Factorio's Belt Bug
pubby.games
pubby.games
A fully compacted belt can move in Factorio, but only when Factorio knows it can output into an open belt. You can have a whole chain of fully compacted belts move, so long as the last segment has an opening. This is handled just like the first algorithm in OP - moving one segment per iteration like a big caterpillar walking.
A loop is just a segment that outputs into its own input - it has a seam. Factorio can't move the belt because it doesn't see an open space. But one could still use the second algorithm, marking segments as immobile rather than tiles. This allows the loop to work without jamming, even with the optimization.
The modern game is a lot more restrictive in terms of how items can be laid out on belts. (This is a good thing. The old behavior was often unpredictable and hard to control.)
I bought in late 2014, pre-steam. I also have a late 2013 email referencing Factorio - a RimWorld project update giving a nod to "Other interesting games you might want to check out"!
Early 2013 was the initial Indiegogo campaign. While the sprites looked much different then, many of the machines and mechanics appear to have been fundamentally in place even way back then - from robots to cars to inserters to belts.
Well worth it to get my name into the game. https://i.imgur.com/RftBXWG.png
First of all, I applaud you for squeezing that much into your life. I honestly think that's awesome.
re single Dad and Cracktorio: my wife calls it Divorcio. So I see how those go together. :)
It's a game. It's not reality. In reality belts need to be powered. Also, in reality, you do not shoot aliens or drive large mechanical spiders. The fact that they chose to implement a game mechanic means it's a game mechanic, not a bug.
The designer didn’t sit down and go “and logically when a circular belt is full, the items should stop moving while the belts keep moving”.
The fact that it was decided to not handle this edgecase does not mean it stops being a bug, no matter how much you love the game or how strongly you want your mantra of “factorial has no bugs” to be true.
Of cause factorial has bugs, lots of them. Just look at the thousands of fixes. This is one of them, and it’s a bug that has been there from the start and will likely never get fixed, but it’s still a bug.
Also, as pointed out, that setup can be made more reliable and not-glitch-using by making the bottom left corner of the loop a slower belt.
Oh and if you're hitting 100% you're using too little nuclear power or building not enough nuclear bombs ;)
My concept was that all of the research would be centralized and wrapped with a single belt that continuously loops with all of the various research types. This kind of works, but everything gets backed up and then no longer rotates, which limits access.
To run a base large enough to produce everything I want has dropped the speed from 60 updates+frames per second to about 40, with each addition further slowing the whole thing down.
It would be an interesting exercise to see how much complexity one could add to a Factorio map before the updates/sec start to drop. I'm hoping that a new AMD chip will be able to handle a much, much larger base/map before slowing down again. EDIT: To actually finish my thought here: You could test different CPU/RAM configurations with a series of maps of increasing complexity.
I have to upgrade my computer to load the map if any other applications are open (something is also messed up with my swap, it just grinds to a halt)
I sometimes think that the rise of mobile, and subsequent need for responsive design, is what truly killed the ideal of an internet driven by readable markup and only the most basic stylesheets.
This is almost certainly a side effect from their belt optimization from years (?) ago? Strangely I do sushi belt science sometimes and I’ve never noticed this bug, I’d wager the splitters and circuit network stuff changes the behavior enough to avoid the problem.
Well, I for one don't care about it. If you are letting belts fill-up with mixed materials you already have enough problems that you won't even notice this. And circular belts just aren't useful.
I think we need a mythbusters style investigation on this.
The cause of this bug is the fact that items move while the belt is static (despite the animation) and their moving requires a free spot in front of them. Once the belt is full, there's no empty spot for items to move into and the items stand still. The loop is stuck.
A somewhat valid use-case is for inserting science packs into labs.
There are seven kinds of science packs in the vanilla game, so without sushi belts, you need four belts to bring all of them to the labs. That can take a lot of space, making it harder to for instance use beacons (which like compact designs since their effect range is limited).