— 2022.10.29. 오전 7:52

I don't haven anything particularly good to show yet, but I'm experimenting with new systems for terrain height, elevation layers, and cliffs. One of the problems with cliffs is that they just do their own thing. There's no way to get fine control over where they go in the the terrain generation. Part of it is because they're on a 4x4 grid but even if the map tiles are forced to spawn in 4x4 grid blocks too, it just won't line up with what cliffs are doing. I want some parts of maps to have much more distinct elevation changes so the high ground tiles are different from the low ground tiles and there are usually cliffs dividing them. I've found two ways around the problem that each half work but they don't work together very well, at least not yet. More work is needed. It's really hard to tell how long this highly experimental stuff will take.



— 2022.11.18. 오전 9:07

0.7 Is progressing slower than expected. The main reason is that I keep getting caught up in other things so it's not getting as much time as I wanted, but also it's just a huge amount of work. There are some pretty big problems with what I want to do with terrain that require some fairly elaborate workarounds. I think I have a proof of concept solution for it, and that's what this picture is. Ignore the new tileset and broken cliff graphics (+lack of rocks and decoratives, etc). The important part is getting the cliff-like objects spawning on top the darker rock terrain in a way that doesn't add lots of new collision masks. They may look like cliffs but they're not proper Factorio cliff objects, they're something else more like rocks. Anyway, it was pretty difficult to get working and so far there are no terrible side effects so it seems like a winning solution out of so many failures. That doesn't mean that this new planet type is done, just that I know that the technology I need for it can work. With this proof of concept done, the next step is to make some large changes to the way that SE generates universes. I've mentioned a few times that the universe code is the hardest area of the code to work on, so the next few weeks are going to be difficult. Unfortunately working on the universe now is needed because in 0.7 planets are more than just alien biomes terrain sliders and they are generated in a different way. Also there will be different star types (probably 3) and some planet types will only be around certain star types. Maybe it's also a good time to do some refactoring, but we'll see how my sanity holds out.



 — 2022.12.05. 오전 9:28

I have a new way of building the universe now. I'm not really tracking my time for this but it was at least 25 hours this week.  It's not finished, but after spending a week tearing everything apart 0.7 was in a state where it couldn't load, so this week was heavily focussed on getting it loading again. I'm back to the state where I can start a new game and build a new universe (but crashes if I try to launch a satellite or use the universe explorer). In some ways the new system is simpler which is good, but I haven't added any code for the universe to handle new or removed resources, or resources changing mid-game and support for that will undoubtedly make things a lot more complicated (because that's what happened last time). The important thing is that the new system is more flexible. Surfaces are faster to generate and can be more unique, so it's all-round better for gameplay. Game save file size should be reduced too.


This was a complete accident. Things for other planets were spawning on Nauvis, which they shouldn't do. It looks pretty interesting even though it would be horrible to play. The textured / relief-shaded sections are basically my fake cliff system going rogue.



 — 2022.12.05. 오전 9:28

I have a new way of building the universe now. I'm not really tracking my time for this but it was at least 25 hours this week.  It's not finished, but after spending a week tearing everything apart 0.7 was in a state where it couldn't load, so this week was heavily focussed on getting it loading again. I'm back to the state where I can start a new game and build a new universe (but crashes if I try to launch a satellite or use the universe explorer). In some ways the new system is simpler which is good, but I haven't added any code for the universe to handle new or removed resources, or resources changing mid-game and support for that will undoubtedly make things a lot more complicated (because that's what happened last time). The important thing is that the new system is more flexible. Surfaces are faster to generate and can be more unique, so it's all-round better for gameplay. Game save file size should be reduced too.


This was a complete accident. Things for other planets were spawning on Nauvis, which they shouldn't do. It looks pretty interesting even though it would be horrible to play. The textured / relief-shaded sections are basically my fake cliff system going rogue.