Hello, it has been a while since we've talked.
I saw there was good interest in Factorio and Factorio: Space Age for the new Nintendo Switch 2. Some players were asking about it even before the console itself was officially announced.
We know you will scroll to the conclusion, so here's the announcement first:
Similar to other games, we decided to release a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, an upgrade you can get if you own the game for the original Switch. If you don't have the game you can get it as part of a 'bundle' which is the game with the Switch 2 edition upgrade. Nintendo has some more information/clarification about Switch 2 editions here.
The upgraded version will feature:
The price for this upgrade will be... free. We don't believe paying for a technical upgrade is reasonable. For players who want to support us, and want more content, they can get the Space Age expansion.
We are happy to announce that Factorio: Space Age will be coming soon to the Switch 2, as a DLC priced at $35. It will feature the same content as the PC version, nothing was removed or trimmed down.
For full details on the Space age expansion, check out the Space Age content page.
Both the Factorio - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition and the Space Age DLC for Switch 2 will release at the same time. The release date is... as soon as possible.
Like with the release for the original Nintendo Switch, the certification and store setup can take a long time. I don't want to delay the release by setting a conservative release date, but I also don't want to promise a release date that we might miss.
We are aiming for a December release, so you can get a nice gift before Christmas. Not an official release date, just something we are aiming for.
Ever since rumors about the console appeared, I was interested on working on it, it would be a shame not to take advantage of the new features and processing power. I asked for access to the development environment shortly after the announcement but didn't receive a positive answer. I was hoping we could get access at the console's release. We did get access shortly after, in July. So I got to work.
The first step was to make everything compile and run on the new platform. After setting up everything, this was surprisingly easy as most of the things are compatible between the platforms. I even used the same version of SDL2 with a few fixes and modifications.
The original Nintendo Switch did not have enough RAM and CPU power to run Space Age, 5 planets worth of bases was too much. So the next important question was if the Switch 2 can run it. Some quick tests showed that yes, everything was good enough and you can finish Space Age while maintaining 60 UPS and 60 FPS, if you build reasonably.
Mouse mode is an interesting feature but it has to be integrated right. The ability to use a mouse doesn't mean you can now play the same way as on PC since you are, well, missing a keyboard.
You will still play as you would normally with a controller, but mouse mode will allow you to use a cursor when needed (placing buildings, navigating the UI).
The feature needs to be enabled in the controls settings menu. Trying to automatically switch to mouse mode based on controller orientation and when the sensor detects something was unreliable. I found the mouse cursor would activate randomly if I held my hand and fingers in some positions. There's also an option to swap the R and A (or L and A) buttons. This makes "clicking" with the Joy-Con feel natural.
Then I went to work putting everything together, figuring out how to distribute the upgrade and the DLC and fixing many smaller issues.
Everything was falling into place. But quite late I decided to test the performance on 4k (2160p) TVs and unfortunately, performance was terrible across the entire game. It looked like we wouldn't support 2160p resolution. Luckily Genhis suggested disabling light occlusion. This improved performance across the board, but Vulcanus, Gleba and space were still problematic.
I integrated Tracy profiler which helped me find the problematic code and shaders. Genhis improved the fog and space dust shader performance significantly without making them looking much different. This optimization, and maybe more, will be available on PC too, so players with modest video cards will see better frame-rates and will be better able to play in 2160p. Some graphical features (like light occlusion and animated water) will be disabled when connecting the console to a 4K TV, but now it keeps 60FPS in most scenes, including busy bases.
The game is now ready from my side, but still has to go though certification where new issues are likely to be found.
Happy one year anniversary since the release of Space Age!
It feels like just a few weeks ago we were deep in the heart of the launch preparations, the excitement of those final weeks and days before release are fondly remembered. The reaction to Space Age has been incredible and we're so thankful to report that we recently crossed the 1 million sales mark, and over fifty thousand engineers have claimed their stars in the Galaxy of Fame.
The initial wave of bug squashing and intense fixing lasted until the Christmas vacations. Once we were back we decided to take a more relaxed approach, slowly working through the issues on the forum and not putting too much pressure on ourselves.
Over the summer we had a few team get togethers here in Prague, where we had long discussions about Factorio, Space Age, and games in general; brainstorming ideas, thinking about our long term plans, as well as laying some groundwork for what our next project could look like.
Now, after our summer 'Brainjams', we've starting work properly on 2.1. We don't want to promise too much (as always), and we're trying to keep the scope not too big and not too small... We really want to make sure Factorio will be in a good place for long term support, and 2.1 might be the last chance for us to make some bigger/breaking changes.
In short, its going to be quite a while, I can promise it won't be ready this year... and I don't promise that we won't start writing juicy and entertaining Friday Facts when we have something more to show :).
As always, let us know what you think at the usual places.
