Friday Facts #104 - Deadlines ahead

[Ailure]

I think March 2016 would be the next best month to release a game I think, February 2016 have a few game releases too and January is usually the month where a lot of people tend to be tighter on savings...

[Drury]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUxz5StP3AM

I'm very sorry to announce I plan on having a FLAMEWAR here, because right here you just sound to me like the guys who claim that Call of Duty invented first person shooter.

That was already mentioned before, Factorio isn't a puzzle game like SpaceChem, Infinifactory, Big Pharma (I heard this one is pretty random, you mix some resources and get something else and you don't know what you'd get in advance) etc. It's a factory optimization game with one clear final goal and a completely unrestricted solution space. You're not required to obey any rules, you may almost always make everything by hand (except things that are made in factories and liquids) but it just takes too much time so you start optimizing and automating things. I haven't seen such motivation before. You may as well optimize your solutions in Infinifactory but you're still restricted by the map size and you still have to complete levels to progress. Factorio doesn't enforce anything, it gives you tools and then you're on your own. Of course, it has similarities with SpaceChem but Zachtronics games are all about visual parallel programming while Factorio is about scaling and optimizing the production lines. It's not enough to just produce something, it's how you produce it thousands of times.

Now you sound like the guys who instantly backpedal on the mention of games like Doom or Wolfenstein and say Call of Duty invented the modern shooter

Semantics.

Also I like how this and the other reply contain "I heard" "it appears"

Let's not argue about things we don't know anything about, shall we?

And last, but not least, Factorio is based on Industrial Craft

[rkfg]

Now you sound like the guys who instantly backpedal on the mention of games like Doom or Wolfenstein and say Call of Duty invented the modern shooter

Semantics.

Also I like how this and the other reply contain "I heard" "it appears"

Let's not argue about things we don't know anything about, shall we?

Hmm, if you mean that Factorio didn't invent automation games you're right. There was a bunch before and I don't argue that. But that's too vague to be a genre. CoD is not much different from other FPSes. In those mentioned before games you just solve the task, you don't have anything to do with the final product. You created it and that's all, go solve the next one. In Factorio many of these items have value of their own, you directly use them, build walls and turrets, weapons, vehicles and robots. I haven't seen a game about creating logistic lines for producing actual useful items that you as a game character can use for different tasks. That's what makes Factorio unique.

BTW, weren't you planning on starting a flamewar? You've got it, mission accomplished!

[Zeblote]

Those icons would look so much better if they weren't put in a bland gui that looks like it's a decade old.

[Drury]

Now you sound like the guys who instantly backpedal on the mention of games like Doom or Wolfenstein and say Call of Duty invented the modern shooter

Semantics.

Also I like how this and the other reply contain "I heard" "it appears"

Let's not argue about things we don't know anything about, shall we?

Hmm, if you mean that Factorio didn't invent automation games you're right. There was a bunch before and I don't argue that. But that's too vague to be a genre. CoD is not much different from other FPSes. In those mentioned before games you just solve the task, you don't have anything to do with the final product. You created it and that's all, go solve the next one. In Factorio many of these items have value of their own, you directly use them, build walls and turrets, weapons, vehicles and robots. I haven't seen a game about creating logistic lines for producing actual useful items that you as a game character can use for different tasks. That's what makes Factorio unique.

BTW, weren't you planning on starting a flamewar? You've got it, mission accomplished!

Job well done!

Well you did admit it's not the first game based on automation, which is good enough in my book. Especially since genres are defined by their core, and the core of Factorio is automation. The little details don't matter since genres are by definition broad and the elements within vary. Just look at Planetary Annihilation, Command and Conquer and Company of Heroes.

Also I have never said Factorio wasn't unique. Matters just definitely aren't dramatic to the degree of "first game of it's genre" or "carving it's own niche"

[rkfg]

Job well done!

Well you did admit it's not the first game based on automation, which is good enough in my book. Especially since genres are defined by their core, and the core of Factorio is automation. The little details don't matter since genres are by definition broad and the elements within vary. Just look at Planetary Annihilation, Command and Conquer and Company of Heroes.

Also I have never said Factorio wasn't unique. Matters just definitely aren't dramatic to the degree of "first game of it's genre" or "carving it's own niche"

Some details are big enough to define a genre. For example, I'm playing Natural Selection 2 almost every evening for 1300 hours to date. It's an FPS basically (for all players but one) with RTS elements (for the commander). I can say the game is of a separate genre, neither FPS nor RTS. It's also not the first of a kind, we have Savage 2 and Nuclear Dawn that more or less are similar though made in different settings.

However, Factorio also is not only about automation! It has a protagonist with health and inventory (maybe RPG-like stats in future with level ups?), you have to explore the map and fight aliens and also build the base, provide supplies for everything (ammo, electricity, water). It's not a pure automation genre like SpaceChem/Infinifactory. So I can still insist that it has its own distinct genre as a crossbreed of automation, TPS and a bit of RTS.

[voyta]

However, under Python intermezzo your company is called Wube softare.

They indeed are Wube (and the Czech entity)

[Peter34]

Some details are big enough to define a genre. For example, I'm playing Natural Selection 2 almost every evening for 1300 hours to date. It's an FPS basically (for all players but one) with RTS elements (for the commander). I can say the game is of a separate genre, neither FPS nor RTS. It's also not the first of a kind, we have Savage 2 and Nuclear Dawn that more or less are similar though made in different settings.

However, Factorio also is not only about automation! It has a protagonist with health and inventory (maybe RPG-like stats in future with level ups?), you have to explore the map and fight aliens and also build the base, provide supplies for everything (ammo, electricity, water). It's not a pure automation genre like SpaceChem/Infinifactory. So I can still insist that it has its own distinct genre as a crossbreed of automation, TPS and a bit of RTS.

No.

Just being a hybrid of two already-existing well-established genres of games, such as Sanctum and Sanctum 2 being a hybrid of tower defence and FPS, isn't the same degree of newness, novelty, as Factorio presents. Factorio is a building-game based on automation (rather than on manual grinding) and is distinctly not a solve-the-puzzle game in the same sense that Infinifactory or presumably SpaceChem is.

And as for BuildCraft, or whatever that Minecraft thing is called, didn't that suffer from the genre-destroying (genre-negating) problem that when the player character moves far enough away from a cluster of machinery, they stop working? The core of Factorio is that automation keeps being automatic without being dependent on player character proximity. Processes keep going on, and on, and on, and on. One benefit of that, perhaps not the most obvious one, is that you can then play the game instead of metagaming the game.

Verdict: Yes, Factorio does score extremely high in terms of novelty factor, offering an experience that is to a stark degree unlike that offered by any other computer games available.

[obstinate]

Thanks for posting these links to your "competitors." I don't really view them that way, because I've already paid for your game, and will probably buy these as well. My appetite for industrial games is larger than any one game can fill. And thank you so much for being an amazing contribution in this space.

[daniel34]

However, under Python intermezzo your company is called Wube softare.

They indeed are Wube (and the Czech entity)

I didn't mean the Wube part, it's more the softare part that is misspelled.

[Drury]

And as for BuildCraft, or whatever that Minecraft thing is called, didn't that suffer from the genre-destroying (genre-negating) problem that when the player character moves far enough away from a cluster of machinery, they stop working? The core of Factorio is that automation keeps being automatic without being dependent on player character proximity. Processes keep going on, and on, and on, and on. One benefit of that, perhaps not the most obvious one, is that you can then play the game instead of metagaming the game.

That was a technical limitation, not an intent.

Also, you sound as if there were no reactors and pipelines in SpaceChem, as if you didn't have to build and link reactors that each synthesizes molecules in a different way. Unlike Factorio, the chain ends differently for each level. We also tend to forget that Factorio has a campaign that goes level by level where you reach an arbitrary goal and move to a different location (just like SpaceChem). It just also has the free play mode tacked on which is basically a very long level with a very complex end product which SpaceChem lacks, but that doesn't mean the game's mechanics deny the possibility. You could make a Factorio-type game out of SpaceChem by simply upscaling the playing field times infinite with randomly generated pumps and mines and giving you an extremely complex end product to produce just like Factorio, but at the time of the game's development, open world elements weren't yet popular enough to warrant implementing. Infinifactory moves in that direction. Notch has already built a turing machine in it.

Of course, you can't know these things if you go to wikipedia and read three sentences.

Whatever the case, they are both games built around the same idea - automation. They have different elements around that idea, but the core idea is the same. Similarly to how Grand Theft Auto doesn't have it's own genre but is an action adventure, same as Uncharted. Just like Mario Kart doesn't have it's own genre but is a racing game. Company of Heroes has no traditional resource-gathering and a very oddball counterplay system, but it's still an RTS.

Those games did something different and new that worked, but they built on existing frameworks. Factorio is the same story. The whole thing is a new experience, but made from ground-up from the ideas we've had lying around in various games for years or even decades. There is one part, the very core one. Automation. That is the thing that we know Factorio by, and the same thing that we know games like SpaceChem or Industrial Craft by. You play the games, you find yourself doing essentially the same thing. Building factories that run by themselves and optimizing them. That's the meat of the thing. Rolling around in your tank is not as prominent.

If it was though, it would still not be a new genre. It would be a tank simulation game One with automation elements.

[daniel34]

And as for BuildCraft, or whatever that Minecraft thing is called, didn't that suffer from the genre-destroying (genre-negating) problem that when the player character moves far enough away from a cluster of machinery, they stop working? The core of Factorio is that automation keeps being automatic without being dependent on player character proximity.

This is the reason I play Factorio. The fact that everything is an actual item, and nothing despawns after the player moves away or after a time limit. Considering topics like this one, which relate Factorio to the real world, there are players that look for this kind of thing.

Factorio is one of the few games that actually simulate everything that goes on in the current world/map, no matter how far you are away from it.
After I read the 0.12 notes, which said that the items on the belt would be only virtual items and not actual entities on the belt, I thought Factorio would go down the same path.
But what Factorio actually did was to keep the current behaviour of the belts (well, except for the sideloading) while still increasing the performance tenfold.

They managed to create a belt system that looks and behaves the same as before, although it's just virtual --> they added another layer of abstraction to the gameplay. And if you don't actually know the difference to the ealier version, you won't see it.

[Kewlhotrod]

talk of a developing a new game and the game isn't even on greenlight yet, also before you start a new game and drop this one, please add muti-core support (to the point where my cpu isnt only using 33%) so atleast modding can take over and do the things you didn't.

[obstinate]

talk of a developing a new game and the game isn't even on greenlight yet, also before you start a new game and drop this one, please add muti-core support (to the point where my cpu isnt only using 33%) so atleast modding can take over and do the things you didn't.

They're not talking about making a new game, silly. They're talking about releasing Factorio on Steam during the winter sale. This would be bad because everyone would be expecting lower prices, and Factorio would not be able to go on sale.

[Drury]

talk of a developing a new game and the game isn't even on greenlight yet, also before you start a new game and drop this one, please add muti-core support (to the point where my cpu isnt only using 33%) so atleast modding can take over and do the things you didn't.

It's pretty normal for developers to work on multiple games at once.

I wonder where this idea that a developer can/should work only on one thing at once is coming from. Especially since this "one thing" is in practice never actually a single repetitive process. Videogames aren't sculptures, you don't carve them out of a single stone with only two tools, a hammer and a chisel. It's more like a war that's being fought on multiple fronts.

They never said they would drop Factorio for their new game. They don't have to. They just close some fronts and open another. Or not close any and hire more manpower specifically for the new project. Anything is possible with money and time.

As for multithreading

Might add that "not so easy" is a bit of an understatement It would be a pretty big project. Think multiplayer-big. I suppose there's still hope, though.

[Kewlhotrod]

I wonder where this idea that a developer can/should work only on one thing at once is coming from. Especially since this "one thing" is in practice never actually a single repetitive process. Videogames aren't sculptures, you don't carve them out of a single stone with only two tools, a hammer and a chisel. It's more like a war that's being fought on multiple fronts.

well, as a passionate fan of factorio I don't like to think of factorio being dropped in development, ever. nor even resources that could be spent developing more on this game and reaching new heights of potential(rts direction or such) rather than other games they decided to produce instead, while I understand this is common practice for game developers and how in general game sales work it just hurts inside.

hell, I would happyly pay a subscription fee for them to develop more

[Yttrium]

Fine folks. Factorio Friday Facts fun finished. For fiddling further feel free

Oh you <3

[slpwnd]

Thanks for all the inputs related (not only) to the release date of the game. Actually we were not aware of the fact that many big games release in November. We will look into this a bit more deeper and see where we could best fit the Steam EA release of the game. So basically the possibilities as I see it now are:

- November 2015 (get out befoe XMas, but risk getting "drown" in the influx of new games and steam sales)
- January 2015 (should be relatively calm though some people might be financially exhausted after XMas )
- March 2015 (imho this is too late)

[ratchetfreak]

Thanks for all the inputs related (not only) to the release date of the game. Actually we were not aware of the fact that many big games release in November. We will look into this a bit more deeper and see where we could best fit the Steam EA release of the game. So basically the possibilities as I see it now are:

- November 2015 (get out befoe XMas, but risk getting "drown" in the influx of new games and steam sales)
- January 2015 (should be relatively calm though some people might be financially exhausted after XMas )
- March 2015 (imho this is too late)

releasing in the past? that'll be a fun adventure

[DerivePi]

releasing in the past? that'll be a fun adventure

Yes, but first you have to produce 10 satellites, and 100 level 3 speed modules and then insert them into a locomotive, which then needs a straight run of rail to get up to 88 miles per hour