Version 0.17.23

[5thHorseman]

Wish i could go back in time and disabled auto update before i went to bed last night.. sad sad sad.

Can you not set Steam directly to 0.17.22, or download 0.17.22 from the website, and then load your last save from there?

[Shingen]

Oh god why don't you just enable modding in another language next to lua? This is getting ridiculous.

Every mod is running in a separate lua instance. How hard would it be to run lua and ... say Javascript instances next to each other?

According to https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... s/dhr96ok/ they have 75k lines of code written in C. They would probably have to rewrite a large chunk of that to make it compatible with javascript. It would essentially be exceedingly laborious to support another language. Then after implementing it you have to support the API for two languages which probably isn't trivial.

not 75k lines in C, but from your link:

Currently arount 330k lines of C++ and 75k lines of Lua.

secondly, the C++ code would be hardly rewritten, as it would still need to support Lua, but rather probably some parsing library would have to be included and conditions would have to be added to execute either one or the other parser based on current mod's language. however that's mostly speculation, i have no idea how is that Lua code actually implemented.

JavaScript is an inherently very slow language. So if you would write Factorio mods in JavaScript, you would inevitably slow down the game much more than if you would have written the same mod in Lua.

Would anyone run a mod that by design would slow down the game? I think not.

pretty sure you overestimate how fast Lua is compared to JS, and how much time do the mods' scripts take while a game is running.

my game is broken, i had a map 100+ hours and now its unplayable.
(...)
4. i cannot just go back to yesterdays version, the map says "map version cant be loaded because its higher than the game version"..

when will people learn to not have just one save file (esp. while testing experimental versions), and to not overwrite the one they care about when they see something bad had happened? sigh...

[BlueTemplar]

Well, it would be nice if you could change the number of autosaves directly in-game...

[DragonMaus]

It will never cease to boggle my mind that people rely upon the auto-saves without creating named saves.

[bobingabout]

Bobs mods for example

Once again, I am the example.
bobpower extends accumulators, this change causes my mod to make no sense, as where before technology started with 1, then expanded to 2, 3 and 4, now has a tech with no number that expands into 2.
bobwarfare was effected because I expand equipment, and for some reason the 2nd battery tech is named battery-mk2-equipment, same with energy shield. to avoid this issue, I had to add a bob- prefix to the tier 3 of both techs, so they have a different name
boblogistics was also effected, because of the oposite, I add bob-logistics-0 and bob-logistics-4 and 5 AROUND the existing logistics-1 to logistics-3. I had to rename those techs to remove the bob- prefix.

And I'm getting other bug reports, that have little to do with my mods, just because they're installed.

I keep getting "update failed" when using the in-game updater to go from 0.17.21 to 0.17.23.

good, it is not worth the hastle just yet, so many broken mods.

Wish i could go back in time and disabled auto update before i went to bed last night.. sad sad sad.

Can you not set Steam directly to 0.17.22, or download 0.17.22 from the website, and then load your last save from there?

Only if you use steam. I personally do not. (Well I do, just not for Factorio.)



About the whole JS thing.
Short answer, It's too late in development to start adding stuff like this now.

For it to make sense, the base game would need to use it. There's too much already written in LUA for anyone to WANT to convert it to JS.
But add new stuff in JS? that means 2 languages side by side. Why?

Give me some examples of stuff you can do in JS that you CAN'T in LUA, and I'm talking more than just changing syntax, example, changing "if condition then else end" to "if (condition) {} else {}"

[MFZ]

This

when will people learn to not have just one save file (esp. while testing experimental versions), and to not overwrite the one they care about when they see something bad had happened? sigh...

and this

It will never cease to boggle my mind that people rely upon the auto-saves without creating named saves.

[psihius]

Modding

• Non-upgrade technologies are now considered to be level 1; previously they were level 0.

Oh god why don't you just enable modding in another language next to lua? This is getting ridiculous.

Every mod is running in a separate lua instance. How hard would it be to run lua and ... say Javascript instances next to each other?

Simple - because while the engine for it is pretty good - everything around it is half-assed, poorly supported, complete lack of any documentation and lack of libraries, bindings and in general instrumentation to work for it. Embedded Lua engine is dead simple and very fast. It has docs, it has a shitload of documentation, library bindings (it has been used past 20 or so years and has built up the ecosystem) and a small team can tackle it. Unlike V8.

V8 was never targeted as an embedded scripting language and to be extended. And although you can use it like that, it is a way bigger project than doing the same with Lua. Embedded Lua was designed specifically for that purpose.

Also, when Factorio was started, V8 JS engine was in way worse state and NodeJS I believe if existed, nobody really knew about it yet. 6-7 years ago predates the whole JavaScript craze.

Also, JavaScript as a language is not really as easy as people think - understanding the whole prototyping approach and using it properly is, dare I say, difficult even for good developers (I rest my case cause I'm 14 years in web dev and I have written shitloads of pretty complex JS in my career). Thing is - a dedicated person can learn Lua and write a simple mod in a few evenings easily - we have a non-dev guy in my community doing just that, doing basically on-par work with some help from us. With JS - he would not be able to do that easily at all. The language and concepts are way out of his league unless he decides to learn programming.

https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/com ... avascript/
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Lua-not-mo ... g-language

Wait, but why are you talking about V8 ?
Wouldn't the equivalent to Factorio's Lua be the normal JavaScript, rather than Chom/ium's engine ?
Also, what about other JavaScript engines, like Gecko ? (I would kind of expect Mozilla to have good documentation, am I wrong ?)

Normal JavaScript is extremely slow compared - V8 has JIT compilation and a decade of optimization efforts put into it by Google and open source via Chromium. And Google has it's own even faster version called Blink that Chrome actually uses and you can't get your hands on it as far as I know. Mozila engine is not a slouch, but it is slower.

Also, footprint of those engines is pretty big.

That's why Lua is scripting engine of choice for many game developers. It is very small, lightweight and very fast for the job (and has JIT)

[5thHorseman]

Wish i could go back in time and disabled auto update before i went to bed last night.. sad sad sad.

Can you not set Steam directly to 0.17.22, or download 0.17.22 from the website, and then load your last save from there?

Only if you use steam. I personally do not. (Well I do, just not for Factorio.)

I just logged into the website to be 100% sure and yes, 0.17.22 (and all versions before) is available.

Or did you not buy it from the website either? I know GoG for example is terrible about updates. I don't buy from them anymore because of it.

[bobingabout]

Wish i could go back in time and disabled auto update before i went to bed last night.. sad sad sad.

Can you not set Steam directly to 0.17.22, or download 0.17.22 from the website, and then load your last save from there?

Only if you use steam. I personally do not. (Well I do, just not for Factorio.)

I just logged into the website to be 100% sure and yes, 0.17.22 (and all versions before) is available.

Or did you not buy it from the website either? I know GoG for example is terrible about updates. I don't buy from them anymore because of it.

I bought it from... what was it, I want to say Kickstarter, but I'm fairly sure that's not it.
anyway, I bought it through the kickstart website back in version 0.9, but do have a full account at factorio.com. the problem is that it's easy to upgrade to 0.17.23, but to downgrade again you'd need to redownload the entire game.

[jsmith65]

The 64bit Windows installer exe download link is giving a 404 error.

[Zavian]

the problem is that it's easy to upgrade to 0.17.23, but to downgrade again you'd need to redownload the entire game.

I normally use the .zip download, and create a new zip file before I let the game update (and before I update any mods). That makes it easy to roll back to a known good version/state, if a new version of the game or a mod causes problems.

[jevon]

Hugs and condolences to all mod authors over the next week. <3

[Light]

Time to lock the client into .22 for several weeks.

Hopefully these changes are actually improving something and aren't breaking mods for little to no benefit. Having to re-update over a dozen unsupported mods every few patches sure isn't how I'd want to spend my evening.

[theolderbeholder]

This is the cutting edge "experimental" version. There might be some nasty bugs. Use on your own risk.

emphasis is mine. Given the effort wube put into this project, it is more than safe to assume they do NOT change for the sake of change. It might not be obvious and could be "only" to bury sins of the past. Which is a more than good enough reason to me - I wish I could do that with some of the things I did at work (datacentre infrastructure).
We are all spoiled be the long phase of 16.51.

[Dune]

Advanced-Solar mod affected as well.

Yeah, time to rollback to 0.17.22 until either the devs rollback this seemingly random change, or the mods get updated.

[Jesperhk]

Oh god why don't you just enable modding in another language next to lua? This is getting ridiculous.

Every mod is running in a separate lua instance. How hard would it be to run lua and ... say Javascript instances next to each other?

According to https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... s/dhr96ok/ they have 75k lines of code written in C. They would probably have to rewrite a large chunk of that to make it compatible with javascript. It would essentially be exceedingly laborious to support another language. Then after implementing it you have to support the API for two languages which probably isn't trivial.

not 75k lines in C, but from your link:

Currently arount 330k lines of C++ and 75k lines of Lua.

secondly, the C++ code would be hardly rewritten, as it would still need to support Lua, but rather probably some parsing library would have to be included and conditions would have to be added to execute either one or the other parser based on current mod's language. however that's mostly speculation, i have no idea how is that Lua code actually implemented.

JavaScript is an inherently very slow language. So if you would write Factorio mods in JavaScript, you would inevitably slow down the game much more than if you would have written the same mod in Lua.

Would anyone run a mod that by design would slow down the game? I think not.

pretty sure you overestimate how fast Lua is compared to JS, and how much time do the mods' scripts take while a game is running.

my game is broken, i had a map 100+ hours and now its unplayable.
(...)
4. i cannot just go back to yesterdays version, the map says "map version cant be loaded because its higher than the game version"..

when will people learn to not have just one save file (esp. while testing experimental versions), and to not overwrite the one they care about when they see something bad had happened? sigh...

I did have 4 saves, 1 save and 3 autosave..
But all autosaves said i had to play a version above 17.21.
The normal save, where like 5-10 hours of playtime behind, it would not have been major problem, but abit sad to do 2 days of work again.

I ended up disable all mods, and install version 17.22.
Enable all mods without bobs mod, cuz the inserters and science were all changed? - the science flasks colors is mixed up. (green is now yellow and so on)
but i wanted logistics from bobs, to get better drones so i enabled that one, but that mod needed bobs library, and when i enable that mod that things get crazy.

but i said, im sure there will be an update soon, so i enabled everything as it was.
I replaced all the splitters and the underground belts and pips that didnt work as before, and now the game is almost as before, just with some funny tweaks with science and inserters.


ps. i have save files from version 12.0, im not one of those who don't have savefiles loll

[BlueTemplar]

If your latest save is 5-10 hours behind, then you do not have enough save files.
I generally have a distinct manual save something like every half hour / hour (for each significant "job" completed).
And for 0.17, since it's an experimental, I have 99 autosaves, 1 minute per autosave (will increase the delay once the saving gets annoying).

Time to lock the client into .22 for several weeks.

Hopefully these changes are actually improving something and aren't breaking mods for little to no benefit. Having to re-update over a dozen unsupported mods every few patches sure isn't how I'd want to spend my evening.

And this is why I'm waiting for the first stable to play mods in 0.17.
I also don't understand modders that keep trying to update their mods for an experimental version with public release in mind - that's building on very shaky ground !

----

I know GoG for example is terrible about updates. I don't buy from them anymore because of it.

They curate all their games and updates manually (at least partially). Expecting for an update to be available in, say, less than a week after a developer uploads it would be unreasonable.

[bobingabout]

Advanced-Solar mod affected as well.

Yeah, time to rollback to 0.17.22 until either the devs rollback this seemingly random change, or the mods get updated.

I talked to the devs.
there is a very good reason for this change, and as such, I doubt rolling back is an option for them.

Ironically, it fixes a bug I posted so far back that I don't even remember which version of the game it was for, 0.15 perhaps. It's related technologies not showing up properly in the game.

[Baughn]

There may be a great reason, but unfortunately this means the game I was playing with some friends is stuck on .22, with the power pole crash.

I don't suppose there's any chance we could get a .22.5, which just fixes that bug but doesn't break the rest of the game?

[Schallfalke]

The worst part of this update is that some of the broken mods are broken because base mod naming is not contiguous...cough "energy-shield-equipment" logically followed by "energy-shield-mk2-equipment", "battery-equipment" logically followed by "battery-mk2-equipment". Yea, would have been nice to let modders know beforehand and leave time for feedback.

True, some tech have bad naming convention, where a bunch of mods (including mine) have to work around them. Now suddenly enforce a strict contiguous check, making all these mods fail to load.