Friday Facts #408 - Statistics improvements, Linux adventures | Factorio
factorio.com
Hello, welcome once again to the world of facts.

For me, it’s Factorio.

a game in which you build and maintain factories.

It even has Wayland support!

(Version 1.1.77» Fri Mar 03, 2023 3:44 pm)

Graphics

  • Added support for Wayland on Linux. To enable it, set SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland in your environment. (thanks to raiguard)

What’s yours?

EDIT: Great Linux ports* not like some forced ports that barely work or don’t.

  • IsoSpandy@lemm.ee
    19·
    5 days ago

    Factorio is so amazing on linux. Like the devas actually care about Linux. They care so much that went on to shit on Gnome for no client side decorations. Absolute legends. Wish more studios wer like them.

    • Klajan
      16·
      5 days ago

      In fact Linux is the superior version of Factorio, since you get to have asynchronous saves that don’t pause the game

        • Psyhackological@lemmy.mlOP
          11·
          5 days ago

          One of the reasons why the native Linux version is better than Proton.

          Asynchronous saving

          Many of you might not be aware that Factorio has support for saving your game in the background, without freezing while it does so. This feature is tucked away in the hidden settings and only works on macOS and Linux. This is one great example of taking advantage of a platform’s features to benefit the game, which would not be available to us if we simply went through Proton.

          Asynchronous saving works by using the fork syscall to essentially duplicate the game. The primary instance - the one you interact with - continues playing, but the newly forked child runs the saving process then exits on completion. I have used it for many years and have never had issues, but the setting remains hidden because there are a few unsolved problems with it and it requires a significant amount of RAM to work.

          I would love to promote this feature away from its hidden status in 2.0. If you are playing on Linux or macOS, please enable asynchronous saving (ctrl+alt+click Settings -> “The rest” -> non-blocking-saving) and report any issues you find. I am particularly interested in reproducing a seemingly random freeze that occurs at the end of the process. Thank you in advance!

    • Psyhackological@lemmy.mlOP
      7·
      5 days ago

      You need to set up CI for the new platform, expand your build system to support the new compiler(s) and architecture(s), and have at least one person on the team that cares enough about the platform to actively maintain it. https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-408

      And yeah, exactly. Their game seems like their life mission, and I don’t blame them. The game is spectacular.

    • Avatar_of_Self@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      5 days ago

      It is also DRM free on Steam. You can copy the rimworld folder to a PC that’s never had Steam on it and play it as an example.

      You can also do that to sort of save a snapshot in time of Rimworld when they are releasing a new version that will likely break mods for a long time/sometimes forever.

      • 9bananas@lemmy.world
        5·
        5 days ago

        the DLC are pricey, but they’re also proper, old school expansions adding lots of content that actually enhances the game.

        it’s perfectly playable without the DLC, and there’s a LOT of DLC-sized mods on the workshop!

        kind of a fundamental problem with modern DLC: they generally don’t get cheaper over time (remember when that was an actual thing? not just sales, but actually lower prices for older games?).

        if you keep up with the releases it’s super okay at about 20/25€ once a year, maybe twice, bur if you’re late to the party it’s a whole lot of cash all at once!

        exactly why paradox introduced a subscription for Stellaris’ DLCs at 10€/month… honestly kinda worth it, if you know you’re just gonna play for a while and then move on…still wish stuff would just get cheaper at some point again…

        • Psyhackological@lemmy.mlOP
          2·
          4 days ago

          So it’s a biiiig rabbit hole, then.

          Well, Factorio price policy says that they will never have a discount for their game. Full price only so you’re committed.

          it’s super okay at about 20/25€ once a year, maybe twice, bur if you’re late to the party it’s a whole lot of cash all at once!

          Yeah, exactly.

          exactly why paradox introduced a subscription for Stellaris’ DLCs at 10€/month

          I didn’t even know there was such a thing. Sucks, though.

  • potentiallynotfelix@lemdro.idEnglish
    6·
    4 days ago

    Flightgear is a 🄯Copyleft, GNU General Public License(GPL) V2, Open-source and Freely Modifiable flight simulator that champions principles of user empowerment, community-driven development, and unrestricted customization. It embodies transparency, inclusivity, and the spirit of collaborative innovation in flight simulation.

  • ssm@lemmy.sdf.org
    9·
    4 days ago

    Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

    • unreasonably realistic open ended post apocalyptic survival simulator roguelike
    • similar to dwarf fortress adventure mode (allegedly, never played it)
    • you will lose 3 weeks of progress
    • every major release makes the game feel like a different game
    • cool lore, even if it changes all the time
    • puts zomboid to shame

    Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup

    • the best traditional roguelike
    • extremely focused design
    • tedious features get cut, pure gameplay
    • only (subjective) downside is the game is fairly heavily RNG dependent

    Both of them are probably in your distribution repository, dcss may be packaged as “crawl” or “stone-soup”.

    • samc@feddit.ukEnglish
      20·
      5 days ago

      Its all about how an application goes from “I would like to display X on a screen” to how X actually gets displayed. Wayland is effectively a language (technically a protocol) that graphical applications can speak to describe how they would like to be drawn. It’s then up to a different program more deeply embedded in your OS to listen to and act on those instructions (this program is called a Wayland compositor). There’s a lot more to it (handling keyboard input monitor settings, etc), but that’s the general idea.

      Wayland is a (relatively) new way of thinking about this process, that tries to take into account the wide variety of input and output devices that exist today, and also tries to mitigate some of the security risks that were inherent to previous approaches (before Wayland, it was very easy for one application to “look at” what was being displayed in a completely different app, or even to listen to what keys were being typed even when the app isn’t focussed).

      Thing is, change is hard, doubly so in the consensus driven world of Linux/FOSS. So, until the last couple of years or so, adoption of Wayland was quite slow. Now we’re at the point where most things work at least as well in Wayland, but there’s still odd bits of software that either haven’t been ported, or that still rely on some features that don’t exist in Wayland, often because of the aforementioned security risks.

      • Jarix@lemmy.world
        8·
        5 days ago

        Thing is, change is hard, doubly so in the consensus driven world of Linux/FOSS.

        … So if im reading this right

        Move fast and break things

        Move slow and fix things?

        • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
          21·
          5 days ago

          more like "move glacially and declare things as "will not support’ so technically we had nothing TO fix!"

    • Psyhackological@lemmy.mlOP
      11·
      5 days ago

      I see X11 and Wayland as display protocols that tell to render things on the screen, for example to Desktop Environments like Gnome or KDE Plasma. X11 wasn’t originally designed for this purpose, and its codebase is very messy and ‘hacky,’ which led to the development of Wayland.

      X11 Wayland
      Legacy Modern
      Many issues due to being legacy Many issues due to being Modern
      Old New
      Stable Experimental

      in short.

      • EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        2·
        4 days ago

        Ah, so it’s like DirectX11/12? That makes sense! How come it’s never (presumably?) used on Windows?

        Also…

        Many issues due to being legacy

        Many issues due to being Modern

        Lol.

         

        Edit: Okay, looking it up, it’s apparent that X11 is not the same thing as DirectX11. Lol.

        • Psyhackological@lemmy.mlOP
          5·
          4 days ago

          DirectX is a set of APIs for game and multimedia development on Windows, whereas X11 and Wayland are display protocols that manage how graphical applications are rendered and interact with the desktop environment. DirectX is more similar to Vulkan in terms of providing a low-level API for high-performance graphics rendering or OpenGL.

    • Vik@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      5 days ago

      it’s a newer display server protocol designed to replace X11, focusing on improved security, simplicity, and contemporary display technologies such as multi-display variable refresh rate and HDR (eventually).

    • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
      33·
      5 days ago

      it’s when devs of a graphics stack just suddenly feel the need to protect your own computer from itself, so they say fuck you to any features that they deem “insecure”, including accessibility features (they will claim they fixed this, but it’s opt-in per app. old apps will just be completely unusable for some people with special needs.)

      But they eliminated tearing on the desktop! woo!!!

      • apotheotic(she/they)@beehaw.orgEnglish
        5·
        5 days ago

        I think that farewell and the c-sides are some of the most enjoyable, challenging, and rewarding gaming experiences I’ve ever had. Keep it up!

        • Psyhackological@lemmy.mlOP
          2·
          4 days ago

          This game always amazes me with “fuck, no I cannot do that”, but after trial and error I get better, and I know I overcome my skill issues.

            • Psyhackological@lemmy.mlOP
              1·
              4 days ago

              Yeah, but the default keyboard controls suck. And I think there is somewhere in the game “every time you fall and die - it’s a progress” or something like this.

              • apotheotic(she/they)@beehaw.orgEnglish
                1·
                3 days ago

                I can imagine the keyboard controls sucking.

                And yeah, those messages are exactly the thing that makes the vibe so cozy. You’re failing again and again and the game keeps encouraging you, believing in you.

    • Father_Redbeard@lemmy.ml
      5·
      5 days ago

      I did not know that. Might have to double dip. I have it on switch, but encouraging Linux game ports with my wallet seems worthwhile. Plus it wouldn’t be the first time I bought a second copy of a game…

      • Psyhackological@lemmy.mlOP
        7·
        5 days ago

        I had many copies of the same game now on Steam when I committed 2 years ago for Linux gaming. I preferred GOG back then, but with Proton and much friendliness of Valve, I prefer Steam now.