Re: Friday Facts #268 - The modern Biter
Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2018 9:30 pm
if you start ruthless game, you will die, because they will eventually overrun your base.5thHorseman wrote: ↑Sun Nov 11, 2018 9:30 pmSo if you start the most ruthless game you possibly can and then stand still forever, you'll never die?
That is corret. As long as no pollution ever reaches them - i.e. by not building a factory - they will never attack you. I confirmed this by cranking all settings up to 11 and then using /c game.speed = 1000. After 30 hours i was still standing still.5thHorseman wrote: ↑Sun Nov 11, 2018 9:30 pmSo if you start the most ruthless game you possibly can and then stand still forever, you'll never die?
Thanks for correction, i always thought they still can path trough (never checked with debug )eradicator wrote: ↑Mon Nov 12, 2018 8:29 amThat is corret. As long as no pollution ever reaches them - i.e. by not building a factory - they will never attack you. I confirmed this by cranking all settings up to 11 and then using /c game.speed = 1000. After 30 hours i was still standing still.5thHorseman wrote: ↑Sun Nov 11, 2018 9:30 pmSo if you start the most ruthless game you possibly can and then stand still forever, you'll never die?
Don't forget that this is not a survival game, or an ecosystem simulator. The biters are just there to provide an antagonist mechanism to the player's factory expansion.GlorifiedToaster wrote: ↑Mon Nov 12, 2018 2:44 pmAm I the only one who wants to see more enemies than just biters? I mean, I understand that It would be difficult to add a few extra species, but when you think about it, biters currently are the dominant species wherever the player happens to be. They have no competition, which if you look into nature, isn't something that would naturally occur cause that shows intelligence that could rival a human, which I don't think would be seen in a biter. I get it, we should fix what we have before we get more, but when the day when you guys say the biters are completely finished, might you add a new species to see some more variation? Thank you for your time.
Like what for example?GlorifiedToaster wrote: ↑Mon Nov 12, 2018 2:44 pmAm I the only one who wants to see more enemies than just biters?
yes, you are only one. if i wanted survival game i would play something else. for me bitters are just part of eco that is here to limit speed of your expansion. i play half time without bitters, when i have complex builds with complex mod and want to focus on actual building and not want to spent resources or time on dealing with those creatures.GlorifiedToaster wrote: ↑Mon Nov 12, 2018 2:44 pmAm I the only one who wants to see more enemies than just biters? I mean, I understand that It would be difficult to add a few extra species, but when you think about it, biters currently are the dominant species wherever the player happens to be. They have no competition, which if you look into nature, isn't something that would naturally occur cause that shows intelligence that could rival a human, which I don't think would be seen in a biter. I get it, we should fix what we have before we get more, but when the day when you guys say the biters are completely finished, might you add a new species to see some more variation? Thank you for your time.
We're getting into semantics now. My wording was detail, not realism. If you zoom in enough on any bug (even the cute ones), it will look more disturbing IMO.
Yes, I agree, that was a stupid thing for me to say. On the other hand, maybe the devs will keep around low-res sprites for players who find the high-res biters disturbing, although that wouldn't be much of a solution either. Come to think of it, someone may have to mod less disturbing models in or something.
There should be a mod that pixelates the icky bits.KoblerMan wrote: ↑Mon Nov 12, 2018 8:48 pmYes, I agree, that was a stupid thing for me to say. On the other hand, maybe the devs will keep around low-res sprites for players who find the high-res biters disturbing, although that wouldn't be much of a solution either. Come to think of it, someone may have to mod less disturbing models in or something.
I thought of that too, worried that I am that my average grade laptop will soon run out of juice to cope with all of these visuals.Adil wrote: ↑Mon Nov 12, 2018 12:58 pmAbout those sidelegs. Does an entity that occurs in thousands need that much visual noise around itself? The blue biter running really fast on the gif image doesn't look nice.
As game currently plays, biters often end up bunching together in tight globs. Did you test how those crowds would look with new animations?
What about the renderer load? In some previous report you've been talking about how overlaid sprites are bad for performance. I would bet that these new legs will be overlaid by other biters all the time and they do look like they'd take up more pixels than old ones.
New face and the art picture looks nice though.
Random thought: they're called Biters, but their attack animation looks more like the mantis shrimp attack than the process of biting.
Cool idea. +1 for thatGlorifiedToaster wrote: ↑Mon Nov 12, 2018 2:44 pmAm I the only one who wants to see more enemies than just biters? I mean, I understand that It would be difficult to add a few extra species, but when you think about it, biters currently are the dominant species wherever the player happens to be. They have no competition, which if you look into nature, isn't something that would naturally occur cause that shows intelligence that could rival a human, which I don't think would be seen in a biter. I get it, we should fix what we have before we get more, but when the day when you guys say the biters are completely finished, might you add a new species to see some more variation? Thank you for your time.
I think that particular part of their lifecycle has been slaughtered on the sacrificial altar in honor of his majesty Yuu Peyes the Alaccellerating.Creepopolous wrote: ↑Tue Nov 13, 2018 2:42 amI hope they get idle animations. If you're really far away and see them in their natural habitat...
they do absolutely nothing. They stand completely still. Even them simply breathing or bobbing would be preferable to being statues.
Of course would AI cost CPU time - but AI is relatively easy to parallelize and Factorio can't currently fully utilize 8 hyperthreads / 4 cores (wich i consider to be mainstream now). So additional biter AI could come for free (almost as Factorio still needs to get events to the AI and results to the renderer).eradicator wrote: ↑Tue Nov 13, 2018 8:43 amI think that particular part of their lifecycle has been slaughtered on the sacrificial altar in honor of his majesty Yuu Peyes the Alaccellerating.
You are forgetting the memory cost of accessing large swaths of the map to make your complex AI decisions.Oktokolo wrote: ↑Tue Nov 13, 2018 12:48 pmOf course would AI cost CPU time - but AI is relatively easy to parallelize and Factorio can't currently fully utilize 8 hyperthreads / 4 cores (wich i consider to be mainstream now). So additional biter AI could come for free (almost as Factorio still needs to get events to the AI and results to the renderer).eradicator wrote: ↑Tue Nov 13, 2018 8:43 amI think that particular part of their lifecycle has been slaughtered on the sacrificial altar in honor of his majesty Yuu Peyes the Alaccellerating.
The reason to not improve biter AI for 0.17 is probably a todo list overflow.
would be very interesting if we could make friends and have peace treaties with them so i could have some of their land and would use eff modules to keep pollution down, it would also be nice if i could plant trees and keep pollution down further to not disturb the locals. this way i am not destroying them to get them out of my way.