Removing RTL language translations Wheybags I'm sorry to say that we have removed the RTL language translations (Hebrew and Arabic) in 0.17.20. Until this point we've had a half implementation of RTL languages, where the text is simply flipped when we download it from Crowdin. This 'works' for a decent proportion of things, but not nearly 100%. In order to attain the level of polish we want for the 1.0 release, we would need to spend a lot of time implementing proper support for RTL layouts. This just doesn't make sense for us given our current goals, and the proportion of our player base which uses these languages (less than 0.1%). We decided that instead of completely gutting the translations, we could leave them in for those who enjoy them, but not to offer them in the GUI as defaults. The languages will remain up on Crowdin, and the locale files will still be present in game, but there will be no option in the in-game language options dialog to choose them. If you want to use an RTL language, you will have to manually edit your config file to set your locale. Detailed instructions are available on our forum. What this also means, is that we won't be investigating any bug reports about RTL issues.
Hello, I can't believe that we have been able to produce a post every Friday for 200 weeks without missing a single one. To be honest I'm not sure if this isn't the right time to pause for a while, to avoid being this kind of show that gets worse and worse over time until it is so bad that you want to take your intestines and strangle yourself with them. But people in the office convinced me with arguments like "FFF is the only good thing we have", so we probably have to continue for a little longer.
Hello, We are down to 28 bugs on the forum. The last bugs are often the ones we have been putting off for a reason, they generally require some more meaningful changes and decisions. That is why this week we have a lot to discuss.
Hello, Another week has elapsed, which brings us another week deeper into the declining weather of autumn.
Locale plan update Klonan Earlier this week I received the English proofreadings from Altagram, and overall I integrated over 500 suggestions into the game. Most were small, such as replacing "can't" with "cannot", things like that. It was the exact sort of external scrutiny we really needed, as it showed some areas where we were quite inconsistent. It feels like things are in a better place now, even if the majority of changes are relatively unnoticeable. However it was very noticeable to our great community translators on Crowdin. When we update the English strings, the translations have to be updated on Crowdin. For the last few days I've been working through the issues raised on Crowdin, and there was a lot of good input on that last 1% of the changes. So this concludes the 'English proofreading' phase. Starting on Monday, Altagram will start proofreading the target languages, and filling in any missing strings where needed. This should take about 3 weeks. Since Altagram has their own translation system for their team, it isn't really feasible to include Crowdin in this part of the work, they will just take the content from Crowdin at the start of the process, and after 3 weeks, push what they have back to Crowdin. So any translation work by volunteers on Crowdin for these 3 weeks would be wasted. So we ask that, if you want to volunteer your time, save it for a little while. Any work done on Crowdin this weekend will be included. We deliberately made this buffer between the English corrections and the Target proofreading so that the players on Crowdin have an opportunity to contribute before Altagram starts. After Altagram has pushed their corrections back to Crowdin, we will start the 'Community review' part of the process. This is when the work that Altagram's team has done is reviewed by players and feedback is given to Altagram via Crowdin issues. This helps us make sure the terms of the translations are consistent with the established community usage, and ensure there are no contextual issues or misunderstandings.
We have a long history of trying to bring Factorio to other platforms, including consoles and mobile phones (not including April Fools). We even worked with some external companies, but the projects never even got to the point where they would run technically, let alone the complicated part of making the game playable using controllers or touch screen. After all the attempts, we even had a Friday Facts prepared that was going to say something along the lines of "we don't plan to bring Factorio to other platforms".
Menu simulation V453000 In the last FFF, we presented that we now have the capability to show real game simulations in the Tips and tricks. Naturally we asked ourselves what else could we use this new technology for... We've dreamed about this multiple times in the past, but the technical roadblocks didn't make us think too seriously. We'd like the main menu background to be a real animated simulation of the game, similar to what Transport Tycoon or Rollercoaster Tycoon games have. Instead of things like cinematic trailers, we always present the game in its true form, and the menu background does not follow this logic. Also, any time we improve any graphics, a static image immediately gets older while a real game simulation is updated automatically. We've created a variety of scenes that each demonstrate some feature(s) of the game, from first miners all the way to the artillery and Spidertron. The screen is quite zoomed in and the factories are rather small, so it's more of a demonstration of the game's features rather than a showcase of "the best things anybody has ever built". The scenes are randomly rotated, where all of them have to play once before any repeat. The main menu should include both Factorio and Wube software logos. The Factorio logo has been used in many places from prints to trailers many times already. Its concept is that the logo is an entity like any other, and integrates itself into the world by being built there if at all possible. The Wube logo is different, both graphically and in concept, so we can't represent it as an entity. It makes a lot of sense that Wube is in a layer underneath the world of Factorio, so we're using it as a special water tile. From now on, the Factorio entity and Wube water tile are both buildable in the map editor without the use of mods. The "water-wube" only works well in specific positions, as it repeats in a 8x8 tile pattern, so fitting it in an existing factory can be tricky. To make it clear that behind the menu is not your factory, every scene has the logos in the exact same position, and the screen has a vignette-like shader on the edges.
Hello, Make Way for the Pentapods! Last week (FFF-424) we announced two entirely new enemies coming to Factorio: Space Age: Stompers and Strafers. This week, we're going to take you on a behind-the-scenes tour of some of the features, systems, and optimizations that brought these adorable monsters to life. We'll also talk about the techniques we used to prepare last week's announcement. We've got a lot of ground to cover, so let's dive right in.
The release plan (kovarex) This week was the time to close and finish all the things that will go to 0.17.0. Not all of the things that we originally planned to be done were done (surprise), but we just left any non-essential stuff for later so we won't postpone the release any further. The plan is, that next week will be dedicated to the office playtesting and bugfixing. Many would argue, that we could just release instantly and let the players find the bugs for us, but we want to fix the most obvious problems in-house to avoid too many duplicate bug reports and chaos after the release. Also, some potential bugs, like save corruptions, are much more easily worked on in-house. If the playtesting goes well, we will let you know next Friday, and if it is the case, we will aim to release the week starting 25th February.
