Another week done and another round of enthralling imagineering by the community! This week GR-18 becomes a marathoner, astronaut, and an AVERAGE JOE!
As always remember to click the level names to bookmark them for play later on - LET'S GO
Moving goal post!
Make sure to stretch your thumbs before playing Almost There! by Omikron. You'll need that preparation for this fun-filled marathon (psst - the finish line is a lie).
Deep Space
The Fallen Legend has created a beautiful yet lonely space experience in the level Awakening Awe Space Cavern Explore the depths of the space and return the package safely. God Speed, TRAVELER!
Makes No Sense!
Msmiley has recreated a usual routine in many households in the level Time Change Ritual. I have only one thing to say about it: Day Light Savings - YOU MAKE NO SENSE!
Elevators!
In Sigmund Froid's thrill-filled level Zipper Mission, be careful which button you press! You might get an unpleasant travel companion!
Flashy spikes
TalkGibberish has created an aesthetically beautiful level Exercise In Spike Block. It's hard not to stare at the flashy spikes, and also hard to not get impaled on them!
Highlights
Johnny0798's Chamber 17 is a fun puzzler! Blast your way through to win this one!
For the new Public Early Access Update, this covers the major features and changes from last 4 months. To get weekly development updates, you can join our Preview branch for testing.
The full text and detailed changelog can be accessed here.
Steam Remote Play Together Beta
- An owner of the game can invite their Friends for local Split Screen. - Other players do not need to own the game. - Players' Steam Clients need to be opted into the beta. - One or both players are recommended to have Gamepads. - For more information, check the Steam Announcements. - And this dev thread.
Mech Save File Sharing
- Copy/Paste easily without editing - Can be loaded while the game is running
Pattern Options
- Texture, Marking, and Glow Layers - Under the Advanced Colors in the Garage
- Boost Regeneration is now based on Weight percentage - Overload Recovery is now based on half of Boost Regeneration - Attacking while in Overload applies self-Burn stacks
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.
Updating mods (V453000)
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.
Not seeing the update? Steam doesn't usually inform the player right away of the update, they tend to wait until you restart your Steam client or until a bit later after the update has come out. So if you want to get the update right away you can do the following:
Right-click the game in your library and select properties
Go to "Local Files" and click "Verify integrity of game files"
The game should immediately start updating!
Update 8.1
I was just remarking today how I hadn't had to do a patch for an update since 4.1, so I'm surprised we made it this far!
Changes
Fixes
Fixed "A Plant" outfit not showing up, making the player invisible
Fixed invisible walls on First National blocking the player from aiming correctly near the base core
Fixed invisible walls on First National blocking the attacker from placing down units at certain points in the attacker zone(s)
Conclusion
This was just a short patch to fix up some not quite game breaking, but still important bugs nonetheless. As soon as the 8.0 update released people want to play as "A Plant" outfit which meant I got to immediately know it was broken! But I'm glad it's fixed now.
It was one of those problems that don't show up in the editor but for some reason or another show up on the Steam build. The downside to this fix is that the plant no longer looks cloaked when the sniper uses their ability although that's the tradeoff of having a static inanimate object as opposed to a proper humanoid model.
Sincerely, Blake Gillman
Join us on Discord Where we discuss new updates, the game, and other games I've made. https://discord.gg/ArEbAut
It was an intense week for us. We integrated all of the languages that were 100% done! Loc Team, I'll say something: you're amazing! Because of you, 6 languages are now integrated in-game
What's New?
We added one new language: Hungarian ːsteamhappyː
Please welcome to the Localization team:
Krysa for Czech
The Wortex for Hungarian
Ken Pachi for Chinese
Latte Telecom for Italian
Leolo for German
Highlight Stats
It was the last push before the loc integration for Open Beta 3!
These languages had the best progression from the last week! But German, Italian and Turkish we saw your efforts!
Tribes of Midgard Open Beta 3 will be in Dutch, Spanish, French, Ukranian, Portuguese, Russian and English! Nice job team!
We need you!
We're still looking for people to join @localization-team, for all languages except French, Spanish, And Portuguese. PM Sydnee or JiPay to be part of the team on our Discord server: http://discord.gg/tribesofmidgard
Once you're in, you can chat in that channel, AND your name will be in the credits of the game! Localization is important to us, so that everyone can experience the viking life no matter where they're from.
