Alternatieve Vrijdag Factorio Fan Feiten

After a three-week hiatus, Alt-F4 is back, more motivated than ever! We start off with a bang as ilbJanissary goes into depth about how the calculation engine behind FactorioLab does its magic. It might seem complicated at the surface, but the process is broken down into granular parts that are illustrated with actual examples. No eyes will glaze over reading this piece (hopefully!).

Oh man. It really has been a year since I started this project. Can’t quite believe it’s already been a year, while also not quite believing the project carried on for a whole year. In the beginning, it was just a silly idea that I wanted to try out and see where it would go, not really expecting it to become an actual project with dozens of people regularly contributing. It would have likely faded after a few weeks without tons of people stepping up and contributing. But (at least in this reality) it didn’t, which I’m very happy about and grateful for.

For issue #45, Alt-F4 has another mod spotlight to share, with the twist that the issue will be released alongisde the mod itself! Niet has been plugging away at bringing some of Satisfactory’s mechanics to Factorio, and it’s way more involved than just bringing over the recipes and calling it a day. The article below goes into all the tricks that are used to try and emulate another game as closely as possible.

You remember April Fool’s day this year? Was quite a while ago already, but if you visited the subreddit on that day, you probably saw arrow in my gluteus maximus’s mind-bending video. If not, this week’s issue #44 of Alt-F4 will catch you up and then go over how exactly this dark magic presentation was achieved!

In issue #43 of Alt-F4, mod-maker extraordinaire Dysoch talks about his history of modding (which started all the way back in Factorio 0.7!), giving a bit of an overview of how his mods evolved over time. Then, he goes into his latest and greatest project that’s due for release very soon. It’s a big overhaul mod that’s focused on an overarching story with the goal to be more immersive than previous big mods. More on the details below!

In this week’s issue #42 of Alt-F4, after previously investigating the games that influenced Factorio, we’ll now be looking at how Factorio influenced the automation genre as a whole, if that’s even a thing. Maybe it isn’t. After 7.5 million years of contemplation, Nanogamer7 has an answer, and it might surprise you.

This week, for issue #41, oof2win2 returns with a somewhat more technical article about what exactly can go wrong when trying to connect to multiplayer games and how to potentially solve these issues. If you’ve ever wondered why Factorio wouldn’t let you join your friends’ multiplayer game, this article might have some explanations for you!

After a semi-intentional two-week mid-summer break, Alt-F4 makes its glorious return with issue #40. In it, fan-favorite and editor extraordinaire stringweasel does another one of his interviews that gets us some perspective on a Nauvis-related topic. A Nauvian Perspective, if you will. This time, he talked to Franqly who’ll be representing Factorio for the first time at the Summer Games Done Quick charity event. More info on that at the end!

In this week’s issue of Alt-F4 #39, which is divisible by 13 (quick maffs), Drogiwan Cannobi makes their first contribution to the project by elaborating on the background and on the inner workings of his Rube-Goldberg-esque self-expanding factory that’s lovingly titled JOSEF. It’s a really cool concept that is not even that complicated once you get down to the details.

This week, our in-house technical editor decided it was a good idea to write another article himself. We weren’t so sure about that, but nobody could stop him. So, we present: Conor_ writing about the relation between Factorio affinity and the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields of study. Time to don your graduation cap and jump in!