Earendel

Recipe exclusive probabilities

Tileset mashup

I’ve been working away on getting my previous work on the SE 0.8 version (built for Factorio 1.1) to load in Factorio 2.0. There’s a LOT there. Comparing the version of SE0.8 for Factorio 1.1 to SE0.8 for Factorio 2.0, in just the ‘core’ mod alone (excluding all the graphics mods, the final fixes mods, menu simulations, etc) it is showing 55000 lines added and 61000 lines removed. Obviously that is quite a big task, but that is just one component, and by no means the most difficult on...

Space Exploration Closed Testing Update

Space Exploration 0.7 has been in closed testing for a month now, so how’s it going?

Slower than expected. Part of that is from me being unwell for over a month (I’m finally better now), but a lot of the delays are just down to the nature of the task. There are just a lot of corner cases due to API changes that are hard to predict and resolve. Also in some cases the game engine needed some API fixes to get things working again and that really slowed things down because we couldn’t...

Space Exploration 0.7 Closed Testing

I’ve been asked for a bit more detail, well maybe this is too much, but it’s a good month for it because I've been doing a lot on the mod updates.

At the end of the last devlog it felt like Space Exploration for 2.0 was about a week away from being ready for closed testing. Just to manage expectations, closed testing doesn’t mean it’s nearly ready for actual release, just that it’s stable enough for testers to help find bugs.

The big issue at the time was to do with rock...

Not quite ready for testing

It’s time for another devlog, and the main thing to talk about is Space Exploration. I was hoping that this post would be “it’s ready for testing”, but no. We ran into some blocking issues. The situation is changing quite rapidly and the story might be very different next week… but I’ll get to that.

When Factorio 2.0 was released there was a lot of effort into updating my other mods. Space exploration is much bigger, much more complicated, and much more reliant on specific t...

Regenerate Terrain

Sometimes if you update the game to a new major version, update a mod, or change mods, it can change the rules that the game uses to generate terrain. When this happens the parts of your map that have already been generated don’t change, but new chunks that get generated will use the new rules and can be different. This can create hard lined broken edges in the terrain that don’t look great, but there can be gameplay downsides too, like pathways that don’t connect, or new required resou...

Preparing for Factorio 2.0

The release date for the Factorio: Space Age expansion has been set for a long time, but there was always a chance for it to be pushed back depending on the beta access feedback. Well we’re in beta testing now, and the feedback from the big playtesting LAN was good, so the release date is locked in. 

I didn’t start getting my mods ready for Factorio 2.0 before this point. From a time efficiency point of view that’s a good thing; a lot has changed so a lot of time would...

Flooding improvements and flood barriers

I managed to get the new lake flooding system to a good place. 

The first proof of concept version from last month slowed the game down every time a chunk loaded. In this new version those lag spikes are mostly gone. 

In the previous version water would appear on tiles at specific times regardless of what you placed on the tile, but I wanted to add a way to block the water so that it’s something you can interact with. If you can play with the water then it feels more l...

Flooding proof of concept

Flooding is supposed to be one of the medium-sized features of 0.7. I’ve known that it was theoretically possible for a while, but it’s always good to have some proof of concept code to get things started. 

This animation is the first stage in the process of developing flooding. 

It’s recorded in real time running at 60ups, 50 tiles changed per tick, or 3000 tiles changed per second. The tide cycle wouldn’t be anywhere near this fast, but then the explored surfac...

Progression changes in SE0.7

I’ve had some questions from Patrons that relate to progression in SE0.7 and the uniqueness of the new planets. Will they be different from each other in the way that planets are different in the Space Age (SA) expansion? The short answer is yes, they will be very different from each other in the same way as SA. That's always been the plan.

As long-time watchers of my roadmap will know, a lot of the planet styles and mechanics for SE were conceptualised long before SA existed. A lot o...

Before the universe

The way that you start a new game in 0.7 is different to 0.6.

In 0.6, as soon as you start a game it builds the universe. Any control over how the universe takes shape needs to be done with mod options or map generation controls.

Mod options are not great because they are hidden away and the types of settings you can have is very restrictive. 

Map generation options are not great because they’re even more restrictive as they are designed for a single surface, not for ...

Feeling Blue

The last month has been a really sad and difficult time for me. I don’t want to go into details, it’s just to say that I didn’t get as much done this last month as usual. 

On to what I did get done: Blue terrain experiments.

Rich blue environments can be difficult, especially if it’s supposed to be semi-realistic or at least plausible.  A saturated blue terrain can look very cartoonish. It’s especially difficult to make it look right in Factorio, which l...

Decorative experiment: Beanslime

I’ve started making some experiments with new decoratives, more specifically the low groundcover types. There will be larger bush type decoratives too, but the groundcover ones are more important because of how they interact with tilesets.

I like how this yellow bean-like slime mould is shaping up but it looks a bit strange on grassy tilesets. It seems to work well on dirt though.

This isn’t part of map generation, I’m just playing around with hand-placing the test assets as...

Biomes strategy

I’ve taken the trees from the last post and put them straight into the game. This is never going to look great for a few reasons:

• The sketches are to indicate a vague artistic direction, so are done quickly and are rough quality.
• They are line-art based, which clashes with the more realistic lineless game assets.
• There’s only 1 variation, when really there should be at least 5.
• They don’t save separated leaf layers, so any random colour variation e...
  2024-02-06 23:19:13 +0000 UTC View Post

Alien Trees

Here are some of my sketches for new alien 'trees'. Few of them are actual trees, but the game engine categorises anything larger than a non-colliding shrub as a tree. 

The biology of new planets is supposed to be quite different from what you're used to on Nauvis. There are land corals, succulents, wing-ferns, fungi, a few things based on crinoids, and a whole load of things that can't be categorised. I intend to have some more conventional things like cacti, tree ferns, and more ...

Science Master Plan

It’s time for more details about science in SE 0.7.

One of the challenges of making Space Exploration is that there’s a lot of stuff in the final ‘vision’ but in the current version a lot of that is missing. There are supposed to be distinctive planets, each with their own special terrain, challenges, buildings, industry, and science. The game needs to be playable even though these things don’t exist yet, so how does that work? Well it’s a combination filling the gaps, or sk...

Clifflet testing

Recently I’ve been working on my new cliff system. I’ve vaguely introduced the concept before in the Iridium Planet post, but there’s been a lot of progress since then.

The new system uses cliffs that are made of many small parts that fit together so I’m calling the parts “Clifflets”.

Vanilla cliffs are a special built-in system where the cliffs are always placed in lines. There’s very little control over the system so you can’t control where the gaps are, which ar...

Xenorkyd Planet

Some planets are hot, some are cold, some are dry and some are oceans, some are lush with plants, and some are infested with… other life. Xenorkyd planets (pronounced Zenorkid) are mostly covered by fleshy mats of material that blurs the line between fungus, animal, and plant.

You’ll need to go to these planets and destroy some fleshy growths on the surface to uncover sources of sap. Some of them may fight back, but the well equipped engineer cares little for such things. You can ha...

Hiding transitions with decoratives

With Alien Biomes V3, I'm trying to keep the number of tilesets to a minimum. As a result, there are lots of situations where the colour difference between two touching tilesets is much greater than intended. This creates abrupt terrain changes, or visible banding on the terrain, where ideally there would be a much smoother gradient.

This image is an experiment where the raw tileset terrain (shrunk down in the bottom left) has the transitions disguised with decoratives. A decorative i...

Uranium Planet

Here’s the current Uranium planet map generation and a mockup of one of the biomes. This biome shows some signs of life, but there will be other areas that will look a lot more dead and decayed. Some Uranium planets will have random ruined structures scattered around certain biomes.

The landscape is littered with huge craters. The dark green circles on the map are craters that are filled with acidic water. For planets with ruins it might suggest that the previous inhabitants were dest...

Snowy rocks & transition tilesets

Here’s some snowy terrain transition testing. I think the snowy rocks turned out well. The snow layer is hand-painted so it took a while to do all the variations.

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently on tilesets, transitions, and terrain particles (like the dust that vehicles kick up).

At the moment the problem I’m facing is getting tilesets to place and transition properly for the next big version of alien biomes. Normally Factorio tile placement is controlled by 2-4 t...

Floods & Vitamelange

On vitamelange planets one of the central mechanics will be flooding. The planets will be dominated by large lakes. Each lake will have a geyser or whirlpool that will periodically flood low lying areas of the lake shores. You can stop the flooding with walls, but you might not want to. If vitamelange patches are flooded then they are replenished when the flooding recedes. Vitamelange availability will be quite limited otherwise, so using floods will be important for long term supplies. (Well...

Iridium Planet

This is the iridium planet so far. There are a few very work-in-progress things. The image on the left is the map and accurately shows what is generating right now. The map generation isn't final but it is close to what the intended look for the "desert canyons" biome. There will probably be some more open areas suitable for building bases but lacking in resources.

The image on the right has the original placement of cliffs and most of the terrain, but I used the editor to add in some d...

Vulcanite Planet

Here is the Vulcanite planet. Rivers of lava, volcanoes, and red desert. It’s still a work in progress but is a big improvement over the current vulcanite planets, which are essentially featureless because they are all volcanic and no water.

The Alien Biomes volcanic terrain was always intended to have lava, but getting lava to work in a way that doesn’t look terrible has been a big challenge. The first attempt at making lava was predictably to base it on water. The benefit of using...

First look at new planets

To the left is a Water planet. It’s a pretty nice place to crash-land. There are abundant basic resources in a convenient balance to make a first base. Mining the core brings up a lot of water which isn't especially useful, but it has a lot of other resources mixed in with it, more than you’d expect to find on other planets. If you can secure the huge continent you land on then you’ll be safe from the natives. If you want to explore further, a boat or a large amount of landfill is recom...

System maps preview

Here's a preview of the new system maps and the graphics for special planet types.

This is all subject to change, but even in this state I'm finding it very useful for testing the universe generation. With the previous system I couldn't tell which plant was what type, so there was a lot of clicking or checking logs to figure out what was going on. Now I can easily tell if a vulcanite planet has ended up in the wrong place, or if a gas giant somehow ended up as a moon. 

Interstellar map preview

This is still a work in progress, but here's a preview of the 0.7 interstellar map so far.

Beyond the nebula background, you might notice things like binary star systems and star colour coding. The colour of the star is an indication of the types of planets you can find there. Some planets are only around red stars, some are only around blue stars. You always start around a yellow star (for now).

I'm also working on starmap icons for the new planet types. There will be a previ...

Space Exploration Logo

Here's the long awaited Space Exploration Logo.

Space Exploration version 0.6 is starting to stabilise so there's a bit of time for things less directly linked to gameplay, like the logo. The metal texture is based on the crystal structure of meteoric iron, which seems very appropriate for the md with meteors. 

General update

I don't want to give too much context to the image, it's a sneak peek of some future content.

For a more general update, another normal version of Space Exploration is nearly ready to go with some minor improvements, bugfixes, quality of life changes, and compatibility updates. The release pattern is a little bit different these days, it tends to be fewer larger updates instead of many small updates. The main reason is that there's more of a focus on larger changes that take a little lo...

Space capsule navigation

Work on the next big Space Exploration update continues. One of the main features of the update (apart from space elevators) is the space capsule navigation system. 

Space capsules will be more useful as a personal transport system. You'll be able to move your character around more easily, but won't be able to take many items with you (only a small fraction of your inventory). It's quite normal for players to need to go up and down from orbit in the early game, and needing a whole ...