorials or reading a wiki. Not that tutorial videos or wiki are a bad thing, of course, I'm talking with the "newcomer" spirit (ok I confess : and I would love to see more campaign missions and/or scenarios in the game too ).

[BlackLight]

Factorio has been mentioned by a big German Youtuber: https://youtu.be/708IAjZCv0U?t=11m22s (This show is coproduced with a big German public broadcasting organization.)
Don't mind the rest of the episode, it's a satirical one due to current political events. That explains also Eisenmann vs Kapitän Germania (Iron Man vs Captain America) etc.

[Umcookies]

* Get real about a decent web host. My business site would have cost me a TON more money for 8tb traffic. 80 USD. 10 USD per Terabyte. Get a decent host.

I'm curious, where did you see them mention the actual amount they spent on overages?

On top of that I'm confused by your statement, how does the fact YOU would spend more money on overage traffic make their host bad in any way?

[transportman]

I remember when I played the campaign (which is some time ago, so maybe things have changed in the mean time), no real info was given on how to build the train system, and only later figuring out in free play how it should work. I think tutorials should be part of the base game, giving them the information they need, instead of relying on the community to do things. While it is good that the community picks up these things, and can help with providing the information, that information should be part of the base game.

How the information can look? Simple save games, the tips with screenshots at the start of the game, access to those tips and topics through a menu.

I agree, but for me, save games aren't the best idea (even if of course it couldn't hurt). I would personally prefer an extended campaign who goes further in explaining basics while giving playing goals (this way, you learn how to play, but you discover by yourself how to do complex things).

Indeed, a more extended campaign would also be an option.