The authors of the Czech Factoria are working on a large expansion -apkrig
Developers from the Czech studio Wube Software released a massive patch for their Factorio at the beginning of last week. The current version 1.1 brought a lot of changes and improvements, which affected, for example, the construction of conveyor belts, the ability to comfortably rotate blueprints, movement and control of Spidertrons and many other elements. The overwhelming reaction from fans was positive, and when it came to more critical remarks, they were mostly not patches at all, but for example non-support modifications that were created before the release of version 1.0, or some older changes that the people of Wube made during the early access. Regardless, the developers say they are finally happy with the current version and are thinking about where Factorio will move in the near future.
“Version 1.1 is final. We’ll keep it up for bugs, minor interface additions, and other minor things, but that’s it. So, what are we going to do now, ”asks Michal Kovařík from Wube Software. He suggests that he discussed several alternatives with his team, from which they automatically deleted the possibility of hanging the Factoria development on a nail and ended up with the next four. Endlessly release free updates, start preparing Factorio 2, focus on smaller DLCs, or embark on a major expansion. To the first three points, however, Kovařík adds an explanation as to why they did not occur and ends with a major expansion. He does not want to develop free updates because the community around Factoria is not as large as in games where this model works and players still buy the original title in bulk. Starting work on the second part would then be a denial of everything they have done so far and where Factorio has gotten, moreover, the developers cannot imagine how they would change the game as radically as crouching demands today. And finally, the little DLC took over because it would break the content structure and, more importantly, even Michal Kovařík is not very popular with them in other games.
Last but not least, plans to expand Factoria include expanding the existing team to which Wube is looking for graphics and programmers.
The decision was made on the expansion, which will now become the focus of Wube Software’s workload, although there are other ideas that the studio also wants to address. This is also the reason why we do not expect to release the promised expansion too soon. “At this point, I can only say that we have set to work and we do not think it should take us less than a year. Personally, I am very curious as to how valid the theory of higher efficiency will be when we already have a working engine, ”says Kovařík. Similarly, it also vaguely speaks of the possible content of the extension, about which the people of Wube Software are not currently decided. There is a period of testing ideas and finding the one that will be most fun for developers. Last but not least, the plans to expand Factoria include expanding the existing team to which Wube is looking for graphics and programmers.
At the end of the current blog post, Michal Kovařík summarizes the whole eight years of Factoria and brings very interesting statistics. We learn that Factorio was able to reach over 2,500,000 players, 800,000 videos from the game appeared on YouTube alone, and the source code has more than 35 million characters, which Wube estimates would put on about 70 average books. In a similar vein, we could go on for quite some time, but in general, Wube points out that in the past two years, all numbers have essentially doubled, which is a great success for us and we are looking forward to the next years at Factoria together with the developers.
