I did a similar thing for the game Highfleet, until I ran into roadblocks with the dev team.
My ultimate goal was to have a "print poster" button that would generate the image and ship it off to one of those poster drop-shippers for a small fee. In that game, you can annotate the maps, and the world map with battle annotations is really special with lots of memories of victories and defeats. Alas, no dice.
I suggest you do this for blueprints! The first thing I'm going to do is take my favorite space platforms and outposts and make posters - the colored block imagery is really artful.
And, if you want a real challenge, you could parse the end-game uploads (galaxy) if available, or save files themselves.
Or, slightly less ambitious - a game mod that generates links to this site directly.
Had never heard of Highfleet but it looks pretty awesome!
Plus, I grew up playing MicroProse games in the early to mid 1990s so wild to see that they are still around and making great content.
I also loved this quote from the reviews:
"A typical Microprose game in that you need to a) immerse yourself in it and b) READ THE GOSH DANG MANUAL in order to have any hope of enjoying it." [0]
There were a few things that were difficult to render properly that made the maps incorrect in ways that would really look bad to a veteran player. Like certain cities not having the right links via trade routes (which is a huge part of the game).
I got radio silence from everyone when I tried to confirm the way to correctly determine links. So I moved on to an easier problem.
I actually printed a few designs and hung them up in frames in my home. Maybe I'll add the idea and some links to the readme. Can you recommend a printing service?
I think it's not possible to access the actual file upload using the galaxy hall of fame (https://www.factorio.com/galaxy) or I just can't find them. Otherwise it would be pretty cool.
Oh yeah, I like the mod idea. That should also be quite doable, thanks.
Oh nice, I didn't know one could print Lithophanes. If you mount a pen in your 3D Printer and the right settings it should also work as a pen plotter. But I don't know how practical that is.
The map2stl tool is also cool. I created a similar tool [0] for pen plotters using OpenStreetMap Data a while ago, which is fun to play around with.
Plenty of people have taped a pen to their 3D printer. The main problem is the same issue for all plotters: they just aren't actually that useful. They're neat as hell for sure, they just don't solve a problem that most people have.
thank you for the artistic contribution to the factorio community! So much stuff around this game is ruthless efficiency it's very nice to have something with some style.
The visualizations are so similar to integrated circuit layouts; they immediately reminded me of some of the coasters that GamersNexus sell which represent simplified computer subsystems.
TIL you can pull ammo from a turret to put in another like you can with research packs/labs.
I love all the mods/tools around Factorio, I don't think I've put more hours in any other video game, maybe Skyrim, maybe not. It tickles all right parts of my brain especially now that I write less code in my current position.
I am a bit sad I finished factorio space age, it was such an amazing game, I wish I could have spent more time on it.
All good things have an end.
I really hope Wube could make it more interesting to play in multiplayer, in games of 50 or 100 players, unfortunately there are no incentives for it.
I suggested to add some resources trading and currency, coupled with a land ownership system, to prevent trolls and scale the game so that any player can join, but it would probably require some balancing.
This game is already 10 years old and still going strong.
Unfortunately mods are not very good quality, or too difficult to enjoy.
Space age is interesting because new planets are being added by fans, but I don't think they're going to be as well designed and really bring anything interesting.
> Unfortunately mods are not very good quality, or too difficult to enjoy.
Most of my playtime in Factorio is with overhaul mods, there's a lot of quality content there. I'm not sure how many of them have been brought to 2.0 or even will be. I'm curious where you think quality lacks.
Space Exploration has been my favorite, but Ultracube, Krastorio2, and Nullius were all quite fun. I'll admit I haven't finished Ultracube and Nullius, but I have restarted my Ultracube run in 2.0.
> Space age is interesting because new planets are being added by fans, but I don't think they're going to be as well designed and really bring anything interesting.
Check out Maraxsis and/or Cerys, these were the kinds of planet mods I was hoping for in Space Age. Maraxsis is an ocean planet and you build underwater and in deep trenches, and the planet's building has a base 50% quality. Cerys is a moon of Fulgora that's really quite small and it's more of a puzzle than anything.
I love Factorio, although I haven't gone far in the expansion. I don't expect any more from them. They've done a lot for this game and they've done it for a very long time. I assume they're now interested in doing something new and I hope they find success at that.
For multiplayer it's really about the people you play with, with is the incentive. Basically doing that stuff with friends is a ton of fun. And you can also include some people new to the game which multiplayer makes much easier for them.
I'm also surprised they already finished it. Without rushing, we're playing for many weeks now, not every evening but then during christmas holidays a lot so maybe that evens out, and are about to go to Aquilo (4th planet, or place to visit idk, out of the 6 new ones)
Nice! I might actually try drawing our factory with a shoddy pen plotter I built, could give some cool results. Well-built factories are really pretty, looks like small ecosystems growths when zoomed out. All the draw settings should make it easy to generate some good outlines
Thanks, pen plotting was my motivation for doing this as an SVG and not on a canvas. I never got around plotting an actual factory though, but I might do it this time.
I really liked the concept of Factorio, but stopped playing after a few hours. I think one of the main reasons was, that it's really hard to visually grok the factories from the in game visuals. All the shades of brown and gray made it not really enjoyable either (I like pretty and colourful virtual environments, there is enough gray and brown in the real life).
If the game would look more like those visualizations, I might have enjoyed it more.
The Factorio development blog has occasional samples of concept art [0] which are more stylized and saturated than the final, "realistic" assets. I honestly prefer the concept art style, even though the more realistic sprites complement the brutalism and grittiness of the game.
I recently played The Planet Crafter. Some similar concepts to factorio, but not quite as deep. But it becomes wonderfully colorful.
Some observations - get off a planet, but in first person perspective. No guns/fighting. Less of a time suck than factorio. Upgrades seem to be less tightly tied to exactly what you do. It's somewhat unclear how to even know how to progress, but maybe it doesn't matter. When automation becomes available, it is easier. There's a struggle for food, water, air at the beginning I didn't like at first (even in menus it doesn't pause). I learned to accept and enjoy it though, and things you do make it less of an issue.
Have you played Shapez? It is a simpler version of a factory game, but I really enjoy it and love the complexities of the shape stacking. It is on Steam or you can play for free here: https://dimava.github.io/shapez/modZ/
I wonder if a mod that changes the graphics to a visual style shown in the link (I'm thinking the Carbot graphics [0] swap for StarCraft 2 in terms of scope) would make it feel more to your liking.
I agree that the visual style was not for me. I had a much better time with satisfactory, which is quite pretty. It also spares you the threat of factory destruction.
Agreed. I started playing Satisfactory a few years ago, before I ever picked up Factorio. And I played A LOT of Satisfactory. Into the thousands of hours.
I'm currently at a couple hundred hours into Factorio and I can safely say I like it better. It is way more polished and way more in-depth. It has definitely had much more time to mature and respond to user feedback. Also the threat level keeps it more interesting. But I do find Satisfactory much more beautiful, and I think the idea of having belts go directly into/out of buildings, etc, without the need for inserters, a much better style than inserters.
Factorio has "loaders" but they're not enabled in the default game, but easy enough to add with a mod (some do as part of the mod, some enable just them, some even try to make them balanced).
Satisfactory's scale is so massive for building that it was a shock coming from Factorio. I started a project over the holidays and I'm pretty sure it's going to end up at nearly 200x50. I am not sure it'll fit in a screenshot, hah.
The scale is both the best and worst thing about Satisfactory. On the one hand, once you finish a build it's really fun to admire everything you built. On the other hand, it's an exercise in utter tedium to actually build those things.
This is not helped by the fact that Coffee Stain has been aggressively anti-QoL as they developed the game. They absolutely refused to put any sort of blueprint feature or tool to speed up placing foundation for the longest time. Then when they finally added those things, the features sucked compared to what players had done with mods because they were so crippled. Then in 1.0 they finally grudgingly added slightly bigger blueprints, which are inexplicably locked behind high tier tech, and they actually make fun of the player for daring to want blueprints that don't suck. It's just baffling how hostile the developers have been to making the building part of the game (which is by far the biggest part) user-friendly.
Lol, it's funny I played both and like factorio much more for precisely those reasons. It's post-apocalyptic and gritty, and has enemies. Satisfactory is great but I need a threat to stay focused. To each their own :)
Mine is surprisingly still serviceable at 60fps 2560x1600 on older games, but I feel like it'd choke hard on this one too. The laptop performs much much better but obvs can't run it.
I'd be surprised if there wasn't a mod for this already. Personally I like the art style and direction, I just want more details and maybe even in 3D to rotate the camera. Hopefully they're working on the sequel with some of this.
This also affects gameplay, but your map will have a lot more green if you turn up the moisture setting on world gen :) and you can have fresh green trees all the time in the space age DLC once you unlock tree farming
For better or worse, Aquilo is designed to be a limiter against end-game tech. All the other planets you can drop in and get everything going from scratch; Aquilo is there to gate legendary items and railguns and fusion power, essentially, and it’s the first time that the quality of your shipping logistics really matters to the player, esp. through high danger areas.
That said, I loved the redesign work needed on Aquilo, it took me quite a while to get the hang of cascading temperature brownouts, heat fluid dynamics, and adding piping to layouts. I found that fun.
Eventually, Aquilo can work like any other base, with rare - legendary bots, it can be remotely laid out and expanded as needed; in reality, very very little needs to be built on Aquilo to support even relatively large economies. I’m on my second playthrough, I have legendary-only production lines up for everything but railguns and fusion power and I’m just thinking about adding my second pump jack for fluorine.
Anyway, come back to it in a year - you might find it’s fun after all. :)
I usually hit a burnout point in Factorio, and either I start throwing down blueprints obtained online (turn it into a resource discovery / train game) or I wander off.
Same. I didn't like Fulgora, then I didn't like Gleba, but pushed through to get to Aquilo so I could see all the content. But then Aquilo wasn't fun either thanks to the massive amount of ice platform I needed to build and how slow it is to build. I just stopped playing. Overall I was pretty unhappy with Space Age, as it doesn't really feel like Factorio any more (except for Vulcanus which is excellent).
I actually found the new mechanics on Fulgora and Gleba very enjoyable. Fulgora especially, for whatever reason. I enjoyed spaghetti-ing my way through all the planets by primarily using the resources available on that planet ("starter" rocket full of belts and power poles notwithstanding).
Aquilo is just so barren. The new mechanic it introduces locks down player choice, as opposed to the other planets that are rife with opportunities for exploration and creativity.
I think that Nauvis+Vulcanus you can still build gnarly mega bases, if the full space age isn't your thing.
I find fulgora and gleba a bit tedious, but I appreciate that each of them bring unique new restrictions/mechanics/challenges to the game. Vulcanus is actually the least inspired, from a mechanics perspective. Mining->lava. It's a good lead-in to those wilder planets.
> Vulcanus is actually the least inspired, from a mechanics perspective.
I agree with that, but I also think that the huge mechanical divergence of the other planets is a bad thing. Like I said, building on other planets it really doesn't feel like Factorio any more... more some new game with Factorio graphics.
I didn't like fulgora for a long time...I think I started having fun with it when I got fusion power there and deleted the accumulator farms. Gleba was a thorn in my side for a long time but finally got it to a place of stable (over)production. It's begging for a rebuild (massively abusing robots there currently).
I can imagine that getting different power would help. My biggest problem with Fulgora is that even on the largest islands, it's so cramped because you have to have huge amounts of accumulators to keep things up through the pauses between storms. The island where I built my Fulgora factory (not including scrap processing) is 50% filled with accumulators, and even then I still will lose power sometimes.
I like the emphasis on this being beautiful and the pen plotter experiments. There's plenty of productivity tools for Factorio, including several blueprint renderers. This one's special for having some aesthetics.
Pumps, plural? I don't think we needed more than the default 1200 u/s that a single offshore pump gets (the one that you start out with) to scale from 0 until nuclear
The python code was running in the browser using pyodide before. It took a while to load and was kind of messy to use. But it worked well once loaded which was pretty cool.
