Hello,
I was talking with a guy in a pub yesterday and when we get to the topic what we do, I told him that I do a computer game. He asked me what is the name of it, and when I told him it is Factorio he couldn't believe me. He actually knew it, he played it from the alpha release and he apparently really liked it. I didn't expect at all that some stranger would know the game. This was really a nice confirmation, that the sales and forum posts are probably real people playing the game, not just some numbers in a database and I won't lie to you, the experience is nice :).
We managed to release the 0.12.5, and it was actually the first time, the script finished everything without any issue. We could theoretically release while being in a pub next time :)
One of the main changes, apart a lot of bugfixing, is that the server can group the network messages from different players to single packet. It needs to be tested more, but it could increase the possible amount of players in multiplayer game greatly.
The soundtrack interludes were also updated. 5 different world ambience tracks replaced the forever repeating wind-track.
I wanted to avoid politics in this blog, but as this is relevant to computer games I had to proceed.
There is a report of the EU called Creative Europe - Media. It states that they basically took 3.2 million euro (stolen from other people through taxes), and they just gave the money to certain game companies of their choice.
Just stop for a while and think what does it mean. They took money from a small studio like us, and they just gave it to some big game studio (CD Project) to support the creation of DLC for their franchise Witcher 3.
From what I have read, they mainly wanted to support games with a lot of story telling. This means, that they think, that they know what is best for us better than we do. They decide for us what kind of game should we play, what movies are worthy, what art is worth support. They decide what kind of food should be supported and what kind shouldn't be. They put quotas of production because they know better how much is enough. The list goes on, and it is all getting worse every year and if we let it go like this for another 20 years, we are all going to be just slaves.
I would like to state, that Wube Software never took this kind of dirty money, and we are certainly not planning to do so in the future.
The technology icons are being worked on, and you can guess what is the meaning of these.
As always come to our forums and let us know what you think.
