Not mentioning it would be weird I really think everybody has heard all about this and nothing else over the last few weeks, but yes, the Coronavirus. For now, with Factorio, everything seems okay. We are all working from home, the team is still going, and so far we are following our plan quite well. We released the Character GUI and Statistics GUI last week, and some improvements such as new water splashes and leaf animations this week. Things are still moving along. However it is still early days, we haven't really had any experience having the whole team work remotely, so there may be some challenges we need to tackle as time goes on. At the moment we don't know whether this will affect our 1.0 release date, I guess it will one way or the other, but for now we aren't announcing any changes.
0.15 release I would be surprised if you are reading this blog and didn't know that we released the 0.15 experimental this Monday. After more than 6 months of work and effort put in, we are really happy to finally see everyone playing and enjoying it so much. We'd like to thank you all for the feedback and suggestions we've received, and for being patient with us when we couldn't keep to our plans. The whole team here is committed first and foremost to making as great a game as possible. While the delays were not insignificant, we really hope we have met your expectations and delivered on what we have promised. Initially we had a small issue with our new config system and a script we use for Steam cloud syncing, leading to the game looking for a value which was no longer there. Thankfully HanziQ solved the problem in short time, and we released 0.15.1 just 3 hours later. The rest of the week ran pretty smoothly with the typical bugfixing, while the majority of the GFX department takes a well deserved break. If you are interested in seeing an overview of all the new features, you have a choice of British or American flavour, provided by MangledPork and Xterminator respectively:
Hello, another friday and another Facts. It has been 3 years already without a single friday facts missing. I didn't expect that!
Hello Factoriators, greeting from rainy Prague. Bad weather makes perfect environment for making good development progress and that is imho exactly we did this week. Just before we start I have to share this picture I came across when checking out Factorio subreddit. I find it super funny. The Factorio subreddit has an active community and it is becoming a good alternative to the forums.
Good evening everyone, we have spent the week doing various stuff. Playing and testing the multiplayer game, working on some promised features (yes, talking about the tank) and also sorting out administrative issues. In the end we have signed an agreement to rent a place in the Prague city center so since this week we officially have an office space. The place is still empty but we are already looking for furniture and computer equipment to turn an ordinary looking flat it into a true Factorio HQ.
Inching closer to stable Klonan The last 2 weeks have been less productive than we would like on the bug fixing front. The Easter festivities along with a wave of illness have dampened our efforts. We have still managed to push out 2 more experimental releases, and fixed a few desyncs. We encountered one specific desync in the mass MP stress test last weekend, caused by a characters inventory size changing (such as researching the toolbelt technology) while the player is respawning. The graph of crashes paints a similar story to how the office atmosphere feels. It is natural though, most of the major crashes affecting most players are resolved, so all that remains are the more difficult issues that only affect a handful of players. This means that each bug fix is less effective at reducing the overall crash count. This last weekend, we had over 500 total crashes reported, which is a slight improvement over the prior weekend's ~650. One thing that makes our progress hard to evaluate is that we don't know how many people are actually playing experimental. Most people play through Steam, and so far we have found no way of determining how many people are opted-in to the 0.17 experimental through Steam. It could be that the game is more stable, or it could be that less people are playing. There are still over 250 open bug reports on our forum, so it seems it will be a few more weeks until the first stable 0.17. Some people have been asking when we will release the new GUI and GFX updates that we promised before 0.17 release. The plan is that after the first 0.17 stable version, some of the team will be moved from fixing bugs to working on features. At the point where we have a meaningful amount of new content ready (A few GUIs, some new GFX, etc.), we will release it as a new experimental 0.17 version. We plan to give some explanation and notice about these 'mini-content releases' in a FFF before they are each released.
Hello, Tomas is in India already, so the place is more empty again. The more empty it is, the harder we have to work to make for it :)
Hello guys, past week has prepared some ups and downs for us. On the up side, we have marked the 0.10.12 as stable and we also moved closer to getting the multiplayer reasonably working. On the down side our reservation for the new office has been cancelled which means we had to start looking for an office place yet again. That is rather unfortunate because we really liked the place we picked originally. Anyway, I am sure we will find another one soonish (we have already had couple of viewings this week but so far without success).
Hello, While a lot of time of 2.0 development has been spent on new features and quality of life, we still take care of the smaller details and technical improvements.
Hello, I'm turning 30 today. Few years ago, I was thinking, that I should achieve something great before I get 30. Now I work on Factorio, and I feel like this is the best position for me that could exist. I enjoy it very much and I feel that it also is the best learning experience I could hope for. I managed to not disappoint the younger me, and it makes me happy ... or maybe just less frustrated from the infinite queue of bugs waiting to be solved :)
