Friday Facts #370 - The journey to Nintendo Switch

[Rebmes]

The game isn't in early access anymore. The players have received what's due to them.

What's coming next is more like a whole new game, almost like a sequel really, and these things take time.

I'll still be around a year from now, or whenever it's time to get FFFs again.

Keep up the good work and have fun (:

[ezekiel]

I know that previously a blocker with supporting ARM (Apple Silicon, specifically) was multiplayer compatibility (as you mention here). Now that you've gotten one platform running on ARM, do you have plans to expand that to Mac (and Windows) ARM devices in the future?

[Molay]

You know, I really want to know what's in store with the expansion. But here's the thing, you not telling us, it's probably the best thing for me.

With Paradox games (EU4, CK3, etc) I always get that feeling of "there's no point to play, big update is coming out soon, and it will have X and Y feature which I feel like I'm missing when I play now". It sucks, knowing the cool stuff that's coming yet not having it, diminishes enjoyment of what we currently have.

So yeah, I am really curious and can't wait for the expansion. But also, I'm so glad I can enjoy the current game for now without announcements of new cool things that would possibly diminish my current enjoyment. So I'm all for the secrecy to be honest. It works. I didn't like it at first, but the more I think about it, the more I like this approach.

[Jon8RFC]

Thanks for sharing all of that, and the timeline of events!

What about hosting some switch games, like you announced multiplayer games, to try and iron out some last-minute desyncs/crashes/whatever? Host some games on your switch so it'll create desync reports, have some other Wube players join as well on switch debug builds, and have another 50 players who play the game strangely join from PC, stream it for fun, and let's try and break the game so you can iron out things and hopefully avoid launch-day crashes/desyncs that come with the boskids of the world causing edge-case crashes/desyncs, haha.

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-156
I think you did some big, public games with katherineofsky, too. Except the goal here would be not only big multiplayer games on switch and seeing how it handles it, but also getting people who do "funky" things as part of their normal game play, and seeing if it causes desyncs on the switch clients.

Will upnp support be included on switch? I guess that's on the switch itself and independent of the game, right?

Anyway, I'm hoping it's a big, successful launch and gets more exposure to OCD people who play games on switch.

[alefu]

I have a proposal: You take your time with finishing the expansion, but during that time you supply us with regular FFFs. Without spoilers, of course. Deal?

[grandexar]

Can’t wait to buy this on switch!! Also can’t wait for the expansion, but I wouldn’t want you all to rush, go at a good pace and keep up the great work!

Honestly this is the best game in the world, can’t wait to see what the expansion holds!!

I’m hoping to do a rail world playthrough on the switch, hopefully I don’t drive my ups into the dirt!

[Xcone]

Oooof; another year
Well, not what I was hoping for; but I'll be waiting for those future FFF's. Thank you for managing expectations at least.

I totally understand a weekly update is undoable. Though I hope I can tempt you slightly more frequent news compared to last year. Maybe 2-monthly / quarterly? Having this long of a silence, and only the april fools post to keep us company for the latter-half was hard.

[Peixe-Abissal]

I respect your focus on quality. Take as long as you need.

But please keep us posted on the progress, I'll be happy to follow along

[eradicator]

Controllers
- Respects known standards.

@Twinsen

As you seemed to care about the Asian translations, are you going to have a controller layout dialogue?

I'm talking about the regionally-dependand standard use and swapping of X/Y and A/B buttons. I'm used to the Japanese layout (physical "rightmost" button being "confirm", "bottom" button being "cancel", "top" being "menu", regardless of what is printed on them). Rewireing my brain isn't an option, so I can't play games that can not be configured to support this. I've seen many Western people struggle with Asian layout too, so the problem goes both ways.

Many PC games fail to compensate for (physically) swapped button layout (i.e. xbox vs ps vs nintendo layout), leaving them in a broken state where either the button-icons shown on screen are wrong, or "confirm" is on the wrong button. Many games have fixer mods just for this. Not sure if "western" joycons have a different button layout, my Japanese one has "A" right and "Y" left.

I'm talking about something easier than scrolling through all 146 controls and manually fixing them. Something usable for "normal" people. Perhaps some sort of preset. Certainly not some weird interface-language based auto-detection garbage.

TL;DR: If you don't compensate for physical/logical A/B & X/Y swap you will imho loose players.


(Great work on the port btw, nice to hear other people love the joycons too!)

[StoneLegion]

A whole other year without an update is very sad news.

Factorio got as big and well known as it is due to the early-access model, perhaps it would be a good idea to rethink the stop of this idea?

Okay I think you are not understanding something here. Imagine them releasing the DLC but it has 100% nothing and empty shell and it's going be like that for 1 year before it has anything playable but they took your money. The first comment your going to say is where is the game you paid for...

They need to first add the meat and potatoes and then make it into a "playable" state then they will probably do a EA...

Your missing sadly the first part where factory was not even released to the public for years to start with.

[pointa2b]

I'm going to pretend as if the expansion is much nearer completion, and this was a move for people to shut the hell up asking about it.

[Gergely]

When I play Minecraft with friends we don't usually have someone host the game to lan or wpn through the client, we instead run a dedicated server on a separate computer. (We play with the Java edition.) This is so that anyone can quit the game early and the others would not be affected, since the host is not also a player.

Would the same thing be possible for Factorio on the Nintendo Switch, (using the headless server) if some players are on desktop?

...you won't find dedicated servers in the server list, only games hosted from the game client(direct IP connect should still work regardless).

(From what I can see, you probably said so but it is vague enough for me to ask.)

[Drizznarte]

Dont worry about making the game too long. I'm currently 300 hours into a seablock playthrough , long is good. I will wait and you can have my money as soon as you are ready for it.

[xereez]

One more year? Okay, I respect your focus on quality. Take your time, but please keep us updated on the progress.

[Twinsen]

As you seemed to care about the Asian translations, are you going to have a controller layout dialogue?

I'm talking about the regionally-dependand standard use and swapping of X/Y and A/B buttons.

I'm aware of the issue and it's something I know all too well, as I play on multiple consoles.
The Nintendo Switch release will use the Japanese layout (right button is confirm) as it seems this is what all games use on Nintendo Switch.

For the PC and Steam Deck, the plan is to use the Xbox layout, as this is what appears to be standard, possibly using the Japanese standard when Joy-Con controllers or Nintendo Switch Pro Controller are used. But the implementation for this in non-trivial so I don't know yet for sure how it will work; it's one of the things I need to solve.

For the rest of edge the cases e.g. someone using Xbox controller but wanting Japanese layout, swapping the buttons in the controls, while not ideal, is not that hard(just replace all A with B and B with A). No buttons are hard-coded.

[Twinsen]

When I play Minecraft with friends we don't usually have someone host the game to lan or wpn through the client, we instead run a dedicated server on a separate computer. (We play with the Java edition.) This is so that anyone can quit the game early and the others would not be affected, since the host is not also a player.

Would the same thing be possible for Factorio on the Nintendo Switch, (using the headless server) if some players are on desktop?

It will be possible but you will need to connect using Direct IP on Nintendo Switch.

[urmet]

1. There's no plans for more releases on ARM as I don't think there's that much demand, but it's something that is now more likely to come in the future as it becomes more popular. Just because the game compiles on one ARM platform, it doesn't mean it will just work on all of them. Adding a new platform comes with a lot of work, such as creating a possibly complex build script, setting up a build server, setting up a test server, setting up distribution(website, steam, more?) and dealing with maintaining everything for the whole time(e.g. updating the build script when we change to a newer C++ standard, fixing any compilation issues that arise because of different compilers). On top of that, is we are talking about Mac, add the whole notarization, signing and whatever else they need and change all the time. There needs to be someone dedicated to making it happen and maintaining it.

I'd still really like to see at least ARM server builds. ARM is getting more common for servers and I'd be really-really happy if I could run factorio on my free pretty beefy arm server I got from a cloud provider.

Making an ARM server build seems like it should be pretty low-effort from my point of view. Architectural difference issues have been fixed now for switch and server doesn't have any of graphics and sound stuff to worry about.

[Gergely]

Does the expansion have a working version on the Nintendo Switch? Just curious.

[Jesperhk]

dont own a nintendo, but its great that factorio will be playable on other devices, thats awesome.

12 factorio nerds, 120hour, that sounds like an expansion with big E and alot of !!!! in the end.

It sounds really cool, cant wait to see whats going on there Take your time, there is simply no rush <3

[SHiRKiT]

I love FFFs. But the reasons stated for stopping them are still valid. 50 FFF basically saying "we're not ready, soon" don't seem necessary. People, don't forget that FFF drained a lot of dev time

I guess trading dev time for a passionate player base due to one of the most communication effort to date for an indie team to talk and take feedback from their community is worth a trade off.

Of course this is not the same, but still the it was not 360 FFF saying "we're not ready", so yeah, that part makes no sense at all.