Hello everyone, Factorio 0.6.4 release has just been marked stable! Following our usual release procedure the 0.6 release has been around for a while. Users from the forum helped us to find the most annoying bugs and now the release is considered "serious bugs free". The release has been packed with features and new stuff. Here are the most significant gameplay improvements: The world map (and a minimap). These allows for a much better orientation in the world. The steel furnace (faster) and the electric furnace (requires no coal). Smelting resources is one of the basic tasks in the factory and these new furnaces provide interesting alternatives to using brute-force approach of many stone furnaces. Logistic robots can suplly the player directly. In the later stages of the game the player can focus more on managing and extending the factory and not running around collecting the created items. Modules and beacons. It is now possible to influence machine properties (speed, productivity, energy efficiency) with inserting module items. This way the assembling machines in the production bottleneck can be sped up without extending the production line. Improved terrain generator. The trees now follow the same fractal terrain generation as the terrain. This makes them look more realistic. Apart from the features we have focused a lot of energy on speed improvements as well. With larger factories the players often experienced slowdowns because too many objects have to be updated every tick. We have made optimizations to the way items move along the belts. These were the biggest "performance eaters" (there are often tons of items on the belts in the factory) so this helped quite a lot for the big factories. We also optimised the way graphical rendering works. This is mostly notable on the Windows operating system (our graphical library uses a different backend - d3d on the windows compared to the linux / mac - openGL). Another major improvement has been made to the core loop of the game. The graphical rendering can now run parallel to the game update using different threads. This can take advantage of at most two threads. And finally the render preparation phase (collecting the sprites to be rendered) has been parallelised as well. This can take advantage of multiple threads, we empirically tested that the best results are shown for 4 or 5 threads (given that there are enough cores for these threads to run on). Last but not least our artist has also done a lot of work. There is a new terrain and plenty of objects have new graphics (labs, car, chests, logistic robots, etc.). The game is less contrastive compared to early versions with RGB colors, on the other hand it is also more aesthetically pleasing now. As usual you can find the full changelog of the changes at our forum in the news section . The changelog is now available also directly in the game in the "About" dialog. As mentioned before, the work on 0.7 is in the full speed now together with preparations for the Steam Greenlight campaign. So stay tuned for more news.

Hello there, not much has been happening in the past two weeks or so in the Factorio land. We took the time to go for vacation and recharge our energy after months of work. But now we are back. The work on the 0.7 release is in the full speed. This release will be mainly aimed at improving the combat and the enemies behavior. Apart from doing regular developer work we will also soon start the preparations for the Steam Greenlight campaign. We plan to begin the campaign in the matter of weeks. The biggest challenge will probably be making a new trailer. The old one is rather obsolete by now. Once the trailer is ready we will also do some more marketing trying to raise awareness about Factorio at gaming blogs. Interesting things ahead. Stay tuned.

Hi everyone, we have updated the game preview page on our website. There is now a set of brand new screenshots from the game. These were taken in Factorio 0.6.x, the current experimental release. The old screenshots were more than half a year old and they were really obsolete. A lot of graphic placeholders has been replaced since then and many new assets were added. There is still a long way to go. However the artistic direction of Factorio has more or less stabilised and we now know where we are heading. Probably the biggest change that strikes the eye are the new color tones of the terrain. The terrain now looks more uniform and smooth, though it is still not a final version. Our artist is experimenting with new terrain meshes and variations. On top of that there will be a set of various objects (doodads) to make the environment more variable and interesting to explore. Things like wrecks of space ships, remnants of dead creatures, ruins left behind by the native civilization, different fauna, etc. Apart from the new screenshots there is an update of the theme pictures as well. Now there is a collection of 1 + 5 theme pictures capturing some essential concepts from Factorio. These are available as wallpapers for Furnace Attendant or higher member tiers.

Hello, here is another update on progress in delivering perks from the alpha preorder. The game development itself is going along quite well. The updates are coming out more or less once a month. This gives the people who have bought the alpha access a sneak peek at the Factorio evolution in progress. Some time ago we have also introduced the first version of the scenario pack. The forum community helped us to tweak the bugs and balance the missions. The result are three mini campaigns that provide various factory-building challenges to the player: Tight spot - Little space, limited resources and fixed amount of time. Buy land and machines and sell your final product. Transport Belt Maddness - So many chests and such a small island. Can you connect the chests without your head spinning? Supply challenge - Six hungry chests that change their taste often. Is your production flexible enough? These missions are the first batch and there will be more coming in the future. The scenario pack is available to the Furnace Attendant tier or higher. Another update in the same tier is a new Factorio wallpaper displaying the Assembling machine in the night. The Mining Drill Operator tier has been updated as well. For a while there has been an option to put your name in the game. Quite a few people already did this and now there are train stations named after them in Factorio. As of 0.6.0 the name generator will be used for Labs as well. Another update for this tier is the first version of the Concept Art book that is available for download now. As mentioned before this is some very early Factorio concept art and the book will definitely be updated as the game development progresses. Last update regards the access to our internal art wiki. The Mining Drill Operator members (or higher) from now on can observe the evolution of the in-game graphics via a read-only access to the wiki. There are plenty of sketches, inspirational photos and different variants of the game objects. The wiki is hosted on the google pages, therefore the google login is necessary. For now the invitations will be send on request. That means if you are a Mining Drill Operator member (or higher) then send us an email with your login name and we will send you an invite. This process will be automated in the future:D Here comes just a tiny recent preview of things you can see there: the evolution of new electric furnace model.

Hello guys, Factorio 0.5.2 release has just been marked stable! The 0.5.0 has been released more than two weeks ago however it took a while to stabilize. We listened to our users and fixed loads of annoying bugs. The biggest thing in the release was probably the visual update. Factorio finally got a decent looking gui and menus. Though many people claim that they don't care about the (gui) visuals we think this is really important. The broader audience often judges the game already by looking at the first menu screen. And the old looks were not really helping there. As part of the gui update we tweaked some UIs - for instance the recipe gui now contains the tabs for different categories. This allows for easier navigation in the growing list of available recipes. Apart from the gui the visuals of quite a few entities were updated. There are still a lot of patches and inconsistencies in the game, however we are slowly improving the arts and (hopefully) preparing the game for wider audience. There is a new boiler, steam engine, pump, pipes, mining drills, locomotive, splitters, lamps and radar. The next target for visual face lift is the terrain=) Another important (yet technical) improvement is the new auto updater. This allows the players who have purchased the alpha version of the game to receive new versions automatically when they are released. The game connects to the server on the startup and after login / password authorization, checks for updates. This feature can be switched off if the user wishes so. When automatic updates are switched off Factorio will not try to establish any connection over the network. We respect users privacy. Factorio has no DRM protection mechanisms. The point of auto updater is to make the life of people who bought the game easier by removing the hassle of downloading and reinstalling the game when new version is released. As usual the release contains tons of little improvements. You can find the full changelogs on our forums in the news section . We have also recorded a video about the major changes in 0.5.x. You can check it out at our youtube channel. Stay tuned - there will be more Factory news coming in the summer.

Hi everyone, one of our indiegogo contributors works in the library in Prague and he asked us to make a presentation about Factorio in there. We said yes. The presentation will take place this Thursday (23rd of May) at 18:00 in the Suchdol Library in Prague. The entry is free. The details are on the web of the library. There you can also find the directions. The presentation will most probably be held in the Czech language. We will be talking about how the Factorio development started, what we went through before the indiegogo, what is it like to do a fund raising campaign, what are we doing now, etc. There will be a lot of room for discussion as well. Depending on the interest among participants we might move to a nearby bar afterwards. If you are from the Prague or vicinity and are interested in some backstage information about Factorio development then you are more then welcome to join us on Thursday.

Hello guys, Factorio 0.4.1 has just been released! This is a bugfix release to the 0.4.0 update that has been made on Friday. The 0.4.0 has been tested by the guys at the forum and in 0.4.1 we provide bugfixes to the things they found. Let's have a look at the biggest changes introduced in the 0.4.0 and 0.4.1. The main theme has been the trains. Connected rolling stocks form a train. The trains can be assigned schedules of stations to visit. In the station the train can be loaded / unloaded an refueled. There are also semaphores to guide trains in the railway network. Apart from this we have also fixed some bugs in how railroads and rolling stocks work. Further information about how railway transportation works is available at our wiki. Apart from the trains we have added quite some functionality to the electricity. There are three new elements for energy distribution: the medium electric pole, the big electric pole and the substation. They all have different properties and are appropriate for different situations. Also there is the long awaited accumulator. Now finally even in night the factories can be protected from the alliens by the laser turrets. We have invested a lot of time into the tuning the determinism. The game is now (almost) fully deterministic. This is a necessary first step towards the multiplayer. Players can see our effort in action already in the replay functionality. Because of the determinism limitations the replaying functionality works only on the games that has been played within the same version with the same sets of mods all the time (and started in 0.4.1). As usual the release contains a lot of fixes and extensions in the scripting. As a result some of the 0.3.x version of the mods (especially those using a lot of scripting functionality) might cause errors with the new version. This can be repaired by using updated mods (when that happens). As before, the new version is compatible with all the previous saves. We really don't want the players to lose the games they have spent so much time with. After the long time of waiting we have added more Linux support. Next to the .deb package there is now a generic .tar package available for download. This is aimed at the more experienced users who will be able to deal with the dependencies themselves. That was longer than expected. The release details are available as usual on our forums. Time to go for a run to clear the head:)

Hello, recently we have been programming day and night to ship the features we have promised for Factorio 0.4.0 release. However apart from that we also found some time to start delivering the promises we made in the Indiegogo campaign. So this is an update on the state of perks delivery from Indiegogo and the preorder. To start with I will repeat the obvious. All the membership accounts are eligible for Factorio alpha access, beta access and full release (when these are made). This is including all the future updates. Whenever someone buys Factorio membership he immediately receives upgrade code and can go and play the alpha right away. On top of this the Furnace Attendant tier promises digital factorio wallpapers and a scenario pack. The wallpapers are ready and if you have the Furnace Attendant (or higher) membership you can download them already. The wallpapers are available on your user settings page. Just click your username at the top right of the screen and scroll down. The wallpapers come in different resolutions. These are some of the most common resolutions in terms of widht : height ratio. If your resolution is not there you might still use a wallpaper with the same width : height ratio and higher resolution. For instance if your resolution is 1280 : 800 you can use the 1680 : 1050 which has the same width : heigh ratio. Originally we promised three wallpapers based on our theme pictures. However we decided to add some more. So at the moment our concept artist is working on two additional theme pictures which will be available as wallpapers as well in the near future. The other highly anticipated perk is the scenario pack. We are working on that right now. The first version of the scenario pack will be available together with the Factorio 0.4.0 release at the end of April. As mentioned already the scenario pack will be work in progress as well. We intend to keep adding new content until we feel "it's right". The Mining Drill Operator on top of these contains the "name in the game" and the Concept Art Book. First backer names will appear in Factorio 0.4.0. If you have the Mining Drill Operator tier or higher you can already insert your name into the form at the user setting page (below the wallpapers). Before every release (starting Factorio 0.4.0) all these names will be collected and exported into the list directly in the game. The names from the list will be used as name tags for different machines in the game, train stations, etc. The concept art book should be released by the end of April as well. Even though our concept artist spent a lot of time with the concepts in the art book we are still not sure whether it is up to the standards. Therefore we will name it version one and it might get updated in the future. Also we are toying with an interesting idea regarding this topic at the moment. We have sort of internal graphical wiki using Google sites. We use it for communication with Albert (main graphic behind the game), for sharing graphic proposals, concepts and finished sprites. What we are considering is to give readonly access to this wiki as part of the Mining Drill Operator tier or higher. This way people could actually see the process of graphical shaping of Factorio. Things that never made it into the game, evolution of some machines graphics, etc. We are still not sure whether this is a good idea so in case you would find this interesting please let us know (email, forum, facebook). Last thing regards the Inserter Constructor. This tier was only available during the Indiegogo campaign. After the campaign ended we sort of felt that the tier was a bit overpriced. That is the reason why for the preorder on the site we created the new tier Mining Drill Operator with pretty much the same content but cheaper. This can naturally happen however we feel it would be correct to somehow compensate the people who bought the Inserter Constructor tier. One thing we came up with would be giving them an extra upgrade code for Factorio which they can use as a gift for someone they know. Again this is something we are considering at the moment so if you have any ideas in this regard please let us know. Ok enough talking. Go and download those wallpapers and put them to your screens;)

Hello everyone, we have just released Factorio 0.3.0 ! We took quite some time and put a our effort into this release. There is a lot of internal refactoring and preparations which won't be visible to the player but they will make our live a lot easier in the future. We are "tying our laces before setting for a run". Apart from that we have put quite some effort into improving modding capabilities. Uptil now making and using mods was just for the hardcore fans of the game. We really see the importance of good modding system so we started building one. The mods are now standalone packages and allow for much easier and cleaner combination. Together with modding improvements we updated our Lua scripting API based on the feedback gathered from our forums. Apart from code changes there is some new graphics in the game. Our graphic Albert has spent more than two weeks here in the Prague. That allowed us to get a lot of work done. There are new inserters, turrets, walls, etc. Even though these all pieces are new graphic they might not be the final version. At the moment Albert is working on a high level artistic direction for the game. That might look like quite late (with the game already in the alpha). But better late than never :). The release is marked as experimental. This means that in order to download it you need to click the "experimental" link on our download page next to the "Download" title. After the release gets tested and no serious bugs are reported it will be marked as stable. Allright, enough of the talking. You can find more details about the changes on our forums. Now go and test the 0.3.0 out ;)

Hello, as promised we have started the Factorio Alpha preorder today. Our PayPal funds have finally been unlocked and delivered to our bank account. Therefore it will be possible to buy the game with both Bitcoins and via the PayPal. The PayPal also accepts credit cards from the users who don't have the PayPal account. However our recommended payment solution is the Bitcoins. We believe that Bitcoins have a huge potential to become a world-wide online currency. We are proud to sell Factorio accounts with Bitcoins. At the moment there are three membership tiers for you to select from. When you perform the preorder you will automatically receive an email with your account upgrade code. This will allow you to upgrade your account and get the alpha version of the game immediately. The extra contents on top of the Alpha access (wallpapers, scenario packs, etc.) is not ready yet. We are working on this. By preordering you are supporting further Factorio development. Thank you !