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| German video: | | German video: |
| http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lywJUWYM3Yw | | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lywJUWYM3Yw |
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| On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 1:33 PM, Myratax <mail@myratax.de> wrote:
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| > Hello Tomas,
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| >
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| > There are some questions that are already covered in some posts on the forum
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| > but since not all the viewers will know your forum I ask them anyways.
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| > If you have anything that I should not mention in the video please mark it
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| > in red or something. So here we go:
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| >
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| > 1. First things first, please introduce yourself to us.
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| >
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| > 2. How big is the Factorio team, where did you meet and how long have you
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| > been working on the game now?
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| >
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| > 3. Where did the idea of Factorio come from?
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|
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| I will answer the first three questions at once because they are
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| somehow related.
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|
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| A friend of mine called Michal (kovarex on the forum) quit his job in the
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| spring of 2012 to start working on Factorio. He has been an avid gamer
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| and had a lot of ideas for the game. Many of those are now present in
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| Factorio. I joined him in the summer of 2012. We are both in our late
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| twenties, with reasonable programming experience. We share a flat in
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| Prague which is now our "office" as well. We both do programming for
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| most of the time, but share other tasks as well (discussing the game
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| design, game propagation, interacting with the community, managing the
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| freelancers etc.)
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|
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| The graphics is done by Albert. An artist from Barcelona whom kovarex
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| found via an advert on some artist forum. He even comes to Prague now
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| and then to live and work with us. We have become good friends with
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| him and plan to visit him at Mallorca, where he lives now.
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|
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| Recently we have been joined by Kuba (blue cube on the forum) our
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| former school mate. He also does programming. So the core team is 3
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| programmers and 1 artist.
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|
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| There are other people who help us now and then. Namely some of
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| our friends, the player on our forum, etc. Big thanks to all of them.
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|
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| A lot of work on the game has been done by the freelancers as well -
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| music, concept art,
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| current character animations, etc.
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|
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| >
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| > 4. What are you currently working on?
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|
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| We make feature releases (more or less) once a month. At the moment we
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| are finishing the 0.6.x release. It should be out by the end of the
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| week. There will be for instance game speed optimizations, the map of
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| the world and some new (undisclosed:D) content.
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|
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| >
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| > 5. You recently delayed the multiplayer mode. What was your reason behind
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| > that?
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|
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| We made some estimates how much work would it be to make the
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| multiplayer. And it turned out to be at least 2 months for 2 people
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| full time (with still somewhat uncertain result). That is too much for us now.
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| Therefore we decided to focus on finishing the singleplayer experience
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| first and get back to
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| multiplayer later. We are still committed to building the multiplayer
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| however there are more important things to work on now (combat, extend
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| and improve main campaign, polishing, more content).
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|
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| >
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| > 6. I am a peaceful player and my current "Let's Play" is on a map without
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| > enemys. Will there be a way in the future to obtain alien artifacts if you
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| > play peaceful?
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|
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| Probably not. The alien artifacts are sort of a reward for players
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| scouting the map and fighting with the enemies. On the other hand not
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| having the alien artifacts will not be a "blocker" for players who
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| don't like to fight (I am not a big fan of fighting either). The
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| artifacts will be used for late technology upgrades that are nice to
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| have, but not essential (faster logistic robots, more efficient
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| weapons, better modules). In
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| other words it will be possible to finish the game without fighting
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| (though it is not now because you need them to build the rocket
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| defense which ends the game).
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|
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| Also we still consider adding the market that would allow you to trade
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| items that you don't have.
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|
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|
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| > 8. There are already a few mods out there for Factorio. How important is a
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| > good community and modding scene to you?
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| >
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|
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| It is really important to us. The game has been designed to be
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| friendly for modders from the beginning. We try to make it as easy and
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| powerful to mod as possible so people can come up with new interesting
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| things. On top of that we actively communicate with the modders on
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| our forum to solve their problems and extend the scripting API for
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| their needs.
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|
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| >
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| > 10. You already have a Steam Greenlight page in the concept section (link in
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| > the description), do you plan the release on other platforms like Desura or
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| > GoG.com?
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|
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| At the moment the page on the steam is only a concept. Our plan is to
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| start a proper Greenlight campaign by the end of the summer. And of
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| course the goal would be to get greenlit and publish the game on Steam
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| in their Early Access section (at the moment they have other awesome
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| games in the process of creation like Kenshi, Gnomoria, Prison
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| Architect, KSP, etc.).
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|
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| AFAIK the GoG.com is only for finished games (I could be wrong). And I
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| don't know how "Indie friendly" they are. When it comes to Desura I
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| heard that the exposure there is not big (also could be wrong). For
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| these reasons our main goal is to get to Steam Early Access and see
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| what comes after that.
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|
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| > 9. Do you plan to support Factorio after the 1.0 release with additional
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| > contend like for example "Don't Starve" ?
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|
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| >
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| > 7. What can we expect with version 1.0?
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| >
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|
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| > 12. Of course the last question has to be "What is the planed release date
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| > for 1.0?"
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|
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| I have reordered and grouped these three questions because they are
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| tightly related.
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|
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| We decided to take a "continuous development" approach to Factorio in
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| a similar fashion many games do nowadays (like those mentioned above
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| related to Steam Early Access or what Minecraft did). We will update
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| the game as long as there is interest in it. And as long as it will
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| cover the development costs:) We might end up being in alpha for a
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| while (which I think is not a bad thing).
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|
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| We don't have a definitive specs or release date for 1.0 (sorry:)). We
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| have a plan for more or less two months ahead and keep updating it
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| based also on the feedback from the community. But to get more
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| specific, Factorio will be called beta when there is at least
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| following: meaningful combat, extended main campaign, more content
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| (new energy sources, at least one new industry and new resources),
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| extended scenario pack, overall polishing (both logic and graphics). I
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| suppose we can start thinking about having 1.0 when there is the
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| multiplayer.
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|
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| >
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| > 11. Is there anything else you would like to mention?
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| >
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|
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| Working on Factorio has been a great experience for us. There has been
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| a lot of downsides but also a lot of upsides. The indiegogo campaign
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| we did in the February has been probably the most intensive month of
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| our lives. We would like to thank to all the people who helped us
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| during our work on this project. This includes our friends, people on
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| the forum or youtubers (like you :)) who help us to propagate the
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| game.
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|
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|
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| > Thank you for your time
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|
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|
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| Thank you for doing this interview.
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|
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| >
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| >
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| > So these are my questions. As i said, I plan on making a german and english
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| > version of the video, as always with links in the description ect.
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| > As soon as I have completed it, I will send you a link to the english video
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| > before I make it public, so you can tell me if you want to have something
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| > changed.
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|
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| I hope some of the answers are not too long. Feel free to reorganize
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| or rephrase them when you feel necessary. Also if there is something
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| missing then just let me know.
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|
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| Looking forward to the interview:)
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|
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| >
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| > Best regards
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| > Myratax
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|
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| Regards
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| Tomas
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|
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|
| === February 5, 2013: [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=125195010 Steam greenlight campaign] === | | === February 5, 2013: [http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=125195010 Steam greenlight campaign] === |