[HN Gopher] How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me
___________________________________________________________________
How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me
Author : 005vc16607
Score : 368 points
Date : 2024-10-26 06:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
| MarkMarine wrote:
| https://archive.is/2sRrE
| perihelions wrote:
| The primary source is
|
| 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!)
| dang wrote:
| (We moved this comment from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41954555)
|
| Three HNers (at least!)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=xal
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kentonv
| kentonv wrote:
| And the author of the article contacted me because of this
| old HN comment:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26593117
|
| (Also, I am typing this while alt-tabbed out of Factorio...)
| dang wrote:
| Highlighted. Thanks!
|
| 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)
| Centigonal wrote:
| You could replace this whole article with https://xkcd.com/356/
|
| Also, if you like Factorio Youtube videos, I'm a big fan of
| https://www.youtube.com/@DoshDoshington
| Xeronate wrote:
| The article mentions one of the main appeals of factorio is you
| get to think like a programmer without bosses/overhead from
| actual work but it's always been hard to get into games for that
| reason because I could just work on a side project with the same
| result. I really don't understand the appeal.
| dunefox wrote:
| I don't either. I tried getting into it (and recently
| Satisfactory) and I find it boring.
| OrigamiPastrami wrote:
| I remember when Guitar Hero came out I didn't understand why
| anybody would play that instead of just buying a guitar. The
| point is the videogame itself is designed to be fun and remove
| plenty of other elements from the real life equivalent that
| focuses more on enjoyment and less on grinding it out. If
| you're thinking about "what have I accomplished?" instead of
| "I'm having so much fun!" then it might not be for you.
|
| The other aspect is there are plenty of people that like to
| think like programmers, but have no experience programming and
| the barrier to entry for a videogame is substantially lower
| than even figuring out a "hello world!" program for someone who
| wouldn't even know how to pick a programming language.
| cole-k wrote:
| Your comparison hits home for me. I have been playing guitar
| on-and-off for over a decade (OK, maybe more like _trying_ to
| play guitar) and I still really enjoy Guitar Hero.
|
| It's instant gratification: I don't have as much fun
| practicing at .75x speed with a metronome to learn the hard
| part of a piece. Instead a video game tells me how great I am
| at "guitar" by being able to push buttons and strum on the
| beat, not to mention that I hear the sounds of my favorite
| songs come out when I do it.
|
| For a similar reason, I like Rocksmith (guitar hero but with
| a real guitar), but the gratification is not quite so
| instant. They gamify the practicing part but I still need to
| do it, otherwise the part I'm playing actually sounds bad.
| And sight-reading is so much harder when there are more than
| 5 buttons.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| As someone that plays music professionally and who enjoyed
| Rock Band, I think that the issue is a lot of folks find
| satisfaction in matering skills and checking off boxes that
| other folks design for them.
|
| Designing a satisfying skill progression takes a lot of work.
| I know what I will have to do if I, say, take up mandolin
| again seriously, and it's daunting- and worse, maybe it won't
| even lead to a satisfying or useful end... I will still do
| that at some point. I had the same feeling about cello or
| pedal steel guitar, and they all turned out okay.
|
| At the same time I totally understand why following simple
| tutorials, running a preset course, climbing an established
| route, riding already-cleared bike trails, or playing a video
| game with few possible outcomes can be satisfying.
| blueblimp wrote:
| I agree: a well-designed educational course can feel like a
| video game in some ways, in that you're learning at a high,
| consistent rate.
| wiseowise wrote:
| But we're talking about professional programmers here, not
| amateurs role playing.
| SauntSolaire wrote:
| So? There are a lot of not fun aspects of programming;
| Factorio is what it's like if it was all just the fun
| parts.
| alexjplant wrote:
| I can't stand Guitar Hero because it's nothing like playing a
| real guitar and I'm therefore no good at it. At least the
| Rock Band drums vaguely approximate playing a cheap e-kit and
| the vocal part has proper pitch detection... unfortunately a
| real guitar is hard to replicate with cheap plastic hardware.
| There's also the fact that memorizing a real song is easier
| than memorizing colored buttons because you can build a
| mental model of the song around your knowledge of music
| theory.
|
| On the topic of complex games a la Factorio: I've been
| playing a lot of Age of Empires II with my friends lately and
| have come to enjoy it. I previously shied away from RTSes
| because I was terrified of the meta but I've gotten decent
| enough to consistently beat the CPU on Moderate. I have no
| shot of ever commanding an army of trebuchets and knights in
| real life so doing it on my ThinkPad via Proton is the next
| best thing :-D
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Omg aoe2 is so addictive! Some things you might enjoy:
|
| - YouTuber "spirit of the law"
|
| - watching some build order guides. Fast feudal and fast
| castle build orders are super useful
|
| - watching commentated games of the Viper
| alexjplant wrote:
| Ha, I was watching a SOTL video earlier today to learn
| how to better plan my military build. I was a Fast Castle
| -> Boom adherent until a week or two ago because I kept
| getting got by the CPU rushing me during Feudal without
| having my defenses built... these days I basically do
| Dark Age the same every time then adjust my strategy
| based on the map, enemy civs, etc.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Being someone who grew up on these games, I often think of
| the steep trade offs I made in childhood playing them.
|
| If I'd spent all the time playing Guitar Hero playing an
| actual guitar instead, I'd be a real guitar hero.
|
| I could also be a pro skater.
| zackbrown wrote:
| On the other hand, video games enable a wide breadth of
| intellectual experiences.
|
| Being a simulated guitar hero and simulated pro skater is
| more enriching than the likely baseline of having zero
| experience with either.
|
| And, video games can help in discovering real world
| passions -- the number of guitarists who found their
| inspirational spark through Guitar Hero is likely
| significant. Same for Factorio or Minecraft -> programming.
| craz8 wrote:
| If I could have got a steady hand with tweezers, I could
| easily have been a surgeon. Real patients probably don't
| have noses that light up, which reduces distractions too!
| toast0 wrote:
| My malpractice insurance payments would be through the
| roof. I'm pretty sure I managed to lose leg bones inside
| the patient.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Maybe you would have tortured yourself and still wouldn't
| be any good.
| runeblaze wrote:
| Same here. Also Factorio AFAIK has no good copilot. Sadly the
| best LLMs are not fine-tuned on Factorio so my productivity
| takes a massive hit when moving from side projects to Factorio.
| Retr0id wrote:
| I can't tell if you're being serious or not here lol
| m463 wrote:
| where is our hacker news copilot when we need it?
| thih9 wrote:
| Are there any popular games with copilot like AI suggestions
| being part of the core gameplay?
| fwip wrote:
| There are some LLM-powered services that claim to be
| copilot for games.
|
| From what I can tell, it seems like generally they're doing
| RAG over the game's wiki, and then reading it to you in an
| attractive-lady voice.
| indigoabstract wrote:
| Lol. My parser failed at this step, so I had to look it up:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I'm looking over the sentences in the comment you replied
| to and I can't figure out where you would have gotten lost,
| can you quote the partial sentence that confused you?
| indigoabstract wrote:
| It starts out as a typical programmer rant these days
| about AI assistants and LLM fine tuning and then goes on
| to complain how sadly, they don't work for this game yet.
| So he's forced to play it manually. How old fashioned.
|
| I find that pretty amusing.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Oh well if you thought someone was going to say they
| dislike LLMs failures so they want fewer LLMs, and
| instead they say they dislike LLM failures so they want
| LLMs to be trained more, that's not a garden path. You
| don't have to back up and re-process the previous words.
| And in particular a garden path sentence does it
| _grammatically_. You suddenly realize you were getting
| parts of speech wrong.
| wildpeaks wrote:
| Perhaps you should be concerned if your productivity is so
| low when you don't have an AI crutch doing the work for you.
| runeblaze wrote:
| Trust me when I play minecraft, the moment I realize I
| don't have inventory sorting installed I quit the game.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| I feel guilty every time I turn on Factorio and basically no
| longer play it because I know I could have just as much
| enjoyment building something for the real world.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| I've yet to find something I can do in the real world that's
| as enjoyable, accessible, affordable, and easy to pick up and
| put down as Factorio, or similar games (that scratch a
| "builder" itch). What sort of things do you have in mind?
|
| * edited for clarity, typos
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Well the reason I enjoy Factorio in the first place is
| because I love automating things, not necessarily the
| building part. There's an endless amount of things I can
| automate in my life or for others, and the effort I put
| into building those automatons, whether is personal or
| professional, continues to provide value after I'm
| finished. I have 1k hours in Factorio, while those hours
| did provide value to me, that value is pretty finite.
| That's my logic at least, I just feel guilty playing it
| looking at it through that lense. I got like 50 private
| repositories that aren't finished, or are interesting and
| fun that could provide just as much satisfaction and
| possibly continue to provide value in my life even after
| I'm finished with them. Right now I'm working on a little
| project to buzz myself into the front door of my building
| via an app on my phone that triggers the buzzer in my
| apartment that is a weird analog system that's 60 + years
| old (but funnily enough is called Auth Master). Not
| complicated or intense, but fun and interesting and will
| provide a standard of living improvement for me for years
| to come (assuming I don't move) after I finish!
| gwervc wrote:
| For me it's me PhD thesis. It's a drug, and there's always
| something to do either on the code or writing or reading.
| I'm even a bit disappointed by Space Age.
| oersted wrote:
| I do get the appeal of games, it is one of my long-time
| passions, but indeed that's the issue with games like Factorio
| specifically, they feel too much like work, so might as well do
| work.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I feel the same about another pretty chill game, Dave the
| Diver. It has a _great_ feedback loop, at the beginning
|
| Once I get successful in it, I'm like "but I should be making
| money in the real world, not this world" as I do have side
| projects. the game does turn into a slog, if you approach it
| that way
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Dave the Diver just turns into a slog is all. It's
| fantastic at the start when everything is novel, and all
| the systems hold promise. But the systems themselves turn
| out to not have good gameplay loops, so right around the
| underwater village it starts to kinda suck, which
| ironically is right around when all the systems are mature
| enough that to play well you have a giant list of "todo"
| items across a variety of systems, many of which you may
| find boring, but are obliged to interact with anyway, sort
| of like real life.
|
| The advantage a game like factorio has over DtD is that you
| can kind of abandon huge sections and "start fresh" while
| still collecting rent from the work you did earlier to fund
| your new excursions. I guess DtD does this to a degree, but
| there's a lot less freedom of intellectual movement.
|
| This is why I like Against the Storm. It is a novel (if
| familiar) challenge every time, and every time you "beat
| the odds" the game _forces_ you to move on to the next
| harder challenge, "you beat this puzzle, you need a harder
| on."
| yieldcrv wrote:
| just looked up Against the Storm, looks like the board
| game Agricola, where the goal is to build and farm and
| survive the winter. I always found Agricola ironic, in
| that is masquarades as a PvP game, where your survival
| outcome is then compared to the other players, but its
| very stressful as there are not enough resources on the
| board for your family.
|
| so thats what made it too much like real life for me,
| because you're like struggling but then pretending like
| you are flexing (look at the size of my house! my farm!),
| but really everyone barely made it at all
|
| maybe Against the Storm as a single player journey makes
| more sense
| oersted wrote:
| I've played both, I absolutely love both, but they don't
| have that much to do with each other.
|
| Against the Storm is all about setting up complex
| production chains, not necessarily linking them
| explicitly like in Factorio, but more about balancing
| resource availability and assigning workers. It's a lot
| like other resource-focused city builders like Anno, but
| it is very well designed to impose a constant pressure on
| the player, always on a rush to meet goals before the
| whole thing crumbles, constantly putting out fires in the
| system (sometimes literal fires).
|
| The name is perfect, in that you build this complex
| machine, and it is constantly stress-tested by periodic
| hazards. It's an awesome rush to "hold-fast", scramble to
| desperately fix things, constantly on the edge, hoping
| that the storm will end soon because the whole thing is
| about to crumble, while rushing to fulfil the objectives
| so you can get out of there before it gets too bad.
|
| Frospunk evokes this feeling really well too. I suppose
| Factorio is kinda similar with the alien attacks. Come to
| think of it, the pressure to feed the family and the
| final scramble for points in Agricola are not so
| dissimilar either.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Once I get successful in it, I'm like "but I should be
| making money in the real world, not this world" as I do
| have side projects. the game does turn into a slog, if you
| approach it that way
|
| _Life_ is a slog if approached that way. Spending your
| time chasing more money instead of enjoying life is the
| quickest way to have a miserable existence.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I find the game motivational after a very profitable
| shift, in game.
|
| But I wasn't looking for devil's advocate or solutions,
| us guys need to affirm each other's experiences more
| often.
|
| I also do enjoy very profitable sessions in life, the
| pursuit of money itself is fulfilling for me as it
| already is a massive multiplayer game pvp. Additionally,
| I would usually prefer to be doing entertainment options
| exclusive to the level of profits that have been
| manifested. But I love the existence that allows me to
| play video games with no consequence.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Spending your (now short) life hungry and homeless on the
| streets is not enjoyable either.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| That's... a weird dichotomy to draw. Seems like you're
| determined to keep yourself miserable.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I'm not miserable. I quite enjoy having money. It allows
| me to spend time with my family doing the things I enjoy.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| This, long ago a roomate got into Factorio and after figuring
| out the basics ended up admitting that it felt way too much
| like work. This has been my reason to stay out of Factorio
| even though plenty of people have recommended it to me. I did
| a short collaborative run of Mindustry and I feel I don't
| need to play Factorio, plus, Counter-Strike chugs all my
| playing time, to me it's a bit like cocaine made a game and
| except for griding aim, it scratches all the right spots in
| my (smooth?) brain.
|
| It's the trucking game for truckers in my mind, only a madman
| would play it after work.
| oersted wrote:
| > It's the trucking game for truckers
|
| Exactly yes, I wouldn't say it's only for engineers, it is
| perfect for smart people who chose a different path in life
| and need to feed this part of their brain with a fun
| simplified simulation of what it's like to be an engineer.
|
| Of course, engineers would love this game, but we already
| engage in this type of activity all day much more intensely
| precisely because we love it, we already know how to do
| more interesting and valuable things with the same effort.
|
| Similarly, I really lost the appetite for hard decision-
| making strategy games when I founded my startup. I was
| already having to take plenty of hard decisions, thank you
| very much, the real thing is much more interesting and more
| than enough.
| z3phyr wrote:
| Are you working at Black Mesa research? Or maybe space
| communist office? Do you work on interplanetary industrial
| stuff?
| adastra22 wrote:
| Yes. Don't you? Why not?
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| The problem with side projects is that they do not have a well
| defined goal. Or they do, in which case something like Factorio
| won't have any appeal because you can just work on something
| more meaningful instead. Factorio is for people who want to
| keep programming but are too frustrated or cynical about the
| real world to do it there. If the real world was better, they
| would do it there. If the real world could be fixed with
| programming, they would do it there. Many have tried, only to
| discover that what they thought were technical problems are
| really people problems.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| There are plenty of technical problems that are in fact
| technical problems.
|
| e.g: making bluetooth 10% more energy efficient in the next
| few revisions
|
| In fact there are probably infinitely many.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| Making Bluetooth 10% more energy efficient in the next few
| revisions is a terrible example because you absolutely
| cannot just tackle that by yourself. Not because it's
| technically hard, but because it's actually a people
| problem in disguise!
|
| If you just walk up to the mailing list with the complete
| designs, documents, experimental results, schematics, trade
| offs, feasibility studies, you know what you're going to
| get? People saying "whoa, hey, great work but let's talk
| about this. I see here you've made assumption X about
| implementation area Y and that actually conflicts with the
| direction that we had in mind for the upcoming release, so
| let's talk more. To start, we'd like to see if we can
| explore option Z, thoughts?"
|
| That ain't fun. It's _rewarding_ but it ain 't fun. Not
| like sitting down and messing with Legos in your own house
| is fun, or building a silly factory in Factorio is fun.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Well of course it would take a literal super genius to
| actually accomplish successfully this via individual
| submission.
|
| Nobody is going to believe anyone short of that bar would
| have even fully understood the bluetooth specification.
| So even a regular genius, 99.9th percentile HN user,
| would have a starting credibility of roughly zero.
|
| But there are likely infinitely many waiting for that
| 99.9999th percentile HN reader to come along.
| surajrmal wrote:
| No one is waiting for super geniuses. They are just
| trying to use groups of people to solve hard problems
| instead of relying on individuals. It's amazing what
| people can accomplish by working together.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| This isn't a feasible pathway outside of a lifetime
| commitment, because it takes several decades to build up
| enough credibility to reliably advance proposals in such
| committee work. (Or be very lucky )
| ozim wrote:
| Games usually have kinks worked out - if you build project
| you might end up chasing one liner for a week.
|
| From game I get instant gratification as if I play by the
| game guide/rules I can have something satisfying built in one
| evening.
| chpatrick wrote:
| Because you don't always have a fun side project and Factorio
| is designed to keep providing them for hours and hours.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >Factorio is designed to keep providing them for hours and
| hours
|
| It's called replayability, the crucial selling point of every
| successful game.
| chpatrick wrote:
| Yes, and?
| abecedarius wrote:
| There's an in-between experience with the likes of the Natural
| Number Game or Project Euler -- it feels like there should be
| so much more of that kind of thing to substitute for so much of
| legacy education. Most "learning games" afaik are too
| "schooley".
|
| I haven't played Factorio so far; for those who haven't
| programmed, do you think you're learning something new and
| somewhat transferable?
| seanthemon wrote:
| Zacktronics games might fit this bill
| grensley wrote:
| Sometimes you just want to expend energy in a direction that
| doesn't have consequences. I hold the opposite opinion from you
| in that people ought to be able to turn off the "any non-
| productive minute of my life is wasted" mindset.
|
| You're on big space rock, dude.
| aphantastic wrote:
| Mindusry scratches the same itch, but in perhaps a slightly
| more appealing way for me at least. Rather than the entire game
| being dedicated to creating one massive monolith dedicated to
| the one goal of rocket building or whatever, there are many
| different levels each where you're just playing classic tower
| defense and using the layout of the map to your advantage to
| extract resources and kill bad guys. It's casual and FOSS.
| fragmede wrote:
| hopefully not a spoiler given the name, but the space mod
| that was released on Monday opens new planets to explore,
| after you manage to build the rocket to space on the first
| level, so it's no longer an "entire game being dedicated to
| creating one massive monolith dedicated to the one goal of
| rocket building"
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| I think Factorio, Mindustry and Satisfactory is a "choose
| one" trio for any gamer to like. They share similar goals
| (factory building), but approaches are quite different.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Not sure what "choose one" means here. I liked Factorio and
| Satisfactory, but didn't like Mindustry.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| I meant that out of this 3 games you'll find one you like
| when looking for factory building games.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| The stakes (there are none except ones you set for yourself)
|
| The timeline (quick returns, but a long scale of challenges you
| can build up to. Lots of side projects out there with 0 users.)
|
| You can play with friends
|
| You can also pay 1/4 attention until you need to design
| something complex in the game. I find it fun, I can turn my
| brain off for a bit but then re/engage for the fun complex
| stuff.
|
| I stopped playing as much myself because I wanted to either
| work on professional development (side projects, learning more)
| or actually make things with my hands (woodworking, chair
| making, fixing an old truck) that were real breaks from
| software engineering, and easier to share with my kids.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Factorio is more fun than any side project. While it hits a
| similar area of the brain as programming does (the problem
| solving zone), it's definitely not the same.
| johnisgood wrote:
| That is debatable. I get more satisfaction from working on a
| side project that I know matters in the real life, outside of
| the gaming scene, and it is fun working on it myself, and the
| same thing applies here: no bosses, deadlines, etc.
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| You could just as easily say, why work on a side project when
| you could play Factorio instead with the same result?
|
| What makes a side project better than Factorio?
| johnisgood wrote:
| I feel I contribute to society more by working on a side
| project of mine than if I play video games.
| fizlebit wrote:
| Games are much easier than real work and provide more
| consistent dopamine hits with their graphics, sound effects and
| feeling of progression. Factorio while fun is a long way from
| real work.
| ozim wrote:
| I play Cities Skylines for that reason I have to debug the
| traffic but mostly have fun building the city the way I want.
| Like once I feel like building a lot of tram lines, other time
| building train lines.
|
| I also build side projects - but from the game I get instant
| gratification as I can build decent city with goal I have in
| one evening whereas side project to have anything I can say is
| pleasing takes much more time than one evening.
|
| Games don't have annoying blockers like trying to use some new
| library, cities I build also did not work first times I was
| playing because I was noob - but even libraries frameworks I
| use on daily basis always have some kinks I have to figure out
| so it takes multiple evening anyway.
| m463 wrote:
| I think it's more a rite of passage.1
|
| You don't have to make it your job.
|
| In a similar way I think more people should change a flat tire
| or change the oil in their car. I think it will make them more
| aware, but they don't have to become a mechanic.
|
| [1] A rite of passage is a ceremony or ritual of the passage
| which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter
| another. It involves a significant change of status in society.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rite_of_passage
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Is there a better graphics version of factorio? And no I don't
| mean Satisfactory or Dyson Sphere Program though those are good
| games in their own rights, I mean something with the same level
| of depth and camera as factorio.
| dcre wrote:
| Better in what sense?
| philsnow wrote:
| I love Factorio but the graphics look a bit like 1996 SVGA
| 256-color sprites (edit: by which I mean, I feel like there
| is noticeable dithering). I haven't played the new "Factorio
| in space" bits, maybe it gets out of the browns-and-beige
| color palette a bit more?
| btmiller wrote:
| I love the art for two reasons:
|
| 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!" ;) )
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You don't like the design aesthetic?
|
| 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.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > by which I mean, I feel like there is noticeable
| dithering
|
| Any chance you have the game set to use 16-bit color?
| kzrdude wrote:
| For Factorio 2.0, there's a lot of graphics that have
| gotten higher resolution upgrades. Earendel has blogged
| about working on this. (The Space Exploration mod author,
| who also works for Wube).
|
| Terrain looks better, trees look better, too, I think it's
| a pretty big change.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| I haven't found one, and really as you get later in the game
| the retro graphics are a blessing. I play on my work Mac (most
| powerful thing in the house) and I end up having to bail early
| because I just can't have a megabase over a certain size,
| everything grinds to a halt.
| solardev wrote:
| What kinda depth are you missing from DSP and Satisfactory? And
| what do you mean by "camera"?
|
| 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.
| mdaniel wrote:
| Shapez 2 is just _stellar_. I mean, Shapez 1 was good, but 2
| is just awesome (IMHO, of course)
| jcranmer wrote:
| Not OP, but my guess for what they meant by "camera" is the
| fact that Factorio is largely a 2D top-down view with
| relatively little impedance to jumping to another part of the
| factory to work on it (especially with the QoL stuff added in
| 2.0). In Satisfactory or DSP, fixing a remote part of the
| factory--even trying to diagnose problems remotely--is a
| chore, and there's precious little you can do to actually
| speed the travel process up.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| For DSP I made a rule for myself: if I have to travel to
| another planet, I have to bring enough material to increase
| (ideally double) the production of a resource. That made
| traveling feel more useful.
|
| Course that means I often had oversupply.
| aithrowawaycomm wrote:
| Speaking for myself, I love Factorio and can't stand
| Satisfactory. Even on peaceful mode Factorio has you solving
| real problems, whereas Satisfactory feels like playing
| Minecraft on creative mode.
|
| 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.
| ekidd wrote:
| I guess it depends on what you mean by "better graphics"?
| They're upgraded their graphics several times over the years.
| I'm playing on a 4K monitor and they're using most of those
| pixels. I can see a small amount of interpolation at full zoom
| at 4K.
|
| 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.)
| bloqs wrote:
| Mindustry
| vanjajaja1 wrote:
| i also hated the graphics, but once you play it for a bit the
| graphics melt away and you can see the beauty in the details
| they have
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| The trees move in the wind when you zoom in. Factorio takes
| sprite graphics to the next level! I felt the same as you, I've
| always wanted a brighter reskin of Factorio but I've realized
| it's way tooooo much work for anyone to do for free...
| chasd00 wrote:
| I get a real kick out of playing builder games with my son. We
| played Jurassic park evolution a lot, I would direct contracts
| and what to build and then we'd discuss and he would build it.
| Heh it was like being team lead without the pressure and anxiety.
| dowakin wrote:
| BTW "Factorio: Space Age" was release a few days ago. Personally,
| I'm going to spend whole Sunday playing it :)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I've started a new Space Age game, too!
|
| With the understanding that you can regularly leave Factorio
| running overnight or even all week to build up resources, how
| many hours have other hard core Factorio players logged?
|
| My Factorio play time is up to 6,573.2 hours at this point.
|
| I love Factorio for the same reasons I love SimCity. 6,573.2
| hours seems like a lot of time, but I've probably logged even
| more hours playing SimCity since 1989. (But much of that was
| actual productive time porting it to various platforms,
| testing, debugging, and optimizing the actual source code and
| user interface, etc.)
|
| https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fVl4dGwUrA
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8snnqQSI0GE
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsxoZXaYJSk
| quesera wrote:
| > _My Factorio play time is up to 6,573.2 hours at this
| point._
|
| I habitually translate "X thousands of hours" into "full time
| employment years".
|
| You've been playing Factorio as the equivalent of a full time
| job, for 3 years and 3 months.
|
| [Edit: Many of those hours were probably background farming,
| so not a direct comparison.]
| herval wrote:
| I read about a half hour every day. That means I probably
| clocked some 6 thousand hours in my lifetime. Imagine all
| the time I could've invested in playing the rat race more,
| in those wasted 3 years of books :(
| quesera wrote:
| I am _absolutely not_ suggesting that "full-time
| employment years" are better allocated to
| work/job/employment.
|
| Just modeling what we (US, 40hrs/wk and 50wks/yr)
| consider a "full-time" commitment to any task/activity.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I know lots of people who play Factorio but for me, I guess it
| just feels too much like work? Whenever I play it, I get the
| distinct feeling that I could instead do the same thing but
| productively instead, such as by contributing to my OSS projects
| (sometimes, maybe even for profit instead). I never got into
| these types of programmatic games for precisely this reason but
| I'd like to understand other perspectives on this.
|
| The games I play instead are wholly unrelated to my work life,
| such as FPS or RPG ones, where there is a clear distinction
| between what I can do and what I want to do.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Fps: the US military thanks you for training for infantry in
| your spare time.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Funnily enough, I actually used to play America's Army 3, a
| game which explicitly was funded by the DoD. It was pretty
| fun, not gonna lie, much more tactical than many other
| shooters during that time.
| atrus wrote:
| It also convinced me to never join the army, because I was
| a bullet magnet haha.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Haha, I would never dream of actually getting shot at,
| lol.
| switchbak wrote:
| Operation Flashpoint (early version of ARMA) did that for
| me. You sneak around for an hour, then get shot in the
| face and it's all over. Imagine that, but for your life
| ... fuck war.
| ekidd wrote:
| I remember speaking to several of the people who worked on
| America's Army back around 2007, when Counter-Strike was
| all the rage. I think this was at the GDC.
|
| The people I spoke with were from the Army. And they found
| CS-style games _agonizing_ to watch. So many people running
| around with no plan, so much friendly fire, so many
| unrealistic tactics. You could practically see them
| shudder.
|
| They also had some people who worked in logistics. I
| remember one of them saying, "If the United States decides
| to invade a country, the software we wrote could calculate
| how much toilet paper we'd need."
| wiseowise wrote:
| Of course it is agonizing, CS doesn't try to replicate
| real world scenario. In real life if you die - you die,
| you don't get to respawn with $800.
| 47282847 wrote:
| You sure?
| wiseowise wrote:
| I haven't tried it myself, but heard that this is indeed
| the case.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| But by your own measure, you're not killing actual people,
| so why waste your time?
|
| Do you finally get it now?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| My work is not killing actual people, so your analogy is
| flawed.
| beeflet wrote:
| Gonna enlist and be the first man to rocket jump
| wiseowise wrote:
| Finally my 14 years of TF2 will pay off. Do they have
| sticky bombs too?
| johnisgood wrote:
| Or Quake 3!
| falcolas wrote:
| Practicing point and click skills probably won't to help much
| with your firearm accuracy. Or cardio.
| Taek wrote:
| Its just fun.
|
| "Okay wth, today we're going to make the entire base solar
| powered"
|
| When making software that's supposed to be used, you can't mess
| around that much. At the end of the day, someone has to use it
| and if its weird it'll be bad.
|
| But in Factorio? Nobody is using it so sure, make it bizzare.
| Change the rules, let yourself go. Don't test the design just
| send it.
|
| Bored? Too challenging? Don't bother finishing the design do
| something else.
| dartos wrote:
| > When making software that's supposed to be used, you can't
| mess around that much. At the end of the day, someone has to
| use it and if its weird it'll be bad.
|
| This makes me sad.
|
| You don't need to make software for mass appeal.
|
| Git is weird and bizarre (especially when initially
| released), but it's used and well loved.
| serf wrote:
| >This makes me sad.
|
| I gotta say, I think I agree.
|
| Maybe it's just rose-tinted-glasses, but I remember a time
| when software was split between "IBM-Corpo" culture, and
| zany SV/MIT/Caltech culture where people threw things at
| the wall and proceeded when stuff stuck.
|
| It kind of saddens me that it feels like it's now _only_
| IBM-Corpo, and everyone feels the need to be ever-
| productive and adhere to strict rules and schema.
|
| tl;dr : I remember when the fun Factorio game was
| qbasic.exe and no one blinked about it. We all had fun.
|
| (p.s. I love factorio now too)
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Bring back counterculture hackers
| tux3 wrote:
| What do you mean, back! There's more than ever! We're
| overflowing with talented peeps hacking on cool things,
| writing nice blogs publishing zines, and so forth and on!
|
| The formerly-counterculture conventions got so cult and
| big they grew a counter-counterculture of smaller places.
|
| Outside the walls of the AI SaaS grind. There be life.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Haha, any recommendations?
| helpfulclippy wrote:
| See if your area has any local makerspaces/hackerspaces
| or regional conferences like BSides.
| dartos wrote:
| Next to none in south Florida outside of Miami :(
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I won't sell any area near me unfortunately.
| gessha wrote:
| The hacker culture is still there but hacker social media
| (unless carefully curated) is flooded with optimized
| content to the point where the cool stuff is hard to find
| and you only see the grifter techs.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Nah, they're still there, you merely have to know where
| to look. Most hackers I know eschew social media
| appearances.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| Plenty of hackers with substantial social media presences
| but they live in pockets that don't cross over into
| mainline social media too much.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Social media popularity is pretty much an anti-signal
| nowadays. The more popular the closer to the average.
| wickedsight wrote:
| You don't even have to look per se. The YouTube aglo
| provides me a lot of interesting content that isn't
| especially high quality or production value. I do take an
| effort to ignore click bait as much as possible and click
| "don't recommend channel" for things like MKBHD and LTT,
| because those crowd out original content if you let them.
| patrickk wrote:
| There's loads of hacker spirit still alive in the homelab
| and home automation space just to give one example.
|
| Having lots of fun tinkering with Proxmox, Wled, Shelly
| devices to manipulate electric rollers, and more.
| Couldn't quite get Valetudo running on my robot vacuum
| (my model isn't the easiest to hack) but the concept is
| so cool. Triggering automations With dirt cheap NFC tags
| or a cheap wireless numpad is so satisfying.
|
| Building an *arr stack is another area where there's tons
| of amazing creativity online and the hacker spirit still
| lives on.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Eric S Raymond deserves credit for pioneering the grifter
| tech exploitation of hacker culture.
| shagie wrote:
| Not long after his immersion in LIFE, Gosper himself got
| a glimpse of the limits of the tight circle the hackers
| had drawn. It happened in the man-made daylight of the
| 1972 Apollo 17 moon shot. He was a passenger on a special
| cruise to the Caribbean, a "science cruise" timed for the
| launch, and the boat was loaded with sci-fi writers,
| futurists, scientists of varying stripes, cultural
| commentators, and, according to Gosper, "an unbelievable
| quantity of just completely empty-headed cruise-niks."
|
| Gosper was there as part of Marvin Minsky's party. He got
| to engage in discussion with the likes of Norman Mailer,
| Katherine Anne Porter, Isaac Asimov, and Carl Sagan, who
| impressed Gosper with his Ping-Pong playing. For real
| competition, Gosper snuck in some forbidden matches with
| the Indonesian crewmen, who were by far the best players
| on the boat.
|
| Apollo 17 was to be the first manned space shot initiated
| at night, and the cruise boat was sitting three miles off
| Cape Kennedy for an advantageous view of the launch.
| Gosper had heard all the arguments against going to the
| trouble of seeing a liftoff--why not watch it on
| television, since you'll be miles away from the actual
| launching pad? But when he saw the damn thing actually
| lift off, he appreciated the distance. The night had been
| set ablaze, and the energy peak got to his very insides.
| The shirt slapped on his chest, the change in his pocket
| jingled, and the PA system speakers broke from their
| brackets on the viewing stand and dangled by their power
| cords. The rocket, which of course never could have held
| to so true a course without computers, leapt into the
| sky, hell-bent for the cosmos like some flaming avenger,
| a Spacewar nightmare; the cruise-niks were stunned into
| trances by the power and glory of the sight. The
| Indonesian crewmen went berserk. Gosper later recalled
| them running around in a panic and throwing their Ping-
| Pong equipment overboard, "like some kind of sacrifice."
|
| The sight affected Gosper profoundly. Before that night,
| Gosper had disdained NASA's human-wave approach toward
| things. He had been adamant in defending the AI lab's
| more individualistic form of hacker elegance in
| programming, and in computing style in general. But now
| he saw how the real world, when it got its mind made up,
| could have an astounding effect. NASA had not applied the
| Hacker Ethic, yet it had done something the lab, for all
| its pioneering, never could have done. Gosper realized
| that the ninth-floor hackers were in some sense deluding
| themselves, working on machines of relatively little
| power compared to the computers of the future--yet still
| trying to do it all, change the world right there in the
| lab. And since the state of computing had not yet
| developed machines with the power to change the world at
| large--certainly nothing to make your chest rumble as did
| the NASA operation--all that the hackers wound up doing
| was making Tools to Make Tools. It was embarrassing.
|
| Gosper's revelation led him to believe that the hackers
| could change things--just make the computers bigger, more
| powerful, without skimping on expense. But the problem
| went even deeper than that. While the mastery of the
| hackers had indeed made computer programming a spiritual
| pursuit, a magical art, and while the culture of the lab
| was developed to the point of a technological Walden
| Pond, something was essentially lacking.
|
| The world.
|
| As much as the hackers tried to make their own world on
| the ninth floor, it could not be done. The movement of
| key people was inevitable. And the harsh realities of
| funding hit Tech Square in the seventies: ARPA, adhering
| to the strict new Mansfield Amendment passed by Congress,
| had to ask for specific justification for many computer
| projects. The unlimited funds for basic research were
| drying up; ARPA was pushing some pet projects like speech
| recognition (which would have directly increased the
| government's ability to mass-monitor phone conversations
| abroad and at home). Minsky thought the policy was a
| "losing" one, and distanced the AI lab from it. But there
| was no longer enough money to hire anyone who showed
| exceptional talent for hacking. And slowly, as MIT itself
| became more ensconced in training students for
| conventional computer studies, the Institute's attitude
| to computer studies shifted focus somewhat. The AI lab
| began to look for teachers as well as researchers, and
| the hackers were seldom interested in the bureaucratic
| hassles, social demands, and lack of hands-on machine
| time that came with teaching courses.
|
| Levy, Steven. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
| - 25th Anniversary Edition
|
| ----
|
| Factorio is hacking again. It's kludging it together to
| make it work. When you read things like
| https://wiki.factorio.com/Balancer_mechanics or the JK
| latch and the SR latch ( https://www.reddit.com/r/factori
| o/comments/92tdgm/jk_latch_s... and https://wiki.factorio
| .com/Tutorial:Circuit_network_cookbook#... ) and get into
| r/technicalfactorio/ it is reminiscent of HACKMEM (
| https://archive.org/details/HAKMEM ) written by Beeler,
| Gosper, and Schroeppel.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Thundering towers blasting into space is a primal
| thrill... but what if the hackers can do all of that with
| some aluminum foil, duct tape, and other things found in
| every garage workshop?
|
| Big and flashy bets are expensive, many small bets are a
| far, far better way to explore the design space,
| especially now that we can share all the results with
| almost no cost.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| > It kind of saddens me that it feels like it's now only
| IBM-Corpo
|
| I think about this whenever I see a new open source
| library hosted on its own domain with a polished and
| slick promo material. I really don't mean to throw shade
| at designers for making nice designs, but it just feels
| weird and corporate-y to me that the polish is a
| priority.
|
| There are, of course, open source projects that serve as
| a hook for selling SaaS products, which is corporate by
| nature and thus doesn't trigger the same feeling in me.
| musha68k wrote:
| the permaculture of: patches in emails; binaries on
| usenet; releases / of sources on maybe less savoury
| personal web sites
|
| otoh lack of basically centralized source control / git /
| hub / lab etc would also be missed dearly
|
| depending on context: corporate polish can be fine;
| especially if software "is infra"; let truly (?) fun
| inconsequential software be messy and / or fun if sparks
| joy
|
| apropos permaculture: i enjoyed TIS-100 but never got
| interested by factorio (maybe its art?) but anyways i'd
| personally find it more interesting to see more
| declarative / triggered simulation / play out in ever
| interesting ways
|
| so maybe biologic systems over industry in space?
|
| maybe there exist such games already? they do in my mind
| at least; i should look into current simulation
| frameworks maybe and read up on ecology
| dartos wrote:
| TIS-100 was more of a puzzle game than a sandbox factory
| building game like factorio.
|
| TIS has a much tighter game loop with hard success
| metrics for each challenge.
|
| I wouldn't really compare the two.
| 7952 wrote:
| I think that culture still exists outside of official IT
| teams. It is just contained in python scripts, R coding,
| excel, PowerApps, shadow IT etc.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Nods in Emacs.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Used? Certainly. Well loved? Oh boy do I disagree.
|
| I think it's an extremely powerful tool, and it's worth
| knowing how to wield it well, but that power comes at the
| expense of user friendliness, especially for junior devs
| who don't have an intuition of git internals and how
| commands map to them.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > You don't need to make software for mass appeal.
|
| Hear, hear. I would tell you all about the tools my
| household runs on but it is as you say. Still gives me a
| lot of satisfaction to make stuff that makes life better,
| and for someone more adventurous than me it might also be
| something you can use to try out new technologies or build
| something for on your CV. The only downside is that
| internet connectivity being down means, e.g., you need to
| remember to load the grocery list before leaving the house
| that has the server in it and better hope your phone
| doesn't decide for you that the page needs to be unloaded
| on the way!
| 0points wrote:
| It fascinates me how someone like you manage to build all
| these tooling to run your house, but still struggle with
|
| > need to remember to load the grocery list before
| leaving the house that has the server in it
|
| ^ remote access
|
| and
|
| > better hope your phone doesn't decide for you that the
| page needs to be unloaded on the way
|
| ^ unreliable tech
| medstrom wrote:
| What would you do?
| sanotehu wrote:
| Syncthing to sync the grocery list to your phone whenever
| it is on the home WiFi. Any changes will be updated when
| you next get back home.
|
| I use this with obsidian and it's a game changer,
| removing need for the cloud
| lucb1e wrote:
| > Any changes will be updated when you next get back home
| [...] removing need for the cloud
|
| More than one person can be in the grocery store. Syncing
| a file does not work because you overwrite each other's
| changes; this is what we started with but this is why I
| made (what I call) multiplayer groceries in the first
| place
|
| And note that I also don't need a "cloud"; it's hosted on
| my own system rather than someone else's
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Email in the drafts folder on my phone
| downut wrote:
| We keep a postit list next to the breadmaker and write
| stuff down when we need to get something. Then when it is
| time to go shopping, we simply peel off the list and away
| we go.
|
| I am getting disgusted by people who need to have that
| screen in their hand, all waking hours.
| throwaway19972 wrote:
| I won't go so far as to say I'm disgusted by what others
| do, but I am increasingly resenting having to use my
| phone for myriad tasks that shouldn't require a phone in
| the first place. Like unlocking my apartment door. It's
| obviously so that someone can get a recurring cut where
| they would have once provided a one-time semi-permanent
| solution (like a key, or a notepad).
|
| I mean, maybe some of this will be blunted over time as
| open source slowly eats away at these utilities, but
| until then I view my phone like a grenade, or a drug, or
| a slot machine, or a money-eater.
| easton wrote:
| My apartment recently moved over to "smart locks" and I
| immediately noped out (app is slow), choosing to memorize
| the codes instead. This was clearly an afterthought since
| about 40% of the time touches are missed when using the
| keypads.
|
| Why anyone wanted to unlock their door with their phone
| instead of tapping a fob, I'm not sure, but the only
| interesting feature (temp access for friends) doesn't
| seem worth it.
| allannienhuis wrote:
| "Why anyone wanted to unlock their door with their phone
| instead of tapping a fob, "
|
| I would want to do it with my phone because then I only
| have to have one thing to carry around with me. I haven't
| carried a key ring in years. I don't even carry a wallet
| these days. It's really quite useful. Way fewer trips
| back to fetch the keys/wallet, etc.
| throwaway313373 wrote:
| In the part of the world where I currently live there are
| cafes/restaurants that have a menu ONLY in the form a QR
| code that leads to some shitty slow and laggy webpage
| with the actual menu. I can't express how much I hate
| this.
|
| Why do I even need a smartphone the go to a restaurant
| and eat something? Why would anyone effectively refusing
| service to people who don't have smartphones or do not
| want to use them? If I need their service and have money
| to pay for it why would they put additional obstacles in
| my way? What's their motivation for scaring of a
| potential customer using totally arbitrary criteria that
| has nothing to do with the service they provide?
|
| Oh, I hate it so much.
| spockz wrote:
| This. And then getting shouted at or (less than politely)
| talked down to for wanting to talk to the staff for how
| they deal allergies. Only to finally load the menu, show
| them the information isn't there, and promptly walk out.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > It's obviously so that someone can get a recurring cut
|
| As the person who started this discussion about needing
| software for household things, let me be clear that this
| is not the sort of situation I'm talking about! The
| things I use, I either made or maintain myself because
| it's my hobby. Nobody needs to use them who doesn't want
| to and there is no cut. I think the conversation diverges
| here as this is not the same situation! Probably anyone
| would agree that being _forced_ to use something or other
| is very different from being _able_ to use something or
| other.
| lucb1e wrote:
| My apologies that using available technology to improve
| upon suboptimal solutions disgusts you. In case it helps
| to know why "that screen" improves upon paper in the
| first place:
|
| - I'm not always home when I decide to want to buy
| something, so then I couldn't write it on that paper
|
| - We go shopping together most of the time. That screen
| lets you check items off and sync that to the other
| person's that screen. Alternatively, there is a mode
| where it gives each participant a subset of the items so
| you don't get duplicate things
|
| - That screen can give you the list in the right order if
| you just tell the app one time what layout a store has
| (e.g. first the bread and breakfast things, then the
| cooling section, then the freezer section.. those sorts
| of categories)
|
| - That screen can also work with a map function where it
| does a traveling salesperson problem to find a good path
| to walk down to get each item, but this requires entering
| the location of everything rather than just having
| everything broadly categorized
|
| - That screen suggests things you frequently buy, so it's
| one tap for what you commonly need
|
| - That screen can temporarily hide items you are going to
| get in the next store, so you can glance and see that the
| list is clear and you're good to go check out and then
| unhide the things when you enter the next store
|
| - That screen can automatically add items from recipes
| you've added
|
| - You have that screen anyway. The pen and paper, on the
| other hand, are consumables
|
| We could forego all these benefits for, eh, not being
| "glued", whatever the advantage in that is. It's not like
| I'm getting distracted by notifications in the store if
| that's what you're worried about
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Progressive app using local storage?
| pcl wrote:
| I'd use tailscale or WireGuard for remote access, for
| starters.
| lucb1e wrote:
| That's... the situation as described in the post which
| the comment above you was responding to?
|
| > The only downside is that internet connectivity being
| down means, e.g., you need to remember to load the
| grocery list before leaving the house that has the server
| in it
|
| Wireguard or Tailscale Inc. are not magically going to
| resolve that situation. Does Tailscale even work locally
| if your internet is down or does it require their cloud
| for NAT punching regardless of whether you're on the
| server's LAN? For starters
| hhh wrote:
| open apple notes and type in my grocery list and go
| blissfully about my day
| lucb1e wrote:
| That works great and is exactly what I did... when I was
| alone
| lucb1e wrote:
| Phones being unreliable and making data-tossing decisions
| without your involvement is indeed the complaint I meant
| to share. It has been a pet peeve about Android since day
| one and it has only gotten worse (websites like
| dontkillmyapp come to mind); would hope that being aware
| of the downsides helps us fix or reliably work around the
| issue one day
|
| I don't understand the first point though, do you mean I
| should set up remote access? Because that's definitely
| there, it's just that if the uplink is down on the ISP's
| side or whatever, then you can't access the system
| outside the house. Or if I were to host it outside the
| house, then you just shift the SPOF to a different
| location. What are you suggesting or pointing out
| exactly?
| ang_cire wrote:
| Can you not just screenshot the page on your phone as a
| backup before you leave?
| scott_w wrote:
| > You don't need to make software for mass appeal.
|
| Some people, like myself, enjoy writing code but need a
| purpose to write code. If I don't have a reason, or problem
| to solve, I can't just sit down and start coding.
| dartos wrote:
| Try graphics programming.
|
| Endless fun to be had trying to recreate shaders and
| having cool ideas for different vfx.
| scott_w wrote:
| Honestly, that fits into the same boat for me. I like
| fixing problems for people and I'm not particularly
| creative in the classical sense. So messing with visual
| effects for the sake of it doesn't really do it for me.
| Weirdly, if someone needed it for something, I'd probably
| pull a 60 hour shift to figure it all out ;-P
| dartos wrote:
| Just kind of sounds like recreational programming isn't
| your thing.
|
| That's okay too :)
| Hugsun wrote:
| Consider yourself lucky. I enjoy programming in itself
| greatly, but I don't find myself motivated by producing
| anything useful.
| LaGrange wrote:
| I mean, what is "useful" in the sense of "paying the
| bills" is quite different from "useful" in the sense of
| social utility - and what you _perceive_ as social
| utility is a whole other thing on top of that, that's
| only _hopefully_ somewhat aligned with the actual thing.
|
| Working on something that feels like it's only useful as
| a way to extract money is incredibly unrewarding in my
| experience, to the point of increasing my feeling of
| burnout.
| archerx wrote:
| Useful does not mean mass appeal. The software I got paid
| the most to write is used by a handful of people on a
| manufacturing site and 99.9999999999% of the public will
| never see it.
|
| It solved a problem they had and I'm proud of it but yea
| it's incredibly niche and useful to a very select few
| people.
| scott_w wrote:
| I don't disagree and, to be honest, that kind of work is
| something I really enjoy.
|
| I'm mostly, personally, talking about building toy apps
| or hacking my microwave to play Doom. Not throwing shade
| at those who do, it's just not what motivates me.
| nicbou wrote:
| An app can be like a home cooked meal
|
| https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/
| z3phyr wrote:
| Well loved? It runs on network effect mostly. hg is well
| loved but not well used.
| earnesti wrote:
| I do not find git weird and bizarre at all. First time I
| hear such nonsense. Why do you feel that way?
| thoroughburro wrote:
| It's amazing you haven't heard negative criticism of Git,
| before! It's widespread.
|
| https://kagi.com/search?q=criticism+of+git
| echoangle wrote:
| For all the peasants that don't have a kagi subscription
| (like myself):
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=criticism+of+git
| freediver wrote:
| Or this (used share search feature in Kagi, which works
| for everyone)
|
| https://kagi.com/search?q=criticism+of+git&r=us&sh=-Tk-
| oKViO...
| dartos wrote:
| > I do not find git weird and bizarre at all.
|
| You probably haven't used it enough, honestly.
|
| Rebasing, reflogs, pickaxes, 3 way merges, merge
| directions, the fact that merge directions are reversed
| during rebases, are all weird things that are pretty
| specific to git.
|
| At least as far as how they're presented
|
| > First time I hear such nonsense
|
| You don't seem to listen very closely. Linus himself
| recognized git's perceived weirdness in a talk he gave
| about it years ago.
| rkangel wrote:
| > Git is weird and bizarre
|
| The core of Git is incredibly simple and elegant (content
| addressable database). It's an amazing approach to how to
| represent the data that needs representing.
|
| The UI is the challenging bit, and that's because Linus
| just slapped something on to demonstrate it, expecting that
| a proper UI would be built over the plumbing he'd created.
| dartos wrote:
| > The UI is the challenging bit, and that's because Linus
| just slapped something on to demonstrate it
|
| Which makes it weird and bizarre. Especially in the
| context of this whole discussion. Not really sure what
| you're trying to say.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I don't understand, I can make whatever software I want, for
| whatever purpose, and it can still be impactful, depending on
| the user. It feels way more impactful than anything I can
| make in Factorio or similar.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Not everything is about impact.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Perhaps not, but my fun can in part be traced to impact.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| Are the FPS games you play also about impact? You seem to
| have set yourself a different bar for 'fun' for this
| title (or genre?) alone.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Of course not. I think you misunderstand, if a game is
| too similar to real life, I am unsure why I should play
| it, whereas if it is fairly different, such as an FPS, it
| becomes much more fun for me. My question is primarily on
| the former, of why people seem to play a game that
| basically is like work but has no benefit for them. If
| it's fun for them, then that's fine, but my question
| more, _why is it fun for them in the first place?_ That
| 's really what I want to figure out.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| It's fun to solve problems. How do I optimize this sub-
| factory? - That's the same fun as "how do I optimize this
| function" but instead of a green light from my test
| runner one gets a colorful display of a working factory
| with a visible result. The fact that I reduced memory
| usage of that function by 10% I don't see in that way.
| And probably both both are equal in benefit to humanity's
| progress (zero)
| dgacmu wrote:
| Sometimes it's fun to do things when there's no real
| world consequence attached to failure and experimentation
| even if the mechanics are similar to something we do for
| work.
|
| I sometimes do project euler puzzles for fun. I'm a CS
| professor - this starts to feel kinda close to my job.
| But it's relaxing and there's no pressure and no one is
| affected when I screw up; I just get to keep kicking at
| it, or put it down. The freedom makes a big difference.
|
| The "solving an interesting problem" part of my job is
| the part I love. It's the other stuff I need a break from
| sometimes. :)
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think I can answer this to some extend. I kinda feel
| like you do, that playing factorio is time that I could
| more productively spend on side projects (especially
| considering how much time it costs), but I don't kill
| bugs in side projects, don't build train lines, don't
| build spaceships. I play factorio because the dopamine
| hit when something comes together is nearly the same, but
| the actions I take are different enough to stay fun.
|
| Also, I just think it's good to not look at something
| that's too much like work once in a while. Even if
| factorio is closer than many other things.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Did someone really downvote my opinion? That's just,
| like, pretty demotivating.
| duckmysick wrote:
| > I can make whatever software I want, for whatever purpose
|
| Such freedom is extremely rare when you get paid for
| writing or maintaining software.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| It depends on whether you make software for a living or
| for OSS. One does not preclude the other, even if one is
| rarer. Given my situation, as I had initially stated, I
| am part of the latter. Even still, were I the former, I
| still don't get why one would work "for free" basically,
| especially in terms of a game versus real life.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| Even oss has users to satisfy.
|
| If you're building oss with no users, or just for
| yourself, you're functionally doing something more like
| art than coding in terms of how you prioritize and
| execute.
| wiseowise wrote:
| You're not playing Factorio for a living, are you?
| Supposedly we're talking about your free time.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Here's to hoping things like Patreon and GitHub Sponsors
| make it more common. These platforms could truly change
| the way things are done in the software world. Given
| enough sponsors, I could quit my job and focus on free
| software every day.
| delichon wrote:
| This behavior is known as "play". Many of us find it
| stimulating. If it doesn't work for you you have my
| sympathy.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I play, just not in the same terms as my work. For
| example, I shoot bad guys, but I also know people in the
| military who refuse to play FPS games.
| delichon wrote:
| When I asked Kovarik about this, he brought up Euro Truck
| Simulator, a wilfully mundane game about hauling cargo.
| The developers, who are friends of his, once told him
| that many of their most enthusiastic players are ...
| truckers. Truckers who spend their time off from their
| trucking jobs pretending to do more trucking ... a lot of
| people actually enjoy the work they do. They just don't
| always enjoy their jobs that much, because of all the
| things that get in the way of the work.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Good for them, fortunately I'm not a trucker.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Fortunate for the truckers..
| hluska wrote:
| Life is way too short to be boring.
| bowsamic wrote:
| It's boring to play CoD instead of Factorio?
| hluska wrote:
| No, it's boring to use cheap personal attacks (like I
| responded to) instead of actually engaging. If I wanted
| to read that, I could find it in YouTube comments.
| bowsamic wrote:
| "Good for them, fortunately I'm not a trucker."
|
| How is that a personal attack?
| taneq wrote:
| I read that as "to play CAD" and was like "nah, Fusion's
| fun too". :D
| Animats wrote:
| There's a whole genre of such games.
|
| - Modern Farming. Has really good working models of
| expensive farming equipment. There are videos of real
| farmers playing it.
|
| - Lawnmower Simulator. Yes, really. Mow enough lawns, get
| a better mower.
|
| - Power Wash Simulator. Not kidding.[1]
|
| The first game in this category was probably the famous
| Desert Bus.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5G-2qTupCk
| DonHopkins wrote:
| If you like Power Wash Simulator, you'll LOVE the
| relaxing meditative idle game Paint Drying Simulator, and
| the exquisite organic fractal patina of its sequel, Paint
| Peeling Simulator. ;)
| 0points wrote:
| Then there's the PC Building Simulator
| jhbadger wrote:
| A surprisingly number of airline pilots are flight
| simulator aficionados.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I was going to say this, VATSIM is full of real pilots.
| kfrzcode wrote:
| I've found myself in playtime with Claude 3.5 lately; it
| scratches both itches very satisfyingly.
| johnisgood wrote:
| You and I both, and I actually have something to show up
| after!
| phreeza wrote:
| What do you do with it?
| wiseowise wrote:
| > When making software that's supposed to be used, you can't
| mess around that much. At the end of the day, someone has to
| use it and if its weird it'll be bad.
|
| Sue you do. And you're not obliged to keep it in some
| workable form just because they use it, they can use
| something else.
| rendall wrote:
| > _When making software that 's supposed to be used, you
| can't mess around that much. At the end of the day, someone
| has to use it and if its weird it'll be bad._
|
| More counter-examples: LaTeX, vim, Regex, Blender, SAP, most
| Unix CLIs...
| highwind wrote:
| Just like any other video games, I like these type of
| management games because it's "work" without real-life
| consequences.
|
| I can play the min-max game without any unknowns that comes
| from real life management. Or I can destroy everything and mess
| everything up too.
|
| It's my escapism.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I submit that if "but I could be doing something productive
| instead" is a common thought when you are trying to have fun,
| that is the problem and not Factorio. It's perfectly ok to just
| have fun and not build something meaningful.
| uoaei wrote:
| Your implication that the definition of fun excludes
| meaningfulness is equally problematic.
| switchbak wrote:
| I don't think they're saying that per-se, I think they're
| saying: it's perfectly ok to both "have fun" AND "not build
| something meaningful" at the same time. I don't think you
| need to read in that having fun necessarily excludes doing
| something meaningful.
|
| While we're on the topic of assuming intent: that invented
| word "problematic" - problematic to whom? Something being a
| problem is almost always a subjective stance, not a
| universal truth as that word implies.
| uoaei wrote:
| problematic to the maintenance of a good-faith social
| contract
| satvikpendem wrote:
| What is this contract?
| uoaei wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that faux dumbfounded naivete
| jives with the terms of the social contract.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I can have fun without needing to build anything meaningful
| at all though, but when the barriers get to close, that's
| when I start having an issue, in my experience. That's why I
| play games that don't replicate work in a sense.
| hluska wrote:
| I wasn't into video games for a long time for the exact reasons
| as you aren't into Factorio. The ones I was interested in
| always felt too much like a job.
|
| Minecraft with a kid was my gateway drug and I got into
| Factorio really quickly after. It's actually a really special
| game. There are elements of it that are practice for real world
| scenarios, but it is very relaxing, stress free and commitment
| free. It's a great game to sit down with for an hour after work
| to decompress and become normal again.
|
| It's also an incredibly fun game to share with a group of
| people on one device. That's something I haven't experienced
| since the 1990s, but it's really enjoyable to get together with
| a group and build together. It's an excellent cooperative game
| and is a great way to really get to know people. It's even more
| fun when you play it with people from a range of professions -
| one of my favourite Factorio groups is a bartender, a cook, a
| lawyer and a software developer. We think differently but when
| it all comes together, it's really neat.
|
| I understand that it's not for everyone and I'll be honest with
| you, I don't have nearly the reflexes for FPS so we're likely
| quite different in terms of the games we like. But I find it
| very relaxing and very enjoyable. It reminds me a lot of QBasic
| on an old Tandy - it's that same thrill of tinkering because
| tinkering is fun.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I feel you, I used to play many single player games as well
| like Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, or Sly Cooper, over
| games that wanted me to expend significant brain power. They
| are still incredible games that don't have the same effect as
| Factorio does, they feel wholly different in their goals.
| SigmundA wrote:
| I feel the same way sometimes, it definitely closer to the same
| loop of plan execute refactor then many games. I do find my
| self getting wrapped up into then backing off because it does
| feel like work.
|
| But I like the fact that I can see it working in realtime, its
| just pretty, this machine I built that I can zoom into and see
| the smallest detail actually working.
|
| Wish software was more like that, a good debugger can get
| closer to that but way more clunky and poor performing than
| Factorio.
| exodust wrote:
| You're right. The intoxication of graphics and visual design
| in games can't be underestimated. It's more than a paint job
| or window dressing. It slots into the whole itch-scratching
| appeal and addiction.
|
| I agree debugging tools could make more use of visualisation.
| I remember the excellent HTML 3d view in Firefox, removed
| from version 47. For some reason we can't have nice things:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqHV625EU3E
|
| Not sure if there's a way to get it back. I heard it's
| available in Edge, but I don't use that browser.
| zen928 wrote:
| Splitting from the experiences of others, I think the mentality
| somewhat comes down to your preference in what you seek to do
| in videogames and how you engage with them. In these types of
| sandbox building games, career developers naturally get
| somewhat of a "cheat" to becoming proficient quickly in that
| the mode of expressing logical sentiments will only ever be a
| few abstractions away from what you would do normally at your
| work, so you feel less constrained to building understanding of
| a system and can instead use the system as a way to output your
| ideas in a way faster than others might. In this sense, it's
| somewhat of a power fantasy that if you vs the average person
| were to play this game that you would most likely be able to
| clearly express your ideas and goals and be able to act on
| them, which makes it fun to go off the rails to show off "some
| crazy thing" you've made as a slight nod to your perceived
| skill being able to make these things.
|
| Consequently, that's why I'm so disinterested in learning these
| games. The discussion about them shifts into a thin one layer
| abstraction for other people to try to brag about their
| accomplishments and what they self injected as their experience
| instead of the game itself. This doesn't affect the gameplay,
| but it affects my perception of the game as a shallow vehicle
| for attention seekers more than it promotes the ideas of fun
| gameplay.
|
| That said, sometimes the style of gameplay resonates with a
| style of development you might have been interested in
| understanding more and can use it as a way to get motivation or
| inspiration for ideas. Automating pipelines, physics
| simulations, etc. I think it's always worth a shot on games
| that have notable recognition of quality to see if it jives
| with what you enjoy, but it's been the exception more than the
| rule in my case.
| instalabs wrote:
| > Whenever I play it, I get the distinct feeling that I could
| instead do the same thing but productively instead
|
| This is me, but extended to all games. I stopped playing games
| because I feel like I can always do something more productive
| with my time instead. If I really want to check out, I watch
| some TV instead. But games (especially modern ones) take too
| much work without any real reward.
| luffy_t wrote:
| I feel exactly the same. I don't think the problems you solve
| in factorio are that complex, they are just tedious. It feels
| like calculations that a calculator can do. It is utterly
| boring to me personally, I can simply write a program or come
| up with a formula once I know what I need to make to calculate
| how much of everything I need. I also like to play simpler
| games which stimulates more of a lower part of my brain (motor
| control shit that feels good) no need to think too much in
| these game since I do a lot of that in my real life job. I have
| mostly been working on research problems where you can't
| generally write these rules for how to solve a particular
| subproblem and that feels like actual problem solving I just
| don't get when people say they love the problem solving aspect
| of the game. I mean if you think solving simple mathematical
| optimization problems that already have a solution "problem
| solving" then good for you. The average game time is too long
| and it is just not worth my time.
| Dr4kn wrote:
| Ratios are one thing. To find a good tileable design, which
| is also UPS efficient, especially with beacons can get quite
| challenging
| luffy_t wrote:
| It can be but my point is when you face those types of
| challenges in you work and solve them you realize how much
| better and satisfying those challenges are in real life
| compared to Factorio which takes away the fun part of
| playing it.
| treflop wrote:
| I'm inclined to agree.
|
| I also don't get people who look up YouTube videos on how to
| do things in Factorio.
|
| What's the fun part left to do if you just use someone else's
| factory or belt design?
| luffy_t wrote:
| yes once you watch those videos it takes away the problem
| solving element as well.
| emberfiend wrote:
| I think a lot about this in the context of video game
| minmaxers/netdeckers who just copy a researched, optimal
| behaviour. It's completely alien to me but some people
| really get a kick out of just being an implementer,
| following rote instructions exactly to the letter.
| p3rls wrote:
| I feel the same about when I play HoI4-- really winning a two-
| front war on ironman and building webapps have a lot of
| similarities.
| balls187 wrote:
| I feel the same. Factorio was fun for a small bit but it really
| just felt like a job, same with Stardew Valley, Animal
| Crossing, etc.
|
| After beating prepatch PCR, I switched back to Call of Duty for
| a bit.
| psygn89 wrote:
| Same with me. When I was younger I was able to just enjoy
| myself without mixing irl thoughts. Unfortunately these days
| as an adult if I'm stuck in a game or have to chip at it in
| some tedious fashion, a part of my brain goes "you can spend
| this time learning something new or productive irl".
|
| I think my attitude changed the games I play also. I used to
| play MMO when I was younger but FPS games give me that
| dopamine rush without any commitments.
|
| Sadly it's only when I'm sick do I feel I'm able to just cozy
| up without these "you can be doing something else" thoughts
| and truly enjoy games for what they are, tedious or not.
| fwip wrote:
| It's important to have time for yourself. You might want to
| think about scheduling some, if it feels like you can only
| really relax when you're sick.
| imtringued wrote:
| This makes no sense to me. Doing productive things means 40 to
| 100 hour commitments with the possibility of your work being
| worthless at the end, because you didn't have enough time for
| that 40th or 100th hour, because you need to do a lot of
| upfront work, because you need specific hardware, because
| someone else did it better, because the maintainer rejected
| your pull request, because what you want to do actually takes
| 1000 hours.
|
| Now that is what I call tedious!
|
| Meanwhile open ended pvp multiplayer games can drain hundreds
| of hours with no feeling of accomplishment. Those are the games
| that make me feel I should be doing something more productive.
| phito wrote:
| You have a very limited view on what being productive is. I
| have a home lab, I'd rather spend an hour or two improving it
| and learning things along the way rather than playing
| factorio.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Some of my most overengineered code was written after a
| Factorio session... maybe it's better treated as an outlet for
| some urges to which you shouldn't acquiesce :)
| discordance wrote:
| My day job is mostly CRUD or calling APIs. I trained my brain
| for many years to do more than that and Factorio satisfies that
| urge.
| doctorwho42 wrote:
| This. But for me it was moving into management instead of
| production. I don't really get to CAD/design in my day job,
| focusing on one of two projects with my mind for weeks on
| end. Instead I manage others and troubleshoot problems that
| arise that become impediments for my team. I also live in an
| apartment, so facotrio/building games are my outlet. Minimal
| impact on the environment, I get my design and building fix,
| and I can always stand up and walk away without much clean
| up.
| bemmu wrote:
| I love Factorio, because in real life it's difficult to fully
| automate things so abstractly. It's so wonderfully simple to
| think that oh this thing goes here, is combined with this and
| this... profit.
|
| You then walk away from the game, inspired to apply such
| process-thinking to your actual work and life, and realize that
| it's actually rare to be able to do.
| brundolf wrote:
| Not the same, but Slay the Spire could be described as a
| "programmatic game". I play it when I just need to burn some
| spare cycles (especially if programming is inaccessible to me
| at the moment, like when I only have my phone)
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| I think there is a quite big player intersection between
| Factorio and Slay the Spire, despite being completely
| different genres. And I agree that StS is a nice way to relax
| from programming.
| asjir wrote:
| reminds of me of this quote from the Tao of programming:
|
| https://farosaves.com/375baf1e-cc1c-4f02-8a7c-35eaba25d94d
| gloosx wrote:
| Do your work feels like you have infinite resources which you
| need to extract, connect and spend on building a fully
| automated planet-size megafactory all by yourself while
| fighting local roaches and acid-spitting bugs? What kind of
| work it is?
|
| Ironically the game goal is to leave that place :D
| consp wrote:
| > I never got into these types of programmatic games for
| precisely this reason but I'd like to understand other
| perspectives on this.
|
| Everything you describe requires interaction with people. Those
| are too often toxic, incompetent, overly demanding and keep
| changin schedules and priorities. At least in single player
| games you get to drop all that crap.
| medstrom wrote:
| Exactly how I feel with redstone contraptions in Minecraft.
| Already have OSS projects to my name, and my way to "play" is
| to refactor them endlessly. In a game I'm looking for a
| different type of fun for once.
| newswasboring wrote:
| For me it's because it looks pretty. The light and sounds of
| factorio are so much fun. Trains going zoom, research centers
| going zip etc.
|
| I wish real programming tools were this much fun.
| pjerem wrote:
| That's why I prefer Satisfactory : it's the same principle but
| it also allows you to build gigantic great and beautiful
| things. For me it's the perfect mix between Factorio (for
| building factories) and Minecraft (for allowing you to create
| your environment) and, contrary to those two, it's also
| aesthetically beautiful. In fact building production lines is
| not even what I prefer, what I prefer is organizing them in
| chaotically beautiful buildings.
|
| (Don't think I want to start a debate, I loved the 3 games and
| played them a lot, it's just that Satisfactory won my heart...
| even the name is great).
| gambiting wrote:
| Same here. Played both, both are extremely satisfying to
| play, but Satisfactory is just..... pretty. It's nice to take
| a break from building the factory to just explore the world
| too.
| dbacar wrote:
| IMHO, Factorio is aesthetically beautiful.
| pjerem wrote:
| In a stylistic way, yes. Not in the << what a beautiful
| multi floor truck station I built there, oh and btw, take
| this stair then on the mezzanine, take the door at the left
| to access the commands of the station. >> way.
|
| It's just different games. Factorio is excellent as
| building production lines while Satisfactory is excellent
| as making feel you << in >> your creations with 3D, a lot
| of architectural options, a really immersive sound design
| (quitting your noisy machine room to a corridor and hearing
| the sound go down when the door closes).
|
| It's different. But there is one important common thing
| with Factorio though : they are both made with a lot of
| love and with a lot of attention to every detail. In fact,
| both games could be an exemple of design and ergonomics for
| even professional softwares.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| You might want to try Dyson sphere program next ( * _ * )
| bloqs wrote:
| Agreed. Factorio is a fantastic game and it ran so
| Satisfactory can fly. With every update (and with release)
| Satisfactory keeps upping the complexity. I would be
| extremely happy if Factorios development helped push
| Satisfactory in this way and led to more maps (planets!)
| ehnto wrote:
| Concur on all points honestly. I will also add that
| Factorio's setting is pretty bleak, and the game is a bit too
| addictive to me. It's also harder to just botch things which,
| because I am trying to have fun and not work, is pretty
| laborious. In satisfactory if I messed up some spacing of
| belts or machines or whatever, I can just clip it, go up and
| over, just generally make a visual mess that works.
|
| Not entirely sure why Factorio is more addictive. Shorter
| action loops, but often queing and waiting for things to
| happen might jiggle the brain in a more addictive way. It's
| not a positive feeling situation either, more like you get
| trapped having to do more stuff over and over again.
| xioxox wrote:
| I've never tried Factorio, but I found Satisfactory very
| boring after a few hours. It was initially fun to do some
| exploring and make some initial manufacturing lines. However,
| when I realised that to scale up the manufacturing, then I
| would have to place all these components by hand hundreds of
| times, it just felt like boring make-work, and I never turned
| it on again. Maybe I would have continued if there was some
| way of automating the building, such as some sort of 2D
| viewer.
| pjerem wrote:
| Looks like you tried the game a long time ago. There is
| totally a way to automate building with the Blueprint
| Designer which basically allows you save blueprints of full
| buildings (or building parts or whatever you want) and to
| build them in one click.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| It does feel like work, but that's okay! Some mechanics are
| mundane than others, e.g. compare clearing enemy bases to
| designing rail blueprints, but the game does everything to make
| it efficient and ejoyable: high performance, keyboard
| shortcuts, immense amount of quality of life features - all you
| get when devs love playing the game themselves.
|
| And, even Factorio being my favorite game, I still need to take
| a long breaks from it because building a factory is a lot of
| mental effort.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| It's funny because I don't enjoy Factorio for the same reason
| you do - it quickly feels like work - but I never get the
| feeling I could be doing something more productive instead. I
| just think the core gameplay loop of Factorio is tedious and
| that it's specifically designed for people who don't mind that.
|
| The gameplay is fun at first. You have a ressource and
| something you want to produce. You look at the ratio of things,
| what the layout you will have to put in place, how fast things
| will have to move. You painfully build that. It works. You feel
| good. Then you realise it will just be more of the same ad
| infinity with the first time you do train design and liquids
| the sole inkling of novelty. It's all fairly simple
| conceptually so it gets tedious and boring quite fast (at least
| to me). I think part of the issue is also that I tend to play
| it wrong by calculating and planning - literally work for which
| the in game tooling is not optimal - while I think I would have
| more fun just winging it and fixing things as they happen.
|
| What I mean is I think it's not a game for everyone but I can
| see why it's catnip for its intended audience.
| Filligree wrote:
| If that's how you want to play it, there are mods such as
| factory planner which will support that playstyle.
|
| Meanwhile, yeah, at least half my time is spent working
| around earlier mistakes. A main bus always works, but
| spaghetti is what makes the game fun.
| fwip wrote:
| If you're looking for more novelty, there are a lot of mods
| that add cool new complexities.
|
| I like the Seablock pack - the core premise is that you crash
| land on a water world, and need to extract all your resources
| from water. The production loops are much more complicated
| (you start having to deal with byproduct management just an
| hour or two in), but in return there's almost no enemy time
| pressure. It also includes some ingame recipe-planner mods,
| so it's easier to plan-then-build.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| The core gameplay loop is still very much the same. More
| complex recipe is not really a more complex game. It just
| means more of the same planning and calculation but with
| more variables - which is to say more tedium not more fun.
| taneq wrote:
| Same, I get to a certain stage in the game (usually the first
| big factory 'refactor') and find myself thinking that the exact
| same effort I'm applying to the game could be applied to any
| number of work-related things that would be just as fun and
| much more beneficial.
| billfruit wrote:
| On the other hand, what bother me about factorio is its
| deterministic nature. Perhaps it would be more fun with more
| random elements like equipment failures etc.
| bjackman wrote:
| I get the same feeling with increasingly many games as I get
| older.
|
| It started with games that are basically engineering work. But
| now it's anything with resource management or long-term
| strategic thinking (basically whenever I think "hmm, I need to
| note down my thoughts so I can pick up my strategy where I left
| of next time I play").
| Salgat wrote:
| To me it just feels very repetitive. I don't feel clever
| building out factories, I just feel more like a drone doing
| iterative manual labor. As an engineer I just couldn't get into
| it.
| archerx wrote:
| I feel the same way, I was building something in a game 10
| years ago and I thought to myself, "I'm putting all this effort
| into this game and at the end I won't really have anything to
| show for it and this feels like the same energy I use when
| programming, let me program instead".
|
| This thought changed me from someone who plays games to someone
| who makes games.
|
| The only real game I find entertaining and fun these days is
| Rocket League, everything else feels slow and boring or I could
| be using this energy for something else.
|
| Not sure if it's a blessing or a curse.
| aniviacat wrote:
| > I'm putting all this effort into this game and at the end I
| won't really have anything to show for it
|
| You will have something to show for it: Joy.
|
| If your only interest is to invest effort into producing
| something that provides some kind of physical value, then of
| course work will be more interesting than games.
|
| Development has fun parts and it has tedious parts. The
| tedious parts are what usually makes for a good product.
| Factorio removes that part; because it is not about producing
| a product, it's about having fun.
|
| > Not sure if it's a blessing or a curse.
|
| That's up to you, but for me it'd be a curse, not being able
| to do thing just for fun anymore, because of always feeling a
| pressure to be productive.
| armada651 wrote:
| > Development has fun parts and it has tedious parts. The
| tedious parts are what usually makes for a good product.
| Factorio removes that part; because it is not about
| producing a product, it's about having fun.
|
| Factorio also has tons of tedious parts. It really isn't
| all that different in that regard in my experience.
|
| There are many games these days that are designed to have a
| certain element of tediousness (grind) in them, because
| this gives you the sense of being productive without
| actually producing anything.
|
| > That's up to you, but for me it'd be a curse, not being
| able to do thing just for fun anymore, because of always
| feeling a pressure to be productive.
|
| I don't think they mean to say they always feel a pressure
| to be productive. If it costs you exactly the same amount
| of energy and you get the same amount of joy from it, then
| why would you not choose an activity that produces
| something of enduring value?
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| > Factorio also has tons of tedious parts. It really
| isn't all that different in that regard in my experience.
|
| I would say that the only boring part is before you get
| bots. Then your role shifts from builder to designer. All
| the tools given to you (ctrl+c/x, up/downgrade planners,
| rail autocomplete, ...) just make building effortles, and
| most of your time is spent in design, analyzing and
| debugging your factory, while the changes are done for
| you as you work.
| ecocentrik wrote:
| You're discounting the joy you get from actually solving a
| problem for yourself and other people which can provide
| serious long term satisfaction and monetary rewards.
|
| For diversion, I try disconnecting from screens and doing
| something healthy that involves the use of my physical
| body. I find walking, hiking, swimming and running very
| enjoyable. I'm also a big fan of tennis, racquetball and
| table tennis. I still play video games occasionally when
| there's not an option to engage with the physical world for
| diversion but I really prefer chess to most modern video
| games.
| Retric wrote:
| Programming can still beat most games in terms of joy. I
| just miss that burst of satisfaction from completing
| something in programming because it's never really done
| just good enough for production.
|
| Factorio and other open ended optimization games scratch
| the same itch as programming without any payoff. Speed
| running feels different because execution is so important
| optimal changes over time, and you get a finite endpoint.
| samatman wrote:
| You're discounting what's actually being said here, and
| said by many people.
|
| I don't play Factorio for the same basic reason as so many
| others in this thread: it's too much like programming, and
| I want to use that energy actually programming. Something I
| enjoy very much, something which has paid every expense
| I've had for the last fifteen years, and something which
| directly produces value for other people.
|
| I also pick up a little handheld most evenings and play
| games on it. Lately, Puzzle Bobble and Galaxian. Scratches
| a different itch.
|
| The dichotomy between 'play Factorio' and 'program
| computer' does not reduce to the dichotomy between 'have
| fun' and 'joylessly pursue productive endeavors'. Clearly
| for some people Factorio doesn't produce the former
| dichotomy in the first place, and more power to 'em. For
| others it does, and the conclusion that this means we don't
| like fun is simply invalid.
| lainga wrote:
| Nobody ever bikesheds me or makes me break flow to attend a
| Fun Team Event in Factorio :)
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| Happened to me too. I was creating circuits and logic in
| Little Big Planet 2 when the realization hit. I then built
| and released a Android platformer.
|
| My LBP2 levels had 50ish hearts. My Android Game got 15k
| downloads
| szundi wrote:
| If this is coming from the feeling that you're not useful in
| the meantime - pretty curse that has positive effect on your
| pro life as a benefit. Makes me miserable though.
|
| In the meantime I always could choose between similar joys
| based on future professional benefits like programming vs
| gaming. Factorio is like programming so for me I play it
| whenever I can with my friends (aka almost never), but
| otherwise I am programming
| kwar13 wrote:
| That sums up how I feel about it. I can see the appeal, but for
| that kind of mental effort I rather just keep coding.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Not just you, I had the same experience with Factorio. Other
| building games like Minecraft I could play for days, but
| Factorio stresses me out. I want to chill and make cool stuff,
| optimizing a factory while fending off aliens wasn't relaxing.
| chasing wrote:
| Haha. Yeah, I'm working on logic puzzles all day for work. The
| games I play to relax are either shoot-everything games or,
| like, MarioKart. I need to chill and not think.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| That's the feeling I get when I see day traders on Eve Online.
| grogenaut wrote:
| There's a whole slew of great programming puzzle games where I
| get the same feel. One day while playing tis1000 I was like I
| should just learn fpga programming. Except for human resource
| machine that one stuck with me I guess because my daughter was
| playing as well.
|
| But same with pico 8, I just want a real ide, debugger, unit
| tests. If I'm not getting those better be getting paid
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| This is why Satisfactory works for me, but factorio doesn't:
| even though it's supposedly also a factory buildering, it's
| really much more of a world exploration game that happens to
| have factory building, but you don't have to build "a perfect
| factory" to get anything done, or unlock things that let you
| explore better. I can just throw down some buildings and link
| them up haphazardly and that strategy kind of works all the way
| up to near-enough-to-the-end to keep the game a fun
| running/driving/flying with occasional bouts of production line
| management, rather than feeling like I'm just doing work that a
| computer could do way better.
| vl wrote:
| I felt same way after playing bunch of American Truck
| Simulator. Why I'm doing this? I can just go and drive real car
| instead!
| egypturnash wrote:
| > Tobias Lutke, co-founder and CEO of the ecommerce platform
| Shopify, lets his staff expense their copies of Factorio. "It's
| just bound to be good for Shopify if people play Factorio for a
| little while," he told the Invest Like The Best podcast. "Because
| part of Shopify is building warehouses and fulfilling products
| for our customers. We are building global supply chains, and
| Factorio makes a game out of that kind of thinking."
|
| I wonder if they'll pay for their employees' copies of Wilmot's
| Warehouse, too.
|
| http://wilmotswarehouse.com
| TYMorningCoffee wrote:
| If you've been consistently redeeming free games from Epic you
| might already have it. It was free on 2020-08-06[1].
|
| [1] https://josephmate.github.io/EpicFreeGamesList/
| mdaniel wrote:
| For anyone similarly confused by the "it," the Aug 6 one was
| Wilmot's and not Factorio (which, AFAIK, has not been a
| participant in any giveaway)
| fragmede wrote:
| Factorio doesn't go on sale. The author's reasoning being
| it's disrespectful to those who paid full price for it.
|
| Edit: official forum link stating thus:
| https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=159626#p159626
| mdaniel wrote:
| I'm sorry, you're right, I misread
| https://isthereanydeal.com/game/factorio/info/ without
| checking
| https://isthereanydeal.com/game/factorio/history/ which
| shows it _was_ cheaper but only goes up over time
| fragmede wrote:
| No worries. It's an interesting moral stand for the
| author to take, so it's one of those random facts that
| just sticks out of my brain.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| I can certainly say I'm an example of someone who hasn't
| bought it because it hasn't been on sale, but 50 dollars
| for a good game is entirely reasonable anyway and I admit
| I will probably still buy it one day.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| It's funny I came across this thread. Just yesterday I
| was looking at buying it, but it's 50 AUD. I went to add
| it to my wishlist to wait for a sale, but it was already
| there. I realised it must have been on there for a long
| time.
|
| I was wondering if I somehow missed it going on sale, or
| it never had.
|
| Glad I know it isn't likely to any time soon.
| EspadaV9 wrote:
| Yeah, it stings. I did buy 2 copies on launch day for
| myself and my son (8) though. We have spent a lot of time
| on Factorio together though and I prefer it much more
| than Minecraft (although we have probably clocked up many
| many more hours on that).
| mdaniel wrote:
| Heh, I would think that Amazon would allow expensing Wilmot's
| Warehouse since that feels more in their wheelhouse than
| Shopify
|
| ---
|
| wowzers, "hate" is not a strong enough word for how I feel
| about that raging piece of junk. Holy hell, I'll never get that
| 15 minutes of my life back
| herval wrote:
| Lots of comments on this thread in the vein of "I dislike this
| game because it's not productive". My honestly question is...
| why? Why is "being productive" this goal that has to consume your
| entire life?
| barbarr wrote:
| Internalized capitalism
| derektank wrote:
| I'm not sure if there's any economic system that could
| survive long term without people being productive. Just
| because the farm is collectivized doesn't mean you aren't
| working from the crack of dawn to sunset
| herval wrote:
| Being productive doesn't require you to be productive non-
| stop. It's not good for you and will likely make you far
| less productive in the long run
|
| Trivia on farming: Medieval peasants worked far less than
| modern employees (at most 150 days a year). It was
| obviously harder physical work than sitting in an office
| all day, but they had plenty of downtime
| wiseowise wrote:
| Medieval peasants also had life expectancy of 30 years,
| what's your point?
| herval wrote:
| How's that in any way related to the topic?
| tokai wrote:
| That is not true. You are passing on an ill informed
| myth.
| OJFord wrote:
| I think because - or to speak for myself, the reason I've never
| bought/played it, despite being interested - it's similar _and
| yet not_ productive.
|
| Versus say Call of Duty or whatever that you might lose
| yourself in, which is also not productive, but bears no
| resemblance to work.
|
| Pilot communities probably say similar things about flight sims
| (or flight components of games) that aren't good enough to be
| useful practice?
| herval wrote:
| It's not in any way similar to coding, though - it's a
| puzzle-solving game. It's not made to simulate any
| engineering discipline, nor user to train engineers (like
| flight sims are)
| ghostpepper wrote:
| You don't find coding similar to solving puzzles in any
| way?
| herval wrote:
| IMO coding is to solving puzzle the same way as any other
| discipline (from people management to architecture) is to
| solving puzzles
| falcolas wrote:
| Not really.
|
| And I think that's mostly due to the lack of constraints
| in most programming jobs. I don't have to think about
| throughput or optimizing op codes or almost anything else
| because our machines have absurd amounts of compute and
| more memory than most hard drives I've had in my life,
| the networks are broad and fast, and there's a commercial
| solution for most of the hard problems.
|
| Maybe I'd think differently if I worked on
| microcontrollers, but my brief foray into Arduinos and
| Raspberry Pies didn't feel that much different. I mean, I
| was using Python on the Arduino. I felt more constrained
| by the pins than anything else - another problem with
| several well explored solutions.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Not at all.
|
| I've hated puzzle games all my life. Most likely because
| they're artificial.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| Many people are quoted in the article claiming it is in
| fact useful for training/educating software engineers.
| herval wrote:
| People say the same thing about Sudoku. Or any video game
| (historically claimed as a hobby that creates coders,
| just because many coders liked computers at an early age,
| I suspect)
| JoshuaDavid wrote:
| Liking video games sometimes leads to modding video
| games, and modding video games is a gateway drug for
| "real" programming.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| Yes, factorio is not coding, though it follows some
| principle of programming, such as input-process-output,
| workflow, load balancers, modular design, etc. Many players
| say that the factories often resembles PCB.
|
| but that's the extend of it, you don't have to do heavier
| programming practice like algorithm, complex state
| management, input parsing and validation (unless sushi), or
| anything involving combinators until finishing the 1.0
| version.
| jhbadger wrote:
| What about Zachtronics games like TIS-100 and Shenzhen/IO
| and Exapunks that are literally about coding (albeit in a
| simplified assembly language).
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Factorio is not a puzzle game. You can get puzzle like
| gameplay if, for example, you are on a map with heavily
| restricted space, or are trying to micro-optimize
| something. But that is analogouse to code-golf or
| microoptimizations in programming, which are fairly puzzle
| like.
|
| For typical gameplay, the only puzzles you run into are the
| ones you build yourself into. The name of game is to design
| your factory in a modular and extensible way so that you do
| not build yourself into a puzzle.
| vanjajaja1 wrote:
| "not in any way similar to coding" is a very strong
| statement
|
| many people feel it feels similar to coding, in the way you
| have to slowly refactor designs + work involves a recursive
| breakdown of tasks + tracing/debugging of issues
| boredtofears wrote:
| I can think of a bunch of similarities just off the top of
| my head: throughput management is probably the most
| critical skill in factorio, and obviously comes up all over
| software engineering. Managing production belt chains is
| not unlike managing your program's call stack. Ensuring the
| right resource reaches a production facility is like
| managing input types.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I'm a pilot and lost interest completely in flight sims when
| I bought my airplane (And I had a maxed out setup, multiple
| monitors, VR, controls, etc.) The simulator doesn't capture
| the real-ness as ironic as that is, of the sounds, smells,
| vibrations, emotions and so on. In fact during my flight
| training my experience with simulators imparted a few low-
| level bad habits I had to work through when it came to
| operating the controls.
|
| The analog controls in real life are heavier, more raw,
| somewhat imprecise, and you can feel them knocked around by
| the wind for example. Night and day difference. It honestly
| makes the most state of the art simulator feel like you're
| operating a NES.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> In fact during my flight training my experience with
| simulators imparted a few low-level bad habits I had to
| work through when it came to operating the controls._
|
| When I first started flying my instructor specifically
| recommended against flight sims for that very reason.
|
| Now that I have my PPL I only use them to practice
| approaches for new airports that I've never visited before
| and to familiarize myself with the cockpit layout for
| planes I haven't flown before. It helps build some minor
| muscle memory so I can focus on the harder parts of flying.
| derektank wrote:
| If you subscribe to Peter Singer's views on consequentialism,
| we all have a moral duty to spend our life maximizing the
| number of people we save from dying or from immense suffering.
| Hard to do that if you're not being productive; though I'll be
| the first to admit nobody does or can live with perfect
| adherence to that principle
| herval wrote:
| That's a crazy ascetic view of life. Also completely
| unrelated to almost anyone on this forum, since it's unlikely
| most here are doing any work that saves anyone's life
| lukas099 wrote:
| Theoretically, I guess telling HN people they should be out
| saving lives could save lives.
| philwelch wrote:
| To his credit, Peter Singer actually is a crazy ascetic.
| kfajdsl wrote:
| I mean, you work to make money, and you can donate that
| money to all kinds of charities that do save lives.
| massysett wrote:
| Just as a productive person sleeps, so too do productive
| people take leisure. Someone who never sleeps is not
| maximizing the number saved from dying.
| klik99 wrote:
| I feel like it and Satisfactory redirects the part of me that
| creates and looks for novel ways of doing things from something
| that yields useful byproducts that actually change the world in
| tiny ways into something that yields nothing but more of
| itself. And it never really ends. I don't mind useless stuff, I
| play games, but something about Factorio and Satisfactory both
| draws me in and makes me feel so empty. I think because it
| scratches the itch that IRL I have built my career on, but
| points it towards something useless.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| This is a really good analysis. I love both of those games
| but I felt exactly the same way as you. For me they are
| REALLY addictive, Minecraft is too. In a way that isn't the
| same as some console games I play - where it's easier to step
| away...
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's a digital model train set.
|
| At least it doesn't take up the whole basement like the sets
| previous generations played with.
| fphhotchips wrote:
| People look at me funny when I say this, but it's true.
|
| I work in performance - a space where we're thinking about
| threading, parallelism and the like a lot - and I often say
| "I want to hire who play with trains". What I mean is "I
| want people who play Factorio", because the concepts and
| problems are very very similar. But fewer people know
| Factorio, so I say trains instead.
|
| I think I know why it's enjoyable even though it's so close
| to work, too. It's the _feedback_. Factorio shows you
| visually where you screwed up, and what's moving slowly. In
| actual work the time and frustration is usually in finding
| it.
| grensley wrote:
| The KPIs of these people's own lives have failed to grow
| quarter-over-quarter
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYvhC_RdIwQ
| lmm wrote:
| To me it feels like it subverts the desire to build something,
| in the same way that e.g. porn subverts the desire for sex. You
| feel like you're making something, but at the end of the day
| you didn't actually make anything.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| For me RTS games are like a drug. I can easily get lost in
| them and play for 10-15 hours straight due to how my brain is
| wired. That doesn't mean I never play them, but I treat it
| with the same respect as a drug, and use them in moderation.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Maybe because it sometimes feels like work. So if it's kinda
| like work, why not do something that is also not productive but
| would either not feel as though it's work or if it's like work,
| that you can actually enjoy.
|
| For some the latter is facotrio. I tried it myself, didn't get
| past the demo. I think if I'm doing something not productive in
| terms of not using my time towards something that actively
| makes me money, I would feel better doing something like
| learning another programming language, do some quick projects
| to automate parts of my life, try to write myself a game or a
| piece of toy software that challenges me and is also fun to
| implement.
|
| I think I'd rather do those than play facotrio.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| Most people are brainwashed by the rat race. They don't realize
| that all the productivity is worthless.
| malux85 wrote:
| Because I am high in trait orderliness, conscientiousness and
| industriousness.
|
| That's why startups appeal to me, because they appeal to my
| nature. It's in my nature to desire being productive.
|
| So asking "why must you always be productive" on a site full of
| startup enthusiasts ... well, you're going to get a lot of the
| same answers
| luffy_t wrote:
| Because it feels like you are building something but you are
| not. The problem solving in factorio is just tedious like doing
| manual calculations and you spend a lot of time doing this. It
| satisfies the problem solving itch for people who haven't faced
| any challenging problems in their work. Once you start solving
| these problems in real life factorio just seems pointless. Dont
| get me wrong i like paying pointless games that require very
| little to zero thinking (Muscle memory based) that I find
| satisfying. Factorio is just tedious.
| dartharva wrote:
| Because this is HN and everyone wants to LARP as their
| projection of a typical HN denizen. Sometimes this place brings
| out the LinkedIn in people.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Because we'll all be dead soon and I want to have achieved
| something great with the short time I was given on this planet.
| VonTum wrote:
| If you don't somehow make something useful, or built a thing
| people actually use, then what was the point of it all? To
| have fun and then be forgotten?
|
| Though, with AI looming to take this last shred of human
| dignity too, maybe having a bit of fun along the way isn't
| such a bad idea.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Well, because being more productive makes more money, of
| course. Even if I only capture a small portion of the overall
| value of it.
|
| Scratch that - I'm using "money" as a proxy for "value". Let's
| talk value directly. All things being equal, if I can enjoy
| Activity A totally in isolation, and Activity B equally much,
| but B leaves something behind which other people can use and
| get their own value out of, then B is clearly a better or more
| noble use of my time. Being productive just makes you a better
| person on net.
|
| Now... I do _not_ choose the "max productivity" strat with
| each and every second of my being, far from it. I'll probably
| buy and play Factorio sometime in the next few months, and it
| will be Steam game #3 added to my library after FTL and Slay
| the Spire. But I'm not going to sit here and pretend it is
| somehow better for the world outside of myself to play Factorio
| rather than e.g. improve the FOSS software I maintain that
| helps people learn Finnish. Let alone something like contribute
| to the Linux kernel. This is a philosophical non-question to
| me.
| sureglymop wrote:
| I think it's perfectionism and impostor syndrome.
|
| When I play games, I never play competitive or intense games, I
| see it as a therapeutic activity.
|
| I play relaxing single player games like Stardew Valley or Tiny
| Glade. Cultivate some crops, feed my chicken, pat my cat. No
| real end goal other than to just relax. I urge anyone to try,
| especially in co-op with with a friend or partner. It really is
| therapeutic.
| cedws wrote:
| I'd love to do that, but I have a different kind of syndrome
| where I can't motivate myself to play something unless I'm
| playing with other people. Being an adult, I don't have
| anyone who can just jump on a game with me on a regular
| schedule.
|
| I've wanted to play Valheim for ages. I even bought the
| Factorio DLC on launch day and barely played it because
| nobody wanted to play.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Oh yes, without getting too political, that's just what
| capitalism is about.
|
| Ironically, Factorio is all about productivity. Mine more
| resources, produce more items, expand more land and build more
| factory.
| theshackleford wrote:
| I faced my mortality and went the other way. I've already
| achieved more from an extremely difficult background than I
| ever could have imagined and it turns out when faced with my
| mortality, that was enough for me.
|
| Everyone has different ways of unwinding and finding meaning,
| and productivity doesn't need to be the sole measure of time
| well spent, at least for me anymore.
| Xeronate wrote:
| Being productive doesn't consume my entire life but if i'm
| going to do two things that feel the same I may as well do the
| one that has other substantial benefits to myself and others. I
| spend enough time developing that side of myself at work. My
| free time should go to making myself more well rounded.
| nprateem wrote:
| I think it's just getting older. Some play is rehearsal for
| real life. Now I can run a real company, make real money and
| become a real millionaire instead of a pretend one (or at least
| try to).
|
| Plus I'm going to die unlike when I was an immortal teenager,
| so I want to retire ASAP.
|
| If I'm going to game it'll be an FPS or similar when I'm too
| brain dead to play when-will-i-be-a-millionaire.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I like that it's similar to work and that is probably why it is
| my favorite game. Sometimes I don't have the intensity needed to
| attack a hard problem at work so I chill out and work on my
| factory instead. Once I notice that I'm becoming too ambitious in
| the game I can tell that my intensity has returned and will
| switch back to work. If I don't have the energy for factorio then
| clearly I won't have the energy for work so there is no point in
| forcing it. It's like a halfway point between relaxation and work
| where I can hang out for a while before committing to either.
| esperent wrote:
| Maybe it depends on the work, but for me, writing code, there's
| always loads of low intensity work to be done. Minor refactors,
| improving code clarity, writing docs, replying to technical
| emails etc. For me, the energy level at which I'd enjoy a game
| like Factorio (which I did briefly try) is exactly the energy
| level at which I'm most productive doing this kind of work.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I work in applied research so it's prototypical, fiendishly
| difficult, and always pushing the limits of my ability. I do
| mix in light duty work to try to help me get back into the
| flow and build up a head of steam but I don't have enough of
| that kind of work. For me time spent in factorio reflects sub
| optimal organization usually due to not feeling 100%. It's
| currently the best adjunct I've used to help manage my energy
| levels so I don't begrudge the time spend in it. As I've
| gotten better at managing energy levels I do spend less time
| gaming. At ~100hrs per year and decreasing I think it's
| unlikely that I'll ever make a major dent in space age but
| I'm ok with that. I really only bought the new DLC as a thank
| you to the game devs.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| I was looking at this game this morning, it sounds fantastic fun
| podcasts I've listened to, but at 50 Australian dollars it'd be
| the most I've ever paid for a game on Steam. Someone convince me
| it's worth it?
| aaronscott wrote:
| They have a free demo that is fairly extensive. It should give
| you a good feel for whether the game is worth it to you.
| abhinavk wrote:
| Don't play the demo if you have a deadline coming. I repeat.
| dalanmiller wrote:
| Easily the single best bang for your buck game I have ever
| played.
|
| I'd still say that at AUD$100
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Factorio provides the illusion of achievement which produces
| happy chemicals in my brain. I will happily forego any other work
| when getting my fix from factorio. So I stopped playing it and
| returned to interesting side projects. I confess I have purchased
| the recently released Space Age expansion, and my productivity is
| in the toilet again. I'll probably be done with it by
| thanksgiving.
| jasfi wrote:
| The Civ series does the same thing for me. I've also moved on
| from games, although I think from time to time they may be
| useful for stimulating creativity.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| If you like Factorio give Shapez 2 a try. I lost a week to it
| recently. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/
| mikewarot wrote:
| Is there a similar game that lets you place logic gates and do
| computing?
|
| Bonus points if it's open source.
| fragmede wrote:
| Nandgame and nand2tetris both take you on a journey from
| discreet transistors to a computer, in the form of a game.
| There's also Zachatronics games' TIS-100, and Shenzhen I/O.
| vessenes wrote:
| I'll offer some unsolicited rankings here for these:
|
| 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..
| fsmv wrote:
| nand2tetris is a book/course not a game lol I loved it though
| edent wrote:
| Mindustry. It is open source and allows your to build logic
| gates.
|
| Works on mobile, desktop, Linux, etc.
| ornornor wrote:
| And according to this article [0] (from the mindustry article
| on Wikipedia), it was a hit on prison-issued android tablets
| until they banned it.
|
| [0]: https://prisonjournalismproject.org/2024/03/31/popular-
| video...
| blashyrk wrote:
| A game called Turing Complete. Not open source, though AFAIK
| baegi wrote:
| Pretty different to Factorio, but Human Resource Machine is
| somewhat relevant and very enjoyable
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > For me, the difference between work and fun is about the
| process.
|
| > 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.
| grahar64 wrote:
| The thing I like about games is a clear objective that once
| achieved you have "finished". The thing I don't like about
| software is that no software is (or will ever be?) finished.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I don't play computer games anymore.
|
| Factorio was the last game I played. I lost a weekend and ended
| up with a raging headache.
|
| Before that an MMORPG did the same
|
| A year before that it was Civilization IV, exactly the same, lost
| an entire weekend then never played it again.
|
| I don't think I am suited to games. Or maybe I just need more
| free time
| piyuv wrote:
| I still play games but I lost my ability to "lost myself in
| time" while playing games, what you're describing does not
| happen to me anymore. And I dearly miss it.
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| Same. In my case I have real world problems that need my
| attention and I struggle to justify playing games while those
| problems loom. Only exception is playing games with my kid, but
| that is time boxed.
| conductr wrote:
| The time I put into Nintendo Switch with my kid in the last
| year is the most I've gamed since very early 2000s
| ArlenBales wrote:
| Instead of binging a game over an entire weekend and burning
| yourself out.. slow down, just play for an hour a week. Treat
| it like a weekly TV episode of a currently airing show. I
| follow a couple television series weekly and don't fret myself
| for wasted time because I only spend 2 hours a week watching
| them.
|
| Life is all about experiences. I am sad for those who go
| through life without experiencing video games in moderation.
| They provide one of a kind interactive experiences that you
| won't find anywhere else in life.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _slow down, just play for an hour a week._
|
| Some games really reward spending more time with them, and
| getting into the "flow". I think playing Factorio for an hour
| and then stopping would just feel frustrating - like cooking
| up a delicious meal, eating a spoonful, and running out the
| door.
| lfkdev wrote:
| "lost a weekend" - it's called having fun. You loose a week if
| you work for someone else.
| Havoc wrote:
| Personally prefer Dyson sphere but to each their own
| mft_ wrote:
| I've started and re-started Factorio several times, and always
| enjoy it... up the point where an automated train network is
| necessary. Here, I always run into problems, and no amount of
| researching or fettling of the setup seems to guarantee that my
| trains work. Sometimes they do... often, I have to drive them
| manually.
|
| Anyway, if you like Factorio, you might also enjoy Mindustry:
| simmilar-ish, less constructional depth, more tower-defence and
| fighting.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| My train network ran about as good as any multi-threaded code I
| can write. Perfectly smooth and then a massive deadlock because
| my mutex locks (rail signals) have a bug.
| stacktraceyo wrote:
| Or Dyson sphere program
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Satisfactory is also good.
| herpdyderp wrote:
| The train logistics system in 2.0 has been vastly improved. I
| was just able to make a "set and forget" train automation
| system. All I need to do is add more stations and, when
| necessary, more trains. Before this updated you needed mods for
| this.
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| I'm terrified of Factorio. I've deliberatly avoided playing it
| because I know, if I do, I'll lose an entire month. Kudos to the
| creators on their brilliant game, it's like heroin for a
| particular type of brain.
| davedx wrote:
| Yeah I have that feeling about Path of Exile 2. I also know I
| won't be able to resist.
| goda90 wrote:
| I was really looking forward to the expansion that came out on
| Monday. I chose not to play the main game anymore for the last
| several months. But then life threw some curve balls and I
| can't bring myself to buy it, knowing it would pull me away
| from the stuff I need to do. Hopefully soon...
| Kiro wrote:
| I don't agree with "Factorio is like work". The grind is no
| different to me than playing Diablo. It feels like a comparison
| that programmers love to tout because it makes for a memeable and
| relatable story but at its core it's just like any other gameplay
| loop.
| bugfix wrote:
| To me, it starts to feel like work when I have to rebuild large
| parts of my factory because I didn't leave enough space to
| expand. This process feels _exactly_ like having to refactor a
| bad codebase (where you feel the urge to just start from
| scratch).
|
| If you plan your build properly, you can avoid this, but it
| takes a few runs to learn the best strategies.
| bicx wrote:
| Factorio makes me realize that I don't really like solving
| problems for the sake of solving problems (or optimization,
| for that matter). I like solving them for a tangible reason
| or because I I'm making someone's life better.
|
| Problem solving and optimizing in Factorio is different than
| a grind in some game like Diablo. That sort of grind uses a
| completely different part of your brain (movement and in-the-
| moment decision making), and I find that I need that kind of
| change after a week of real-life problem solving.
|
| I imagine people who gravitate to Factorio are probably
| better problem solvers and optimizers than me because that's
| what they truly enjoy for its own sake.
| talldayo wrote:
| > The grind is no different to me than playing Diablo.
|
| On the surface, I guess. But Diablo is a game about dungeon
| crawling and Factorio is a game where you _make_ the dungeon.
| You aren 't looking for good loot rolls to make your character
| better in Factorio, you're trying to reassemble the pieces of a
| poorly-designed infrastructure network to make it efficient
| enough for your goals.
|
| Really there are so many types of programming that Factorio's
| proximity to your day-to-day work will vary on the field. If
| you are a frontend web designer, then Factorio will probably
| feel pretty fresh and novel to you. If you're an SRE/SWE that
| rips apart musty codebases to see what's salvageable,
| Factorio's loop of refreshing and optimizing can feel eerily
| similar in some respects.
| herpdyderp wrote:
| I've always been a little miffed with the comparison to
| programming. I love Factorio because it's the only survival-
| craft game I've played that doesn't devolve into an inventory
| management game. The game scales with your gameplay.
| ecocentrik wrote:
| Games that require significant time investments have a tragic
| quality to them.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It's just gamified programming. I lost interest quickly.
| cartoonfoxes wrote:
| Every time I start playing Factorio it's always a matter of time
| before I'm trying to figure out how to solve factories with VHDL
| and how to interface Magic VLSI with the game's blueprints. From
| there it's another day or so before I'm reviewing EE graduate
| programs and working out how much math I would need to grind.
|
| I had this experience with Eve Online back in the day. The
| optimization limit horseshoes back into the real world.
|
| Case in point: just reading this thread started me learning about
| discrete event simulation. Damn you Factorio.
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