Friday Facts #231 - Belt compression & Crash log uploading

[Nomadic Steppe]

It is rare for your problems with AMD processors, I used to have an 8350 fx and now I use a Ryzen 1700 or 3.8 "Excellent CPU" and everything works perfect in my 500 SPM mega base only belts and growing.

Very good that speak of privacy, transparency and honesty demonstrates its excellence as managers of this game.

[doxsroxs]

While all this is cool, when are you going to give me the ability to send a train directly to a station ID?
Currently trains have unique IDs, giving it to stations and allowing trains to be sent to station ID regardless of schedule using combinators would open up a world of possibilities

[RS_Lak]

Interesting FFF. As a developer myself I can clearly understand why you want those crash logs.

All the sperging out over uploading crash logs is less about privacy and more about piracy. Thieves don't like it when their stolen goods phone home.

Aside from that, anyone whining about privacy and sill using chrome/google/facebook on a daily basis is a hypocrite and an idiot.

It is fun to see crash logs where the person clearly pirated it But I don't really care. If it helps us fix a bug then they're helping us make the game better.

I'm curious, how can you see that they use a pirated copy? I never pirated any game (except for minecraft years ago, which I bought about 2 days later) so I dont really know whats different.

[Rseding91]

Interesting FFF. As a developer myself I can clearly understand why you want those crash logs.

All the sperging out over uploading crash logs is less about privacy and more about piracy. Thieves don't like it when their stolen goods phone home.

Aside from that, anyone whining about privacy and sill using chrome/google/facebook on a daily basis is a hypocrite and an idiot.

It is fun to see crash logs where the person clearly pirated it But I don't really care. If it helps us fix a bug then they're helping us make the game better.

I'm curious, how can you see that they use a pirated copy? I never pirated any game (except for minecraft years ago, which I bought about 2 days later) so I dont really know whats different.

The exe file path:

Code: Select all

C:\users\user\downloads\Factorio.windows.x64.0.16.25.full.version\bin\x64\factorio.exe

[eradicator]

Even with all of this some people think that we are doing something wrong. To paraphrase what kovarex said: "The games I played send all kinds of data and they don't allow me to opt out, now we do it and are transparent about it and we are the bad guys?"

Well. More like: In an environment where (by a gut feeling) every company steals as much data as they can legally (or illegaly as long as no one notices) get away with without asking, for whatever purpose they might deem important to themselfs (mostly marketing i guess...) you chose the very brave move to tell everyone you're now collecting data too (for which at least my respect you have). But, imho the reaction you got was pretty much to be expected. Just because you're transparent about being opt-out doesn't mean people are going to like it. And to be quite frank, the transparency only reaches as far as the forum/changelog, which are as unlikely to be read by the majority of people as they are unlikely to click "Send report" on that explorer crash dialogue you quoted. Because, as you said yourself, you don't actually trust people to send you those reports if they are made aware that they have a choice (because they're in a state of mistrust due to other companies misbehaving), so you chose to hide the opt-out button in a seldom used options menu where you expect most people won't notice it. Imho you (conciously or not) chose to not go the high-risk route of not telling anyone and having that potentially blow up in your face later, but you also chose to not go the other high-risk route of giving users at least a one-time opt-in dialogue on first startup and risk not getting as many reports as you want. You went the low-risk route in the middle. And got a low-risk reaction. Not sure what you expected... (Also this paragraph became far longer than intended).
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As other people have mentiond pop-up-dialog designs here's one with an evil psycological twist:
The send-report dialog has only two buttons.
[No, not this time.][Yes, always.]
Forcing the user who doesn't want to upload to click every time while the "cooperative" user only needs to click once.
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We also updated our EULA and included it in the game to mitigate any legal issues.

Chances are that your EULA was at least partially invalid in Germany in the first place and updating it in-place without notifying the user doesn't work as far as i know. I can't find a good english source on it so i'll translate the summary from the German wiki page:

In Germany EULAs are only part of the contract for [mass market/non-custom] software if they were agreed upon by seller and buyer prior to purchase. This includes the possibility to view the EULA in full when agreeing to the contract. [EULA] conditions only made accessible to the buyer after purchase (for example during Installation or as printed booklet inside the box) are without effect for the buyer. This also applies if the buyer clicked "I agree to the EULA" or similar during installation because the software would otherwise refuse to be installed.

Even in case an EULA is valid (e.g by being displayed in a well visible fashion during online purchase [...]) its applicability may still be limited, as in this case they are treaded as AGB [German: Common contract conditions] and are subject to content control according to the AGB-Rules of the BGB [German: Civil Code].

This first and foremost means that you can't use the EULA to legalize-after-the-fact something that would otherwise violate any German law. So if ("I'm not a lawyer") the opt-out data collection you're doing was illegal in Germany, then your EULA couldn't change that. According to the wiki Austria as a law with about the same effect.
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As a closing note i'd like to say that i'm not angry at you or anyone for whatever reason. I think i can understand the people worrying about their privacy (me included) as much as i can understand (and respect) your desire as a developer to get those crash reports to squash those damn bugs out of existance.
It's just that we live in a time where collecting data from private people is a very delicate and ongoing issue. And a hot topic in public and political debates. And you jumped right into the target zone.

Have a nice day. ;)
(And to say it again: I'm not angry. I just enjoy a good discussion. Sadly people sometimes still get angry even if i state this explicitly :x)

[sowieso]

As other people have mentiond pop-up-dialog designs here's one with an evil psycological twist:
The send-report dialog has only two buttons.
[No, not this time.][Yes, always.]
Forcing the user who doesn't want to upload to click every time while the "cooperative" user only needs to click once.

Please don't do that! Forcing the user who wants to be nice to make a commitment for eternity. That's a slap in the face for people who want to contribute. There should definitely be an option like [Yes, ask me again].
An option like [No, don't ask me again] could be hidden inside the options (like it is now), a bit of annoyance is ok for that.

[bobingabout]

Interesting FFF. As a developer myself I can clearly understand why you want those crash logs.

All the sperging out over uploading crash logs is less about privacy and more about piracy. Thieves don't like it when their stolen goods phone home.

Aside from that, anyone whining about privacy and sill using chrome/google/facebook on a daily basis is a hypocrite and an idiot.

It is fun to see crash logs where the person clearly pirated it But I don't really care. If it helps us fix a bug then they're helping us make the game better.

I'm curious, how can you see that they use a pirated copy? I never pirated any game (except for minecraft years ago, which I bought about 2 days later) so I dont really know whats different.

The exe file path:

Code: Select all

C:\users\user\downloads\Factorio.windows.x64.0.16.25.full.version\bin\x64\factorio.exe

can't even be bothered to move it to like, C:\Games\ or something.

[dee-]

Reposted for visibility.

I went out of my way to completely gut Windows 10's ability to send any form of telemetry. (And in the process found out exactly how much Windows cares about permissions. Which is to say not at all. I replaced their shitty Cortana executable with a blank one because it was running even after disabling it then set all accounts to deny all access to it and the OS still replaced it and still runs it in the background.) They try to remove your choice and they're not remotely transparent about what data they're after in the slightest. So they can simply make do without that data regardless of how innocuous it might have actually been.

I own windows 10 and factorio, I hate it that windows 10 has mandatory tracking, because I don't trust microsoft.

It's not mandatory, you just didn't bother to look into your available options to turn it off. Options have always existed to disable telemetry since WinXP and haven't gotten any harder to disable since then.

That is very wrong, sorry. The (german) university where I work had to advise staff not to use the first windows10 version because some invasive options could not be turned off, not even with registry hacking (and in the menues privacy options were distributed like a jigsaw puzzle, so you could never be sure you found everything). Only after much pressure (don't remember, from germany or EU) did Microsoft make everything selectable. BUT: The interesting bit: Microsoft only made the professional version able to turn off all invasive options, I.e. companies usually can do it, private users of windows are out of luck if they want total privacy. Even now an EU agency is asking Microsoft in vain to give out information (under NDA naturally) of the last secret bits of telemetry that Windows10 sends home.

[Alice3173]

The exe file path:

Code: Select all

C:\users\user\downloads\Factorio.windows.x64.0.16.25.full.version\bin\x64\factorio.exe

can't even be bothered to move it to like, C:\Games\ or something.

I wouldn't say it being in downloads necessarily means it's pirated. The "Factorio.windows.x64.0.16.25.full.version" is the part that makes it obvious to me. For example, this is my Factorio path:

Code: Select all

Z:\1_Misc\Factorio_0.12.29\bin\x64\Factorio.exe

With Z:\1_Misc being my downloads folder. (And 0.12.29 being the first version of Factorio I installed after buying it and I never got around to fixing the folder name even after updating, lol.)

[Inglonias]

I am slightly disappointed in this Friday Facts. Not because of the privacy thing. I couldn't care less about that (and incidentally, I've never actually had a situation where Factorio has outright crashed on me, so either I'm not playing hard enough or you all are just that good)

No, the reason I'm disappointed is that I want technical details on how belt compression was fixed! From my observations, it looks like what you did was check if a belt was fully compressed when something was inserted from outside of it, and if it wasn't, stop everything before the insertion point until there was enough room for the newcomer to re-compress the belt. That part is simple enough and pretty elegant, as it means you don't need a special case for when a belt is almost compressed but not quite. But after all the details regarding belt optimization, I'm a little curious how it all works.

[Rammix]

To the devs.

You might add an option allowing people to add their email address to the log file if they wish so.
I'd gladly provide my email address for cases when devs need some additional information from me.

[tazdu29]

my Factorio path:

Code: Select all

Z:\1_Misc\Factorio_0.12.29\bin\x64\Factorio.exe

Mine is

Code: Select all

/opt/factorio/bin/x64/factorio

Linux power

(And 0.12.29 being the first version of Factorio I installed after buying it and I never got around to fixing the folder name even after updating, lol.)

I fixed the issue by just naming the folder factorio, and adding "/opt/factorio/bin/x64/" to PATH. I then use in-game updater when needed.

[justincuster]

Thank you for addressing the privacy concerns. It helped a great deal that you very clearly outline exactly what was being sent. By the way, I don't think you are the "bad guys", but I don't like the assumption that just because everyone else is collecting data, it's somehow perfectly OK.

[DMFan79]

I started having random crashes with version 16.25 (IIRC). I can't really link the crash to something specific I was doing in the game. I never reached this tech level before though, so maybe it could be originated from the increased complexity of my base.

I'm using a Ryzen 1600x processor on a Windows 10 OS. My RAM is OCed from the BIOS using the default OC profile.

[fechnert]

[...] I'm curious, how can you see that they use a pirated copy? [...]

The exe file path:

Code: Select all

C:\users\user\downloads\Factorio.windows.x64.0.16.25.full.version\bin\x64\factorio.exe

Aren't there even more indicators like a missing license or stuff like that?

[ratchetfreak]

I am slightly disappointed in this Friday Facts. Not because of the privacy thing. I couldn't care less about that (and incidentally, I've never actually had a situation where Factorio has outright crashed on me, so either I'm not playing hard enough or you all are just that good)

No, the reason I'm disappointed is that I want technical details on how belt compression was fixed! From my observations, it looks like what you did was check if a belt was fully compressed when something was inserted from outside of it, and if it wasn't, stop everything before the insertion point until there was enough room for the newcomer to re-compress the belt. That part is simple enough and pretty elegant, as it means you don't need a special case for when a belt is almost compressed but not quite. But after all the details regarding belt optimization, I'm a little curious how it all works.

My interpretation:

old version: when an inserter tries to insert it looks for a gap >= min_gap, if there isn't a gap large enough it waits.

new version: when an inserter tries to insert it looks for a gap > 0, and inserts the item, however the gap to the next item then becomes negative so when the belt moves first that negative gap gets incremented up to 0 and then the items can move again.

[ske]

Aren't there even more indicators like a missing license or stuff like that?

"Please tell us any way of how you could identify a pirated copy... for science!"

[Zeblote]

[...] I'm curious, how can you see that they use a pirated copy? [...]

The exe file path:

Code: Select all

C:\users\user\downloads\Factorio.windows.x64.0.16.25.full.version\bin\x64\factorio.exe

Aren't there even more indicators like a missing license or stuff like that?

There are no licenses for drm free games

[DanGio]

Or you could have made it opt in but also belt compression fix to be opt in, just below in the menu, forcing everyone to go check it at least once ! OK I leave

[Loewchen]

There are no licenses for drm free games

That is not really how this works, factorio itself is obviously licensed since this is essentially what you pay for when purchasing the game, if there were no license offer for it, it would just exist and no one but the creator could use it. DRM is just a tool to prevent breach of the license agreement, not using DRM has no legal effect.