Factorio multiplayer update#
You only get told that it happened then, your game has to update its local simulation by itself. Then, the server only tells you if something changes by user input, such as if a player places a belt at some coordinates, dies from a biter (or a train), etc. In Factorio, the connection to the server starts with the server giving you just the map. Instead, during the creation of multiplayer, the developers created multiplayer using the lockstep protocol. Factorio is very different to most multiplayer games, like CS:GO or Overwatch, so the devs couldn’t just take the multiplayer implementation model from these, and port it to Factorio, as it wouldn’t work properly. An instance is an occurrence of something, for example, there can be many instances of apples in a basket or tabs in Chrome. This means that if one person does something on their computer, other people’s instances of Factorio need to do the same. A Fully Deterministic ApproachĪs mentioned in FFF-30, all clients and the server must simulate the game in the same way, the same actions at exactly the same time. This is very useful on larger servers which can have tens to hundreds of players online at once, as nobody has to wait for one single person so they can play the game. This means that if you have an older computer, a server will no longer wait for you to catch up in processing. With Factorio 0.14.0, Factorio servers no longer paused the game for all players if one player’s computer takes too long to process an update. It also allowed multiple server instances to run at the same time on one machine, which is very useful in some cases. This meant that servers could now run on machines without GPUs, which greatly reduced the cost of Factorio servers and improved accessibility. In Factorio 0.12.0, as a major feature, headless servers were added. A lot of work has been put into multiplayer development for 500 players to be able to connect at once. There was also this bug which didn’t allow for three or more people to connect at once - unlike this 500+ player multiplayer session nearly six years later. It was of course fixed, not even three hours later, in typical Wube fashion. When the first multiplayer was released, there were quite a few bugs, such as this bug which didn’t allow multiplayer games to last more than 20 seconds. This multiplayer was unlike the one you see today, you couldn’t for example easily ‘Join Friend’ through Steam or use the server browser - you needed to know the exact IP address of the server. In October 2014 with Factorio 0.11.0, multiplayer was introduced into the game though it has been worked on since Factorio 0.9.4. I will be explaining the usage of fully deterministic and lockstep algorithms, amongst other things. In today’s edition of Alt-F4, I will briefly explain the history of multiplayer, and then I will take a deeper dive into explaining how multiplayer works technically. Most of us have probably connected to a Factorio server at least once, to play with friends or just check out some else’s builds.
Factorio multiplayer free#
If you’ve ever wondered what a desync is or how the game manages to handle hundreds of players and many thousands of entities at once, please feel free to dive right in! Factorio Servers oof2win2 You may wish to remap the controls for zooming and alt-mode.In this week’s 26th issue of Alt-F4 (half a year of issues!), oof2win2 goes into the Factorio multiplayer and explains some of the technical machinations behind it. The Alt key and mouse scrollwheels are ignored by Factorio in the current version of Universal Split Screen. You can optionally use Toggle window borders to trim the window borders.Ĭlick Start split screen.
Factorio multiplayer download#
If it is unavailible, download this as Factorio.json in the Config folder. Install and run Universal Split Screen: see the Quick Start guide. On the other instances, go to Play -> Multiplayer -> Play on LAN and select the game.Enable LAN and Disable Verify user identity. Host a game on the first instance by going to Play -> Multiplayer -> Host new game or Host saved game. You can toggle windowed mode by pressing Alt+Enter. Make sure the instances are running in windowed mode. Launch the other instances with SplitScreen2.bat, SplitScreen3.bat, etc. This first instance will be able to load your existing save games. Run the first instance by running SplitScreen1.bat. You may want to move your saves from Factorio\saves to %APPDATA%\Factorio\savesĭownload the script files here and extract them into the Factorio\bin\圆4 folder. #config-path=_PATH_executable_/././configĬonfig-path=_PATH_system-write-data_/config