Controller support

[Twinsen]

Here you can give general feedback about how it is to play Factorio with a controller(or Joy-Con controllers).
Things like what parts are not intuitive, what important actions are too slow and cumbersome, feedback related to vibrations

[Borax Kid]

Navigating the inventory is a bit slow when trying to get to the right part of the UI, for crafting or putting/getting stuff from furnaces etc.

Would love it if the right stick would let me change the "section" of the UI my cursor is in, eg. opening the inventory followed by a right move on the right stick and my cursor is in the crafting menu. Or maybe L/R ?

[Twinsen]

I'm considering adding an option to wrap around the GUI to maybe help with this situation.

[jakeman27]

Another way of speeding up navigation is to use a modifier button to move say 5 items at a time rather than one by one. I did this on another game on my Steam Controller where if I held one of the bumpers and used the D-pad it did 5 button presses instead of 1.

Just an idea

[Antipatience]

When using JoyCons, SL & SR on the left JoyCon can have distinct functions from SL & SR on the right, but there’s no distinction in the controller UI for which one is mapped to which. Definitely love having 4 extra buttons instead of 2, but not being able to tell them apart is rough.

[Alexey152]

Hi folks,

So, my wife is playing the demo on Switch right now and here is some feedback bits:

I noticed that in menus like "main menu" or "new game" you have to use your left stick (like toggle it up and down) to get any items in focus. It would be great to always have some item in focus (perhaps the first one?) to simplify and speed up the navigation.

When we entered new game -> tutorial, it wasn't clear which exact ui element is now in focus and we had to toggle them a bit to understand what is in the focus and how to get to play button. Perhaps more contrast would help here: on the right bottom there were levels selection and the background color of it is only changing slightly when it is in focus.

Some of default key bindings feel a bit unnatural, such as:
- Perhaps heavily influenced by recently played games, but there inventory is accessible by pressing "plus" button on a right joy-con (Stardew Valley: https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Controls# ... Controller, Diablo 3) and not `X`. Whilst writing this, googled Minecraft and it uses `X` (but we haven't played it in a while)
- `B` is a default "back" button on the console and all the games. Would be great to be able to exit inventory with `B` instead of repeating `X`
- An entity such as furnace can be "opened" through `A`, but closed with `X`: again, `B` is universal close on the Switch

When you open a chest and want to move some item from/to it: you have to grab it first and then move your cursor to another storage (player inventory or chest). However, the game anyway auto-orders items so they fill the top leftmost cells first, so it doesn't make any sense to actually move it with a "cursor". So, it would be great to have a button to quickly move the whole stack. Being familiar with the game, I know that such key exists, but perhaps it should be advertised more on Switch version, because it takes more time to move items with sticks than with a proper mouse.

Which brings us to a more general feature request: the game should have more tips about controls. This would greatly improve user experience of new players. For inspiration, look at screenshots from
- Minecraft: https://www.vooks.net/minecraft-nintend ... on-review/
- The Witcher 3: https://scifiempire.net/wordpress/the-w ... e-console/
- Graveyard Keeper: https://switchrpg.com/reviews/graveyard ... ew-switch/

Perhaps some of those are not really issues, but I'm just broadcasting a first impression here from the first 20 minutes of gameplay. Let me know if you have other questions or want us to test other aspects of the game!

[PrgSkidmark]

I've been a little frustrated because I don't know what all the controls do.
I'm playing through the tutorial now so not much time yet.
Perhaps you can create a graphic like this with all the functions.
https://en-americas-support.nintendo.co ... er-diagram
I keep going to settings, controls, and looking at what they do.

Update: I found out about the Tips and Tricks panel that shows some controller assistance. I either glossed over this in the tutorial, or I missed it.
Update 2: the tips and tricks have been invaluable to mastering the controls. I wish the button representations were bigger, and perhaps the font was bigger. The button representations are in blue and I find it hard to see against the background especially that small.
Thanks,
Doug

[martinw89]

I personally have a really hard time wrapping my head around the “absolute” vehicle control rather than a “relative” approach. In other words, I think it’s easier to use accelerate, brake, left, right controls rather than down on the left stick always meaning I want to go down on the screen. Especially because it’s hard to predict how the car will react with absolute controls (will it brake? Will it go in reverse?)

[PrgSkidmark]

I personally have a really hard time wrapping my head around the “absolute” vehicle control rather than a “relative” approach. In other words, I think it’s easier to use accelerate, brake, left, right controls rather than down on the left stick always meaning I want to go down on the screen. Especially because it’s hard to predict how the car will react with absolute controls (will it brake? Will it go in reverse?)

I finally built a car. I spend some time driving it around killing biters and bases. I agree that the car is horrible to drive. There’s no fine control at all which lead to crashing into everything and it almost being destroyed before I could repair it. If this game adopted the GTA in car control scheme it would be so natural as I believe a lot of games adopt that scheme.
The main issue was if my car was facing east and stopped and I want to go south, I had to push the stick like in a half circle from E, SE, and S before it went south. It had to actually move eastward before it could circle south. I’m sure with a wide open area it’s no problem, but with a million trees, boulders, and cliffs it was hard to do.

[EMaDeLoC]

It will be great if there is a control to adjust sensibility in right joystick or mouse to move the cursor faster or slower.

Also, when I use an aanlog joystick to move a player, I expect to control speed and more than the classic 8-way.

D-pad is not working at all in menus or inventory. In that scenarios D-pad is better than joystick, faster and is more accurate.

Selecting entities with right joystick is sometimes frustrating. If cursor moves between three entities, you can select the two of the sides, but jumps the middle one. It needs a little bit of work.

BTW, great port!!

[montoyo]

Loving the Switch port!
Controls are mostly alright, but I must say however that the car controls are horrible as pointed out by others
Also, the right joystick which selects tiles to remove/repair is quite limited. What bothers me mostly is when I try to repair my 3-layered wall. It seems that I can only reach the outer layers, and have to break some of the layers to reach the inner ones - or perhaps there's a trick I'm not aware of

Anyway, cheers for the great port! I really surprised by how fast it took. Read the FFF about it and suddenly it was there!

[NJLGamer64]

Hello I have been playing factorio on pc since 2019 and happily bought the switch port when it came out last week and I have played about 10 hours. After playing I have some controller suggestions that I hope to be considered. The vehicle control is weird in the switch port. I think there should be an option for a completely different set of controls while in a vehicle. I personally have never felt the need to build while in a vehicle so that means that while in a vehicle the triggers and d-pad could be used for other things. I thing the D-pad should be used to select the weapon, right shoulder should stay fire, and the left shoulder button should be grenades perhaps while this setting is on the car and tank would have a "grenade launcher" the player would need to load with grenades similar to ammo but it would still have the same range as throwing them by hand. And a return to tank controls where the left stick is turning and the triggers are for forward and reverse. Also a hand held grenade launcher so you could aim with the right stick and fire with shoulder button. Next I like the "radial" 8 way hot menu for the left stick, I wish it was a little less clunky though. I think there should be a toggle in the menu to keep it on screen in the bottom right corner ( or maybe top left) and then when the player hold the l button the left stick switches from movement to selection even if the right stick is in cursor mode and could make the menu bigger.I prefer using the cursor mode in stead of the snap mode for the right stick but that preference makes the l-button hot menu hard to use.

[driver]

I'm playing on PC but like to play with a gamepad from time to time and looking at some old postings about gamepad configurations and nintendo switch youtubevideos inspired me for this very simple configuration, which has only essential functions in one set what avoids a lot of headaches and offers comfortable direct access to the quickbar and zooming (!).
Map, Technology tree, (...) can be accessed by the game interface.
It has 5 sets, but all of them are identical apart from the d-pad, which is used to cycle through the quickbar with one-way selectors. Dpad left 1-5, dpad right 6-0.
You can cycle through different quickbars with shift (right stick button) and Dpad left 1-5 or Dpad right 6-0.
This can be done with third party tools like xpadder or antimicro (free).
Antimicro also has a documented cycle-function, which you could use instead of 5 sets connected with oneway selectors for the quickbar.

[TORAK3WOLF]

A while back the developers put out a blogpost about consistency in menus. They used examples showing the confirm option is always on the right side of the screen and highlighted green, while the back/backout option is left, and highlighted red. What I see in the switch menus is counter to that philosophy. With nintendo products, A is confirm/progress, B is back/backout: in all scenarios, and in all menus. Currently the switch version of factorio has sort of a "continue with the settings as is" currently with X, but sometimes A and you are never sure which is available at any given time, which feels awkward especially when you are trying to "back" out of a menu and the only way to close it is with a "confirm all" button.

Traversing any menu should be possible with the D-pad. Period. Full stop. How this got skipped in development astounds me.

Using the "cursor mode" should not stop the functionality of the quick bar menu. None of the controls overlap/interfere with one another. I was excited when I realized the switch version was going to have a quick access wheel and was severely disappointed when I realized that with "cursor mode", the wheel was basically unusable.
Within "cursor mode" the left stick/ D-pad should scroll text/space in menus. In a broader scope, the non dominant stick should always scroll text/space in menus, while the dominant stick should scroll through selectable/toggleable options.

/endrant*

*probably**
**nah, who am I kidding?

[bowling_allie]

ive been playing on switch for a couple hundred hours and its a wonderful port so far, i liked reading the fff about it :). im impressed with how well it plays on controller. im not a fan of the default control scheme, bc it feels to much like a mapping straight from kb&mouse and doesnt allow me to build and move the cursor at the same time, but thats all rebindable.

some notes:
having the left stick move the character when navigating ur inventory in free cursor mode would make way more sense to my brain than having it also move the cursor.

its hard to build in map mode when the left stick wont go straigt up or down, left or right, i use this all the time on pc, (get a blueprint hold lmb, hold w, and tada new rail line, but on controller i have to zoom out, position the view, carefully position the cursor on the tiny map, hold build, then move the cursor straight in a direction, i have to be zoomed out to cover enough distance. it would be much nicer if the move stick behaved like the cursor and was 8 directional until turned

the craft queue can get down to a single square when in a spidertron, even tho theres plenty of room in the middle of the screen

thanks <3

[Drexel]

Navigating the inventory is a bit slow when trying to get to the right part of the UI, for crafting or putting/getting stuff from furnaces etc.

Would love it if the right stick would let me change the "section" of the UI my cursor is in, eg. opening the inventory followed by a right move on the right stick and my cursor is in the crafting menu. Or maybe L/R ?

I'm considering adding an option to wrap around the GUI to maybe help with this situation.

Was this solved/implemented in the meanwhile? Tried the Switch demo yesterday and this is so annoying it would keep me from buying the full version. Googling gave me no result.

Switching the left and right window halfs with L and R would also be a possibility.

[Twinsen]

Was this solved/implemented in the meanwhile?

Not yet, sorry. I tried to look into it a few times but the implementation for this is not so easy because of the rather complicated heuristic algorithm used to navigate the widgets so it was always postponed for easier improvements.

[Drexel]

Thank you, I appreciate your quick response! Hope you get it into finally. As it is still on your list, maybe I give the Switch version a try, it would be a great game for any kind of trips.

It would also be nice, if on opening an inventory or switching in left/right pane the first item would be selected already, currently you always have to press down, which is what you want in 99% of the cases if you open an inventory. But that would be the icing on the cake.

[Drexel]

Ok I want to give some more feedback for the controller support of Factorio.

I also play the PC Version of the game and I know that the controls are complex and not everything will be as comfortable and fast as with keyboard and mouse. But I think the most common functions should be easy to reach and should stick to established controller/console inputs.

Here are some suggestions (button naming of the Switch controller):

- On opening the character inventory, the cursor is on the top left over the character inventory, you see it when you have an item in your hand. That lets you switch over to the crafting/character side one time by pressing right. But in any way you have to press down to get to the inventory/crafting area. This is not the case in buildings or chests inventory, if you press right there you don't switch over to the buildings inventory but to the first line of the character inventory. This feels inconsistent and confusing.

- In the inventories it would be easier to navigate by the D-Pad.

- If you can switch sides in the inventory menu by L and R then in the character inventory you should be able to change the crafting category on the right side (logistics, production, intermediate, combat) by ZL and ZR. And switch between crafting and character on the right side by holding ZL or ZR and then press L and R e.g. And the cursor/selected item on opening a menu or switching sides should always be on the most top left item of the inventory/crafting/character. Maybe if you have an item in the hand on the item you have in hand if you have it in the inventory. Or on the position before you switched the side if you switch several times. Don't know which option feels really well.

- In research the selected technology and its description should change immediately after changing the technology and not on pressing A. A instead should start the research immediately so that you don't need to navigate to the start research button. (I couldn't queue research on the Switch, but maybe this is a limitation of the demo/tutorial?!?)

Thank you for the great work on the game!

[Twinsen]

I couldn't queue research on the Switch, but maybe this is a limitation of the demo/tutorial?!?

It should work by navigating to the "Start research" button and pressing it.
Another trick is to "double-click" the research by double-tapping A. I understand it's not intuitive, it's mostly a side-effect of how it's implemented for mouse and keyboard.