Hello guys,
Factorio 0.4.1 has just been released!
This is a bugfix release to the 0.4.0 update that has been made on Friday. The 0.4.0 has been tested by the guys at the forum and in 0.4.1 we provide bugfixes to the things they found. Let's have a look at the biggest changes introduced in the 0.4.0 and 0.4.1.
The main theme has been the trains. Connected rolling stocks form a train. The trains can be assigned schedules of stations to visit. In the station the train can be loaded / unloaded an refueled. There are also semaphores to guide trains in the railway network. Apart from this we have also fixed some bugs in how railroads and rolling stocks work. Further information about how railway transportation works is available at our wiki.
Apart from the trains we have added quite some functionality to the electricity. There are three new elements for energy distribution: the medium electric pole, the big electric pole and the substation. They all have different properties and are appropriate for different situations. Also there is the long awaited accumulator. Now finally even in night the factories can be protected from the alliens by the laser turrets.
We have invested a lot of time into the tuning the determinism. The game is now (almost) fully deterministic. This is a necessary first step towards the multiplayer. Players can see our effort in action already in the replay functionality. Because of the determinism limitations the replaying functionality works only on the games that has been played within the same version with the same sets of mods all the time (and started in 0.4.1).
As usual the release contains a lot of fixes and extensions in the scripting. As a result some of the 0.3.x version of the mods (especially those using a lot of scripting functionality) might cause errors with the new version. This can be repaired by using updated mods (when that happens). As before, the new version is compatible with all the previous saves. We really don't want the players to lose the games they have spent so much time with.
After the long time of waiting we have added more Linux support. Next to the .deb package there is now a generic .tar package available for download. This is aimed at the more experienced users who will be able to deal with the dependencies themselves.
That was longer than expected. The release details are available as usual on our forums. Time to go for a run to clear the head:)
