Version 0.17.3

[bman212121]

[BATCH workflow suggestion]

Hmm, wouldn't just copying the whole Factorio folder be even easier ? (Might even put notes about its specific settings in the root...)
I know that this seems overkill, but SSD's are pretty fast, and with considerable space these days, and Factorio is not *that* big...

(thinking about replicating the way that "AppData" works in Windows, having a single folder of Factorio per game version, but multiple folders with user-configurable files, but *without even the need* to use any batch files... might Factorio command line support that already? And what is ModMyFactory (that already does something a bit like that) up to ?)

Yes if you're using the stand alone Zip version of the game, you could in fact just copy the entire install into another folder, and have completely separate installs. You should be able to run them side by side as well. The main issue with that is that you'd likely need to still sync some data, like your saves and your mods. I don't know if you would really benefit from doing so though. If you use the Zip version it doesn't rely on the AppData location, so you won't have two installs pointing back at the exact same location.

The ModMyFactory kind of does what I'm talking about. It also seems to be a bit overkill for what I'd want it for. It looks like it can shuffle around versions of the mods, so I'm assuming it's copying the .dat file while it's doing so. It can also edit the .json to turn on and off mods. The one thing I don't know if it's able to do is launch the same exact mod layout, but with different configuration settings. If you can create a bundle like that then yea it would be one way to try to handle it. For Bob's case most of the time he's likely not turning on and off mods at all, he's just trying to switch settings within his mods. This became harder back in .16? because you can't just change that data directly anymore.

You are correct though, apparently there is in fact a switch for the mod folder location. " --mod-directory PATH Mod directory to use" You wouldn't need to copy back in if you used that. Although once again I still prefer just copying a 6KB .dat file as opposed to having 10 copies of all of the mods. But you could keep switching directories and configuring mods so you had something to revert to.

[BlueTemplar]

I used ModMyFactory for a while, but now (as mostly a player) I just have 1 Factorio folder per game : less risk of messing up stuff, especially after a long hiatus !
(Also, MMF is Windows-only... though other mod managers aren't.)

[aka13]

For the love of god, lets refrain from launchers. I can't stand it that every game nowadays insinsts on having some bullshit launcher with news, advertisements, flashy pictures etc.

oh god, I don't need anything with huge complex advertisements or news or anything like that, I hate those.
I'm just asking for an OPTIONAL (can launch the game without it as you do now) Launcher that has some basics in there.
Game updates
Mod updates
Change game and mod settings (Because it is currently possible to change the settings to a state where the game won't load, and your option is to delete the mod-settings file and start over)

Keep in mind that ALL of the above require a game restart, so if you're like me and are a mod developer, you can be constantly changing settings, having a launcher to change them for you would be useful.

EG, I load the game to turn on a specific setting to do tests, then want to revert the setting afterwards. Current method has me load the game, change setting, relaunch the game, perform my tests, forget to change the setting back when I quit, load the game again, change the setting, Load the game AGAIN because I changed the setting, then quit.
with a launcher it would be... load the launcher, change the setting, change the setting back and quit... or if I forget and realise after I quit, load the launcher, change the setting, then quit the launcher, reducing the number of game loads, which takes several minutes with all my mods installed, down to a single game load. Well, it used to, I installed 0.17 on my new SSD.

what if there is an update you need to load the game, perform an update, load the game again, update mods, load the game again, check mod settings, change some and load the game again... and that's if you're lucky. with a launcher you'd load the launcher, update game, update mods, check and update mod settings, launch the game.

I don't want to FORCE it on anyone, but I would like the OPTION to do all this shit without being forced to relaunch the game at every single step.

Updater is broken ATM. Even if there was a launcher, it too would have the same problem if the update server is offline due to issues.

...true...

Usually I would have said, "it's not possible, it always turns out bad", but for as long as I follow factrio and wube they consistantly broke my stereotypes on indie development, early access games and simulation games. If it's truly possible to design a launcher akin to the 2000-2005 ones, I'm all in.