TUXDB - LINUX GAMING AGGREGATE
by NuSuey
NEWSFEED
▪️ GAMES
▪️ STEAM DECK ▪️ DEALS ▪️ CROWDFUNDING ▪️ COMMUNITY
tuxdb.com logo
Support tuxDB on Patreon
Currently supported by 9 awesome people!

🌟 Special thanks to our amazing supporters:


✨ $10 Tier: [Geeks Love Detail]
🌈 $5 Tier: [Arch Toasty][Benedikt][David Martínez Martí]

Steam ImageSteam ImageSteam ImageSteam ImageSteam ImageSteam Image
Friday Facts #350 - Electric mining drill redesign

Read this post on our website.

Electric mining drill redesign (Ernestas & V453000)


The electric mining drill is one of the older designs still in the game, and we have had our eye on it for a long time as a candidate for redesign. We would have loved to rework the mining drill in 0.15 when we added high resolution graphics and the pipe patch for it, but we had many nuclear related graphics to do for 0.15, so we just did the necessary minimum and postponed the full redesign. Now was finally the time we could unleash Ernestas onto it.

The old design


The most problematic aspect we see is the weak radial animation thats more like gently harvesting a field, rather than aggressively mining and destroying the planet.
The original mining drill is also very flat like a top-down square. In general we try to avoid square entities like the plague, as they tend to look disintegrated with the world because they dont try to hide that their perspective isnt correct.
The pipe patch for uranium ore mining makes the mining drill look like a different entity as it is massive compared to the ultra lightweight drill. Now that we can account for the pipe patch from the start of the design process, we can make it better integrated.

The new design


The drill bit is the part that does the action and therefore is the main characteristic for the entity. We spent multiple iterations trying to find the right shape for it first. We tried a tricone, four metal drills, a cone shaped drill bit, and none of them worked. Mostly the problem was visibility or too many details, which became even worse while drilling. Having a small pixel area is what usually limits us on what we can create, and also things need to be recognizable from far away.
Through trying various options, we chose to use a similar solution to the burner mining drill, as that is already established in the Factorio language. It makes it clear that the miners are one family of entities.
The old animation had one big benefit - it could work non-stop and move around the collision box so it looks like its harvesting from various tiles. With the new construction of the drill, it has to lift to move around. However, the drill can be outputting resources even when the drill bit is lifted, so we have added a working LED and a tintable layer for resources being dropped to the output, making it clear when the drill is in a working state.
Since the movement of the drill is procedural and Ernestas was smart about optimizing the spritesheet space, we can save a lot of VRAM compared to the original mining drill (about 40MB). We were considering a lot more additional animations but it would multiply VRAM requirements too much, or it would become too procedural and too complicated to implement. The resource layer, the pipe contents and the smoke emitted by the drill bit are all tintable layers, specified by resources, which make it very dynamic and mod friendly.
The remnants ignore rotations, but have 4 variations. Typical mining fields usually use only 2 rotations anyway, so this way it always looks a bit nicer. [url=https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/img/blog/fff-350-07-remnants-fullsize.png]
Click to view full resolution The sound of the mining drill has also been updated. Unfortunately Factorio does not support multiple working sounds per entity, which also means we cant synchronize sounds with the animation. So Ian had to invent a sound that would work nonstop. Since there is almost always more than one mining drill working, it should be fine. https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/img/blog/fff-350-08-new-drill-animation.mp4 We were finishing the mining drill in the last few weeks so we couldn't release it with the new icons. We didn't feel like creating a new icon for the old design and found it to be a cute little hint that the redesign is coming. Hopefully the confusion why the new icon looks completely different to the entity will be cleared up next week when we release the redesign presented in this post.


[ 2020-06-05 11:57:25 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
GAMEBILLET

[ 6102 ]

12.74$ (15%)
6.67$ (78%)
17.19$ (14%)
16.57$ (17%)
16.39$ (18%)
2.66$ (11%)
21.22$ (15%)
16.59$ (17%)
33.99$ (-70%)
41.49$ (17%)
7.95$ (20%)
33.17$ (17%)
17.79$ (11%)
7.35$ (8%)
12.74$ (15%)
8.46$ (15%)
2.51$ (16%)
28.69$ (18%)
21.22$ (15%)
4.14$ (17%)
4.24$ (15%)
16.52$ (17%)
34.40$ (15%)
11.61$ (17%)
16.79$ (16%)
8.25$ (17%)
33.05$ (17%)
5.91$ (15%)
12.44$ (17%)
19.97$ (20%)
GAMERSGATE

[ 764 ]

0.85$ (91%)
9.0$ (70%)
0.85$ (91%)
2.5$ (50%)
6.62$ (45%)
0.37$ (63%)
0.53$ (92%)
1.28$ (91%)
0.43$ (91%)
6.8$ (66%)
1.7$ (83%)
0.9$ (92%)
1.02$ (83%)
6.62$ (49%)
3.48$ (83%)
0.53$ (92%)
0.58$ (92%)
2.55$ (74%)
12.74$ (58%)
0.53$ (92%)
7.73$ (45%)
1.91$ (87%)
4.07$ (49%)
0.68$ (86%)
5.0$ (50%)
2.3$ (87%)
1.91$ (87%)
0.6$ (92%)
1.7$ (91%)
0.85$ (83%)

FANATICAL BUNDLES

Time left:

12 days, 10 hours, 57 minutes


Time left:

19 days, 10 hours, 57 minutes


Time left:

8 days, 10 hours, 57 minutes


Time left:

5 days, 10 hours, 57 minutes


Time left:

13 days, 10 hours, 57 minutes


Time left:

15 days, 10 hours, 57 minutes


Time left:

36 days, 10 hours, 57 minutes


Time left:

356461 days, 2 hours, 57 minutes


Time left:

18 days, 10 hours, 57 minutes


Time left:

47 days, 10 hours, 57 minutes


Time left:

33 days, 10 hours, 57 minutes


HUMBLE BUNDLES

Time left:

0 days, 4 hours, 57 minutes


Time left:

2 days, 4 hours, 57 minutes


Time left:

7 days, 4 hours, 57 minutes


Time left:

9 days, 4 hours, 57 minutes


Time left:

14 days, 4 hours, 57 minutes

by buying games/dlcs from affiliate links you are supporting tuxDB
🔴 LIVE