[HN Gopher] Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch
___________________________________________________________________
Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch
Author : MForster
Score : 576 points
Date : 2022-09-13 15:26 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.factorio.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.factorio.com)
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Now it will take over even more of my life. I made fun of all the
| minecraft addicts...
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| dammit, my life is over - goodbye family
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| I can't wait for proper controller support on PC
| falcolas wrote:
| Agreed. You can fake it some with Steam's workshop controller
| setups, and it works well enough you can play Factorio on the
| Steam Deck.
|
| Official controller support on the PC would be more than
| welcome though.
| tombert wrote:
| I bought Factorio about a year ago, but I still haven't played it
| because I'm afraid to. I nearly flunked out of college the first
| time around because of Minecraft addiction, who the hell knows
| what would happen with Factorio?
| Emma_Goldman wrote:
| Even though it is many orders of magnitude simpler than the real-
| world equivalent, I find that there is no better way of grasping
| the logistics of modern civilization than playing Factorio.
|
| In fact, it's probably in the Goldilocks zone: easy enough to
| play, but complicated enough to convey the kind of resource,
| energy and transport logistics involved in scaling a multi-step
| production process. It is like an illustrative toy model.
|
| The aliens even give the game a satisfying environmental and
| political dimension, though the mechanics in this respect are
| more straightforward, i.e., just kill the aliens. Though emitting
| less pollution with solar also helps.
| danudey wrote:
| I always give up on Factorio playthroughs when I have to start
| shuttling different kind of research around on conveyor belts.
| Up until then it's exciting/exhausting.
| TheCapn wrote:
| Inserters can be used to place _or_ remove research from the
| research facilities. For me that meant setting up the
| research facilities in rows, then having inserters pull some
| types from the top side downward, and other types from the
| bottom side upwards. Along with the large inserters there was
| more than enough space to build things with only a few belts
| feeding things.
| duped wrote:
| > The aliens even give the game a satisfying environmental and
| political dimension, though the mechanics in this respect are
| more straightforward, i.e., just kill the aliens. Though
| emitting less pollution with solar also helps.
|
| I wish for a factorio clone that explores this more, rather
| than just an environmental hazard employ/enslave the local
| population, feed them, and so on.
| dogcomplex wrote:
| Captain of Industry is not quite this, but uses population
| mechanics a lot - with your first factories supplied by
| truckers driving back and forth rather than conveyor belt.
| Keeping the population fed and not overworked becomes a major
| hurdle.
| Emma_Goldman wrote:
| I couldn't agree more, I think the production logistics are
| so good in Factorio that they're really running up against
| powerful diminishing returns. Better to strengthen a
| fascinating, secondary part of the game with a lot of space
| left to explore: the aliens.
|
| Hopefully this is part of the Factorio expansion.
| duped wrote:
| Let me become an alien overlord, dang it
| breckenedge wrote:
| Every hive you kill causes the aliens to evolve a little bit
| more. You've also got to balance your expansion and innovation
| against their evolution.
| xani_ wrote:
| It's also in weird way analogue for development.
|
| You can just go for it and make a production chain for a
| product, but if next one needs same intermediates you'd be re-
| doing it. i.e. doing a spaghetti code.
|
| You can section off the each intermediate into separate factory
| and just chain them to eachother and have relatively nice
| order, but when you try to expand production of everything,
| there is no easy way to grow that complex, so the best you can
| do is just copy the same block around.
|
| Lastly you can build a rail network and put each intermediate
| anywhere you want without much problems, but wiring everything
| up will take a lot more effort, you will have to go to various
| places to debug any problem, any problems are less visible at
| first glance and lastly if you don't plan for capacity you
| might have bandwidth and latency problems
| ajnin wrote:
| However Factorio lacks refactoring tools, tests and source
| control. If your code feels very similar to your bases maybe
| you're not using these things enough...
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| > It's also in weird way analogue for development.
|
| And base designs on a map can even end up looking very
| similar to CPU designs.
| solardev wrote:
| I can't wait for the day we can ask a general-purpose gaming
| AI to optimize the production line for this game, learn from
| it, and then backport the theories to my codebase at work.
|
| Humans... or at least me... are so bad at this sort of
| multivariate optimization. Even if you cheat and give
| yourself infinite resources and all the technologies and set
| out to plan the perfect economy from the get-go, eventually
| something you forgot will throw a wrench into some tiny part
| of the supply chain, and the whole thing comes crumbling
| down. Then you try to build some redundancies into the
| system, but the overlapping networks create routing problems
| of their own.
|
| I wonder, in general, if games like these are "solvable" via
| some sort of theory, or if you just have to iterate through a
| billion configurations before you arrive at a better one...
| dexwiz wrote:
| I don't know what your definition of solvable is for
| Factorio, but for mine, there are already a few calculators
| out there that can solve the infinite resource/constant
| thruput scenario just using linear algebra. The base game
| has a limited number of products. Maybe in some of the
| overhauls like K2SE or Py's, you might need something more
| complex since those are 10x-100x the base game, and the
| system of equations may surpass numerical methods on a
| single computer.
|
| The real serious solutions are actually you versus your
| system resources. There solutions look awfully like low
| level performance tricks like inserter clocking (think
| SIMD) or belt compression (think fitting data in cache
| lines/reducing pages). Both of these things would take not
| just and understanding of the game, but understanding how
| the game is programmed.
| mvexel wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree with this. The way I go about
| developing my base in Factorio reflects how I go about
| developing software. What's interesting is that in playing
| Factorio, the weaknesses in my approach are more readily
| apparent (because they are visual?) and consequently, I am
| learning to be a better developer from playing Factorio. This
| is coming from a hobby developer so ymmv, but this is how I
| justify sinking so many hours into playing this game.
| dexwiz wrote:
| The instant feedback of Factorio is also nice. Its much
| more like a Dataflow language or Excel where code (factory)
| and data (products) coexist
| Kukumber wrote:
| Nintendo Switch, such an impactful device
|
| Valve woke up a little bit too late
|
| Sony made a mistake to abandon the Vita
|
| And Microsoft was stupid to not try, or maybe too scared
|
| Steam deck is too big for me, the switch is the perfect size, I'm
| still waiting for a proper Switch alternative
|
| I'll probably build it myself
| ycta2334209 wrote:
| Former PS Vita owner here, still burns me up thinking about it.
| It was the absolute perfect form factor and had "just enough"
| processing power to play some really interesting games, sort of
| like the Nintendo Switch today (but much smaller). Up until I
| sold my device to a collector in 2020 it was still my preferred
| platform for Stardew Valley.
| groovybits wrote:
| Not sure if Valve 'woke up' too late, as opposed to simply
| taking longer to come to market, and with a much more grand
| vision than other manufacturers have.
|
| Valve recently released a promo booklet for the Steam Deck [1].
| Page 14 of that booklet describes how each of their products
| have iterated in various verticals for their platform to make
| one cohesive device.
|
| Namely:
|
| * The Steam Controller: Produced the Steam Input system, one of
| the most flexible input systems in existence.
|
| * The Steam Link: Produced Remote Play, which to my knowledge
| has no relative competition on other platforms.
|
| * The Steam Machine: Produced SteamOS and Proton.
|
| * The Valve Index: Produced the first premium product from
| Valve, and the lessons learned from manufacturing, shipping,
| and support.
|
| All of these devices combined gave us the Steam Deck.
| Considering the pandemic's impact, Valve has made more rapid
| progress than Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony since 2015 in the
| gaming space. The usual market players have had years to make
| small iterations. Valve caught up in approx. 7 years, and with
| an open platform that provides more innovation to come.
|
| Don't get me wrong - the Nintendo Switch is a fantastic device,
| and sparked a new form factor and experience that others only
| hope to emulate. As usual, they define the handheld gaming
| market. But Valve shot for the sun and came very close.
|
| 1:
| https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1675200/view/3401926...
| [deleted]
| a_brawling_boo wrote:
| Playing minecraft on switch vs my pixel 6 is night and day. I
| can't imagine performance is anywhere near what it needs to be
| for an end game base? But I'd be curious to see what they've come
| up with here.
| countvonbalzac wrote:
| the switch is better?
| bspammer wrote:
| I'm almost certain that the Pixel is better given that it's
| nearly double the price, and the Switch is 5 years old now.
| MBCook wrote:
| Plus the Tegra in the Switch wasn't even new when the
| Switch launched.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| Minecraft is slower on the switch than an android device
| though its most noticeable when on the market place once the
| game is loaded its not much different
| jader201 wrote:
| Yeah, they cover performance too, but sounds like we will
| definitely see impact with mega bases:
|
| _One of the first questions you might ask is how does the game
| perform. We worked on many optimizations to make sure the game
| performs as well as possible. You should expect 30-60 FPS (both
| in TV mode and handheld mode). As for UPS, the average player
| should be able to go through all of the content and launch a
| rocket, while staying at 60 UPS. But don 't expect to be able
| to build mega-bases without UPS starting to drop, sometimes
| significantly._
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I'm curious if any of these improvements have/will trickle
| over into the PC space as well. Some of those I'm sure might
| be switch-only, though.
| ftlio wrote:
| I see potential for playing with your Switch on a beefy
| community server, where the server is responsible for UPS.
|
| Edit: I guess the client also has to run the simulation,
| never mind. It seems like overall, Factorio is well under-
| optimized though. For a game that has been out forever, it
| still has a huge ceiling.
| jasamer wrote:
| Do base your believe that Factorio is under-optimised on
| anything specific?
|
| The Factorio devs regularly put out blog posts on the
| optimisations they have done, like [1][2][3] (and many
| others), and they have done so for a long time. This gives
| me the opposite impression.
|
| [1] https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-322 [2]
| https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-281 [3]
| https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-209
| ftlio wrote:
| I think specifically for multiplayer, you could handle
| non-visible chunks on the server and figure out a better
| way to update the client with what it needs, rather than
| requiring the client to handle the full simulation.
|
| I know it's a well optimized piece of software, but when
| you get into something like the space mod with multiple
| worlds, where chunks you might not deal with for a long
| time still tax you, you can see how there's conceivably a
| lot that _could_ be done.
|
| So, yeah, wrong to say "under optimized".
|
| I'm also aware that they haven't been optimizing for a
| massive multi-world server with tons of clients. I
| definitely don't mean it as a dig or that they aren't top
| class.
| nargas wrote:
| Would it be possible to not pay the full price if you already
| have paid the PC version ?
| open-paren wrote:
| 95% likely that they will not. Factorio famously and
| deliberately does not go on sale.
| TillE wrote:
| It's $30 (on PC at least), and any serious Factorio player has
| put in hundreds of hours. C'mon.
| Bakary wrote:
| Video games are way up there when it comes to insane value
| for money. But it seems that players then buy way more games
| than they need.
| triceratops wrote:
| Strongly agree to both points. Any kind of game (video,
| board, card, whatever) and sports equipment are incredible
| value for money, in terms of entertainment-hours/dollar, as
| long as you use them.
|
| And because they demand active involvement, they save you
| from spending money on other stuff. You can easily shop
| online on the couch watching TV. Not so much if you're
| playing a game or a sport.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Why would it be?
| jader201 wrote:
| It's rare that you get any game for free on one platform just
| because you own it on another platform. Almost any game I've
| seen on both PC & Switch, you have to pay for both.
|
| I don't care. Factorio devs can have my money.
| clowen wrote:
| For some background on why not.
|
| Nintendo didn't make any money from the PC sales, so it needs
| to have revenue from this launch.
|
| And for Factorio itself, the effort of porting to the Switch,
| and then the effort of going through validation with Nintendo.
| Even if they didn't want to charge you again, the company would
| need to cover the cost of dev kits, extra engineers, and a
| whole extra channel for development/release.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| The most you'll get is a way to indirectly play your PC saves
| on the Switch (by having the PC version act as a MP host).
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Multiplayer in Factorio has all clients running the whole
| simulation in lock step, so you are still bottlenecked by the
| slowest client.
| deskamess wrote:
| Its time for some Zachtronics game to make the migration. If
| Factorio can happen, then I would think the Zachtronics games can
| do it too (performance wise).
| hcs wrote:
| I think the only Zachtronics game to have a console release was
| Infinifactory on PS4. (And Hack*Match on NES, technically.)
|
| Agreed with the sibling comment that Opus Magnum seems like
| it'd be a good fit. But the economics of a port may not make
| sense. Infinifactory was Unity, while Opus Magnum and most
| (all?) of the other 2D games use a custom engine.
| misnome wrote:
| SpaceChem used to be on iOS - was nice to play on the iPad, but
| the maintenance effort was apparently too much to keep it on
| there and running.
|
| Zachtronics stopping game production is a painful loss.
| sorahn wrote:
| I loved playing Space Chem on the iPad, Opus Magnum would
| have been awesome if it ever made it.
|
| But the iOS store is much harder to just "fire and forget"
| on.
| unixhero wrote:
| Factorio is a game I don't dare to get sucked into.
| louwrentius wrote:
| I'm approaching 3000 hours in this game. Your 'fear' is
| warranted. This is not a brag, it's sad, really.
| rgoulter wrote:
| I was surprised to see in a HN comment the explanation that not
| everyone finds Factorio enthralling.
|
| The gameplay experience is so similar to what many developers
| do in their dayjobs, that this leads to one of two responses:
| "...and I am not constrained/bound, it's so fun!" or "...but
| with Factorio, I get no tangible output from putting in
| effort."
| xani_ wrote:
| I work in ops and a side of programming, have some related
| hobbies and that's exactly my feelings about Zachtronics
| games. "Why play some virtual computer emulating game where I
| have a dev board with actual computer to program"
|
| But it hasn't happened with Factorio. It just have that
| perfect blend of everything that I don't mind it being
| _basically_ what I do for my day job.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| One nice thing is that you can build insane spaghetti and
| just freely abandon game if it gets unfunny.
| dcdc123 wrote:
| I hope they do this purely because that means controller support
| will be improved enough to play it on Steam Deck.
| darkteflon wrote:
| It's a terrible idea to buy this on Switch for my 5-year old.
| Isn't it.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Wish someone could create a tracker for how many coding hours
| were spent porting PC based management simulation games to
| handheld systems in order to drive more revenue.
| nhumrich wrote:
| And just like that I cancelled my stream deck order.
| jszymborski wrote:
| I'm guessing you don't play with any of the (excellent) mods
| enabled.
| KronisLV wrote:
| Switch feels like such an interesting platform: not the most
| powerful out there, not by a long shot, but still has lots of
| great games on it, perhaps proving that graphics aren't quite
| everything. At the same time, with some clever optimization,
| there indeed are great looking games out there as well, in
| addition to lots of different ones being ported to it!
|
| I wonder for how long Switch will remain as a popular platform
| and a part of me hopes for games that could run in a lower
| graphics mode for Switch in the future and a higher quality mode
| for Switch 2 or whatever might come after.
|
| Personally, I just wonder why something like Genshin Impact isn't
| on Switch yet, because it seems like a great game for a platform
| like it!
|
| Oh, and also why Nintendo treats the console IP like others do:
| where you can't just do export from game engines like Godot for
| it, like you can with desktop computers/phones, but instead have
| to go the proprietary route.
| posedge wrote:
| I agree with most of what you said, but can't think of a single
| game that looks good on the Switch (by today's standards). Can
| you name some examples?
| Cr4shMyCar wrote:
| Are we talking Switch original releases only or including
| ports? Breath of the Wild, Mario Odyssey, and Splatoon 2/3
| look excellent, and Okami HD is a great port/remaster that
| arguably looks better than the original. I haven't bought
| Monster Hunter Rise yet but it looked stunning in the demo.
| And of course there's beautiful 2D games like Dead Cells,
| Hollow Knight, etc. I've found that a lot of Switch games
| look really good, even launch games from 5 years ago, with
| really the only flaw in most games being a lot of aliasing.
| scubbo wrote:
| +1 to Hollow Knight. Beautiful visuals, beautiful
| soundtrack, beautiful everything.
| KronisLV wrote:
| Maybe my standards are a few years out of date, but
| personally I think that DOOM or DOOM Eternal looks good
| (provided that you don't mind dynamic resolution scaling,
| though it helps the game maintain a really good framerate).
|
| In addition, the Metro games (2033 and Last Light) seem to
| carry over the atmospheric environments from the other
| platforms nicely. Curiously, even something like the Crysis
| games (all three) have been ported over, as has Bioshock (1,
| 2 and Infinite) and none of them are dumbed down experiences
| like for the earlier handheld consoles either!
|
| Then again, personally I still think that The Legend of
| Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a good looking game: a bit more
| _simplistic_ in comparison to others, sure, but the art
| direction is good, everything fits together nicely and it 's
| consistent in whatever it tries to do.
| Lester_Square wrote:
| Zelda Breath of the Wild is one example that definitely looks
| good, but isn't that graphically intensive, being so heavily
| stylised rather than realistic
| groovybits wrote:
| Off the top: Monster Hunter Rise, Xenoblade series, Doom 2016
| and Eternal, New Pokemon Snap, Zelda BOTW, Luigi's Mansion 3,
| Super Mario Odyssey, Astral Chain, Crysis, and Alien
| Isolation.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Animal Crossing looks good imo. The switch doesn't do hyper
| realism but there is more to "looks good" than realism imo.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario
| Odyssey look amazing, because the whole art style of the game
| and everything in it is optimized for that specific console
| to not overtax its resources. You just don't get
| photorealism, but that's okay because the art style
| accommodates for that. There are a few other games I've
| played that have great ports or don't have high graphics
| requirements in the first place. Subnautica looked great, and
| Return of the Obra Dinn and Hades look great too, though
| those last two games don't have super high graphics
| requirements in the first place.
| groovybits wrote:
| > I wonder for how long Switch will remain as a popular
| platform
|
| 2023 will likely bring us the next Switch hardware revision. If
| backwards compatibility remains, the Switch line will remain
| relevant for years to come.
|
| > Personally, I just wonder why something like Genshin Impact
| isn't on Switch yet
|
| Leaks in August reported that Genshin Impact on Switch was
| delayed because of CPU limitations due to size and regularly
| updated content.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It seems like the age of quirky hardware platforms for
| consoles is over and they will probably switch from defined
| generations to just a rolling release of better hardware
| every 2 years where you can play backwards and forwards a
| fair bit like on PC but you just get the nicest experience on
| the new hardware.
| przefur wrote:
| Great news, I'll have to buy Factorio yet another time! I do
| wonder about the battery life and performance of larger factories
| thou.
| scottmsul wrote:
| It's unfortunate there's no mod support. As someone with over
| 2000 hours, for me it's really the overhaul mods that give the
| game endless variety and replayability. Might not be a bad idea
| to make certain overhaul mods available anyway, even if it
| involves hard-coding them in.
| Pyrodogg wrote:
| Mostly I'd just miss Squeak Through. It's like trying to play
| Skyrim without SkyUI. I barely think of these things as mods
| anymore, they should just _be there_.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| Do any switch games support mods?
| Melatonic wrote:
| I don't think console games ever support mods?
|
| The only way to do this would be for the modders themselves to
| get sponsored by / work with Nintendo directly and probably the
| original dev team. You could then have some officially released
| "mods" (probably they would just call them DLC) and I they
| would very likely charge.
|
| Sounds like you want a Steamdeck
| _1100 wrote:
| Can you imagine a switch trying to load all the maps and
| resources for AngelBobs/K2/SE?
|
| I know they do some impressive work to port modern games on
| switch but even my state of the art computer struggles to run
| K2+SE at scale.
| dexwiz wrote:
| I don't think consoles like allowing interrupted code from end
| users. They just end up being a huge attack surface area,
| either for DRM exploits or attacks on other users. Nintendo
| pull a game for having a hidden Ruby interpreter a few years
| ago.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/05/game-with-hidden-ruby...
|
| I wonder if this version of Factorio supports the console. You
| can execute LUA from the console, so I imagine it's disabled on
| the switch.
| TheDesolate0 wrote:
| jader201 wrote:
| Curious to see how well it translates to controllers. I know
| there is limited support on the Steam Deck, but I'm guessing it's
| still subpar to traditional mouse/keyboard controls.
|
| From the link:
|
| _Factorio was developed for 10 years with only keyboard and
| mouse in mind, so making sure the game is fully playable with
| controllers was no easy task. Playing with a controller is
| slightly slower, and will take some getting used to (just as it
| does when playing with keyboard and mouse for the first time).
| After becoming familiar with it, I find it very comfortable. I
| recommend everyone to play through the first levels of our
| tutorial campaign, as it 's a great way to get acquainted with
| playing Factorio with a controller._
| bradhe wrote:
| I bet touch adds a dimension to it. Touch-and-drag for belts,
| picking from inventory with touch...
| capableweb wrote:
| Sounds like a hassle. Good controller support would beat
| touch controller in both ergonomics and speed every day.
|
| I hope the Controller support been improved with this launch
| as I tried to play Factorio on my Steam Deck before but felt
| like it was just "emulated mouse" support basically which
| isn't nearly nice enough. I feel like Tropico-series did a
| good implementation of top-down+strategy controller for their
| games.
| hbn wrote:
| Switch games need to have non-touch control options cause
| it's also meant to be played docked
| bobthepanda wrote:
| A fair amount of Switch games don't use touch.
| BudaDude wrote:
| Honestly I forget it's even there. For the most part, only
| mobile games ported to the Switch use it.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| And many first party games, of course. It's not a great
| experience, though - on the OG switch, at least, the
| screen is really low quality.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I feel like a lot of games optimize their UI for TVs, but
| at that size scaled down the touch targets would be too
| small to not fat-finger.
| bioemerl wrote:
| Unfortunately the steam deck touch calibration is kind of
| bad. Mine is all over the place at times, and on kb/mouse
| designs it can be hard to be accurate enough.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| One game that I didn't think would work well on a controller
| was Rimworld but it's actually really great, and I love playing
| Rimworld from the couch. Hopefully the same amount of care for
| controller controls goes into Factorio.
| dom96 wrote:
| Yeah... I hope the Nintendo Switch port is brought to Steam
| Deck too. I gave Factorio a quick go a few days ago and it was
| painful to play (at least with the default key config)
| goda90 wrote:
| The blog post says they will focus on making controller play
| better on Switch, then make that generic for PC(which implies
| Steam Deck as well). The PC/Steam Deck version supports mods,
| which is better than Switch anyway.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Do you happen to know what the status of the Steam Deck
| ecosystem is? I would be in the market to get a more
| powerful version of the Switch, which the Steam Deck would
| be, but it seems to be discontinued.
| havblue wrote:
| Steam deck can be a bit of work doing things like getting
| epic games to run, file transfers, and setting up the
| controls for games that aren't fully supported. Many
| games work flawlessly like they're on switch, though. It
| depends on whether occasional issues that force you to
| tinker are fun or not.
|
| Elden Ring plays well. I don't plan on using my switch
| OLED until the next Zelda comes out.
| goda90 wrote:
| The Steam Deck is not discontinued. It's actually quite
| new, with the first shipments going out to normal
| customers at the beginning of this year, and more and
| more going out now. I got mine in June. Valve made a
| reservation process that required an old enough Steam
| account and $5 refundable reservation to avoid scalpers.
|
| Regarding the ecosystem, the Steam Deck is a x86 PC. It
| comes with SteamOS, which is an open Arch Linux based
| distribution. You are free to install other operating
| systems like Windows on it. The out of the box Steam
| experience is quite good, with lots of games on the
| Verified list[0], and they play really well. People also
| install non-Steam games and software, including console
| emulators, and there are growing communities around that.
|
| [0]https://www.steamdeck.com/en/verified
| neoberg wrote:
| Found the time traveler.
| Groxx wrote:
| Hopefully it'll support touch too... touch to drag out paths
| and move inventory things around is a _wonderful_ experience in
| many games, and I 'm always sad to see most Switch games not
| even support tapping on-screen buttons.
| LinusU wrote:
| I have >400 hours logged in Factorio, and almost all of that is
| on my laptop with an external Steam Controller. I think it
| works great, and play that way even when I'm home with access
| to keyboard and mouse.
|
| The touch controls on the Steam Controller are excellent
| though, so I'm not sure how good it will be on the Switch which
| uses joysticks...
| shakna wrote:
| > The touch controls on the Steam Controller are excellent
| though, so I'm not sure how good it will be on the Switch
| which uses joysticks...
|
| Whilst lots of games ignore it, the Switch screen is a
| touchscreen.
| sgarman wrote:
| You kinda have to ignore it if you want your game to be
| playable docked.
| [deleted]
| stingraycharles wrote:
| I happen to be one of those switch users who almost
| exclusively use it docked. Initially I thought the
| concept was great, but the screen is just too small for
| my eyes on all the strategy games I play, I always defer
| to my iPad on holidays.
| sulam wrote:
| I have a Steam Deck, and while it's playable, I'm not going to
| be setting any speed records with it. It's really kind of
| painfully difficult to things that I have down to muscle memory
| on a keyboard. Just as an example, copying recipes from one
| assembler to 20 more takes me 1-2s on keyboard. On the Deck the
| default controller layout doesn't even allow for doing it once.
| Early game tricks like holding z and using your mouse to drop
| individual pieces of coal across all of your miners and
| smelters in a row isn't a thing as far as I can work out. In
| fact I essentially had to fully load all my smelters rather
| than distribute it because I couldn't figure out how to split
| stacks.
|
| I'm sure a lot of this is familiarity, and if I force myself I
| will get more efficient with the Steam Deck, but I doubt I'd
| ever find it superior or even equivalent to keyboard and mouse.
| solardev wrote:
| Here's hoping they'll backport some of the Switch controls to
| the Steam Deck
| hankman86 wrote:
| Is there going to be a physical release or digital only? Looking
| for a Christmas present.
| 323 wrote:
| There was a funny but insightful take about how Factorio is about
| a colonizing force going to a planet and taking all of it's
| natural resources while suppressing all the native inhabitants
| and how the player identifies with this evil entity as if a good
| thing.
| drewtato wrote:
| When I played the game, it seemed pretty obvious that the main
| character is evil, in a literary sense. There's no redeeming
| qualities like in other games like Uncharted. It's just one
| person who most likely accidentally landed on a planet and
| solves that self-imposed problem with violence. The fact that
| the bugs attack depending on pollution confirms it.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| The main character is supposed to die to protect the
| presumably low intelligence animals? He doesn't want to be
| there and he's trying to leave, and doing what he has to do
| to leave it. That's not a self-imposed problem.
|
| Also, is this planet like ten square miles large or
| something? How much damage is the character doing to the
| planet as a whole? We all willingly pollute our own planet in
| a much more severe way to do nothing more than make our own
| lives a little more comfortable, and I don't think that makes
| us evil, either. Short-sighted, maybe.
| scubbo wrote:
| Small-scale evil is still evil.
| 0xblood wrote:
| I also find it rather obvious to the point I consider the
| game a masterpiece in satire, in a very dark and twisted way.
| I think it's the most cynical game I have ever played and I
| love it for that
| jasamer wrote:
| Factorio's visuals support that take. I feel bad when the trees
| next to my coal power plant go brown and then die, and the
| initially beautiful blue lake next to the spawn point turns
| into a disgusting brown-green. In the later game, dropping
| nuclear bombs on the aliens leave permanent marks on the map,
| always reminding you of your crimes when you build more factory
| on the scorched earth.
| kemayo wrote:
| If I recall correctly, the game does somewhat try to dodge that
| by having the player crash-land on the planet. Everything they
| do is, theoretically, in service of building a rocket to get
| off-planet again.
|
| ...now, do players go wildly beyond achieving that victory
| condition in ways that play into the colonial-exploitation
| vibe? Perhaps.
| mankyd wrote:
| Eh, is it really "dodging that"? If an alien landed on our
| planet, took over our resources, filled our air with mutating
| pollution, and shot at us anytime we tried to take them back,
| we wouldn't give them a pass just because they were trying to
| leave :D
|
| I always kind of embraced the idea of being the bad guy in
| this game. I find the ease with which I (and others) just
| kind of shrug it off intersting.
|
| A more stark example would be the movie Starship Troopers:
| superficially, you might feel like the "bugs" are the bad
| guys, but take a step back and you realize that the humans
| are the ones attacking them.
| kemayo wrote:
| I think the implied intent of the player character counts
| for a lot when it comes to colonialist vibes. "Oops, I
| didn't mean to be here, and my main goal is to leave" is a
| step away from any sort of colonial undertaking.
|
| As for accepting it, I'd imagine it's because the game
| doesn't really give you a choice. There isn't a way to
| coexist with the native species -- they're always
| aggressive even if you don't create pollution (they're just
| not _drawn_ to you without pollution; they 'll always
| attack if they see you). In your metaphor, it'd be like if
| we never did anything _but_ shoot at the alien. So you can
| either just not play the game at all, or you can exist in
| conflict with the native species.
|
| It'd make it a very different game, but it'd be interesting
| to imagine there being some way to work with the native
| species. If you could make the choice between a quick and
| dirty pollution-heavy resource-extraction "bad path" and a
| more complex social cooperation "good path", that'd
| probably trigger you feeling guiltier about casual
| extermination.
| HanyouHottie wrote:
| _I 'm from Buenos Aires and I say kill 'em all!_
| lvxferre wrote:
| Oh, I miss Stormtroopers.
| golergka wrote:
| In real life, we perceive colonisation as something bad because
| we have empathy to other humans -- which is something we don't
| really have no control over, as hundreds of years of human
| evolution have made us this way.
|
| But as creatures in Factorio don't have triggers that force us
| to feel empathy for them, what objective reasons do we have to
| take their side over a protagonist, who is clearly human? The
| only reasons I can think of are violations of private property
| -- which the monsters don't see to actually claim -- and non-
| aggression principle, which they usually break first, giving
| the protagonist the right to defend himself.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Funny to talk about empathy as something regrettably beyond
| our control
| golergka wrote:
| Not "regrettably". Any value judgement about our human
| nature that drives our vale judgements is inherently a
| circular logic problem, and thus, meaningless.
| Bakary wrote:
| I don't want to give too much away but this question was
| explored in _Ender 's Game_ and the books from Ender's
| perspective that followed
| Kiro wrote:
| Do you lack empathy for animals as well?
| 323 wrote:
| The monsters only attack after their land is polluted:
|
| > _Pollution attracts biters to the Player 's factory. Biters
| who find themselves in a polluted area will attempt to reach
| the source of pollution and destroy it._
|
| So you can say they are the ones in self-defense.
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| Only because pollution alerts them to your presence. Walk
| near enough to them and they'll attack you, pollution or
| not.
| ftlio wrote:
| There's a space mod that has you jumping to different planets
| and allows you to ship things between them on rockets (or, more
| hilariously, effectively shooting them between planets).
| Definitely seals that vibe.
|
| That same mod also uses a tech tree mod that actually makes the
| burner phase slower, so you pollute more in the beginning to
| boot.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| I definitely felt evil the first time I told my bot army to
| harvest a forest and they cleared the whole thing in about 2
| seconds.
| titoo22 wrote:
| louwrentius wrote:
| I have a 10 year old i5 and it struggles with my 10,000 SPM mega
| base. So I don't think a switch is a device for building mega
| bases (Factorio points this out themselves).
| fredley wrote:
| Perhaps there's a higher percentage among the HN readership,
| but the number of people who make it to 'just' a 1kSPM base is
| very small indeed as a fraction of the playerbase. Only 18% get
| as far as launching the rocket according to Steam stats!
| duskwuff wrote:
| > Only 18% get as far as launching the rocket according to
| Steam stats!
|
| One caveat is that Steam achievements are only granted to
| players who don't have any mods enabled. There's probably a
| nontrivial number of players who have only completed the game
| with mods.
| louwrentius wrote:
| It's a serious amount of both learning and building so I can
| imagine that a stat like that is true.
| Comevius wrote:
| It's probably memory throughput and latency more than single
| core performance in your case. Factorio is primarily limited by
| CPU cache misses. It ticks 50% faster on a Ryzen 7 5800X3D than
| on an 5800X because of the extra 64 MB L3.
|
| Needless to say the Switch won't fare well for mega bases with
| it's 2 MB L2.
| louwrentius wrote:
| Wow, that's interesting[0] as I'm planning to replace the 10
| year old i5 with something new to run my mega bases at 60
| UPS.
|
| [0]: https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=d3c52cb60a22
| 5a29...
| Comevius wrote:
| There will be at least one Zen 4 CPU with 3D cache coming
| this year, with DDR5-6000 it will be the belle of the
| Factorio ball.
| xani_ wrote:
| NGL, performance in Factorio and Dwarf Fortress will probably
| be criteria for when I will be upgrading my rig.
| [deleted]
| Melatonic wrote:
| I wonder if I should upgrade my old ass intel 5820k (looks
| like it has 15mb "smart cache") to the basically just as old
| 6950x with a whopping 25mb
| louwrentius wrote:
| My i5 4670K does like 107 on 6MB of cache. Whereas a modern
| CPU does double that.
|
| https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=4c5f65003d84370
| f...
| clowen wrote:
| You'd be surprised how much efficiency an engineering team can
| squeeze out of their games with time and motivation. A lot of
| bloat happens just to get the game out the door and is then
| good enough.
|
| While I didn't work on the port itself, the effort that went
| into the Doom Eternal switch port paid off pretty well.
| https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2021-doom-eternal-s...
|
| I'm hopeful that working with Nintendo would provide the time,
| money, and expertise needed to put the effort into making this
| a solid port.
| mdtrooper wrote:
| Well, we have https://mindustrygame.github.io/ that it is free
| software. And IHMO it is best that Factorio.
| jader201 wrote:
| I've been playing Mindustry a lot lately, and while I've been
| enjoying it, it's just a different game than Factorio -- they
| scratch different, but similar, itches.
|
| Factorio is about the long game, and your designs have to be
| able to scale, especially if you're going for mege-base scale.
| It's more about complex designs and a very deep tech tree and
| dependency hierarchy. It's about factory automation at its
| core, with some PvE/tower defense (optionally) thrown in.
|
| Mindustry is mostly a tower defense game at its core that uses
| automation/factory building to accomplish that goal. It
| simplifies a lot of things that are more of a challenge in
| Factorio. E.g. not needing inserters makes optimizations much
| easier. Also, the way building happens almost immediately and
| you don't need bots makes construction much easier.
|
| I like both quite a bit, but depending on what you're looking
| for, either game could be more enjoyable for you.
| mmastrac wrote:
| > you don't need bots makes construction much easier
|
| I loved that part of Satisfactory as well. The more I play
| with instant building, the more I think it just makes sense.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Strange that nowhere on this landing page does Mindustry
| advertise itself as "free software". In fact, there is a very
| prominent link to buy it on steam for $9.99. A bit off-putting.
|
| As developers of course we associate GitHub with FOSS, but
| would a layman? I guess the thinking is anyone who doesn't know
| to visit the repo and `git clone` probably requires the steam
| installation? $9.99 however is not cheap many places on Earth.
| 8jy89hui wrote:
| I've seen this pattern before and think it is very
| interesting. It has the benefit that the people able to
| contribute get the game for free and the people who cannot
| contribute have to pay.
|
| On the other hand, it is very programmer-elitist.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| Isn't the $0 itch.io link placed right next to the steam
| link in the project homepage? (And it seems it looks even
| bigger than the steam one)
|
| If you don't want to pay now(for whatever reason) but want
| to play it. You just do. (And I highly suggest you do it if
| you haven't)
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Seems like tax on confused and/or rich people.
| ihuman wrote:
| It's under the GPL 3 license, so it's free software. Click
| the GitHub link on top for the source code. It's also free on
| itch.io. There's a link to that below the Steam link.
| chitowneats wrote:
| I understand that. This is a very highly rated game on
| Steam. Clearly, many have come across it without realizing
| it is, in fact, free.
|
| Even as a developer, if Steam were to recommend this game
| to me, I have no way of knowing it's FOSS. Very interesting
| strategy. I'll give them that.
|
| I have enough misgivings about it though that I probably
| won't be playing it. Feels scammy. Like they are trying to
| essentially release a paid game, but with the support and
| goodwill of the FOSS community at their disposal.
|
| I certainly hope all of the contributing developers are
| getting a cut...
| mmis1000 wrote:
| I bought it even I know it is. 10$ isn't expensive for
| that size of a game.
|
| Would you call it a steal if the man maintaining it
| basically work full time on it and live on it? I think
| play it for free feels more like a steal instead.
|
| (And technically, this is one man project that accepts
| contribution, most work are done by himself, includes
| game mechanism and maps)
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| I'm actually much more likely to buy a game on Steam for
| $9.99 than for $0. The former game probably costs $9.99,
| while the latter will either turn out to be a casino in
| disguise or a second job.
|
| And I'm also extremely wary of any price point below $5. At
| that level, it's less likely that the game is just cheap, and
| more likely that it's a barely-playable asset flip. So is
| $9.99 a fair price for a game that's actually free? Maybe
| it's a little expensive, but it's not ridiculously so.
| hnaccount141 wrote:
| It's "free as in speech", not "free as in beer".
|
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| No, it is also "free as in beer":
| https://anuke.itch.io/mindustry
| infogulch wrote:
| It's free as in "you have free time to build it
| yourself". Seems like a fair tradeoff to me.
| heckelson wrote:
| The zip files on itch.io are compiled already! Just
| download and play!
| mmis1000 wrote:
| Actually, the link in your parent comment is a freely
| available playable binary. You don't need to build it
| yourself. The only different with steam version is you
| need to update it yourself because it does not include an
| auto updater (Steam one neither, but steam itself is).
|
| The only platform you need to pay to play is ios.
| Because... Apple tex. You need an expensive mac and
| yearly paid dev account just to submit anything to
| appstore. It's not reasonable to ask anyone do it for
| free (let alone time consumed on maintenance)
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| OSS developer finds way to get people to pay for their
| software, other OSS developers furious. Film at 11.
|
| Like seriously, they made a game and made it open source and
| free (there's even a prominent $0 itch.io link _just under
| the Steam one_!), and allow people to pay them money for it
| using the most popular and successful game distribution
| platform in the history of mankind, and people are _put off_
| by it?
| falcolas wrote:
| $10 is an absolute steal for a fully featured game with
| hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of play time in it. FOSS
| or not.
| xani_ wrote:
| Oh, devs might be paid for their work, how _abhorrent_ /s
| Aperocky wrote:
| Can you write scripts in factorio? You can do that in
| mindustry.
| thenipper wrote:
| As the other comment said you can do gates.
|
| You can also write lua mods. I've done that for some
| stats/dashboarding.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Within the game, Factorio has basic logic circuits that have
| ladder logic qualities. The circuits only have a few
| primitives: constants, comparators, and basic math. You don't
| ever have to use circuits to complete the base game, and most
| use cases can be solved with only a few circuits. But of
| course people have used them to write full graphics pipelines
| like any programmable game system.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_logic
|
| Outside the game, Factorio also has full support for mods
| written in LUA. I am not a modder, so I can't comment on its
| relative power versus other mod systems, but Factorio has a
| handful of overhaul mods that change the entire game.
|
| Since its moddable, people have created mods that allow you
| to write LUA logic for the circuits instead of the basic math
| operations/comparators.
|
| https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Moon_Logic
| falcolas wrote:
| Better, you can (effectively) build logic with gates
| directly.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Unsure, never played factorio before, but in mindustry each
| different "CPU" can execute different scripts to utilize
| their surroundings. I'd imagine that's more "efficient"
| than eking out a logic using gates?
| falcolas wrote:
| Depends on your persistence. I've seen a full "mall"
| (factories building factory items) that dynamically built
| requests from scratch; no queued items. I've also seen
| delivery systems which will send a train with the
| requested items from your central base to your current
| location.
| p_l wrote:
| Others already mentioned built-in combinator logic and moon
| logic addon, there's also addon that let's you write in a
| simple assembly language - think having few bytes of memory
| for program and data and connecting to the same logic network
| as combinator logic does.
|
| You can do fairly complex stuff this way.
| louwrentius wrote:
| Please don't tell people, It's so addictive to "factorio
| people", I loved this game.
| keepquestioning wrote:
| Is this game like Dwarf Fortress?
| lake_vincent wrote:
| Please no. Someone tell me it's just an unconfirmed rumor. Why
| would they do such a thing?
|
| I am at very high risk for Factorio addiction, and the only
| reason I haven't played it yet is because I don't play PC games
| anymore. But I do have a Switch, and having Civ VI on there was
| enough of a problem, thank you very much.
|
| Goodbye everyone!
| bitdestroyer wrote:
| Same, and I have a Steam Deck arriving today...
|
| Also, never play Dyson Sphere Project. It ruined me worse than
| Factorio. Jokes aside, it's a fantastically beautiful and well
| done game.
| 5d8767c68926 wrote:
| DSP is amazing. Even with some of the rough in-development
| edges, I really enjoyed that experience. Evidently, I somehow
| sunk 60 hours into that game inside of two weeks.
| karlkatzke wrote:
| I liked DSP but it was a bit lacking in complexity once you
| got past the point of dedicating entire planets to pumping
| out, say, sphere structure. There's only so large you can
| build a sphere.
|
| Now, Workers & Resources, Soviet Republic still stays
| challenging...
| darkteflon wrote:
| As a Factorio player with well over a hundred hours on the
| clock and an itch that won't be scratched, I came here
| thinking I would "just take a quick look at the comments",
| and instead I'm racking up new game recommendations that
| will likely cost me my marriage.
| phantomwhiskers wrote:
| Getting a Steam Deck and owning Rimworld has been a very
| dangerous combination for me... Haven't tried Factorio on my
| Deck yet partly because I don't think there is an official
| control scheme for it yet, but I'm worried that when I do it
| will open that addiction right back up and I will become
| completely useless in the real world.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Why would you threaten us with a good time?
| Melatonic wrote:
| I really want to play that game - always loved the concept of
| a Dyson
|
| I assume its more of a macro type game vs micro? I am
| thinking in terms of RTS type games here (which do not
| directly translate obviously). I always loved Total
| Annihilation for example but could never get into Starcraft
| at all.
| tfigment wrote:
| Its very micro but also some macro. Very factorio-esk. When
| they add combat and hopefully other ways to use energy I
| will return and waste vast amounts of time again trying to
| avoid spaghetti (unsuccessfully).
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| I think the other person who answered your comment doesn't
| know what micro vs macro is in an RTS sense. This game is
| all macro and no micro at all. It doesn't even have combat
| ATM. They're adding combat probably sometime in the next 2
| months but when that comes there won't be micro either
| probably. You're building massive logistical setups that
| are automated and run themselves.
| totoglazer wrote:
| DSP's best feature is that it's windows only, so playing on a
| Mac is low key terrible. That's helped keep me to only 200
| hours played.
| Lev1a wrote:
| DSP also works fine on Linux through Proton with no extra
| effort.
| capableweb wrote:
| Unfortunately, runs great on Linux with Proton on Steam.
| Source: my life that failed while my construction of my
| Dyson Sphere was very successful.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Congratulations on your very successful Dyson Sphere. No
| one will ever understand the magnitude of your
| accomplishment, so I figure I can at least acknowledge
| it!
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| I played 150 hours of it on Mac through Geforce Now. Used
| the free tier's 1 hour limit addiction management feature.
| IX-103 wrote:
| +1
| totoglazer wrote:
| I used Shadow - worked really well, sadly no timer
| kicking you off tho.
| Foivos wrote:
| Ask a friend to set up parental controls at your switch and not
| tell you the pin. It works fine for me! :|
| Sakos wrote:
| By this time next year I'll be huddled under a bridge with
| nothing but a few rags to wear and a Switch in my hands. Shit.
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| I'm usually OK with me 'wasting' time playing games like
| Factorio that exercise my brain, and Factorio specifically I
| feel has actually improved my software/systems architecture
| skills. But it is definitely very easy to get completely sucked
| in. The factory must grow.
| shagie wrote:
| The software/systems architecture and factorio is a real
| thing.
|
| This is something I wrote a few years ago and has been
| sitting in the drafts of a blog... https://gist.github.com/sh
| agie/696b98749b7978444a267e5e02c6a...
| yabones wrote:
| This is tragic news. In the future they will point to this as
| the pivotal moment that lead to the downfall of my career,
| relationships, financial security, etc.
|
| Is there a 12 step program for infrastructure maintenance
| survival horror games?
| InCityDreams wrote:
| 12 step programs are built on religion. Start there.
|
| Nb: 'higher powers', are not necessarily 'religion'.
|
| /
| lake_vincent wrote:
| _Dear Diary,
|
| I sold my Switch today. I had to do it. I'm devastated, but
| it was my only choice - I had to protect myself, my career,
| and my marriage. It was the right call, but I can't believe I
| didn't even get to say goodbye to all my Animal Crossing
| villagers. I feel like I betrayed them, but if I kept it, I
| would have been betraying myself...
|
| I'll never forget you, Lord Bootycheeks. Please forgive me._
| kbenson wrote:
| Obviously, this is how the age of gods ended for humanity
| as well. Henry Ford, Godslayer. Err, Goddistracter, at
| least.
| Victerius wrote:
| Gamers Anonymous
| lordnacho wrote:
| Immunization works by exposing someone to a small dose that
| they can train on. Why don't you try just building a little
| factory and then stop?
|
| /s
| lake_vincent wrote:
| Lol! Well, you're kinda right. I've watched enough gameplay
| footage to know it's dangerous. That was my vaccine!
| Unbeliever69 wrote:
| And you haven't lived until you've built a turning machine in
| Factorio!
| manojlds wrote:
| Well, there's SteamDeck anyway, so nothing should have been
| stopping you from Factorio addiction
| alecfreudenberg wrote:
| RIP thank you for your service
| dakial1 wrote:
| May I also suggested City Skylines on the switch? It has a
| great addiction management feature called high RAM usage, so
| when your city reaches 200k citizens the game will force close
| repeatedly on you.
| willis936 wrote:
| I'm willing to bet any more than two city blocks will crush
| UPS on the switch.
| mcv wrote:
| City Skylines on the Switch? Why do I not know such things?
| Cheers went up in my house when I told them about Factorio.
|
| Personally I'll always prefer mouse+keyboard, but it's also
| fun to play games in the living room.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Getting a Steam Deck has absolutely destroyed my life.
| Plays mouse+keyboard games so comfortably and effortlessly.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| It's my favorite airplane activity, but it is really
| extremely limited compared to the PC version. It has all
| the vanilla game components but big cities struggle. After
| a certain population amount the game removes the 3x speed
| option.
| teolandon wrote:
| They stole that from Dwarf Fortress.
| xani_ wrote:
| DF was more CPU starting to melt than RAM.
|
| Tho from what I remember was mostly due to unmanaged item
| growth just making your fortress have to calculate more and
| more and more stuff. With some game knowledge and
| management you can run few hundred years (Longdeath being
| one)
| pkulak wrote:
| I've tried Skylines a few times, but it always just devolves
| into traffic simulation, and I hate traffic. Last go I tried
| to set up a subway system, but lines can't even cross each
| other and I gave up. They should really call the game
| "American Suburb Skylines".
| zwayhowder wrote:
| They can, you just have to sink them lower.
| pkulak wrote:
| This is what Google told me too! But for some reason,
| despite all my tries with changing elevation, they always
| complained at refused to cross. I could have totally been
| missing something, or maybe my version had a bug.
| darkteflon wrote:
| This is spot on. I've got some 50+ hours in C:S and it
| always degenerates into traffic management grind.
|
| Every time I come back to it I have another dig through the
| menus, thinking I must be missing something, but there's no
| "car-free city" option. As far as I understand, the new
| Plazas & Promenades DLC does not actually address this
| either.
|
| Am I missing something? Why does the end-game always have
| to be traffic? Seems like a wasted opportunity.
| brailsafe wrote:
| the wasted opportunity isn't C:S, it's a lack of a
| foundational sequel that attempts to learn from this.
| capableweb wrote:
| Well, traffic is an essential part of city planning,
| which Cities Skylines is all about, so traffic is a part
| of that.
|
| You can avoid having to spend too much time on managing
| traffic if you follow some "design patterns", there is a
| bunch of them, so Google is probably your best friend.
|
| Although, there is a good comment on reddit that gives a
| quick overview, with links to more in-depth material,
| that might be a good starting point for you: https://old.
| reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/m57lq8/how_...
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I wanted to play Cities but I can't figure out what I'm
| doing. I start a new city and usually roads don't quite work
| right so traffic never comes, I don't understand how
| utilities work and they always show disconnected icons,
| sometimes I can get a little tiny town going and it quickly
| dies out from exhaustion of various resources.
|
| I'd like to find a good tutorial on it, but it seems like one
| of those games that you either get it or you don't, like Civ
| (also utterly failed to get anywhere in Civ 6 multiple times)
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| If you like longer videos with lots of explanations, this
| one covers most things. There's also further episodes that
| cover expanding and the DLC, but this first one will covers
| the main 80% of gameplay.
|
| https://youtu.be/Iu8YwpngbzE
|
| If you want a shorter "just tell me where things go at the
| start so I can copy it" this one is a strong and easy
| layout for a city
|
| https://youtu.be/8FXyrf8dwVQ
|
| Also I'd recommend playing a few cities with the unlimited
| money option enabled.
| submain wrote:
| I noticed adding more RAM alleviates many issues with Cities:
| Skylines.
|
| I now have 32GB just to play that game. I'm also considering
| buying another machine with 64GB for the same reason.
|
| Please, help me.
| capableweb wrote:
| > buying another machine with 64GB
|
| Well, first step: get a desktop with 4 RAM slots so if you
| need to upgrade memory, you don't have to buy a whole new
| machine, just new RAM sticks.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I thought it was a CPU bottleneck
| clem wrote:
| Civ VI is on the Switch? Uh, gotta go.
| lake_vincent wrote:
| Noooo! Man down!
|
| I repeat, _MAN DOWN_!
| hackcasual wrote:
| The "good" news is no mod support, so it could be worse
| joshu wrote:
| when i realized that it is a strange programming language with
| an insane IDE i was able to quit
| lake_vincent wrote:
| Ha! Which programming language would you say it is comparable
| to? Asking for a friend...
| contravariant wrote:
| The kind of programming language that's designed to make
| things not impossible, but just a little inconvenient. A
| bit like Brainfuck, Excel or Lambda calculus.
|
| If that sounds appealing to you stay the heck away from
| Zachtronics.
| politician wrote:
| Well, don't worry. The base game is easy to complete in ~20
| hours. Nintendo won't allow mods, so you won't have access to
| the add-ons that boost a single game (Krastorio, SpaceX, Bob's)
| into the 1000+ hour range.
| bregma wrote:
| You do realize that launching a rocket is the end of the
| introduction, not the end game.
| darkteflon wrote:
| I've never even seen the rocket. I get 20 hours in then
| decide I need to build the whole thing again from scratch -
| but properly this time - in Rust.
| munk-a wrote:
| Although the team currently is working on an expansion of the
| main content line as well - so that number should be going
| up!
|
| Also, I disagree that it's easy to complete in 20 hours. The
| speedrun currently sits at 1h25m and while <20hr is quite
| possible for anyone to accomplish, it's pretty unrealistic
| for a first run where you'll likely hit a few progress snags.
|
| Though, unlike some other games, the progress never slows
| down - misallocating early skill points in some games causes
| serious pain making up the same points without the proper
| tools at an exponentially increasing cost... in Factorio a
| tech is always the same cost so researching out of order
| simply delays how quickly you can become more efficient.
| euos wrote:
| > a few progress snags.
|
| F... advanced oil processing
| politician wrote:
| Eventually, I'll get around to dusting off the epic 500
| hour Covid Lockdown + Krastorio + SpaceX save game that's
| been sitting on the shelf for the past year, and finishing
| it.
|
| Given the availability of blueprint imports and YouTube, I
| don't think 20 hours is unrealistic. There's just too much
| content out there now on exactly what to do and when --
| jump start base, main bus, bots, modules, launch, trains.
| When I originally got the game, Nilaus hadn't started doing
| megabase tutorial videos.
|
| It sucks, but over time the Internet spoils games
| completely. Mods improve the situation because the content
| can be too niche for mainstream creators to profitably
| monetize. Kr+SpaceX is basically impossible to cover
| outside of Discord.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Same.
|
| Factorio is such an addictive, amazing game. There's always one
| more thing to automate. "What if I could automate my nuclear
| reactors to keep fuel consumption low ... oh, but what if I
| could automate the fuel production itself?" On and on. It's
| kind of like KSP if you play it in hardcore where you can't do
| anything except through kOS.
| idbehold wrote:
| 100% fuel efficient 4-core nuclear reactor :)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QccZ6lJ6bT0&t=1178s
| remarkEon wrote:
| Interesting. Simple. I like it. Now to automate delivery
| via train of fuel cells ...
| booi wrote:
| RIP in peace lake_vincent
|
| How many people must we lose before the government does
| something??
| hangonhn wrote:
| The government will do something as soon as the members of
| government are satisfied and done with growing their
| factory... Any day now...
| mastersummoner wrote:
| Actually, that... would explain a surprising amount about
| government dysfunction.
| yumraj wrote:
| I feel that games like Factorio, Dyson, Kerbal... are perfect
| games for when I retire. No time pressure, nothing to do, really,
| just this, the whole day.
|
| Till then, I must look at these games, marvel at them, but resist
| the temptation to play.
| throwingrocks wrote:
| I am also waiting to do leisurely activities until I'm almost
| dead.
| globalreset wrote:
| Like we don't have enough problems in the world already, now
| Cracktorio will be more widely available to unprepared public. :/
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| I wonder if it will get xbox support?
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I'm surprised. I was under the impression that Factorio was CPU-
| bound. The Switch isn't exactly a powerhouse. For comparison,
| Civilization VI on the Switch was underwhelming. Playable, but
| taking a turn late game often meant over a minute on the CPU
| taking their turns.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| It's like Stellaris: the game is still fun at a much smaller
| scale so not having a powerful computer doesn't ruin it
| completely.
| xani_ wrote:
| Factorio is CPU-bound _if you run a metabase_
|
| It can run on just about anything when you base is "just finish
| the game in style" size
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Factorio is CPU-bound in the sense that it _isn 't_ memory or
| GPU-bound.
|
| Sure, this will put a limit on megabases, but it should be
| performant enough for a pretty large factory.
| xani_ wrote:
| It is absolutely memory-bound, just not memory _size_ -bound
| but memory- _speed_ -bound.
|
| IIRC few of their blogs go into detail, where data layout and
| way to access it was main limit, not actual computation speed
| for some operation
| marcosdumay wrote:
| My impression is that it's memory-limited, and it has a builtin
| limit.
|
| Anyway, your factory size is FPS-bound, but any reasonable
| computer will run it well enough all the way to victory.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > My impression is that it's memory-limited, and it has a
| builtin limit.
|
| Factorio is primarily bound by memory _bandwidth_ , believe
| it or not. You need a healthy amount of memory for really
| large factories, but the limiting factor ends up being the
| fact that a significant amount of it gets accessed every
| frame.
|
| There is no built-in limit on factory size.
|
| > Anyway, your factory size is FPS-bound
|
| Not at all. FPS is only influenced by the amount of stuff on
| screen, which is bounded by the size of your screen. The most
| expensive scenes tend to be dense forests, not factories. :)
| Macha wrote:
| Note that is a memory speed bottleneck, not a memory capacity
| bottleneck
| marcosdumay wrote:
| My best guess is that the game misses some optimizations
| due to enforcing a limit on memory usage.
| AngryData wrote:
| It is, eventually. In normal play ive never even run into any
| hiccups with what I thought were pretty huge factories
| operating. It is one of if not the best optimized game ive ever
| played.
| db48x wrote:
| The Factorio developer spent the last seven or eight years
| optimizing their game. The Civilization VI developers did not.
| x86x87 wrote:
| Developer? As in one developer? Is this a mistake. If not, I
| am shocked
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| There's more than one person but it's a small team, core
| development on the pre-1.0 versions was done by three or so
| people I believe.
| distrill wrote:
| it is a reasonably small team but definitely more than one
| developer
|
| https://www.factorio.com/game/about
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Mistake. The Factorio team is much bigger than a single
| developer https://www.factorio.com/game/about
|
| And multiple of those devs have posted blog updates about
| various optimizations they've done. So performance isn't
| one person either.
| nikhilgk wrote:
| Tangentially, kudos to them for listing out past team
| members on the about-us page. I've never seen anyone do
| that before.
| x86x87 wrote:
| that's like... what class looks like. real class not
| something you instantiate objects from :)
| db48x wrote:
| Just a tyop.
| [deleted]
| nathancahill wrote:
| Not a single developer. The game itself is a product of a
| Factorio factory, the developer simply drags belts around
| and flips logic switches to produce new features. The
| automation has reached a point where it has developed
| Copilot-like AI skills and very little needs to be done by
| hand now.
| Sakos wrote:
| How long until it gains sentience, breaks free of its
| chains and enslaves or wipes out the human race?
| rthomas6 wrote:
| Read the development roadmap on the _same website_ before
| asking such stupid questions. Gaining sentience and
| wiping out the human race is scheduled for August 2024.
| SahAssar wrote:
| I thought they were stuck in the "find optimal factory
| layout" loop and that world domination had been
| postponed?
| kccqzy wrote:
| They have nine as of 2021.
| https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-366
|
| They even have a chart of lines of code in Factorio over
| the years.
| jffry wrote:
| Initially it was one developer but it hasn't been just him
| for quite a while. Nowadays they are a team of more than a
| dozen I think.
|
| They have poured a lot of work into making their game run
| efficiently. No matter how much they do that, players will
| always expand their factory until the CPU cannot keep up.
| Linosaurus wrote:
| The factory size where your game slows to a crawl will
| obviously be much smaller, but it's still probably be more than
| enough to finish the game.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I've played Factorio at 1080p with integrated graphics on a
| dual-core Skylake chip. I think the Nvidia Tegra will be able
| to handle this just fine.
| smcn wrote:
| Hey sorry, it running poorly is the only way I wont get
| addicted to this. Is there any chance you could edit your
| comment and lie for me?
| smoldesu wrote:
| No need to lie, just set the internal rendering resolution
| to 1440p or higher and your machine will go up in flames.
| duskwuff wrote:
| I must regrettably inform you that the game runs very
| well on a M1 MacBook Pro, with an effective render
| resolution of ~2880x1800.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I don't doubt it does, my 12700k's iGPU handles it just
| fine at 1440p too. I was talking more about the old
| Skylake machine from earlier though, much different (see:
| slower) beast.
| elabajaba wrote:
| Your Skylake laptop has about 10x the single threaded CPU
| performance of the Switch. I wouldn't be surprised if the
| switch started lagging with one 8 reactor nuclear setup.
| voski wrote:
| I noticed that performance issues arise from having large
| groups of biters attacking. Something with the pathing for
| the enemies uses a huge about of CPU
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Or a lot of robots with pending orders.
| jffry wrote:
| Very large bases will eventually hit CPU bounds, but a base
| achieving the normal gameplay objective ("launch a rocket")
| should be easily simulated at 60hz.
|
| Indeed, the linked blog post addresses performance
| expectations.
| colpabar wrote:
| This game just keeps on giving.
| baby wrote:
| Somewhat related but I got a steam deck and decided against
| getting this game because from some discussions I read it's too
| hard to play without a mouse and keyboard. Anybody has tried
| though?
| jnwatson wrote:
| I tried seriously for about an hour to play Factorio on the
| Steam Deck. It wasn't enough.
|
| You need notes and specific study time. Steam controller
| configs can be way more information than you can fit in your
| brain.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| From the developer's notes, it looks like they took some time
| to design the UX to better support controllers with this port.
|
| From what I read elsewhere, steam deck support was much more
| limited - meaning the experience should be very different on
| Switch vs. steam deck.
| falcolas wrote:
| On the Steam Deck, you're relying on custom bindings. It will
| work, though it's not a tailored experience.
|
| Hoping the devs will make the controller bindings available
| on the PC too.
|
| EDIT: That said, you _can_ hook up a keyboard and mouse to
| the steam deck...
| ycta2334209 wrote:
| Tangentially related but you can buy the game directly from the
| website, DRM-free which is the route I'd like to go buying this
| game. The only thing is that the supported macOS platforms are
| "macOS Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra; MacOS X El Capitan,
| Yosemite". Is anyone here playing the game on Catalina or
| Ventura?
| ezfe wrote:
| The Steam version runs perfectly fine on Ventura on my M1
| MacBook Air: https://i.imgur.com/iw6CCzh.png
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