
Defacto: Factorio-like game in the browser for the PICO-8 - sxp
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=30631
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gaogao
Vox Mine is another super impressive PICO-8 game -
[https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=32894](https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=32894)

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kickscondor
Maybe not to that level, but also an impressive clone - of Katamari Damacy:
[https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=katamari_christmassy](https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=katamari_christmassy)

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chapium
I'm frequently amazed by what can be built within the limits of PICO-8 and
Lua.

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loup-vaillant
I'm not sure how drastic these limits really are. The display is tiny, the
graphical memory small (32K), and code is limited to 8192 Lua tokens.

On the other hand, I haven't seen any computational model. It seems the
"machine language" actually is Lua, and processing power is not limited by the
specs, but by the _host computer_. Thus, there are quite a few ways we could
trade speed for size.

My dream of a fantasy console is one that we could actually instantiate in
actual hardware, should we want to. Ideally a cheap FPGA for which we have a
Free toolchain, like the iCE40.

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Impossible
This isn't true at all. There are (undocumented) artificial costs to all
instructions, making something like writing a performant software 3D engine
non-trivial. For example there is a benchmark cart that compares runtime
performance of multiple triangle rasterizers
([https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=31478](https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=31478)).
If the limit was the host computers ability to execute Lua you'd be able to
trivially draw 10s of thousands of triangles in software without issue.

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loup-vaillant
Ah, that would explain why I haven't seen it. Good, then.

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mNovak
Reminds me also partially of
[https://factoryidle.com/](https://factoryidle.com/) Lost some hours there in
the past

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willis936
That developer makes abusive design decisions. He does not maximize player
entertainment, he tries to maximize how much money he can squeeze out of
players with addictive loops. There are better options in this genre.

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t0astbread
This is amazing. Especially the fact that a PICO-8 game can own my brain this
much.

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snicky
Please, please don't mention Factorio, it's too addictive. I bought it on
Steam during Christmas 2 years ago and almost forgot there's a world outside.
I spent 80 hours playing it in a couple of days and it was just one game.
Later I found out that most people beat it much faster
([https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=17455](https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=17455))
and it made the guilt of wasting time even stronger.

It is an awesome game though. Just don't start.

~~~
henrikschroder
Oh, you liked Factorio? Let me tell you about this game called Oxygen Not
Included, it's similar, but with more thermodynamics, and cute little dupes
running around...

I only have 560 hours played so far.

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pmoriarty
I absolutely love _Factorio_ (it's one of my all-time favorite games), and
heard a lot of good things about _Oxygen Not Included_ , and the let's plays I
saw of it looked great. But I found it really boring when I actually tried it.
YMMV

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DonHopkins
I'm also extremely addicted to Factorio, and terribly afraid of getting hooked
on Defacto. And not only because it uses a similar 3x5 font as Mike Koss's
"The Terminal" terminal emulator for the Apple ][:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20051217102712/http://mckoss.com...](https://web.archive.org/web/20051217102712/http://mckoss.com/jscript/tinyalice.htm)

When I got bored with Oxygen Not Included, I switched it into sandbox mode,
and played around with the paint brush tools, creating and cooking and
freezing different materials, like a KidPix-like radioactive chemistry set,
mixing together and juxtapositioning and melting and freezing all the
different kinds of solids, liquids, gasses, lava, oil, water, ice, the hard
vacuum of space, etc, to see how they all react with each other.

Here's a video Pawsome Gaming made of Sandbox mode, but I went a bit crazier
with dangerous combinations of water and lava and other weird materials:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NniVJd89Gqk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NniVJd89Gqk)

After a while, that got boring too, but don't miss out on that part of the
experience!

Also: I'm only going to say this once, because even saying it once might ruin
somebody else's life like it's ruined mine, but: RimWorld!

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escherize
I've been playing a great factorio-like called Mindustry. It is less
resources+logistics and a little more starcraft. It is relaxing and satisfying
to rebalance resource lines and optimize production.

[https://anuke.itch.io/mindustry](https://anuke.itch.io/mindustry)

~~~
jaked89
Where Mindustry falls short for me is where once the waves are over, you're
forced to leave your base and start all over.

I'm not motivated to invest in optimization if the production line is going to
be abandoned soon; the game becomes more of a tower defense, and less of a
production one.

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donio
Play custom game, survival mode and see how many waves you can survive. I
think the campaign is more of a tutorial thing and to have a mode with a sense
of progression.

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skrowl
I felt this same way. Survival is the real challenge. Campaign is just for fun
/ learning the mechanics.

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swang
how do i pick the direction that the insert is put in? using my directional
arrow keys doesn't seem to work

edit: ah you're suppose to drop the piece then choose the direction with your
mouse/keyboard

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mdaniel
The pixel perfect placement requirements made me feel like I was trying to
play using those pick-em-up games at the fair. I will just admire this game
for its technical achievement, because the UX is entirely too bad for me.

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cabaalis
Playing in mobile with the Gameboy-like interface is a joy :)

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frozenlettuce
The gameplay was surprisingly smooth in a mobile device. Congrats on the game!

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ouid
are bridges supposed to function as much more efficient inserters?

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myhf
Yes. They also act as splitters.

