Playing Factorio offline

[pat]

Over this past weekend, I took my laptop to a location without any wifi. Tried firing up Factorio and Steam demanded I log in. Couldn't because I was offline. Ok, so now that I DO have a connection again, I've done the research and know you can set Steam to be offline. Nice.

I normally play Factorio on my desktop PC. When I initially loaded it onto my laptop and started up a game, it was able to load up a game I had been playing on the desktop. So it must have been uploaded to Steam's cloud. How convenient!

Normally, the laptop is turned off. I'll play Factorio on my desktop, and then when I go away on the weekend, I'll take the laptop. But with it being offline, it's not going to be able to see the cloud. How will it have access to the saved game? Prior to leaving wifi access, do I need to run Factorio on the laptop and start up that saved game? Is there another way to download everything from the cloud before I go offline for the weekend?

[Hedning]

Even if you sync saves to the steam sales don't you still have copies in the save folder? If so just copy them over.

[piccolo255]

Yes, either run the game once on your laptop to have it sync while you're connected, or copy them from desktop to laptop manually (they're in %APPDATA%\Factorio\saves).

Btw, you can download DRM-free versions from the Factorio homepage. Those don't have Steam integration, so it won't automatically sync or track your play time, but it doesn't require Steam to run so you can start it even if you forget to prepare by setting Steam to offline mode or whatever.

[Hedning]

Isn't default that steam will prompt you to play in offline mode if it can't find a connection?

[PunCrathod]

Originally posted by Hedning:

Isn't default that steam will prompt you to play in offline mode if it can't find a connection?

only if you tick the remember password and sign in automatically checkboxes. If you have it ask for password then it can't login even in offline mode wihtout internet.

[pat]

Originally posted by PunCrathod:

only if you tick the remember password and sign in automatically checkboxes.

I can't understand how this would be right. If you don't have a connection, how could it possibly "sign in" - automatically or not?

[Xilo The Odd]

its a form of security, it writes a document to the computer with accepted credentials for the games specifically on your rig. or something along those lines. this way the software will accept that there is no online connection and accept your login.

how it works i dunno, but it works.

[PunCrathod]

Originally posted by pat:

Originally posted by PunCrathod:

only if you tick the remember password and sign in automatically checkboxes.

I can't understand how this would be right. If you don't have a connection, how could it possibly "sign in" - automatically or not?

When you login with internet with those checkboxes ticked steam send some unique information about your computer to steam servers with your accountname and password and makes an encrypted security file for you that only works for that account on that computer. Then the next time you start steam it does not need to send accountnames or passwords to the internet as it can just use the security file. Steam actually doesn't even remember your password when the remember password is ticked. Instead it uses that security file.

[Horoai]

Originally posted by PunCrathod:

Originally posted by Hedning:

Isn't default that steam will prompt you to play in offline mode if it can't find a connection?

only if you tick the remember password and sign in automatically checkboxes. If you have it ask for password then it can't login even in offline mode wihtout internet.

No steam offline mode always works no need to save the password.

You DO, however, have to successfully log into your account with active internet connection once before you can do that. A successful login creates a file in some hidden steam folder containing all kinds of information to your account, including your account settings.

I'm fairly sure that steam saves a hash of your pw locally and whenever you login it only verifies with the local hash value. If you're online, it also checks with the steam servers whether this PC is known (triggers 2factor authentication with your email) and perhaps sends a one-time password generated from your hash for authentication.
This last part can be skipped with offline mode but the first part cannot so you have to have the files on your PC before trying to run offline.



Steam cloud
All games with this feature enabled try to sync their files with steam cloud (settings, save games, etc). This means you'll have all these files locally on your harddrive but steam tries to upload any changes you make (by changing a setting or saving a game) or download any such changes made on other computers.

If there is no internet connection then steam simply cannot sync. You will have your local version of files to play with but any progress you save won't get uploaded to be available on your dektop or vice versa.

If you want to make this happen simply start steam in online mode once you get back home on your laptop and let it sync up.




@OP Also note:

1) FYI if you're planning to play local, offline LAN matches.
Factorio used to have a weird behaviour in LAN games without outside internet connection. Dunno if they changed it recently but what happens is the game has all sorts of mod server and private server authentication stuff set up and some of that likes to wait for a lengthy time-out before it let's anyone join your private, local game.

2) FYI DRM free version on their website with your steam key
Linking your steam account to an official factorio account (which you already have to do in order to use their mod portal I believe) will grant you access to stand-alone downloads of Factorio from their website which work without steam or any DRM.

[PunCrathod]

Originally posted by Yggdrasil:

Originally posted by PunCrathod:

only if you tick the remember password and sign in automatically checkboxes. If you have it ask for password then it can't login even in offline mode wihtout internet.

No steam offline mode always works no need to save the password.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-agcb-2555&l=english Steam support page says otherwise.

[Horoai]

Originally posted by PunCrathod:

Originally posted by Yggdrasil:

No steam offline mode always works no need to save the password.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-agcb-2555&l=english Steam support page says otherwise.

Well it says that but I have used offline mode without checking that box houndreds of times.