• Fixed a desync related to biter pathfinding. more

Read this post on our website.

Hello,
we feel that the Factorio development is taking way too long. The approach "It is done when it is done" was serving us well to deliver a high quality product, but if we continued this way, we would be doing it basically forever. A lot of us don't have any problem working on Factorio for some more time, but the main problem is, that we would like to introduce new features and content instead of just polishing parts that are already present in the game. We also considered, that the game is quite polished now, and if we just pushed the button to release 1.0, it wouldn't be a catastrophe. From our perspective, a lot of things wouldn't be finished, but from the perspective of a new player, the things we are working on now are mainly nitpicks.

With this in mind, we decided to just specify a 1.0 release date publicly, so we have to stick with it. We will just focus on the most important aspects as we approach the date, and we just do whatever we have time to do. Once the 1.0 happens, we can have some rest and after that, we can finally focus on the content and features again.

The date is 25th September 2020.

Version 1.0 does not mean that development on the game will end, or that Factorio is 100% finished. When we have a better idea of what we will be working on after the 1.0 release, we will let you know.

Game Developers Session 2019 is happening in a few weeks, Friday 29th and Saturday 30th of November. This year, like last, we are silver sponsors of the event, so you will see our banners around the venue if you attend.

This year we are happy to have two of our team doing talks at the conference:

• Albert - "Developing the Visual Style of Factorio".
• Vaclav - "Technical Side of Creating Factorio Graphics".

You can read a bit more about our talks and others on the speakers page.

Other than our two speakers, a lot of the team will be attending the conference, so if you see anybody sporting a Factorio t-shirt, it could be one of us (don't be afraid to come talk to us).

We also took the opportunity to do some updates to our cover art.



We have been on a bit of a hiring spree lately, trying to fill gaps in the team where we can identify them. We are happy to say, we have continued our team growth, with two new additions to the team.

Ian is a sound designer from the UK, who has moved to Prague quite recently. He will be working with us full-time here in the office, and with the help of Rseding for engine features, will be developing the soundscape of the game as we narrow in on the 1.0 release.

Next up is Allaizn. You might remember a few of our team mentioned him in past Friday Facts, and he is infamous for his experiments with cars on belts. He has had source access to the game for a long time, and in the past has made some good contributions through the program, so he has been able to get up to speed with us very quickly. For now he is reinforcing Posila in the Graphics backend department.

For some more details on our new colleagues and the rest of the team, we have short bios for everyone on our Team page.

As always, let us know what you think on our forum.

• When a team loses in PvP, all their characters will die.
  
• Technology GUI shows saved progress of partially-researched technologies.

• Fixed a crash when when loading modded saves that had construction robots working on modded entities.
  
• Fixed that 'corpses' and 'dying_explosion' wouldn't be created on the correct force. more
  
• Fixed that LuaEntity::get_fuel_inventory() didn't work on burner pumps. more
  
• Fixed ammo turret tooltip not showing the damage bonus correctly. more
  
• Fixed fluid name and amount not being shown when the tooltip is on the side. more
  
• Show how module energy consumption is applied more clearly in the tooltips. more
  
• Fixed several issues related to modded reactors set to use electric energy. more
  
• Fixed spitters were not able to destroy trees and rocks. more
  
• Fixed that shift+click recipes in cheat mode wasn't able to handle recipes that included fluids but still only produced 1 item result. more
  
• Fixed a difference in map editor paused vs unpaused game ticking related to enabled/disabled train stops. more
  
• Fixed that produce item per hour achievements could not be progressed. more
  
• Fixed an issue with reading localised strings in Lua. more
  
• Fixed that right clicking to add 1 item to assembling machines had no limit. more
  
• Fixed that teleporting players/cars between surfaces would invalidate lua references to them.
  
• Fixed a crash with trains that had wheels.direction_count = 0. more
  
• Fixed statistics not counting items correctly on large intervals when a large number of items are produced/consumed. more
  
• Fixed Beacon ghost tooltip missing some information. more
  
• Fixed ghost tooltips not showing correct max energy consumption.
  
• Fixed tooltips for tile creating items showing wrong title. more
  
• Fixed blueprint strings not saving empty values for some circuit network settings. more
  
• Fixed PvP config import would always append the default item and equipment lists. more
  
• Fixed that creating infinity chests with logistic_mode set would ignore request filters. more

• Added LuaEntity::command, LuaEntity::distraction_command, LuaUnitGroup::command, and LuaUnitGroup::distraction_command reads.
  
• Added LuaUnitGroup::is_script_driven read.

• Changed RollingStockPrototype::wheels to be optional.

You can get experimental releases by selecting the 'experimental' beta branch under Factorio's properties in Steam.

Read this post on our website.

Factorio is in a state that even though is not yet finished, it is very close to it's 1.0 version. That means that most of the work is done and we are polishing the game in order to make it bright. That's what we've been doing for the past 2 weeks. Literally making it bright.

Since years I wanted to do this post-production work. But I didn't dare to do it until most of the graphics were finished. I was afraid of breaking the consistency of the look and our production pipeline.
Now it's different. There's only a couple of entities to re-design and some other stuff to do, but in general this missing details are not affecting the possibility of working in the post-production.

Factorio is a dark game. I mean conceptually. All these things about industrializing a planet, polluting an entire world just for the sake of the factory, and killing all its inhabitants are not precisely happy concepts full of light. This old article could explain better my thoughts regarding this concept. But the look of the game was dark, too dark. So we cleaned it up without betraying its spirit. Like restoring an old painting.



The difference can be subtle, but very effective. We added more light, and a little bit of color saturation. Adding these general changes to the entire sprites collection is not an easy task. Many sprites were badly affected by this general correction. V453000 was fixing individually the broken sprites and icons in order to keep the consistency with the new context.

We took the chance to work on the terrain a bit further. Not only this color correction was applied, but the contrast and integration with other terrains was also improved. Also experimenting with the color of the trees, trying to achieve a more colorful feeling with the excuse of an alien planet. I have to say the Alien Biomes mod was opening my mind - a little - to experiment with the color a bit further.



In order to break this general brown feeling, we added a more orange tonality to the sand biome. Here is were you can the difference more. Going further to too saturated colors is dangerous, after all, the terrain is a background that should provide a good and comfortable contrast with the entities and the icons.



Touching terrain colours means touching map colors also. We were very keen to keep the visibility of the map information and the similarity with the terrain. The result is a more vibrant look in the entire game.



We tweaked the night also. Thanks to posila and Wheybags, we can use LUTs (Look up tables) to dynamically modify the colors. Instead of playing with the alpha channel of a solid black layer on top of the game. Now we can gradually move to a different color palette for night with more control. So the colors are losing their saturation and becoming more blue and cold. This is important, because part of the annoying darkness of the game comes from this black layer.



We are still experimenting with this LUT, and the transitions of day/night cycles. I'm pretty sure also that I will have to touch the map colors for some missing details and fine tuning. Possibly there is some entity that is not in its best shape with these new color palettes, and maybe we keep tweaking the terrain. But I feel very confident with these additions and I'm very sure that these changes will improve the experience of playing Factorio. After playing with these colors, the feeling is good. I hope you see it the same way.

By changing the colors of all game graphics, most mods are going to look out of place. We’ve used scripts to apply LUTs to most of the images, and one such script is ready for mod authors to clone or download here, together with the information of which LUT was used for which spritesheet in the game data, with the exception of terrain tiles, electric wires and combinators which were adjusted manually.

For technical support don’t hesitate to contact me directly, you’ll get quickest reply by messaging me (V453000#1894) on the Factorio Discord.

We still have some work to do on the LUTs, so they aren't going to be ready for release for another short while.

As always, let us know what you think on our forum.

• Energy consumption is no longer shown in the tooltip for void energy sources.
  

• Fixed a bug in NPE where Compilatron would sometimes loop around smashing things. more
  
• Fixed possibility of dying just before a cutscene in NPE, which would lead to a crash. more
  
• Fixed game crashing in NPE if it can't find anywhere to spawn a biter. more
  
• Fixed using dark coal icon on dark speech bubble background. more
  
• Fixed a crash when loading modded saves without the mod when you had entities marked to be upgraded to the now removed modded items but the entity is still valid.
  
• Fixed incorrect string for "Fuel Pollution" in tooltip. more
  
• Fixed tooltip not showing max consumption correctly when using modules. more
  
• Fixed battery equipment and accumulator tooltips showing wrong input flow limit when it's unlimited. more
  
• Fixed item tooltips not showing custom_description. more
  
• Fixed some item tooltips having incorrect title or description.
  
• Fixed that hovering over a logistic request didn't highlight inventory items. more
  
• Fixed pump tooltip not showing pumped amount when pumping from a fluid wagon. more
  
• Show the products of a recipe more clearly when the product has a probability and/or an interval defined. more
  
• Fixed a crash when restarting the game after it failed to load modded fluidboxes. more
  
• Fixed tech tree quantity icon being shown incorrectly. more
  
• Fixed an exploit related to upgrading ghosts while a robot is trying to work on them. more
  
• Fixed target leading logic would cause turret to shoot outside of its range sometimes. more
  

• Added AmmoTurretPrototype::entity_info_icon_shift.
  

You can get experimental releases by selecting the 'experimental' beta branch under Factorio's properties in Steam.

• Construction robots will attempt to batch build tiles.
  

• Tooltips reworked. They now have a new structure and look.
  
• Properties in tooltips have been reorganized and reworked. Common properties have been added to categories.
  
• Added more information to tooltips, for example to be able to calculate steam power and nuclear ratios.
  
• Recipe and item tooltips are now separate. Item tooltips will be shown for each product in the recipe, if relevant.
  
• Descriptions and Total Raw can be hidden using the interface setting.
  
• Reorganized the interface settings menu.
  

• Fixed a crash when switching between the map editor and the ghost controller type. more
  
• Fixed car movement animation played forwards when reversing. more
  
• Fixed a crash related to using LuaCustomTables incorrectly. more
  
• Fixed that accumulators wouldn't copy circuit signals correctly in some cases. more
  
• Fixed a crash related to removing all collision masks from rails. more
  

• Added ProductPrototype::show_details_in_recipe_tooltip. It determines if a product tooltip should be shown when hovering a recipe.
  

• Added filtering support for several common Lua events.
  
• Added LuaEntity::logistic_network write for construction and logistic robots.
  
• Added "lifetime" optional entity creation parameter for speech-bubble entities.
  
• Added LuaEntityPrototype::max_distance_of_sector_revealed and max_distance_of_nearby_sector_revealed read.
  
• Changed RecipePrototype so it calculates catalyst from ingredients and products automatically if not manually defined.
  

You can get experimental releases by selecting the 'experimental' beta branch under Factorio's properties in Steam.

Read this post on our website.

Hello,
There is a bit of a cold/flu going around the office, but it isn't severe enough to dampen our spirits (I don't like the daylight savings though).

Ever since we launched the classic Grey T-shirt back in November 2017, we've been asked when we're going to have more designs. Over the last few months Jitka, Albert, and Aleš, have been working on our new collection, which is now available.


Check out our store page for full product details.

We chose the Inserter and the Electronic circuit, as we feel that they are some of the items that best represent the game.



Once again, its the small details of which we are really proud. This time we are incorporating the new Wube logo into the print, as well as continuing our Factorio Dude printed label.

We have also updated our classic Factorio logo on grey with the new T-shirt design, which means that all the T-shirts are available in 3XL (Triple-XL), including the older design which previously only went up to 2XL. We have also printed a small batch of the Factorio logo T-shirts in a Ladies cut.

Several weeks ago, we mentioned that we bought a new rack for the server room (FFF-315). The secret we have been keeping is that we didn't just buy new racks for the server room, but also for the merchandise room. Now that we have the new T-shirt collection, the shelves are filled quite nicely.



The new T-shirt collection is available on our website from today. Please bear in mind that we are packaging and shipping all the T-shirts ourselves in the office, we aren't handling things through any 3rd party distributor. What this means is that shipping isn't super fast and we can't really guarantee any shipment dates. Generally the T-shirts reach European addresses within 1 week, and reach North America within 2.

With Christmas approaching, shipping times may be longer, so if you are looking to gift a Factorio T-shirt this upcoming holiday season, we would recommend ordering as soon as possible. Please note we still impose a 3 T-shirt limit on all orders.

Every so often someone makes a mod interface request that grabs my attention - not because of the actual benefits the request will give (although that helps) but from a pure challenge perspective: I start thinking "that sounds difficult (and fun) - but I think I can do it - so how I can do that in an efficient/expandable way?...".

Several weeks ago someone requested a way to filter the different prototypes from the game on the C++ side instead of having to do it all Lua side:

• Grab all of them.
• Iterate through them one by one.
• Store only the ones I care about.

Their reasons made sense to me and it was one of those challenging things that grabbed my attention. I finished it - and it has been out for several weeks.

Shortly after that someone asked for the same system for Lua events; mentioning that most mods don't actually want most events when they subscribe to one - but only a small subset of what would trigger a given event. It also made sense to me and it was even more of a challenge to take the already working filtering system I had and make it work for something I didn't intend. The end result though works quite nicely and can be expanded as we find different events needing different filters.



What this means overall, is that modders will be able to write cleaner and more efficient Lua scripts, and everybody will benefit from less UPS spent filtering the events on the script side.

This weekend the moderators over at the Factorio subreddit are taking part in the Extra Life charity event. They will be streaming Factorio to help raise money for Children's hospitals in the US and Canada. There are some more details on the Reddit post.

As always, let us know what you think on our forum.

Read this post on our website.

Hello,
we just released 0.17.73, with 0.17.74 coming very soon. This is just some bug fixes and further pathfinding improvements, and we hope to be able to mark the release as Stable next week.


As part of our big GUI update, I've been working on one particular part: the tooltips. We worked not only on updating the style, but also how the information is structured and sorted, added missing information, removed irrelevant information. This concerns entity, item and recipe tooltips, but almost all tooltips were touched one way or another. Many things were changed. I will go through some of the more important changes.

The new look



First thing to see is the new style Albert has worked on. They now have the same general style as the technology tooltips. We tried to keep them as compact as possible, as sometimes there is quite a lot of information to show.

For the screenshots in this blog post, I set the background to be non-transparent. Unfortunately they don't blend very well with our blog background, but in game you will notice that they are slightly transparent and the also have a blurring effect. Together with the shadows, they integrate nicely in the game.

Categorization



As you may have noticed already, some common properties like electricity consumption are grouped into categories. Most of the work was defining these categories and trying to figure out what makes sense. These categories help grouping the information but also gives more context to some entity properties. Properties that are directly related to the selected entity type are placed in the "root" category that has no name. This is to avoid having pointless categories like "Inserter" and "Transport belt".

New information
The place where the categorization really shines is in the tooltips of power generating entities. Now it's much clearer what each entity does and what the ratios are. Entities related to nuclear power were especially confusing. Creating an optimal nuclear setup was almost impossible without the help of the wiki. Now all the important information is there.





Entity tooltips and item tooltips generally show the same properties, but I tried to make the entity tooltips show state information when possible. For example, here's how the item tooltips above look when the entities are placed in the game. Categories are even more useful now, since properties like the fuel inside the machine or the state of the fluid output pipe can now be grouped inside the relevant categories.



Other entities have more properties added to them, such as inserter rotation speed, rolling stock weight, laser turret energy use per shot, flamethrower turret burning and slowdown effect, and many more.

Tooltip separation



The recipe tooltip was kind of a Frankenstein's monster of recipe information and item information mashed together. We also had the problem with what properties to show when a recipe has multiple output products. The solution was to split the tooltips and show a "multi-tooltip" when hovering a recipe,

Now, when hovering over a recipe in the crafting menu the recipe tooltip will be shown. An additional item tooltip will be shown for every product, as a separate tooltip, if the item tooltip has a description and/or properties to show. While this improves things quite a bit in vanilla, complex mods will benefit from it even more. Recipes can now have their own textual description and each separate product can be explained independently if necessary.



The same mechanism is used for the tooltip shown when hovering a logistic request in the character window.

This means that an item tooltip will look the same regardless if it's shown while hovering a recipe, an item in the player inventory or a logistic request. No more mixing of information.

Most of the implementation is done, just a few tweaks and bugfixes left to do, plus any changes based on your feedback. If all goes well, the new tooltips will be part of one of the next experimental feature releases, which we hope to release in the next couple of weeks. After that, more GUIs to come.

One of the things I've wanted to tinker with for some time is having a construction robot build multiple things at the same time. Construction robots spend the vast majority of their time just flying around doing very little work and can technically use the cargo capacity research but only ever use it for logistic related things.

https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/img/blog/fff-318-not-batched.mp4

One of the main things which stopped me from looking into this in the past was performance concerns: figuring out which thing(s) a robot can work on in a batch gets expensive very quickly and with robots existing in the 10s of thousands range I can't just make each one 5 times as expensive.

A few weeks ago I thought I finally figured out a way to at least make robots able to batch build tiles without loosing too much performance. The thing is: when tiles are built they are built in large square patterns so I can safely assume there will be other tiles to be built directly next to a given tile that hasn't already been assigned a robot to work on. After some experiments and then several re-works to optimize what was already quite fast I was satisfied with the result.

https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/img/blog/fff-318-batched.mp4

Of course, the next question people ask is: what about doing it for entities? I could, but it doesn't make as much sense for them because they aren't always 1x1 (performance drops off quickly as the size grows - tiles are always 1x1), aren't typically built in tightly packed squares like tiles are, and in the common case it would just make robots more expensive to run while rarely making them build faster. So, for now they just batch build tiles.

https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/img/blog/fff-318-batched-comparison.mp4
As a more direct comparison, Boskid made this nice setup using two forces with different cargo bonuses.

As with the tooltips, the tile job batching will be released as part of our next experimental feature release, which we're calling internally 'Stable 3' (0.17.69 is Stable 1, 0.17.74 will be Stable 2). As always, let us know what you think on our forum.