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Factorio - Optimising Factories & Slaying Monsters [SpaceChem fans get in here]

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
VOTE IT UP ON GREENLIGHT!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=125195010&searchtext=factorio

Hey guys! Time for another game recommendation out of the Indie Games thread series:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=517647
MHP9qAe.png


Here is a pretty apt description from the developers website:
You will be mining resources, researching technologies, building infrastructure, automating production and fighting alien enemies. Use your imagination to design your factory, combine simple elements into ingenious structures, apply management skills to keep it working and finally show your close combat skills in encounters with planet inhabitants who don't really like you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| Info Box |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Current version: v0.2.10
Link: https://www.factorio.com/
Price: Free Demo available on link above/ €10 for Alpha Access and the full game Try the Demo, guys!

Additional tiers for preorder:

Transport Belt Repair Man - 10€
You get an access to the game alpha right NOW. You will be entitled to ALL the game updates in the future as well. In case we manage to get on the Steam in the future you will also get a steam key.

Furnace Attendant - 20€
But here on top of that you get a loaded scenario pack with various challenge missions crafted for you directly by the developers.(will be made available later) Not to mention three beautiful high-res digital wallpapers that will make your desktop truly stand out.

Mining Drill Operator - 35€
Put YOUR name in the game. Different machines in the game will have a "designed by" / "model" tag that will bear your name. Besides that you get our concept art book

32 & 64 bit Windows versions
64 bit Mac version
32 bit Linux version

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| What is this game? |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Its basically the optimisation process of SpaceChem, mixed with light Tower Defense elements and a bit of Minecraft-style crafting thrown in. If you arent familiar with the mentioned games, it basically works like this: In the beginning you'll run around gathering resources. Then you'll use those resources to build simple mechanisms via exhaustive crafting options, and THEN with those mechanism you'll create mechanism that help you automating everything. The satisfaction in this game definitely revolves around starting off small and then creating more and more elaborate ways to have your "factory" working flawlessly. Small example: You can always (and will need to do so in the beginning) grab some resources by hand. In the beginning you'll mine them themselves to build and fuel your first tools and mechanisms. Then you'll be able to use these resources to build machines for you that mine these resources and you manually fill them with coal to power them. And THEN you build conveyor belts from your coal mines to your machines to supply them with coal, automating the entire process.
Here is an example of a demo level:
9ILPbmH.gif


Thats a more advanced setup where they gave you lots of stuff from the start. In that level, you basically built a pump to supply water, which then gets heated up and the steam from the water gets transformed into electricity in the generator, which then supply all the other means of production as well. Oh and yeah, you can do all of that on endless maps in freeplay mode with enemy spawns and hidden secrets.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| Impressions |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Me playing 50 minutes of Freeplay mode (start at 16 minutes, I ...uhm.. got nibbled on by enemies on my first try): http://de.twitch.tv/tomalexi/b/379377974

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| Content |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Stuff included in the Demo:
3 Levels of the campaign.
Less features than the full version, but its still fun and free to try for yourself!

Stuff included in the Alpha (currently available):
The game will be released in its current state as an alpha in mid March 2013. The alpha will be available to all backers. The alpha is already playable and contains following things (however not graphically finished or polished):

2 extra campaign levels in three difficulty settings
singleplayer freeplay (couple of hours playing on a procedurally generated map)
researching technologies for unlocking recipes or improving existing structures
programmable signals to get fine grain control over your factory
logistic robots to ease transportation in big factories
more game content
assembling machines to automatically craft things
transport belts to ground to allow belts crossing
filtering inserters
laboratories to perform research
steel processing
entities variations (chests, inserters, etc.)
...
more weapons (flamethrower, rocket launcher, landmines)
map editor
lua scenarios scripting
moderate modding support (all game element properties are defined as data)

Stuff planned for full release:
If we get the funding, the expected release date will be May 2013. The release will feature (on top of the alpha):

longer main campaign
overall tuning and polishing (singleplayer freeplay, map editor, etc.)
finished graphics (including better GUI :))
richer technology tree (e.g. way more modifiers - speed, energy efficiency, health)
more game content
accumulators to store energy
rocket towers
larger iron furnace
transport belt recombinators
...
better combat mechanics
batteries to enable special attack effects (slow enemies, ...)
splash damage attacks
armor varieties
little robots flying around the character and protecting him
variety of enemy creatures
technical stuff (automatic downloader / updater, speed improvements)
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Not so many interested people at once please! :p

Just for the record, I went against all logic and bought the 35€ version to support the devs in their endeavors and to get the challenge packs (and to get my name into the game... just this one time).
 

Xemu

I hope you enjoyed your little rebellion, irritant. But remember, what SHODAN gives she is more than able to take away.
This looks really interesting - thanks for bringing this to my attention! SpaceChem was one of my favorite games of the past few years.
 
The beta was absolutely awesome. I'm skipping this for the time being because I'm poor (Spain and such) and I have a ridiculous amount of stuff on my plate right now. I'll probably pick this when it goes gold and/or on Steam.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
This looks really interesting - thanks for bringing this to my attention! SpaceChem was one of my favorite games of the past few years.

I wasnt as hyped for a game in a long time. Tried the demo and was eagerly awaiting to throw my money at them for 1-2 weeks or so to FINALLY get to play the alpha that some others were already playing. People should really just give the demo a try. It will take around 30-40 minutes to finish it.

The beta was absolutely awesome. I'm skipping this for the time being because I'm poor (Spain and such) and I have a ridiculous amount of stuff on my plate right now. I'll probably pick this when it goes gold and/or on Steam.

Shhh, dont give people ideas. People should support them NOW, so that the hype for this game blows up disproportionally and they can hire another person to make MORE content! (Totally made that up, but ... you get the idea :p)
 

Pepboy

Member
This looks and sounds awesome. I will try the demo tonight and post impressions, but I strongly suspect this will be a must-buy.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
This looks and sounds awesome. I will try the demo tonight and post impressions, but I strongly suspect this will be a must-buy.

I wouldnt post about it if it werent. ;) But yeah , please post more impressions. This game deserves a bit more attention.

Btw, just to get an idea how "big" this game currently is.. Their WHOLE forum had about 11 posts in the last 2 days. If I get a few people here to wake up and try it, I highly suspect that we'll reach more posts in 1 day than they had over there in 2 weeks.
 
I still intend to check this out at some point, but with a new baby I haven't had time yet.

If I generally hate RTS games, should I bother though? I do love SpaceChem....
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
v0.3.0 is going online on 29th of March with the following changes:

Ready:
LuaInventory::remove function
Merged on ununitdied and onplayerdied to onentitydied (so all entities with health emit this event when dying)
The migration script runs before control lua and can be used to reload scripts from the original scenario, this will be extra useful after the script interface changes in 0.3.0
Divided the player and it's character, methods connected with just player and not his character are accessible from the LuaPlayer class (game.player), methods like print, setgoaldescription etc.. Character is accessible as entity (game.player.character) and contains the rest of the methods. This allows having player without character or character without player.
Dynamic furnace energy source in json (so it can be electric)
Started to use the name of the recipe in json definition of recipe, this allows different recipes for the same product.

In progress:

Way to manupulate custom gui elements (Just buttons now) in the script, these emit events that can be used in the script.

Planned:
Every mod will have its own directory in the mods directory, all it's data (json definitions, control.lua additions) will be in this directory.
English fallback for translations
Allow to have separate translation files into more files (so mods can entity names translations in it's directory)

Planned someday:
LuaEntity, entity that has drawing function/update and all behaviour defined as lua, this would be slower than native entities, but would add a lot of possibilities.

Recent dev (today) update on recent proceedings and the immediate future:
http://www.factorioforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=593
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
I still intend to check this out at some point, but with a new baby I haven't had time yet.

If I generally hate RTS games, should I bother though? I do love SpaceChem....

Yeah, definitely. The biggest part in here is SpaceChem factory building. The RTS element comes from the part that you create actual machines/buildings in the world and try to kill some stray enemies. Actually, the more I think about it, its a bit more like light-towerdefense in that regard. You definitely should give the demo a try though, since its not that long. And especially Freeplay mode lends itself very well to just starting it up for a few minutes, building stuff and then saving/closing the game until a few days later, since the player doesnt seem to have that much pressure in there yet (I think enemy spawns can even be disabled)

After Frozen Synapse, SpaceChem and Gnomoria, this is the next game I'll actively push on GAF. Next candidate could be Underrail, but we'll see.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
No worries. Based on Toma's description I am pretty sure you can build a new family ingame to replace the one that leaves you over factorio addiction.

No family building yet! You can create cars and.. planes and... they want to let you create small robots that assist and help you eventually. Thats as good as a real family, isnt it?

Edit: Oh and you can play a game of tag with the zombies/enemies whatever they are!
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Just a post to remind me to post this in the SpaceChem thread later.
 

Raxum

Member
Looks interesting, will try out the demo to see how it plays and might put some money into early access.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Looks interesting, will try out the demo to see how it plays and might put some money into early access.

Yeah, I think my biggest reason for throwing these guys €35 was just to support them. They have a really great vision (and a pretty remarkable great execution at this stage of development) here and I want to see them flourish :)

Random aside, this thread has now more posts than their whole forum in the last 3 days combined. Thats why I really want to give them some attention.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
One Transport Belt Repair Man reporting for duty! Sir, yes sir.

Mining Drill Operator Toma calls to duty: post a screenshot of your game at some point and report on your impressions of the game!

;p

Looks really interesting! I still have to get around to playing spacechem though.. my backlog is killing me!

Someone should make that a science, but from watching a few of these threads I assume that the highest chance for people to get into these more obscure games is when the attention is the biggest, as in NOW during the creation of this thread. I think that it helps a bit as motivation if the thread still has the "new" smell and because its fun to talk with others who just had the same experience.

In short: Try the demo! ;)
 

epmode

Member
I read about this on RPS right before the Indiegogo campaign ended. It did sound something like SpaceChem so I pledged pretty quickly! I'm looking forward to it.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
I read about this on RPS right before the Indiegogo campaign ended. It did sound something like SpaceChem so I pledged pretty quickly! I'm looking forward to it.

You should already have Alpha access then! Not interested in trying?
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Oh and yeah guys. Subscribe to the thread, I'll probably try to keep it updated when updates are out.
 

epmode

Member
You should already have Alpha access then! Not interested in trying?

I guess I didn't read the Indiegogo updates very closely because I didn't even have a factorio.com account until now! I hope they upgrade my account soon.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
I guess I didn't read the Indiegogo updates very closely because I didn't even have a factorio.com account until now! I hope they upgrade my account soon.

I missed the campaign, and bought it via preorder a few days ago, but I received a mail with my game code, which I then put into the website to upgrade my account status. You didnt receive a mail once the Indiegogo campaign was finished?

Was there any mention how the upgrades for the backers were supposed to happen?
 

epmode

Member
Posted one day ago:

"The situation is as follows. By the end of this week we will perform following steps:

1. We will upgrade all the free and testing accounts on our webpage for users who backed the Indiegogo campaign to the appropriate membership tier. This will be done based on matching email addresses from the Indiegogo funders list to email addresses in our user accounts database. The membership tier will be calculated by summing up multiple contributions if applicable.

2. We will send out emails with generated upgrade codes to users who don’t have accounts (according to our data) on our webpage.

This should be done by the Friday night. "
 
Still going to put it in the schedule to check out, as much as I tried to find time over the weekend, had too many other pressing matters to attend to, unfortunately.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Posted one day ago:

"The situation is as follows. By the end of this week we will perform following steps:

1. We will upgrade all the free and testing accounts on our webpage for users who backed the Indiegogo campaign to the appropriate membership tier. This will be done based on matching email addresses from the Indiegogo funders list to email addresses in our user accounts database. The membership tier will be calculated by summing up multiple contributions if applicable.

2. We will send out emails with generated upgrade codes to users who don’t have accounts (according to our data) on our webpage.

This should be done by the Friday night. "

Yeah, but was that prior to LAST friday? Since you didnt have an account back then yet, you might need to manually contact them to fix that for you. Feel free to put an [URGENT] in the mail title, since they seem to get lots of mails these days. I work in CS and that method of grabbing attention.. works.

Edit: I am being stupid. But I did read that other people already got their Alpha access from the Indiegogo campaign. Weird they just do that now. Maybe they only activated the other accounts manually via mail.

Still going to put it in the schedule to check out, as much as I tried to find time over the weekend, had too many other pressing matters to attend to, unfortunately.

Ah dont worry. Didnt want to push you into it ;) Just glad people are giving this a look at all, considering how small the attention these guys get seems to be currently.
 

fallagin

Member
Someone should make that a science, but from watching a few of these threads I assume that the highest chance for people to get into these more obscure games is when the attention is the biggest, as in NOW during the creation of this thread. I think that it helps a bit as motivation if the thread still has the "new" smell and because its fun to talk with others who just had the same experience.

In short: Try the demo! ;)

Ok I'll do that right now and see how I like it.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Picture of my current, not-so-overwhelming freeplay factory:
A5YklpC.png
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Tonight or tomorrow, though! I've got it installed, ready to roll.

Ok I'll do that right now and see how I like it.

Nice :) Interested in hearing more impressions. Please also feel free to criticize the game if you feel like it. The game is still rather early in development, so I think its fair to point these issues out with the current development state in mind.

I didnt encounter any bugs at least.

The UI is one of my biggest gripes currently. Its... functional.
 

letterboxart

Neo Member
Edit: I am being stupid. But I did read that other people already got their Alpha access from the Indiegogo campaign. Weird they just do that now. Maybe they only activated the other accounts manually via mail..
Yeah, my alpha access was done via manual email.

I was also surprised at how little attention this was getting. I found it via Rock, Paper, Shotgun and a couple of youtube videos:
For Minecraft users, it could be described as third-person Tekkit/FTB.

Tried the demo, but I like the free play mode best. Here's my stupidly inefficient science pack factory:
YVdiRGG.png

(the arrows are from the toggleable info overlay)

It's using way too many inserters and isn't producing enough blue science packs, which is why one of the conveyor belts leading to the research machine is empty. The black blocks on the left are the new solar panels I installed to help reduce coal usage during the day (most electricity is from coal-powered steam engines).

I wanted to use this factory to research automobilism (it's really a word) in order to make a car to run over aliens (because who needs guns). I made a car and ran over my factory on accident (I thought the back was the front):
RknS3wp.png


and then the aliens:
mnd90nW.png


Overall, pretty fun. I didn't expect much because it didn't have much word of mouth and was still in alpha. It was very stable (only like 2 crashes in about 30 hours), and the interface was intuitive once I redid the keybinds.

I did end up turning off alien attacks after a while because they were causing lag, and the combat and AI are very alpha (they basically act like SimCity buses right now, except that they don't cause traffic because you can shoot them).

I got busy and haven't played in a couple of weeks, but I'll probably start a new world once the next update comes out.

Also, I don't have SpaceChem!

By the way, this actually on Steam Greenlight right now, but only as a concept (not listed as a game yet).
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Also, I don't have SpaceChem!

By the way, this actually on Steam Greenlight right now, but only as a concept (not listed as a game yet).

Oh nice. Awesome screenshots and impressions :) Glad you found the thread. If you liked working on the production lines, you'll like SpaceChem too. Considering the current attention this thread is getting, your chances of grabbing the key arent the worst I think.

Oh and thanks for the Greenlight reminder.

How did you rebind the controls btw? And how can you build that using less inserters?
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
In Toma I trust.

Spacechem was so hard it regularly made my eyeball vessels burst. I wonder what Factorio will do...

lol. The Freeplay mode in Factorio is pretty laid back. It doesnt have any boundaries so you can basically do whatever you want and take how much time you need (especially if you disable the enemy spawns). As they guy above said, its still super fun to tinker around with.

And proper mod support and custom scenarios (in 9 days) will help a lot too I think :)
 

epmode

Member
Are the custom scenarios limited to those who paid 20€? Because I only put up 10€. I'd consider the higher tier if I like the base game but I'm not sure if the website allows for that.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
And here is one of those smaller graphical issues that they probably will iron out eventually:
jbhrC1WYru6d8I.png
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Are the custom scenarios limited to those who paid 20€?

Nope, custom scenarios can be played and created on the 10€ level too. However, the devs said they are going to add their own challenge pack to the game eventually on the 20€ tier (which have no release date yet). That does not affect the player mods and player scenarios.
 

grumble

Member
Toma, got to say that the community really benefits from having you as a member. It's easy to just mindlessly play the games that get the marketing push, but your determination to showcase smaller and more unique titles that focus on great and new gameplay experiences enriches gaf. Keep on trucking!
 

MThanded

I Was There! Official L Receiver 2/12/2016
Damn I don't even know what this is about but I will buy this if it is anything close to spacechem. Hopefully I don't forget about it.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Damn I don't even know what this is about but I will buy this if it is anything close to spacechem. Hopefully I don't forget about it.

You guys are in for a treat, even in this early alpha stage of development. Just think of it as having unlimited build space, 10 times the tools and unlimited Waldos at your disposal :p That inherently makes it a bit less "puzzley", but still very interesting.

Toma, got to say that the community really benefits from having you as a member. It's easy to just mindlessly play the games that get the marketing push, but your determination to showcase smaller and more unique titles that focus on great and new gameplay experiences enriches gaf. Keep on trucking!

Thanks! You guys are the reason I am doing this for, so as long as there is demand, I hopefully have enough time to supply. ;)
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
I am going off to bed now, someone please do me the favor of bumping this thread with a random screenshot or some impressions later. Its a bit hard to fight the tides of GAF with 5000+ people online.
 

fallagin

Member
Just played the demo, really awesome. I love the depth that was there, and I guess there is even more! Cant wait for the full release!

Edit: I did have one problem though, I couldn't get the electrical inserter to work quite right. I was trying to get it to put coal in the water boiler thing(of course only after actually getting the electricity online). Still great though.
 

eroots

Member
Loved SpaceChem. Looking forward to trying this out. After watching the trailer, I'm sure I'll like it a bunch too. This definitely needs more hype.
 

letterboxart

Neo Member
Edit: I did have one problem though, I couldn't get the electrical inserter to work quite right. I was trying to get it to put coal in the water boiler thing(of course only after actually getting the electricity online). Still great though.
Weird, that's one of the most common uses. If you mouse over the inserter, does it look like this?
1agGtH3.png

There should be a yellow square around the electric pole that's providing power to the inserter, and the red arrow should be pointing towards the boiler.

It also only puts up to 5 coal in the boiler at a time. If there's more than 5 coal in the boiler already, then the inserter won't do anything (by design).
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Glad some more guys liked it. This game really deserves more attention.
Btw, how exactly can you turn off enemies?
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
I really like the versatility in this game. This level basically needed you to create more elaborate production structures and I just said... fuck it and brute-forced it:
jSX7GohE7I8D9.png

(Thats my end of level 4)

In the end, I created some compilers to keep up with ammunition creation but before that I just kept producing everything myself. Keeping track of having coal everywhere and getting enough ammunition to the towers was a major pain in the ass, but it worked! lol

I'll play some more freeplay next, and the next thing I am going to do is definitely creating better production lines. Post 30 was basically my progress so far. Now, I need to start researching, build some defenses and start building a production line + assembly that focusses on providing ammunition to my towers.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
I think this is where you lose me Toma. I'll give it a try but it looks a bit overwhelming

This can be overwhelming if you just start Freeplay right from the get go. However, the demo does thankfully have no freeplay and limiteds the stuff you can actually build in the first few levels. I think the demo did a pretty great job of showing off the mechanics and teaching the basics. Its a typical case of something that is rather easy to learn but then harder to master if you want to apply everything at your disposal in the best possible way.

And there were a few here in this thread who like it too, so it cant be that bad ;) But finish the demo and let me know what you think please! That way I can use your impressions for the next guy who says it looks too overwhelming for him :p Should take you around 30-40 minutes (3 levels).

The game is still a bit rough around the edges, but I actually think they did a rather swell job of easing players into it. Mining and crafting is a concept very well known from other games, and the rest makes up common logic. I love when common logic is being used in a game to get him to understand things. You want more resources? Build a mine. You want resources somewhere else? Build a conveyor belt. Enemies annoy you? Build a turret. You want some more protection from enemies? Research armor.
 
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