Factorio Forums

This mod portal integrated into the game is a great idea, but it's still in developmeent, so I open a thread on mod portal suggestions for future improvements.

- I am not sure that email notifications work (modder should receive a notification of a new post, or user of a reply, or a way to subscribe to a thread, like on forums). Without this feature, it will be very hard to follow threads news.

- images that uploaded in the gallery are cropped to square. Would it be possible to display them correctly (and maybe only crop them when used in the mod main "logo") Still cropped even if inserted into description, example here : https://mods.factorio.com/mods/binbinhfr/ScoreExtended

- the EDIT description page lacks a "preview" button. It is very tedious to click submit and then go up and switch to the information tab, and then switch back, go down, etc... Especially while discovering this new Markdown styling... (that lacks colors ?)

- we should be able in the description to mix pictures and text, without having the pictures shown in the gallery above. To make descriptions like this : viewtopic.php?f=93&t=23995 (in the forum when you upload an image, if it is placed in the text, it does not appear anymore at the end of the post, same thing with a file upload)

- when clicking on the name of a modder, we should possibly retrieve the list of all his mods, like it was done on the old factoriomods site : http://www.factoriomods.com/authors/binbinhfr

- possibility to search on other terms than only mod's name : modder's name, mod's description, etc...

I'm having real difficulties with the mod portal's design. I'm trying to install bobs mods, but the portal interface makes the process very tedious. Having to restart every time, the inability to install multiple mods at once, is painful. With all the restarts, re-searching for the next mod to install, checking the dependencies and installing them, I'm looking at an hour or more of not-playing simply to TRY bobs mods.

Oh, and don't try to disable anything. Toggling something off restarts you into a crash that can only be bypassed by removing all the mods manually and starting the process again. ATM the mod portal is more trouble than it is worth.

So, I would suggest allowing for multiple mods to be downloaded and saved to the directory BEFORE factorio decides to restart. Restart should only occur once the user is done with the mod portal. Then, if some sort of conflict is preventing the game from starting, some sort of error message explaining exactly which mod is the cause.

Feature requests:

-Mod grouping: Function to group mods together, either to show your kind of modpack or for some bigger mods to have them all in view with one click (for example bob mods)

-Indicator for having a new thread posted on one of your mods/a new answer to your posting.

-Your recent post overview

-New posts/announcements

-Bookmark mods/Favorites

1+ for mod subscribing.

I think the best for the mod portal is really just to function as ONLY a way to download the mods. Do away with the ablity to post discussions on the portal at all, and link all discussions back to the forums, which are pretty good for discussions already. I understand you want to make the portal the go-to place for mods, and stop mods from being on the forums, which is fine and all, but it's just not going to work that way. Basically, if it were up to me, I'd rather the mod portal be scrapped entirely and just make the forums better in some way.


But, since you won't do the above because of your great desire to have a mod portal, make the portal work more like the forums do. Divide the mods into Mod Pack sections and Individual Mod sections, because it's annoying going through 2 pages of bob's mods just to get to the letter C.

For me, the mod portal as a repository is a very good improvement, ,with autoinstall, autoupdate from in-game, and soon maybe mod packs included into maps and autodownloaded when needed (useful for MP).

But I quite agree that I do not see the need to split discussion on factorio-game and discussions on factorio-mods... The original forum is so easy to use, and one place is just enough. It will conduct to 2 forums in parallel, which will be hard to follow... Modders already upload their mod to the portal. That's a good win. They won't post their zip in the forum anymore. So why not keeping mod's posts on forum ?

I'd like to be able to change the displayed name in the mod portal.
Or allow login through forum accounts to upload the mods.

I just notice (by chance) that 2 guys posted reports on one of my mod on the portal... But as I did not receive any email notification, I did not see these reports before...