1. Factorio
  2. News

Factorio News

Version 0.17.77 released

Changes


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


  • 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
Scripting


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


  • Changed RollingStockPrototype::wheels to be optional.
You can get experimental releases by selecting the 'experimental' beta branch under Factorio's properties in Steam.

Friday Facts #320 - Color correction

Read this post on our website.

Color correction (Albert, V453000)

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.

Version 0.17.76 released

Changes


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


  • 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
Modding


  • Added AmmoTurretPrototype::entity_info_icon_shift.


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

Version 0.17.75 released

Features


  • Construction robots will attempt to batch build tiles.
Changes


  • 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.
Bugfixes


  • 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
Modding


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


  • 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.

Friday Facts #319 - New T-shirts Lua event filtering

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).

New T-shirts (Jitka, Albert, Aleš, Klonan)

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.

Lua event filters (Rseding)

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.

/r/Factorio Extra Life charity stream (Klonan)

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.