Friday Facts #282 - 0.17 in sight

[Merssedes]

Native seablock-type maps? ^_^

[Cyonic]

I have a question regarding the map generation and specifically the water generation. Currently, in 0.16, as you get further from spawn the bodies of water appear to be increasing until you get massive lakes even if you selected low water settings.
Has this changed for 0.17 so that water doesn't overflow after you explore for a bit?

I like a bit of water on the map but with too much it requires obscene amounts of landfill which I'd rather avoid.

[CzBuCHi]

does this mean seasons / weather could be a thing now?

This is all done once at generation time (and isn't as quick as my animations make it look), so doesn't do anything to make tiles change dynamically during a game.

how hard would be to run some script on each tile, that will update moisture? - say once every in-game `week`

also seasons slider would be nice to have during map gen

edit: also can map preview include something like 'fog-of-war' slider, that will control, how big map area is actualy generated in preview? (it would speed up map generation and do not reveal huge map to player - for me ore locations are important only at starting area, for rest there are trains ...)

[Serenity]

Blueprint books in blueprint books! Yes! I always wanted that. Like having one book for belt stuff and that then contains a book for each color of belt balancers, one for special large balancers, one for lane balancers, one for bus splitoffs, etc.

Water generation is the single most important 0.17 feature for me. Would have been nice to have some larger scale pictures of oceans and lakes, but this looks pretty promising

[bman212121]

Amazing work guys! Normally I post if there is something I'd like to add feedback about. I don't really have anything to add, this FFF is solid from start to finish and I love how these changes ended up working out. This definitely makes me much more excited to give 0.17 a try. I was going to wait a month or so before testing it out, but I think I might play around with the new map generator sooner than later. Also, the blueprint library work looks great!

[JadeSpider]

Hello. I have always preferred to use the map gen settings json format to generate maps. It is unclear whether this has been updated in 0.17 to support all of the features available in the GUI. Specifically, how will we control all of the options that are in the "Terrain" tab in the GUI screenshot? It would be nice to have an example of the file with all possible options demonstrated.

[jona5]

nice work guys!

psst! may need to be fixed:

Screenshot 2019-02-15 at 19.36.16.png (12.12 KiB) Viewed 7728 times

[Qwa7]

Hmm PvP islands.. so up warhammer not for long. ))

[GrumpyJoe]

2 thing about the map generation

a button/slider that makes all settings per resource the same (if you still want to change, you can do it from there) would be awesome
Im playing around with settings, with Angels + Madclowns ores.
Thats 20 dropdowns x 3 colums to change (will be better with sliders instead of dropdown menues, but still)
And chainging every single one is abit tedious.


and will there be more grass? right now im getting about 80% sand starting areas (with sand/desert/grass and dirt set the same) just to hit regenerate, which is a little annoying.

I understand that both cases are a very small portion of the game, its not even gameplay. But that would be the icing on the cake

cant wait!

[Avezo]

Still hope that during playtesting devs will realise they've made new blue science even a greater step-up than previous blue science was. Red circuits need to be removed from it (and probably added to higher science pack).

[OutOfNicks]

\o/
Thanks guys!
Now hurry up!

[thecatlover1996]

- And a kind of dumb suggestion, it would look cool if accumulators would arc electricity to other nearby accumulators.

yeah I assumed thats what the original graphics were trying to do - show that they are connected in a grid.

maybe combining the animations of multiple accumulators into like a large chunk, like a texture pattern, ( idk the word for it sigh ) would also solve the animation stuttering problem?

I do get what you mean though; in some way, the Tesla poles could become shared between neighboring accumulators

Also, it kinda looks like the two rows of accumulators have some kind of "gap" between them, or that the top row is higher elevated than the bottom row. This probably is a side-effect of the 2.5D projection of Factorio -- kind of similar to the train-stretching problem that was described in FFF-133. So I don't know if this is easy to fix, but it would look neat if neighboring accumulators would look like one big chunk instead of separate rows

P.S. So hyped for 0.17 and the upcoming incremental releases

[<NO_NAME>]

The new version is coming!

ALL ABOARD THE HYPE TRAIN!!!

[J-H]

A starting island that can be bridged to a mainland (via landfill) sounds good. A starting island with nothing but water around it sounds like a recipe for a factory that dies because it can't get more resources.

I'd like some clarification on which one we're getting.

A starting island with nothing but water around it,
It will be a somewhat 'challenge map', to launch a rocket with only the limited resources the Island provides

Oh, fun.... an efficiency challenge. It's entirely possible to waste resources on unnecessary research, belts, etc., and lose.


Will there be a set minimum of resources, enough to support a rocket?

No laser turrets on that playthrough. Minimal robots because they are expensive... no high end PA with fusion reactor. Possibly no nuclear power? Interesting.

[frostig]

Oh thanks for "Water Placement". All my 0.16 maps are generated in 0.15 and revealed via cheat. Glad I will not need to do this anymore.

[irbork]

Is AUX (terrain type) a temperature? It seems most logical to have tile type chosen by its temperature and humidity values. It will allow to properly generate maps with additional biomes, like tundra, tropical forest, ice sheet.

I would not mind if some trusted streemers/youtubers (AntiElitz, Exterminator, etc.) would got early access to the experimental to showcase it on streams/videos.

[naed]

So for 0.17, the water 'frequency' and 'size' sliders are being replaced with 'scale' and 'coverage', which do the same thing, but in a hopefully more obvious way. Larger scale means larger land features, while more coverage means more of the map covered in water.

"Larger scale means larger land features" still seems like it's the inverse and just as counter-intuitive.
Can this be reversed to a larger water 'scale' means more water? I may still be confused about the wording, but seeing it in a working preview will fix that.

The tooltip for the Scale column is "Overall scale of features and the space between them", if that makes it any clearer. "Scale" makes everything larger, like inflating a globe balloon. "Coverage" of water increases the water level without moving anything else, so that there's more water but otherwise the world looks about the same.

We felt that "frequency" was confusing because it might sound like you're getting more water with higher frequency, when actually it was just deflating the globe balloon. So you would find more distinct bodies of water per distance walked, but not necessarily more water. Back before I worked on the terrain generator I wasn't sure which way I should move the slider if I wanted bigger features.

"Amount" works instead of coverage. It communicates what the result is. Why use a complex term when a simple one works?

[Koub]

I hope sliders will be adjustable with mouse-over + mouse scroll. I hate having to setup a slider with pixel precision with mouse pointer control on a highres screen.
Oh I also forgot one detail : each FFF is even more awesomerest than the previous one lastly. I'm really hyped, even if it usually doesn't show up.

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

Regarding that picture with the 3 islands.

Will it be possible in v0.17 to have an ocean with dozens of largish islands?

Also, if there are any talented modders out there who could make a ferry/boat/steamer mod to transport goods from island to island I would be extremely happy!

[ChildishGiant]

This whole update seems absolutely amazing, I'd just wish that the island starting option would still generate other landmasses outside of the island. I currently often struggle where I want biters to exist, but not to interrupt my operations until I'm ready for it. The 'old' peaceful mode was a nice way to aggro the biters when you were ready for them but the new per-nest aggro system makes that impossible.

I completely agree with this. Also with the island I fear that I'd run out of materials before finishing and have no way out except giving up on that save.