Friday Facts #235 - 0.16 stable

[Lubricus]

thank you for the diagram eradicator.
that is how it should work. if game makers swap the reverse direction you will have people growing up parallel parking into oncoming traffic.

What I say is that tanks and stuff that can turn on the spot behaves the other way. The tank in factorio behaves like a car, not like a real tank that use the relative speed of the tracks to turn and can turn on the spot. I think that is OK but it is confusing and not at all obvious how it should behave.

[impetus maximus]

ok, i see what you are saying now. i don't really use tanks.

when moving forward and turning left, the left tread seems to slow.
when in reverse turning left accually makes the left tread speed up and the tank turns to the players right.

[eradicator]

Oh. Weird yea. The tank actually has inversed controls when driving backwards. That would explain the "weird" feeling i sometimes got when using it. I don't have any real-world tank-driving experience, but i find it very likely that they would drive the same as a car would to reduce the learning barrier for soldiers.

[Spyhawk]

Oh. Weird yea. The tank actually has inversed controls when driving backwards. That would explain the "weird" feeling i sometimes got when using it. I don't have any real-world tank-driving experience, but i find it very likely that they would drive the same as a car would to reduce the learning barrier for soldiers.

See viewtopic.php?f=6&t=30942.

[Bizz Keryear]

I don't think declaring 0.17 an RC is an good idea there are still a few things to be sorted out and to be improved before release.
E.g. Possibility to climb over pipes(in vanilla), or that pavement and cliffs don't mix very well (at least in certain cases).
I also would love to have different pipes (e.g. different colors) that only connect to their own type and not to others, except general purpose ones.

Though those issues might be sorted out by 0.18 ... which then can become a good solid 1.0 once stable.


P.S.: I think to few people are playing this game. It is good and fun enough that at least 7 billion copies should have been sold, and till that is reached to few people own a copy.


P.P.S.: Make Factorio 2.0 3D ... or even VR ...

[impetus maximus]

Bizz Keryear, you forgot world/ore generation. there is going to be a flood of 'stable only' players complaining about it.

[golfmiketango]

Aeternus beat me to my main comment: it's very, very plausible that some kind of sandboxing or virus... er, anti-virus.... they are kind of the same thing aren't they? ... is at fault for the jump outside of factorio. These are, as you may know, analogous to LD_PRELOAD sandboxes on linux and interpose between any linkage to the filesystem, network... basically anything potentially security related (what code normally goes there?). Microsoft has respectable, standardized "filter driver" framework support for this type of thing in recent Windows but not everybody runs recent windows... on ancient windows, who knows what is going on? Probably all sorts of horrors.

Also plausible are cracked factorii distributed OOB, which could be trying, unsuccessfully, it would seem, to scribble over exception generating code at the last moment in order to prevent a bug-report. If this were the explanation, then these strange minidumps don't tell you anything useful, except that your game is being pirated, which you probably knew.

It might be sensible from a signal/noise perspective (and have the nice side-effect of discrediting many paranoid hypotheses about Wube's motivations wrt auto-crash-reporting) to checksum the game binaries (but not the in-memory dll images, since the Windows ecosystem has so many hacks that inject themselves into every process that you'd probably never see another bug report if you checksummed those), and not bother doing a crash-report, if these are modified from their official versions.

Edit:

BTW, I forgot to mention wine. Who knows what sorts of magic occurs in wine but if there is not a cross-module linkage there, then the cheat-engine hypothesis seems more likely. Also why would you run factorio under wine when there is a Linux version? I don't know about others, but I admit I've done this myself both in my early experiments with pirated factorio (I never buy a game until I've had the opportunity to try the full version, first, and if no possibility exists to do so by sanctioned means, I shamelessly pursue "other" means as necessary), and in recent months, out of intellectual curiosity.

One other note, I really like the non-judgemental and non-hysterical way you presented the possibility of "cheat engines" in the FFF. Most software companies would not treat something like this as an interesting thing that can be talked about openly, but as a shameful corporate secret that should never be discussed publicly and combatted technocratically. I don't know for sure, and am admittedly super-libertarian about intellectual property stuff, but fwiw, I doubt the standard approach and conventional wisdom about piracy and control of binary integrity is profitable for game companies that exercise them, nor, in the aggregate result, for potentially negatively-impacted multiplayer gamers who may at times be victims of cheating.

[bman212121]

Oh. Weird yea. The tank actually has inversed controls when driving backwards. That would explain the "weird" feeling i sometimes got when using it. I don't have any real-world tank-driving experience, but i find it very likely that they would drive the same as a car would to reduce the learning barrier for soldiers.

That's what it is... In the tank it doesn't matter which end of the tank is up, if you're pressing W to go north, left and right do what they should. If you are pressing S to go south, they are inverted, but once again it doesn't matter which end of the tank is facing in that direction. I actually prefer it working like that, because it's at least consistent. But then switch over to the car and all of the sudden you'll get completely turned around when trying to back it up. I'm not sure why it's so odd in top down, because if you're used to using R/C the car isn't different than that. Could just be perspective of how you're looking at it that really makes it odd.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Cars work "properly" by turning the front wheels. This means while holding left, you will always go left regardless of if you're going forward or back.

Tanks are more like a simplified tread control and rather than "left" or "right", they "spin". Left spins anticlockwise, right spins clockwise. This allows the tank to rotate even when not moving, for it to behave like a car either it would need to lose that functionality, or alternatively we'd need to add individual forward and backwards controls for each tread (eg so to move forward you'd need to hold both Lforward and Rforward, to rotate clockwise on the spot hold Lforward and Rbackward).

Perhaps my mild experience with a traxcavator gives me an advantage here but I don't find it difficult to flip between control schemes. Just remember the car turns, the tank rotates.

[eradicator]

Tanks are more like a simplified tread control and rather than "left" or "right", they "spin". Left spins anticlockwise, right spins clockwise. This allows the tank to rotate even when not moving, for it to behave like a car either it would need to lose that functionality, or alternatively we'd need to add individual forward and backwards controls for each tread (eg so to move forward you'd need to hold both Lforward and Rforward, to rotate clockwise on the spot hold Lforward and Rbackward).
Just remember the car turns, the tank rotates.

I actually had an RC car decades ago that had individual controls for spin direction of left/right wheels (i.e. two sticks both going north/south) which allowed to do 360° spins etc, but i don't think that would work well with a keyboard that has no analog input capabilities. Thinking of the tank controls as rotating the tank around its center works i guess. The mapping of two tracks to a steering wheel has no inherit physical reasoning though imho, and could be made to work the same as with a car. My factorian soul yearns for "consistency" with cars/trains and i don't think you'd have to sacrifice the turning-on-the-spot ability for that, not that i care enough to push the issue, now that i understand why it happens. I tried finding docs about how real tanks steer btw, but couldn't find anything :/.

[Killcreek2]

I think we just need to give a pair of Stack Inserters the ability to compress/consume a blue belt - this will both simplify and buff train-belt loading and unloading, and make those faster prod+speed setups more feasible with belts.

2x stack can now compress a blue lane, is this what you mean?

pic

Blue belt compression.png (354.74 KiB) Viewed 7731 times

[Immun]

I tried finding docs about how real tanks steer btw, but couldn't find anything :/.

old tanks have no steering wheel mostly and no gas pedal, they have two sticks. pushing forward the stick spins the coressponding caterpillar forward. pulling the stick backwards. some models have the backward function controlled by the selected gear and then only a "pushing" function. now is up to you how you want to move the tank. pushing the sticks simultaneous is straight forward. the left one a bit less forward and you turn left because of the "inner"/left caterpillar is rotating not that fast. now you can combine . extrem variant is pushing one forward and one backward. then you spin on the spot. not all tanks are able to do this because some are just able to spin a caterpillar in one direction. means extrem position is one standing and one spinning forward or backward. other models can rotate one full forward and full backward allowing turing really on the spot like the factorio one i like this because are the cooler tanks from mechanical perspective.

modern tanks are "imitating" more a cars driving feeling by having a wheel (not fully rotatable normally) and a gas pedal. the board computer then calculates from the selected gear (forward or backward usually) and the turning angle on the "wheel" how the caterpillars must be accelerated and the spinning direction. behavior is as far as my experience like in factorio. i think theoretically it could be inverted because it's an calculated signal in each case and perhaps this exists as well. behavior at the end is the same as explained for the "older" tanks.

perhaps i forgot some versions and solutions out there, but this are the solutions i know from my experience and hopefully understandable explained

[eradicator]

@Immun:
(Btw, your quote is broken, i said that, not Deadly-Bagel ;)).
And with "couldn't find anything" i meant "anything regarding how modern steering-wheel tanks behave when driving backwards". I did find the two-sticks thing for older tanks (as already mentioned) and that modern tanks just map it all to a steering wheel. You say the mapping is "as in factorio", may i ask for what, or rather how many different models you know this? Maybe with country of originl of the tank model(s)?

[Resand]

How can you decide to not fix the totally broken map generation before 17??!!
It has quite effectively stopped me from playing Factorio. There's going to be a flood of complaints when this is moved to stable release.

Currently the map is:
- random tiny cliffs in starting area, no real cliff walls or any outside of starting area.
- No lakes/oceans. Only "swamp land".
- Almost no coal
- Almost no stone
- Almost all desert

[fiery_salmon]

totally broken map generation

Extreme exaggerating is not helpful. "totally broken" is something that is, well, totally broken. You may dislike changes - but it is clear that game is playable and for most/many/nearly all there is no reason for complaints.

- Almost no coal
- Almost no stone

Easy to change with map generation settings. Map settings may also fix your other problems.

It has quite effectively stopped me from playing Factorio.

If you hate new version you can use old version - it is not like it was made worse by releasing new updates.

[Deadly-Bagel]

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=58806

the generator iron:copper:coal:stone ratio is 9.8 : 6 : 4.5 : 2.3

[Oktokolo]

Currently the map is:
- random tiny cliffs in starting area, no real cliff walls or any outside of starting area.
- No lakes/oceans. Only "swamp land".
- Almost no coal
- Almost no stone
- Almost all desert

Must be another game. In Factorio 0.16 i never had problems with resource or biome distribution. Also got looong cliffs and huge oceans (altered the map generation settings to get them).
Starting area almost always had enough iron/copper/coal/stone until oil (and i am always late for oil).

[GeekinaCave]

does anyone know an alternative official link for download factorio installers, i just try to download zip version from the page and it stops at 98% and know it seems down (this is not the first time that happens BTW)

[fiery_salmon]

does anyone know an alternative official link for download factorio installers, i just try to download zip version from the page and it stops at 98% and know it seems down (this is not the first time that happens BTW)

Have you tried udating using ingame updater?

[Oktokolo]

does anyone know an alternative official link for download factorio installers, i just try to download zip version from the page and it stops at 98% and know it seems down (this is not the first time that happens BTW)

Get any pirated copy and use the ingame updater with your legit account credentials.