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Friday Facts #134 - Signal placement indicator

Hello Factorio players!

The fast progress report


Cube is working on the udp download rate with high packet loss. Michal and Vaclav are tweaking the flamethrower mechanics (You will like this one). Robert is working on the circuit network improvements. Tomas is working on the authentication service. Albert is preparing the new train graphics which will solve the horizontal/vertical inconsistency explained in the last Friday facts. Ondra is implementing control interface of the headless server and Martin is mainly cooperating on the integration of the mod portal. Most of these topics will be described in detail in a future Friday facts once they are finished.

Welcome Mishka


Miska is our now project manager on a testing period. We (Tomas and Me) decided to delegate some of our responsibilities to someone else, so we have more time for programming and game design. Her responsibilities will be to keep the track of the ongoing projects in Wube, help us to optimize our working processes, help with administrative and business tasks, possibly help us to optimize the bug fixing process and other similar tasks.

Signal placement indicator


Let me explain the process of a small task I decided to do during Sunday afternoon for 0.13, which grew to a week of work. The problem with signal building, is that it is not clear where can the signal be built, especially on turns like this:
So the first obvious step was to show the possible positions of the signal placement, to spare the player searching for those by moving the cursor around. The indicator shows only positions around the cursor (20 tiles radius) and it looks like this.
This is a nice improvement already, but once we have it, we can go further. The typical misunderstanding, is that people don't understand why is this signal blinking:
Signals as well as junctions always divide rails into segments. A segment is a rail with one beginning and one end, with no junctions and these segments are grouped into blocks. Two distinct blocks need to have signals on the border with the other blocks, and can't have any collisions with rails of another block. This is to make sure that a train on one block can never collide with a train on another block.
The problem with the junction, is that the curved rail collides with both the left and right segments, so it merges all of the segments into one block. This renders the signal to be useless, as it is not dividing anything.
Placing signals on these positions makes no sense, so I extended the indication and building checks, to not allow the building of useless signals in junctions. This also makes it perfectly clear, what is the closest safe location after a junction to build the signal:
Once I was done with that, I remembered another annoying issue that arises when building signals. The direction problems. One small and often hard to find error can cause a lot of confusion. It is especially important with a one way rail system, which is used by most people in the late game stage. Signals like this make no sense, as there is no exit point from the center segment:
So I decided, that it won't be possible to place a signal in the opposite direction as long as there is no exit from the block in that direction. The signal can be always upgraded to a 2-way signal, by building a signal on the opposite side (the grey marks). As long as it is not done, the indicator will only show the placement on the correct side of the rail and won't allow incorrect placements by accident. This is especially useful when signaling junctions like this:
From the little testing I did, this is going to be one of those changes that will make us wonder, how could we play without it before? As always, let us know what you think on our forums.


[ 2016-04-15 11:09:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Factorio
Wube Software LTD. Developer
Wube Software LTD. Publisher
2020-08-14 Release
Game News Posts: 506
🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
Overwhelmingly Positive (164072 reviews)
The Game includes VR Support
Public Linux Depots:
  • Factorio Linux64 [306.86 M]
  • Factorio Linux32 [300.1 M]
Available DLCs:
  • Factorio: Space Age
Factorio is a game in which you build and maintain factories. You will be mining resources, researching technologies, building infrastructure, automating production and fighting enemies. In the beginning you will find yourself chopping trees, mining ores and crafting mechanical arms and transport belts by hand, but in short time you can become an industrial powerhouse, with huge solar fields, oil refining and cracking, manufacture and deployment of construction and logistic robots, all for your resource needs. However this heavy exploitation of the planet's resources does not sit nicely with the locals, so you will have to be prepared to defend yourself and your machine empire.

Join forces with other players in cooperative Multiplayer, create huge factories, collaborate and delegate tasks between you and your friends. Add mods to increase your enjoyment, from small tweak and helper mods to complete game overhauls, Factorio's ground-up Modding support has allowed content creators from around the world to design interesting and innovative features. While the core gameplay is in the form of the freeplay scenario, there are a range of interesting challenges in the form of the Scenario pack, available as free DLC. If you don't find any maps or scenarios you enjoy, you can create your own with the in-game Map Editor, place down entities, enemies, and terrain in any way you like, and even add your own custom script to make for interesting gameplay.

Discount Disclaimer: We don't have any plans to take part in a sale or to reduce the price for the foreseeable future.

What people say about Factorio


  • No other game in the history of gaming handles the logistics side of management simulator so perfectly. - Reddit
  • I see conveyor belts when I close my eyes. I may have been binging Factorio lately. - Notch, Mojang
  • Factorio is a super duper awesome game where we use conveyor belts to shoot aliens. - Zisteau, Youtube

MINIMAL SETUP
  • OS: Linux (tarball installation)
  • Processor: Dual core 3Ghz+Memory: 4 GB RAM
  • Memory: 4 GB RAM
  • Graphics: OpenGL 3.3 core. DirectX 10.1 capable GPU with 512 MB VRAM - GeForce GTX 260. Radeon HD 4850 or Intel HD Graphics 5500
  • Storage: 3 GB available space
RECOMMENDED SETUP
  • OS: Linux (tarball installation)
  • Processor: Quad core 3GHz+Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: OpenGL 4.3 core. DirectX 11 capable GPU with 2 GB VRAM - GeForce GTX 750 Ti. Radeon R7 360
  • Storage: 3 GB available space
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