[HN Gopher] Alt-F4 #65 - Factorio visualizer in Unreal Engine 5
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Alt-F4 #65 - Factorio visualizer in Unreal Engine 5
Author : BlueTemplar
Score : 282 points
Date : 2023-07-02 14:34 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (alt-f4.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (alt-f4.blog)
| DDSDev wrote:
| As a game dev, factorio has always been a title that I would
| absolutely love to see the original source code for.
|
| Also, for anyone who's first question was "how is this legal":
|
| "When asked about the legality of this whole endeavour, they
| showed great understanding and allowed the project to be
| released, provided it won't be used for commercial purposes."
| refulgentis wrote:
| Naively, I had the inverse question after reading that, how
| would this be illegal? Why must this be a labor of love? Use of
| Factorio IP seems limited to visual inspiration and file format
| parsing, and its clearly transformative (in the legal sense of
| the word)
| jrm4 wrote:
| I mean, nothing is clear in terms of "transformative" and
| never has been, but I absolutely agree with the overall
| point.
| jdlshore wrote:
| "Visual inspiration" is generous. The models are a direct 1:1
| copy of the in-game sprites, which sounds like a "derivative
| work" to me. IANAL.
| soneil wrote:
| Sometimes I think we're far too obsessed with legal. The
| developer is good to the community, the community is good to
| the developer. This seems like a much more productive
| relationship than arguing over what is legal.
| nness wrote:
| In this instance, it would be more than "look and feel" and
| more "would a person assume this project is done by the
| original Factorio developers" -- are they misleading the
| audience. They copied much of the UI from the Factorio site
| for instance -- so if they wanted you could make the argument
| the intent is to mislead.
| jdlshore wrote:
| I think you're confusing trademark and copyright. Trademark
| is about confusing the public. Copyright is about
| derivative works. It seems pretty clear to me that this is
| a derivative work, due to its direct copying of Factorio
| sprites.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| The website UI is by the Alt-F4 team, not the FUE5 team,
| it's like seeing this discussion and then complaining that
| FUE5 'copied' Factorio's colour scheme, thinking they are
| also behind hackernews, lol.
| amitp wrote:
| There are some bits of Factorio source code on github --
| https://gist.github.com/Rseding91
|
| and
| https://old.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/13bsf3s/technical...
| is fascinating reading (things like: they used doubly linked
| lists, and multiple inheritance)
| TOGoS wrote:
| The Factorio team is pretty chill about stuff, generally, which
| is why they make the game so moddable in the first place. The
| only time I remember them having to take any legal action was
| to deal with someone reselling stolen keys or something. It's
| understood that anything cool the community does is good for
| Factorio.
|
| > i would absolutely love to see the original source code for
|
| As someone who's seen the source code, I'd say it's relatively
| good code, but nothing particularly amazing. C++ with multiple
| inheritance, game objects doing method calls to each other in
| multiple phases, and a good dose of "maybe not the best way to
| do this but it works and we're not changing it now" code. What
| keeps it all running as well as it does is a comprehensive set
| of automated tests, and Rseding getting on your case any time
| you make a PR with less-than-optimal code. The interesting bits
| are the algorithms, which are covered by the Friday Facts.
| bilekas wrote:
| > What keeps it all running as well as it does is a
| comprehensive set of automated tests
|
| "Let's game it out enters the chat"
|
| Really though super cool to hear a perspective from someone
| with inside knowledge!
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Wow how did they build so many 3D models in just 5 months, that's
| amazing talent, perhaps 3D modeling tools are also just really
| good now?
| chefandy wrote:
| > The remodelling process was a lot of fun, but next time we
| should really ask for the original Factorio models to preserve
| what's left of our sanity.
|
| Some tools are a lot better-- Substance 3D for texturing, for
| example, especially if you can get their auto UVing to make
| something acceptable-- but fundamentally most straight-up 3D
| modelling tools are roughly what they were a while ago. The
| screenshot of their model seems to have tight topology, too, so
| I'll bet it was pretty labor intensive.
| redox99 wrote:
| Why is the video 25fps? To make it more "cinematic"? It isn't
| even 24fps cinematic. In either case, they both look awful in
| your typical 60hz container because 60 isn't divisible by 24 or
| 25.
|
| Just make it 30 or 60fps. It looks awful like this.
| Operyl wrote:
| It doesn't look that bad, honestly.
| reaperman wrote:
| Most people over the age of 30 or so can't see the difference.
| We didn't grow up with high frame rates and our brains didn't
| train on them. It's entirely possible they have no idea this is
| a thing.
|
| I've seen some videos where different people try out gaming
| trials on different Hz's and it seems like older gamers don't
| get nearly as much performance improvement from high frame
| rates that younger players do. They're also much less likely to
| be able to tell which is which in a blind trial.
| Sardtok wrote:
| 60Hz video looks super weird to me. Looks like it's running
| in like 2x FF, but everything syncs up with 1x audio.
| Watching The Hobbit when it came out was a horrible
| experience.
|
| It's not a problem with games, though. Even if 60 fps was
| quite rare to achieve for 3D games 20+ years ago. I was
| usually happy if I could get stable 20-30 fps.
| bombcar wrote:
| Reminds me of the 3D visualization that you could get for Dwarf
| Fortress. Some "painted" and others tried real-time updates.
| un_montagnard wrote:
| > When you don't know how to code, you just put these nodes
| together, and if it doesn't work you just keep adding more and
| more and become increasingly confused. Suspiciously similar to
| this factory game I've been playing recently.
|
| Cracked me up
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| I loved that bit too. Especially because when you do know how
| to code, you still do the same exact thing but some things are
| probably less verbose. Still lots of spaghetti involved
| occasionally.
| flir wrote:
| You never eliminate a bottleneck, you just move it somewhere
| else.
|
| This is something I knew, but Factorio taught me viscerally.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| That's nothing - LabView even has a similar colour scheme !
|
| https://physics.highpoint.edu/~bbarlow/courses/phy2100/docum...
|
| (Orange. And Gray Tiles show up in the 'GUI' view.)
| butz wrote:
| I would like to see someone building visualizer of same quality
| for good old SimCity 2000.
| dividuum wrote:
| Probably a whoosh moment, but in case people don't know:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCopter
| netsharc wrote:
| SimCopter made the cities 3d, but obviously not Unreal Engine 5
| quality...
| jokoon wrote:
| Factorio is already quite CPU heavy so I don't want to imagine
| how it would behave in 3D. The factory size might be much smaller
| for this to be possible.
|
| I don't really see the point of this, really, except a
| misunderstanding about game design, UX and programming in
| general. This thing might be possible with huge sacrifices,
| though, but I'm not very interested in making something in 3D
| "just because". I love 3D games, but a lot of games just don't
| translate properly to 3D.
|
| Factorio is popular because its hardcore players make immense
| factories that usually reaches the limit of any CPU/GPU.
|
| That's a bit why I dislike most of the gaming industry, because
| there are way too many people who aims for high quality 3D
| graphics without ever understanding software or hardware, and it
| shows, and it's a big step back for the industry as a whole, but
| GPU vendors are always happy for those people to push for high
| end graphics, but not people who like good gameplay.
| leetcrew wrote:
| factorio isn't CPU or GPU bound though. memory bandwidth is
| typically the bottleneck, at least according to the developers.
|
| I'm glad the developers have prioritized game mechanics and sim
| optimization over graphics, and I think the game looks good
| enough for what it is. but I wouldn't mind if they improved
| them either. they could do a lot before it meaningfully
| impacted UPS for megafactories.
| detaro wrote:
| ... your comment doesn't particularly suggest that you have
| understood what this is about, while complaining that its
| authors don't understand things. For one thing, this is not the
| game and doesn't attempt to be.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| I mean, Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere Program run well.
|
| Also, hypothetically, I don't think a 3D client would impact
| the simulation since Factorio (AFAIK) runs as a client +
| server. The 2D simulation would be unchanged.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > since Factorio (AFAIK) runs as a client + server
|
| It does not. Factorio runs as a single process encompassing
| both simulation and rendering; the "headless server" just
| omits the rendering bits.
| gouggoug wrote:
| Read the article.
|
| This is just a fun pet project allowing you to visualize your
| base in 3D. Nothing less, nothing more.
| gigel82 wrote:
| If you want to actually play a Factorio-like game in 3D, I
| recommend Satisfactory.
| spiderice wrote:
| Also play satisfactory if you want days of your life to
| disappear. Such a fun game. Just like Factorio.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Or Dyson Sphere Program.
| [deleted]
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| DSP is a really excellent game. Also it looks beautiful.
| iliketrains wrote:
| Or Captain of Industry (disclaimer: I am one of the devs)
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Briefly mentioned in this and rendered: space exploration is an
| incredible factorio mod and the deepest game I've ever played.
|
| In Factorio you launch a rocket and win. Space exploration takes
| that and continues. You end up developing a base across multiple
| worlds in the solar system. After developing the solar system
| from the different unique resources on each planet you expand to
| interstellar space and then other solar systems. The game has a
| 'quarter of the way through' victory screen but there's another
| victory screen as you explore a mystery that spans the known
| universe and takes a reasonable amount of math knowledge figure
| out.
|
| It's 100s of hours of gameplay and really well done. They
| modified the game so that you can fly spaceships between planets
| with a star and solar system maps and it all works really well.
|
| Just make sure to turn the biters way down. The mod requires a
| level of patience and the intensity of combat runs counter to
| that (in fact the mod itself has a popup telling you to turn
| biters down on start).
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah, but I'd only pick up Space Exploration if you've played
| through the base game a few times and just want more. What I've
| found is that it rebalances the game so the 'base' takes less
| parts (i.e. for modules), but it goes harder on complexity.
| Like, the number of factories / production lines you have to
| build for the next stage just goes up and up.
|
| I think I got to a point - probably nearly 100 hours in - where
| I finally had two lines of products coming from other planets
| to do the next tier of science.
|
| Another tip that I'd add is that you should increase the
| science cost, I found it easy to run out of things to research
| while it still took hours to expand things for the next tier,
| which in practice meant your factory just stops doing anything
| because it doesn't need to do anything.
| louwrentius wrote:
| I'm playing Space Exploration right now and it is epic. But
| beware, a professional YouTuber Dosh Doshington who seems to be
| one of the best Factorio players in the world (in my opinion)
| took 300 hours to complete SE with some help. I think SE is
| amazing but it's an incredible time sink. I've gotten 3500+
| hours in Factorio, I think I have a problem.
|
| Anyway, seeing Factorio in 3D was amazing though, really cool
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Yes that's why I think you should turn biters waaaay down or
| off for SE. It's a game that can take a few years to play
| through if you have a full time job+other things. Still a
| worthy distraction, just understand you'll be playing for
| years.
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| I just absolutely despise the (lack of) visuals in Factorio.
|
| Satisfactory might only be 80% as deep but it being in 3D and
| gorgeous more than makes up for it.
|
| If Factorio looked anything like this model visualizer I'd take
| it seriously.
| pests wrote:
| I agree Factorio does not look the greatest. It looks like a
| giant smear of muddy washed out colors. I've tried to watch
| some content on YT and its so hard to tell whats going on or
| to see anything as a newcomer.
| concordDance wrote:
| Try Dyson Sphere Program then.
|
| Not as repayable as factorio but still good fun.
| dmarinoc wrote:
| Or add Shapez2 to your wishlist.
|
| It hasn't been released yet, but the team is publishing a
| highly interesting devlog:
| https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2162800
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I had such a fantastic time with DSP. Has some clunkiness
| which will hopefully be refined with time, but absolute
| blast in going from nothing to dominating a star. Count me
| as one of those people who see zero need for the game to
| incorporate the upcoming combat/enemy mechanic.
| fermentation wrote:
| I actually prefer to completely turn off biters. They'll still
| be there on other planets, but the anxiety on the home world is
| gone
| candiddevmike wrote:
| What's the best faster-start mod? I want to start with robots
| instead of remaking my base midway through.
| srgpqt wrote:
| Haven't tried it, but this seems like something you can
| customize ingame at any time with the builtin map editor.
|
| See the "setting up research" on the editor wiki page:
|
| https://wiki.factorio.com/Map_editor#Setting_up_research
|
| Edit: you'd probably have to give yourself the necessary
| modular armor, roboport and initial bots.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Agreed. The difficulty creep that was demanded by vocal
| experienced players has made Factorio much harder for
| newcomers to get into.
|
| Factorio is a brilliant Zen garden and an absolutely terrible
| real time strategy game. Since the beta there's been more and
| more biter types and a gradual ramp up in how frantic you
| have to be to keep up. It's tremendously off-putting and
| completely opposite to what makes Factorio what it is.
|
| Hopefully the developers realize this at some point and knock
| it off. Make a 'frantic mode' toggle for the experienced
| players but don't make it the default. I can handle needed a
| turret or two at key points but I can't handle needing to
| race the tech tree to keep up. I don't get why they made the
| defaults so hostile to new players. I'm not even that new to
| Factorio but it's still waaaay too frantic with default
| settings.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree. I gave up on my first sandbox game of
| Factorio mid-way through, because I realized that biters
| were a pushover against my new tank... (not realizing that
| biter settings or mods existed)
| xavdid wrote:
| I mostly play for the engineering side of it, so in all my
| bases over the years, I always _always_ play on "peaceful"
| mode. It makes part of the tech tree useless (no need for
| better guns if there's nothing to shoot) but I find I enjoy
| the game much more that way.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Many of my fun memories of Factorio do involve biters
| though, both defending against them, and attacking them by
| building power lines and quickly building and then un-
| building laser towers near their bases (and later just by
| having super strong armor and a shotgun).
|
| But I guess a toned down offense on your base, while still
| allowing the same kind of attack, would work just as well.
|
| Also, the biters are somewhat boring at end of game, it's
| just the whole world map full of the exact same evolved
| bases everywhere.
| pram wrote:
| IMO the bugs add some needed entropy. If you're not paying
| attention your bases will eventually be demolished. Makes
| me more thoughtful about my planning and design rather than
| just plopping some half assed shit down.
| leetcrew wrote:
| they're also the entity that gives "bite" (pun intended)
| to the pollution mechanic, which complicates lots of
| tradeoffs in the game. with biters/pollution, trees are
| both an inconvenience and a helpful pollution buffer.
| it's not trivial to decide whether to build your starter
| base in the open desert or nested between forests.
| additionally, the tradeoffs between solar vs steam and
| the effect modules are shallower when you ignore
| pollution.
|
| I understand some people just aren't really into the
| tower defense side of factorio. that's okay, and it's a
| good thing that the settings can be adjusted to suit a
| wide range of playstyles. but if that's you, I'd
| recommend at least trying a low pollution / efficiency-
| focused playthrough. the game gives you a lot of tools to
| manage pollution, and the biter threat can be pretty
| minimal if you use them. imo this preserves the balance
| better than just turning off biters.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I actually liked having the biters on my first couple of
| playthroughs of the game. It added a sense of urgency and a
| feeling that this was a dangerous alien world.
|
| After that I started playing mods that in and of themselves
| increased the difficulty of the game, and having the biters
| on top of that was just way too much.
|
| Also, in a vanilla game, once you're more or less
| invulnerable to the biters they become just an extra
| annoyance, and I'd rather just focus on building.
|
| On the other hand, without the sense of urgency that biters
| give the game can become kind of boring...
| z3c0 wrote:
| I agree. It adds pacing, as you can't simply dive down
| one branch of the technology tree. You're forced to
| always be developing your offense and defense, pushing
| you down branches you would have ignored otherwise.
| evandale wrote:
| My understanding is that the purpose of biters is to
| prevent you from building too big too fast and also as a
| resource sink to get rid of excess iron. There is a FFF
| they wrote about it and Katherine of Sky has a great video
| about why you should bet biters IIRC because she was
| against them when they got buffed as well but changed her
| tune. I can't seem to find either though.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Same, but that's true for most base building and RTS games,
| the base building / turtling is more fun than the attacking /
| combat part.
| naikrovek wrote:
| > takes a reasonable amount of math knowledge figure out
|
| hard pass. I do not enjoy when a video game makes me feel like
| a failure because I don't know trigonometry or calculus.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Weirdly I actually like games that make me alt-tab and then
| look up some equations and open excel for a bit.
|
| (No, I will not try EVE)
| freeone3000 wrote:
| No trig or calc, every formula is linear. There's some very
| non-integer factors in there, but if you take "time" as an
| input you can do it all with algebra.
| paxys wrote:
| My graphics card cried just reading this post.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| To be clear, its a Factorio visualizer, not a client or anything.
| But its still super cool.
| samstave wrote:
| What will be very interesting, as stated in the article, is to
| see what the factorio creatives in the community figure out
| what to hack together based on this...
|
| I expect some sort of UE5 factorio-esque battle system...
|
| Imagine a game where you run a factory, and you haveto maintain
| it - while a bunch of PvP FPS shooter are running through your
| factory battleing it out and keep dmaging your supply lines and
| you have to fix them - you can choose to join the factory
| maintenance team, or be a PvP player laying waste to your
| enemies and fucking up the factory supply lines for the other
| teams at the same time.
| a_nop wrote:
| Mindustry is like a PvP Factorio-lite
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| I mean, you can _already_ do this right now in MP (if not in
| 3D) :
|
| https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=560735#p560735
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Thats interesting, but I don't think the social dynamics of
| such a game would work. The situation is unstable, where
| either the builders can't keep up and quickly lose their
| factory (and probably quit) or the PvPers get surpressed
| and/or just ignore the factory.
|
| This is kinda what happened in modded PvP Minecraft servers.
|
| But there are already some team based "production line PvP"
| games like Mindustry and Foxhole.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've put that in the title above. Thanks!
| bloqs wrote:
| Or play Satisfactory in the new Unreal 5 Experimental branch !!
| lastangryman wrote:
| Full disclosure didn't even read the article. But if you wanted
| to know what programming as a game would look like, play
| Factorio. Refactoring, decoupling, debugging, it's all there. I
| played it intensely for 3 weeks then had to force myself to put
| it down. It's a one of a kind game.
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(page generated 2023-07-02 23:00 UTC)