Give entity ghosts a shimmer / animation

[bobthescv]

I think ghost items should be given more distinguishing features, ideally an animated one to make them stick out more from a zoomed out perspective.

What ?

To make ghost items easier to tell apart from placed entities, I suggest giving them some form of animation or distinguishing feature, maybe changing translucency, a different hue, or something to make them stick out more. It's easy to tell a destroyed-item ghost from a real entity, but shift-placed ghosts are much harder.

Why ?

I'm frequently struggling to identify which entities are ghosts. It's easy enough when your factory is tutorial-sized and you're always zoomed all the way in, but as it grows you start to look at it from a zoomed out perspective (or map perspective), it gets progressively harder to tell a ghost from a real entity. Especially difficult on a desert background, which has similar colors to a lot of common items, yellow inserters, tier 1 belts, wooden boxes, and so forth.

[steinio]

A more distinguishable color would be suffice: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Blue-Ghosts

[bobthescv]

Amazing! Thanks

[slippycheeze]

A more distinguishable color would be suffice: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Blue-Ghosts

It helps less than you might think, though I thank the author of that mod (and Picker Tweaks, which offers the same feature) for it.

I'd personally appreciate an animation here, as I do have trouble with picking the static images. I'm sure most people have the eyes that they don't need it so much, but I'd hope the cost wasn't too great on either side. Even just a sparkle, pulse, or color wave would serve the purpose: have something moving, not just static color, since that is a very effective trigger for people to see things.

[Adamo]

Maybe they could just put a little picture of Casper over it.

[Koub]

I'd personally appreciate an animation here, as I do have trouble with picking the static images.

That's what happens when a T-Rex plays Factorio
More seriously (spoiler alert : I'm not sure I know what I'm talking about) isn't there a way to apply a shader on blueprinted entities so that they display as a non fixed image onscreen ?

[Darinth]

This has never been a substantial enough issue for me to pay it much attention, but I do have to acknowledge every now and then coming back to a project I thought I was finished with only to learn something was a ghost.

[Deadlock989]

More seriously (spoiler alert : I'm not sure I know what I'm talking about) isn't there a way to apply a shader on blueprinted entities so that they display as a non fixed image onscreen ?

Not for modders, no. The API provides no access to shaders. It has been discussed but I gather it's a minefield.

What I would personally like to see, as more of a halfway house, is more access to engine-animated effects. We do have a very limited number of them available - a light flicker, the uranium glow effect. But they are not broadly applicable to sprites/animations in general and can only be used on specific prototype properties (working animation lights only AFAIK). Then, for example, I wouldn't need to provide a 30-frame animation of a flickering furnace light, but just one frame which is then animated (e.g. random alpha value per frame) by the engine.

[slippycheeze]

I'd personally appreciate an animation here, as I do have trouble with picking the static images.

That's what happens when a T-Rex plays Factorio

Something like that. Entertainingly, my partner has amazingly acute color perception and meh night vision. I have the exact opposite: shockingly good night vision, but I can't tell the difference between white and pale yellow reliably a bunch of the time. I'm not color blind, but curious testing tells me that I am way below average on color differentiation. So I can't tell close colors apart, but things like red/green etc are no problem.

So the ghosts of, like, at least a couple dozen things that were tinted regular things by mods are ... not really distinguishable. The "GUI Signal Display" is a tinted constant combinator and I just can't see the difference.

I'll take being a T-Rex though.

[ssilk]

I would like to look blueprints like blueprints: Nearly white outlines with dark-blue background. It can also look like "hand-drawn". I think it's just how to use the shader.

[Darinth]

I don't think that I like the idea of a ghost entities looking like actual blue & white blueprints, but some sort of a simple animation/shimmer seems like it'd be easy to spot.

[FuryoftheStars]

I just wonder if the animation/shimmer would have a UPS impact, but then also wonder if there'd even be enough of them out there for that to even matter?

Entertainingly, my partner has amazingly acute color perception and meh night vision. I have the exact opposite: shockingly good night vision, but I can't tell the difference between white and pale yellow reliably a bunch of the time. I'm not color blind, but curious testing tells me that I am way below average on color differentiation. So I can't tell close colors apart, but things like red/green etc are no problem.

Put two colors together/next to each other that are only a few shades off and I can usually tell. Make me look at them separately and I'd think they were the same.

[slippycheeze]

I just wonder if the animation/shimmer would have a UPS impact, but then also wonder if there'd even be enough of them out there for that to even matter?

A shader should have minimal to no impact, and could disable on low enough graphics settings. It'd only eat time on the GPU, and not very much of it at that, I believe. (but here ends my expert knowledge of nothing about the other side of the bus for GPUs, not even as compute rather than graphics.)

Entertainingly, my partner has amazingly acute color perception and meh night vision. I have the exact opposite: shockingly good night vision, but I can't tell the difference between white and pale yellow reliably a bunch of the time. I'm not color blind, but curious testing tells me that I am way below average on color differentiation. So I can't tell close colors apart, but things like red/green etc are no problem.

Put two colors together/next to each other that are only a few shades off and I can usually tell. Make me look at them separately and I'd think they were the same.

Yeah, most people don't do good at the second case. My comments are all about the first case, not the second. I don't think I communicated that, because Englishing is hard even for native speakers.

[Engimage]

I like the idea. Some effect like static noise which is often used to make an effect of a hologram projection

[ssilk]

I don't think that I like the idea of a ghost entities looking like actual blue & white blueprints, but some sort of a simple animation/shimmer seems like it'd be easy to spot.

Currently it’s sometimes really hard to recognize blueprints. Especially in forests they are nearly invisible. That’s the reason why I would like to have more contrast, aka lighter outlines. I cannot say how a shimmer would improve the visibility, but my first guess is, that it would not so good as more contrast.

[bobthescv]

Human eyesight is much better at recognizing movement than static detail, so it would probably help a ton, at least in telling that there is something there, although it may still be hard to say what.

But it should be noted that the blue ghost mod I got as a link made a world of difference, and is something I'd very much support bring rolled out in vanilla.

[nosports]

I don't think that I like the idea of a ghost entities looking like actual blue & white blueprints, but some sort of a simple animation/shimmer seems like it'd be easy to spot.

Currently it’s sometimes really hard to recognize blueprints. Especially in forests they are nearly invisible. That’s the reason why I would like to have more contrast, aka lighter outlines. I cannot say how a shimmer would improve the visibility, but my first guess is, that it would not so good as more contrast.

Hows about a outlined red dashed line around the tiles used in the blueprint, maybe moving ?

[slippycheeze]

I don't think that I like the idea of a ghost entities looking like actual blue & white blueprints, but some sort of a simple animation/shimmer seems like it'd be easy to spot.

Currently it’s sometimes really hard to recognize blueprints. Especially in forests they are nearly invisible. That’s the reason why I would like to have more contrast, aka lighter outlines. I cannot say how a shimmer would improve the visibility, but my first guess is, that it would not so good as more contrast.

Hows about a outlined red dashed line around the tiles used in the blueprint, maybe moving ?

Above everything else, it'd work. Under it, Alien Biomes is gonna mess you around by having some combo of trees and (ground, not floor) tiles that make it low contrast.

[blizgerg]

I'd have to agree, I do sometimes have some trouble distinguishing ghosts from actual machines, especially at night. And, I consider myself to have pretty good eye sight.

My two cents, I think making the blueprint ghosts look a little like old style holograms by adding some white noise and a tint or something (my immediate thought is something like star wars) would be beautiful.

[Koub]

[Koub] Moved to implemented in 2.0. Source : https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-380