Factorio Forums

Oxyd wrote: So, you want the game to just hang for a few seconds as it autosaves? In that case, you're out of luck – we definitely want to tell the user that the game is doing something instead of just hanging for a bit.

Darthlawsuit wrote:You should look at paradoxes DLC model. It has worked wonders for their games and I keep on buying the dlc. How it works is every so often they release a new set of dlc. That dlc is more like a traditional expansion for games but you can play the game with or without it; they also release minor dlc with their major dlc that has music/sprites. They use the constant flow of dlc to provide free patches to everyone and continue to keep their game fresh with new features. Really look at the crusader kings 2 and Europa universalis 4 model.

Imagine adding an entire warfare dlc where you can wage a war on a group of the natives, not a passive war but both sides trying to anhiliate one another.

I know some people foam at the mouth when they hear dlc, because of EA milking it, but a good dlc model is more of a modern expansion/patching model that allows "free" patches and even if you lack the dlc you can still play with the person in multiplayer.

Chaoseed wrote:I've enjoyed playing Factorio for months, although...



¯\_(ツ)_/¯

SWSe wrote:

Oxyd wrote: So, you want the game to just hang for a few seconds as it autosaves? In that case, you're out of luck – we definitely want to tell the user that the game is doing something instead of just hanging for a bit.

Yes, I do.

You don't forget about unexperienced users, which is good and important. But many actually understood what autosave means before this.
That's why I said "optional".

There's an entire thread filled with other proposals that don't interrupt someones experience this much. E.g. showing the progress bar (or a turning factorio cog) in a corner, continuing to play the background sounds and not turning the screen darker.

ratchetfreak wrote:

SWSe wrote:

Oxyd wrote: So, you want the game to just hang for a few seconds as it autosaves? In that case, you're out of luck – we definitely want to tell the user that the game is doing something instead of just hanging for a bit.

Yes, I do.

You don't forget about unexperienced users, which is good and important. But many actually understood what autosave means before this.
That's why I said "optional".

There's an entire thread filled with other proposals that don't interrupt someones experience this much. E.g. showing the progress bar (or a turning factorio cog) in a corner, continuing to play the background sounds and not turning the screen darker.

There are 2 major options, pause the game or double the memory requirements

the reason the game pauses is to avoid a change during gameplay corrupting the save file. The solution to that is duplicating the entire game state to provide a immutable copy that can be written out.

ratchetfreak wrote:

SWSe wrote:

Oxyd wrote: So, you want the game to just hang for a few seconds as it autosaves? In that case, you're out of luck – we definitely want to tell the user that the game is doing something instead of just hanging for a bit.

Yes, I do.

You don't forget about unexperienced users, which is good and important. But many actually understood what autosave means before this.
That's why I said "optional".

There's an entire thread filled with other proposals that don't interrupt someones experience this much. E.g. showing the progress bar (or a turning factorio cog) in a corner, continuing to play the background sounds and not turning the screen darker.

There are 2 major options, pause the game or double the memory requirements

the reason the game pauses is to avoid a change during gameplay corrupting the save file. The solution to that is duplicating the entire game state to provide a immutable copy that can be written out. Duplicating the game state would also require a laggy pause unless the game engine is rewritten to allow it to use a prevstate setup

ratchetfreak wrote:

SWSe wrote:

Oxyd wrote: So, you want the game to just hang for a few seconds as it autosaves? In that case, you're out of luck – we definitely want to tell the user that the game is doing something instead of just hanging for a bit.

Yes, I do.

You don't forget about unexperienced users, which is good and important. But many actually understood what autosave means before this.
That's why I said "optional".

There's an entire thread filled with other proposals that don't interrupt someones experience this much. E.g. showing the progress bar (or a turning factorio cog) in a corner, continuing to play the background sounds and not turning the screen darker.

There are 2 major options, pause the game or double the memory requirements

the reason the game pauses is to avoid a change during gameplay corrupting the save file. The solution to that is duplicating the entire game state to provide a immutable copy that can be written out. Duplicating the game state would also require a laggy pause unless the game engine is rewritten to allow it to use a prevstate setup

Oxyd wrote:That's not true. We could simply stop updating the map and start storing modifications to the map as the game continues. Once the autosave is done, we're left with an old map and a diff to the new one, so just apply it and you've got the correct new map. The additional memory requirement would then be proportional to the time it takes to finish an autosave. Only problem with this is that someone would have to actually program it. And it doesn't sound particularly easy.

Moving the progress bar somewhere to a corner might happen in the future. I would also love to see autosaves to happen faster. But if I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath for getting rid of the progress indication entirely.

And yes, you are playing a game – remember to take regular breaks away from your computer. I hear that's what's recommended.

ThaPear wrote:

ratchetfreak wrote:

SWSe wrote:

Oxyd wrote: So, you want the game to just hang for a few seconds as it autosaves? In that case, you're out of luck – we definitely want to tell the user that the game is doing something instead of just hanging for a bit.

Yes, I do.

You don't forget about unexperienced users, which is good and important. But many actually understood what autosave means before this.
That's why I said "optional".

There's an entire thread filled with other proposals that don't interrupt someones experience this much. E.g. showing the progress bar (or a turning factorio cog) in a corner, continuing to play the background sounds and not turning the screen darker.

There are 2 major options, pause the game or double the memory requirements

the reason the game pauses is to avoid a change during gameplay corrupting the save file. The solution to that is duplicating the entire game state to provide a immutable copy that can be written out. Duplicating the game state would also require a laggy pause unless the game engine is rewritten to allow it to use a prevstate setup

He's not suggesting not pausing the game. He's suggesting not shoving the autosave in your face.
To me the autosave is quite jarring. It's a reminder every minute: "You're playing a game". Removing the darkened screen would improve it for me, (re)moving the progress bar out of the center of my screen would solve it.
I'd still know there's an autosave but it wouldn't interrupt me as much.

I understand a random short hang every minute would be strange to new player, but that's why he suggested it be optional.

Autosaves to me

HEY HEY I'M AUTOSAVING... SAVIIIIIINNGGGGGG! THIS MEANS YOU'RE PLAYING A GAME!
Ok I'm done saving bye

MasterBuilder wrote:The problem with autosaves is that it interrupts the UI. Is it possible to use something similar to the 'latency' system from MP in such a way to leave the UI responsive and delay all the changes to the game state?
Can we not save the user input and simply delay the action whilst saving?

Or what about freezing the UI for a shorter time just to duplicate the game state? Once duplicated, perform the save with the duplicated copy on another thread. (I'm assuming serializing the data is going to take longer than duplicating the state. You could even malloc a 'buffer' area to copy the state into a few frames in advance.)
It's not how it's presented that's intrusive. It's that it prevents us (often interrupting something) from doing anything. Anything that minimizes the time frozen is an improvement.

Even something small like letting the player move around (even if we can't interact with anything) will help.

vampiricdust wrote:The research window is almost as annoying in it's interruption of gameplay.