Hello Factory builders.

0.12 to be finished soon

We thought that 0.12 was over, but with the influx of new players, there are always more people trying different kinds of ways to crash the game. Like connecting/disconnecting monitors while playing, changing wifi connection while in multiplayer, or changing the system time. Yes, the system time is used on few places and its sudden change can freeze Factorio currently. I had to spend 2 hours investigating a corrupt save, just to find it to be a hardware issue. This reminded me of the blog post by Patrick Wyatt, where he explains that they did a mem/cpu tests when the game started, so they could ignore bogus crash reports. We might consider this in the future. Long story short, only half of the dev time is now spent on bugfixing (This is an improvement), and it should become less after next week. Let's hope 0.12.30 will be the last stable of 0.12.

0.13 Roadmap

After some discussions, we decided that our goal of 0.13.0 release date is 1. June, which is 2 months and a week from now. I would like to make clear that it is not a promise but a goal. It seems like a lot of time, but as we already know, things take longer than expected. I had a meeting with our graphics department yeasterday, which is just Albert and Vaclav. We had to make final plans of what we can actually finish and what we can't: Let me summarize the current state of the 0.13 roadmap: Things that are done or almost done:

• Tech tree
• Additional train conditions
• Turrets revisit - Minimised to flame thrower turret and fire system.
• Better rail building
• Achievements
• Multiplayer matching server - more about it in future FFF
• Better train management possibilities.
• Modules in blueprints.
• Power switch.
• Blueprint book
• Search field (recipes, technologies, filters, stations and maybe more)
• and a lot of small things

These are to be finished:

• Circuit network additions
• Redo of the train graphics and fixing the train distances, so they are whole tiles and vertical and horizontal distances are the same.
• Graphical gui redesign - one of the big things that just had to be done sooner or later, we will definitely talk about it in detail in the future FFF
• Native mod portal integration
• Resource generation overhaul.
• The loader.
• and a lot of small things as well

Stuff that had to be postponed to 0.14, so we can deliver the rest:

• Spidertron
• Fluid wagon
• Artillery turret
• Higher tier mining drill

Ease of use

The work on improving the comfort is important and shouldn't be neglected because of features. Some of the changes are really simple, but can help a lot in later stages of the game, like the possibility to put a different module into the slot, without having to clear it first, and the exchanged module goes into the inventory.
The way to upgrade modules using control click also helps a lot:
Thanks to Rseding91, modules can be also part of a blueprint:
Underground pipes and belts can also be built the same way as poles in 0.13: [table] [tr][td]
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We need people

It is more than obvious, that we should get more people now. We can afford it, there is practically infinite amount of improvements or additions we could work on, and we feel there isn't enough of us. So if you know a good C++ programmer or 3D artist, please send him/her our way, specifically to https://www.factorio.com/jobs

Achievements will be finished soon

Albert finished the first pack of icons and I like them a lot. A nice icon can definitely increase the enjoyment of getting an achievement.
As always, let us know what you think on our forums.

[ 2016-03-25 16:47:16 CET ] [ Original post ]