Friday Facts #191 - Gui improvements

[Lord_Sprit]

Love changes

can add sort to boxes inventory? or auto-sort like actual inventory?

[Bi0nicM4n]

If you make the toolbar a shortcut, I would like to sugest that you make the character inventory size larger to compensate.

As Twinsen already wrote, "No one is taking away your inventory space. Main inventory will be increased to compensate for the slots lost in the shortcut bar"

[Jonathan88]

As a current player who has become very used to the inventory over the many years and hours, I say definitely go ahead and change things!

We can easily re-learn stuff and "this is how we've always done it" isn't a good reason not to change things. You shouldn't feel like you are the bad guy - the internet is always a place of a negative vocal minority.

For me, the new changes make perfect sense - I love the idea of being able to place ghosts before you've built them! However, I think if new players are able to place ghosts of technologies they've never seen, they may get confused, especially if they are unfamiliar with ghosts. Perhaps only let people place ghosts of items they've researched in any game (so people starting new worlds can place locked items but not new players) - there's probably a more elegant way of doing this though.

As far as change for the sake of change goes, the one thing me as an current player would say is: the layout of the GUI is fine to change for the better (as you are doing), but the style of it is fine! The recent little embellishing of GUI was perfect - it just made it look a little more polished.

However, changing the entire art style just for the sake of making it look "better" seems a little pointless to me - functionally, there is nothing wrong with the nice grey boxes we are used to so why change it to something more fancy looking when it works? After all, Factorio is more for the functional, logical players rather than those who prefer pretty looking GUIs

So to sum it up:

• Don't worry about being the bag guy - all the changes make perfect sense so there's nothing not to like.
• Changing the art style of the GUI from nice grey boxes to something overly "pretty" doesn't seem necessary to me.
• However, the recent polishing of the GUI was perfect - not completely changing it but just making it look a little neater!

[Artman40]

With the amount of pure input/output slots in Factorio, it might be worth considering giving them some visual differentiation to make them inherently intuitive to new players, like a different border around the item box.

Something like

[img]image[/img]

[img]image[/img]

/rip cursor, hopefully your sacrifice will go towards building a better future for us all

I personally like this idea. Good for new players and not bad for advanced players.

[Drury]

So when I first read this it sounded like a good idea, but thinking about it more, I'm not so convinced. At the moment, everything is conveniently located with one easy e-press. Adding a tab isolates things and adds more clicks without really having any benefit. If there were a shortage of space on screen with the inventory open, I could see this helping, but at the moment there is plenty of space so I'm not sure what advantage the tabs buy you. I could see maybe reorganizing so that inventory is center, logistics is left, crafting is right or something if you dislike the visual leap from inventory to crafting. Or, maybe have logistics and crafting both be extendable tabs (one left, one right) so you can expand or contract as you see fit.

Yeah that sounds good. Have the option to easily open all tabs. Everyone wins.

[WhisperingSiren]

Generally love the proposed changes. A few things:

-make sure the inventory doesn't jump when switching tabs. Doesn't really matter if that's done by sizing the tabs the same or having it align left to me.
-some indication of currently equipped weapon for the surprise monstrous biter attack (catching yourself on fire with the flamethrower is bad)
-still have ability to ghost-place easily even though you have the item in inventory
-perhaps on the map view, you could have something akin to a filter bar for the movement of items? So any robots carrying the item, storage containers with it, or belts/pipes would show up? This would simplify the big-picture view of larger factories' production. having the equivalent amount of slots of a quickbar would enable somebody to follow the entire line of production of a higher-tech good, or a portion of the production tree for it, or just focus on a couple trouble spots/systems. I'm not sure what you'd use on the map to best do this.
-similar to google maps' traffic filter, perhaps something for belts/robots/pipes with goods that AREN'T moving showing red, indicating a blockage of some form and possibly a problem? Maybe a slider/toggle set like the production stats for the timespan it calculates by?
I don't know if the map ideas would just make things way too busy, but I think that's what toggles are for, and in any case there's nothing to my knowledge in the game that would give you this kind of functionality without a lot of patience and walking around. Having the radars allow you to extend this analysis range could be nifty as well.

[Linosaurus]

I like having easy access to my most recent crafted item. Currently that only works out early game, because later on the slots fill up too fast. Perhaps make the last item slot automatically be set to my most recent crafted item. And then I can easily move it to a more permanent slot without opening inventory.

[IronCartographer]

For easy making ghosts without things at hand I propose some form of Ghost Pipette.
A pipette which returns ghost. Probably shift-Q.

I don't like the tabs system. All at once is good for me. Less clicks and less frustration.

Also there needs to be a way to fill ghosts quicker. Pipette allows it, but it is too slow this way. I propose holding Shift-LMB or sth like that to fill the ghost under the cursor. Dream is to be able to do it while running.

... and being able to draw belts like pipes without need to rotate manually... just to draw them in the needed direction. With some toggle for cases when you want to fix orientation.

There are a lot of small improvements that could just skyrocket playing speed and reduce fatigue leaving more player's powers for careful design and planning.

The default pipette could work that way quite easily, since what you're asking for is the same behavior as selecting from the new toolbelt--the item if you have one, and the blueprint/ghost if not.

I agree that tabs will get in the way to some extent, and is my only concern about the proposed changes. Everything else is golden.

Reviving ghost images to real buildings I still say would work well like this.

One of Kovarex's playtesting FFF's mentioned belt placement in the style of the current rail planner, but with everything else they've been working on I can see why that hasn't been implemented.

"...while everything else is just random junk put there by the game." Not always. I usually keep one or two slots free so that they're filled with whatever I've picked up to move.

I like having easy access to my most recent crafted item. Currently that only works out early game, because later on the slots fill up too fast. Perhaps make the last item slot automatically be set to my most recent crafted item. And then I can easily move it to a more permanent slot without opening inventory.

To ghost-place items without needing the item, I don't like the idea that you need to set a filter in the hotbar first. What if you just want to order your robots to place a single refinery or train stop or whatever?

im just wondering what you are gonna do with that one-off item that you craft, have in your hotbar for 5 seconds and place down. Do I need to open my inventory to grab it?

Suggestion for a new Crafting Hotkey: Middle click Q (Same as pipette). Crafts straight to the user's cursor stack, OR acts as a shortcut and gives you a ghost which becomes the real item once it's crafted!

[Gren]

Just want to jump on the bandwagon and say that I totally agree with theses changes. Keep on keeping on.

[comcode3]

Minor nitpick: F1/F2/F3 are bad ideas since lots of modern laptops/keyboards don't have them (or rather, require fn+BrightnessDown to achieve F1).

I think you can change this in your settings so you can press F1/F2/F3 but you have to press fn+F1 to reduce the brightness

And to the topic of change in the game:
There will always be a group which doesn't like change. I personally just love the new update and all those changes. Go on like this

[TigBits]

For items such as equipment and weapons, clicking the shortcut will equip the item.

If I have a Power Armor MK2 equipped for combat, and a second one in my inventory for construction, will the shortcut swap them without dumping half my inventory on the ground?

Opening the character screen(using E) will open it with the last tab. To open the character screen in a specific tab, the F1, F2, F3 keys can be used.

Can you add keyboard controls that switch between tabs when the menu is open? Personally I would like to use Mouse Button 4 & 5 (the side buttons) to go forward and backward through the tabs like I can with a browser or text editor.

[ikarikeiji]

But please change the hotbar hotkeys from [shift]+1..5 to 6..0

Many people have suggested this and my reaction is no, please don't! 6-0 are hard to reach since your right hand is on the mouse. I use things like shift-1 for splitter, shift-2 for underground belt all the time... if it was 6 and 7 it'd be much more difficult.

I totally agree with the changes proposed in the FFF, apart from moving the weapons box into the inventory. Weapons box should stay where it is honestly, and shift-click into it would work fine if the crafting tab was open. And with it reduced to just crafting vs logistics tabs, that could also be solved: e could open logistics tab while another button like c could open crafting tab (I'm thinking of Starbound here). So no need for tabs.

[Rocksen]

wow i have to say, the amount of thought that went into this is huge. good job for taking care when changing something as important as the GUI. i love the changes, they make sense from a dev standpoint and they make sense from a player standpoint. to be honest though i have only been disappointed once from a FF and that was because we had to wait a few extra weeks for the latest patch xD. Good to see people still put thought into the changes they make in their games.

[quyxkh]

Reading this FFF just reaffirmed my belief that Factorio's in good hands.

The concern about losing some of the toolbelt features seems on-target. shift-click twice to load then dump everything in a salad-bar chest currently reloads all my toolbelt items, that's very handy, and being able to build a poor-man's-logistics setup long before flight or even oil is up, and in general making sure the later tech is just more convenient (and more expensive) ways to do what's already possible, adds a lot to the rewards system.

[Afforess]

Words can not say how in favor of these improvements I am. I'm definitely on the "long time player" side of the equation, and I am constantly frustrated and re-organizing the toolbelt because it gets out of whack. The proposed changes are a massive quality of life improvement.

[mp0011]

User should have ability to make few toolbars, and toggle between them.

You are going to make rails?
Toggle to railing toolbar, with saved rails, stations, signals, rail-related blueprint books, trains etc.

Going to make some plumbing?
Toggle to toolbar with pipes, pumps, tanks refineries etc.

Going improve defences?
Toggle to toolbar with turrets, walls and ammo...

[Tendies4meplz]

Brand spanking new player here, and can confirm that all of these changes make sense to me and make the game seem more appealing. That was a fantastic read, thank you!

[JonathanMorgan]

I think it is not only beneficial to know how much ammo your weapons have but also your armor hit points and battery amount.

1. Late game armor hit points is not that useful to know but early game with death world like settings it is. I have had early game armor get destroyed in battle before and it is nice to see if that is about to happen.

2. Battery amount is also nice to know because you might quickly run out. If that is the case, you might want to get out of battle just before it happens so you have enough energy to fully power your exoskeleton modules to run faster.

3. Knowing the amount of ammo your other weapons have is also beneficial, because, if you are like me, you might switch weapons multiple times and you might not switch again to a previous weapon if you know it is low on ammo.

4. I personally like the character info in the bottom right hand corner like it is, except for one thing: It would be nice to know the total amount of ammo on hand, not just what is loaded in the weapon.

[wwdragon]

My only complaint about losing the quickslots as inventory is the loss of space.
So if if you are increasing base inventory space by 20, then I'm fine with it.

Just make sure you add a mini tutorial for it so new players understand!

[WhisperingSiren]

Why have differentiation between weapons/ammo/items in inventory anyway?

as an add to the multi-specialized-toolbar thing:

-you can't "place" personal weapons or ammo on the ground except by dropping it
-when fighting, there's likely very little you're also paying attention to, so why have the normal crafting items up?
-this allows for a mixed, versatile, way of dealing with a combat bar- I would for instance include in mine defense robots to deploy, mines, various bulky items to serve as walls (whether or not they're walls), and whatever ammo I'm wanting to use at the moment. I'd select the ammo, and whatever weapon works with it fires that type, by holding the quickbar shortcut for it or having it active and spamming space as normal. You can't fire and build at the same time to my knowledge anyway.