Posted by 005vc16607 1 day ago
https://www.ft.com/content/b9e419c6-acf1-420b-8ae6-908feb52c... ("How ‘Factorio’ seduced Silicon Valley — and me")
(Cool fourth-wall breaking moment seeing an HN'er featured in the FT!)
Three HNers (at least!)
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=xal
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26593117
(Also, I am typing this while alt-tabbed out of Factorio...)
https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights
(Unfortunately one would have to scroll back through 3 years' worth of other things to run across it, but it's on my list to fix that and it's squirreled away there for the future)
Bonus points if it's open source.
Works on mobile, desktop, Linux, etc.
Level of fun/addictiveness: Factorio<<<----, Shenzhen I/O, TIS-100, Nandgame, nand2tetris
Best story: Tossup for Shenzhen I/O and TIS-100, Factorio, nand2tetris, nandgame
Best order if you've never coded and want to get tricked into becoming an engineer: Factorio (but hard limit yourself here to no more than 2000 hours), then TIS-100, then Shenzhen I/O, then the Nands. I think Nand2tetris is more accessible as a learning tool.
Upshot - I highly recommend this list. :) Space Age (the Factorio DLC) has me wanting to do nand2tetris in Factorio now. Resisting..
If you zoom in, the graphics are high-res 2D sprites, rendered from 3D models. And the level of detail can be ridiculous. From this week's Factorio 2.0 update (and Space Age add-on), here's an example of the zoomed-in detail: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-396 See the foundry animations? Those videos are actually slightly more blurred than the in-game version. And the sound effects are synced to specific animation frames.
So the world of Factorio is oftentimes brown and grim and covered in grime, but that's a conscious artistic choice. (Not all of the new planets are brown. Gleba is green and irridescent and frankly creepy.) Similarly, Factorio's 2D nature has allowed the developers to focus on gameplay and quality-of-life more than many newer games in the genre. If you want to build big, intricate factories with complex train networks, for example, Factorio really shines.
If anyone would like a game with 3D graphics, or a different graphics style, try:
- Satisfactory: The 3D world is gorgeous, and Satisfactory shines at "walk around inside your factory and tinker with it." Gameplay-wise, it has only recently gained blueprinting tools that allow working at a medium level of abstraction.
- Shapez 2.0: This is pretty and colorful and full of great little puzzles. It occupies a different part of the game-design space and is just a joy to play.
(Dyson Sphere Project and Captain of Industry also have great gameplay, but I don't know if their graphics are likely to grab people who find Factorio graphically underwhelming.)
There's also Shapez 1 and 2, which is like the essence of Factorio abstracted into shapes and colors. Shapez 2 has more mining and trains and multiple levels.
Satisfactory's main issue is that it lets you build in three dimensions without doing any physics to check if that build is mechanically plausible. It's of course not reasonable to expect them to do that physics. But it means that sophisticated logistics/organization problems in Factorio almost always have the same solution in Satisfactory: build more, but upwards. There's no reason to think long-term in Satisfactory unless you have a specific aesthetic vision for a base. Of course, a giant factory-skyscraper with tons of conveyor belts sticking out looks really cool! And Satisfactory being easier makes it more of a chill sandbox game than a tense strategy game like Factorio, so I get why aesthetics-minded people like it. Different strokes.
Course that means I often had oversupply.
Because your phrased your question like people that complain about the level of detail. Yes, factorio is ugly (although some trees are beautiful). And yes, that's a design decision.
There are some mods that reskin it. Personally, I don't think any of them are beautiful.
1. It’s simple, charming, and nostalgic.
2. I view it as a defense mechanism against the onslaught of modern gaming that’s locked in a race to the lowest common denominator (i.e. “Stay away! This game isn’t for you!” ;) )
Terrain looks better, trees look better, too, I think it's a pretty big change.
Any chance you have the game set to use 16-bit color?
I’d still say that at AUD$100
Also, if you like Factorio Youtube videos, I'm a big fan of https://www.youtube.com/@DoshDoshington
> If I have to do it in an inefficient way, or the way I’m told to, it feels like work.
> When I have the freedom to do it my way, it feels like fun.
Yeah, that resonates with me. I didn't pursue a software development career because of this. Decided to do something else and enjoy programming on my own terms. It's been alright but I still wonder what might have been.