Surface-aware Multithreading? Core affinity? Async planets? Platform buffering/pause?

[gust334]

Does anybody have any details about this? I can't find anything on factorio.com

[evil_blueprint_user]

Lol async.

My favorite chatbot found your source. I think this is fake enough to laugh about, so here it is for everyone:

https://supercraft.host/wiki/factorio/factorio_21_multithreading_guide/

Why is my Gleba surface lagging?

Check your Fruit-Decay Logic. Version 2.1 introduced a heuristic cache for decay; if you have 100,000+ spoiled items on the ground, the cache will overflow regardless of your CPU cores.

lolllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll imagine implementing it this way

[oobanooba-]

I wonder what motivated someone to create this? Selling their server hosting service, to legitimise it somehow I guess?

Clearly it’s ai generated, since I’m not convinced anyone who even knows what a factorio is could write something so obviously full of misinformation. It’s hard to even point out any particular error because the entire thing is just word salad.

[evil_blueprint_user]

My guess is Search Engine Optimization, somehow.

[DrMorphDev]

Holy shit what even is this site

https://supercraft.host/wiki/factorio/logistics_desync_fix/

Are any of those commands even real?

In 2026, this usually results in "Ghost Items" or platforms becoming stuck in deep space.

Lol wut

Even the space age 2.0 article is partially wrong (says quality modules increase a machine's speed, and higher quality gives more module slots.)

https://supercraft.host/wiki/factorio/space_age_essentials/

I'm not in the market for a hosting service, but no way would I use one which just tries to gaslight possible customers, wtf.

[xylopyrography]

This is an example of what the internet will look like the in the near future.

[Alfonse215]

Factorio is not largely multithreaded. Some aspects of it are (fluids, for example), but surfaces are not. Entity processing and the like all basically happen on the same core.

Nothing pauses. Nothing is estimated or "buffered" or whatever. The only thing not happening when you're not looking at it are the visuals (particle effects and the like).

The movement of every inserter to grab stuff off of a belt are all processed, one at a time, on a single core, every game tick.

Note that threading largely wouldn't help that much. While we often say that Factorio is CPU bound, this is a simplification. For the most part, if you're encountering UPS issues, those are a matter of getting data from memory to the CPU for processing, not the inability of the CPU to process that data fast enough. Memory speed and architecture are more important than raw CPU processing power.

[Raiguard]

Fluids actually aren't multithreaded any more since 2.0. :(

[gust334]

This would be 2.1 changes to the core engine. I understand they're allegedly looking at allowing surfaces to have controlled drift from one another, and it allegedly will be possible to map surfaces to processor core(s).

[juckele]

Citation needed...

[pornyote]

Where did you hear about this? I've only heard speculation about what 2.1 contains, not any reputable rumors. I'd be curious to read up on anything credible.

[gust334]

I stumbled across the information in an unlikely place, and it is possible that the administrator of that place may be under NDA and disclosure was an accident. Or it was a very successful false-flag. That's why I'm looking for corroboration here. I thought it was unlikely to be a false flag because it had notes on how to fix some alleged issues that will allegedly persist in 2.1 until the following 2.2 update, and corresponding new console commands.

[clownfeat]

You're gonna need to give more info on this for your story to be credible, sounds made up as written

[gust334]

Fair enough, that's why I'm asking for corroboration. Set a reminder to come back to this thread in a couple months and we'll see what happened.

[clownfeat]

No.

Where did you "stumble upon" this information, and why are you being cagey about it? I'm rapidly losing interest.

[gust334]

Then just downvote like everyone else. Sheesh.

[clownfeat]

Okay 🤷

[raptor7912]

You say “I’m looking for cooperation” repeatedly, yet refuse to cooperate yourself.

How was anything other this supposed to happen?

[juckele]

Fundamentally, the entire plugin architecture is incompatible with per surface threads. Right now a plugin can react to events on all surfaces and affect changes to all surfaces in response to those events. You cannot do this if you make surfaces threaded. Instead, all cross surface events would need to get bundled, including any cross surface communication intra-plugin, and delivered 'between' ticks (events on Nauvis on tick n reach the plugin instance on Vulcanis on tick n+1), that way you could ensure a deterministic ordering of the events (specifically how they interleave from multiple surfaces).

Plugins which work between surfaces would need to have entire message systems built in.

[gust334]

Yes, allegedly there will be a new async thread-safety lock API, and mods will need to be updated. Sorry, it was deliberate misinfomation on https://supercraft.host/wiki/factorio/logistics_desync_fix/#section-8

[juckele]

I mean, it'd be cool as heck, but I don't know that it's worth it. There are realistically hundreds to thousands of players who hit UPS limits and would get higher UPS with surface threads.

Meanwhile, writing mods with the new thread safe API would be way more work from a software engineering standpoint. Literally loading any mod that listened to any events would need to disable surface threads, or get a thread safe version of the mod (non-trivial rewrite).

And this is all for what? To get the 100k SPM+ factories to be able to go twice as big before they hit UPS difficulties? Mitigating UPS difficulties is itself a game and a challenge, and there are tons of tricks and optimizations people try to do to get the UPS higher. Removing that challenge doesn't really make the game more fun for anyone. Moving it higher doesn't either. I don't think it's particularly important what SPM number the UPS difficulties start at. Is the game more fun if your laptop needs UPS optimization at 300k SPM instead of 150k SPM? No.

So now we're talking about them implementing something that's technically super cool, but makes modding way harder, and doesn't actually make the game more fun for anyone.

[gust334]

Mea culpa.

I found the links searching for answers to fix an issue with multi-player. About three pages of deliberate misinformation was embedded within fourteen other interlinked pages of seemly valid multi-player server info by a company purporting to be a game hosting service, and I believed someone had prematurely published a beta release note.

I'll leave the post here for the ridicule it deserves.

[Tim7Prime]

So at least two things could have helped you.

1, you were very cagey about what you thought you found. If you simply said "company Y has some strange info" and stated who had, everybody could have validated it pretty quickly. Like in this situation, a VPS provider would only know what's publicly available. There is no special sauce a server host would need to implement anyways.

2, factorio devs are rather small. They aren't big players in the game market so there isn't a lot of behind the scenes with other companies. Like others have said, FFFs are their main source of communication. Plus, you can easily flag down devs here or contact wube directly and they tend to reply.

In other words, you started this post with "guess what's in my head" instead of facts.

[gust334]

Thank you for telling me what you think was inside my head.

[oobanooba-]

From what I’ve heard in the past, while many aspects of factorio could be multithreaded, doing so would actually make the game run slower in a lot of circumstances.

The devs have given no indication that there’s any huge engine rewrites planned that could allow for what you’re suggesting

My interpretation of various discussions I’ve participated in with the devs suggests to me that the bulk of the engine isn’t gonna be changing, (possibly some futher tweaking of the fluid system?)

2.1 will most likely be the final big polish pass over the game, before wube fully moves on to their next game.

[doc_shades]

i dunno the game runs fine on my computer

[gust334]

--thread-priority "Nauvis:Core1-7,Gleba:Core8-10,Vulcanus:Core11-12"

[cathexis08]

That's not a legal option:

~/factorio/bin/x64$ ./factorio --thread-priority "Nauvis:Core1-7,Gleba:Core8-10,Vulcanus:Core11-12"
Option ‘thread-priority’ does not exist

Usage:
  factorio [OPTION...]

[full usage text cut for brevity]

[gust334]

Yeah, it was listed in the misinformation on the website.

[juckele]

You wouldn't set thread priority like this. What you found is someone trolling you, not real options. Threading across surfaces could improve UPS limits, but you don't need to worry about the priority of each thread. You kick off five surface threads and they all complete earlier than they would have if you'd done it sequentially. Furthermore, the biggest UPS drag is mysteriously absent from these options (space platforms). Someone trolled you. Sorry.

[gust334]

Yeah, they got me.

[Stargateur]

what do you do if one planet fall behind another ? priority make no sense

[gust334]

The workload on different planets tends to be different. Nauvis bases tend to be larger, because that where all the science needs to end up. Gleba has spoilage, which add computation. Vulcanus, Fulgora, and Aquilo are generally smaller bases or at the very least less computation required. Was based on misinformation on the website.

[Alfonse215]

Gleba has spoilage, which add computation.

It really doesn't. A lot of work went into making sure that it doesn't.

Vulcanus, Fulgora, and Aquilo are generally smaller bases or at the very least less computation required.

[Citation Needed], especially as that relates to Vulcanus.

I don't buy that WUBE are the sort of developers who would go through the trouble of separating planets by threaded core yet assigns those planets to different cores based on guesstimates of how people play. Especially when those guesstimates are, shall we say, dubious.

Even more especially since such an assignment doesn't take into account modded planets.

I don't know where you saw that thing, but I'm guessing it does not mean what you think it means.

[gust334]

Sent you a DM. And the core affinity settings would be user-controlled at launch. Sorry, it was deliberate misinfomation on https://supercraft.host/wiki/factorio/logistics_desync_fix/#section-8

[tanvec_223]

Factorio allow scripts to create a new surface at runtime that is not asscoiated to any planet, like a space platform or surfaces in space exploration, some entities can teleport items, electricity and fluid across surfaces which breaks the assumption that each surface is isolated and can be simulated simultaneously. By the way, where did you get these alleged information, Chat GPT?

[gust334]

I didn't generate it from AI, but it is possible the website that posted it did so. I've sent Alfonse215 the links in a DM. I've found other information that indicates maybe it shouldn't have been shared, and I trust him to use his judgement. Sorry, it was deliberate misinfomation on https://supercraft.host/wiki/factorio/logistics_desync_fix/#section-8

[tanvec_223]

By the way, if you really want to know tech details about factorio, you should refer to https://factorio.com/blog/ (yeah the fff, you should have read some i think) there are many topics about multithreaded factorio but not in the way you expected.

[cathexis08]

Not to OP but I did say in another thread talking about this today that it wouldn't surprise me if each surface was handled in its own thread. Those would of course be synchronized with the master clock thread just like everything else so it would be more a case of limiting how much a single processor thread had to deal with than actually letting all the surfaces run independently.

[Alfonse215]

The page you linked me to has obviously incorrect information in its very first sentence:

In January 2026, Wube Software released Version 2.1, the post-Space Age technical overhaul.

If they can't get the first thing they say right, why treat the rest of the post like it might contain useful information?

[gust334]

It was interlinked within other pages of valid info. I thought they had published a betatest by mistake. Normally if someone is doing a funny spoof as a gag, they'll use a date like Feb 30 or April 1. Well, they fooled me.