Friday Facts #273 - Cutscene controller & Localisation plan

[ikarikeiji]

I don’t know how difficult is to translate it to a Screen saver ?

Probably fairly hard. It's a multiplayer game, and windows screensavers iirc need to be compiled as some special kind of executable, which factorio.exe is not.
That said, a prerendered video might work.

A Windows screensaver .scr is just a renamed .exe which takes some specific command-line arguments, described here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/hel ... -arguments

Would be quite simple to have Factorio determine if it's being run from a .scr file, check the arguments, load a map and run some custom lua script from a mod/scenario/whatever to control it.

[zebediah49]

I also got a somewhat weird feeling from the motion used in the cutscenes, and agree with the notes about panning while zoomed out being preferable to while zoomed in. However, I also think that the currently used cubic spline is actually a little *too* slow at the ends. It feels to me like the motion should stop somewhere around 0.1 to 0.2s before it actually does; instead it continues slowly for a little bit further.

Or, restated, I think constant-acceleration motion feels more natural than constant-jerk (d^3 x/dt^3).

In any case, it might be worth messing with the functional form to see what feels most comfortable for people.

[Gergely]

• Indicating that a cutscene is playing (vignette,letterboxing or using the cctv filter from map view).

Thing is, the cctv filter you have on the map is not easy to notice. I recommend cropping the bottom and top of the screen while a cut-scene is playing. Like this:

fff-273-cutscene-edited.webm

(3.37 MiB) Downloaded 246 times

Of course, you might want a smoother transition and it doesn't have to be fully black.

I think most players are used to these and "sit their minds back" while this is in effect.

[OvermindDL1]

Zoom out to a height where both origin and destination are visible and then zooming in again would give a sense of overview, which is great when the player wants to figure out where the camera is moved to. This can be combined with slow movements for scrolling, which will allow the scroll movement without feeling like a scroll. Besides if the scroll is done primarily while zoomed out, the scroll has less of an on screen distance to travel, making it much less of a scroll.

As someone who can massively get motion sick either always do this in a cutscene or have the camera absolutely follow something like a specific drone or train or biter or something that is locked to the center of the screen that isn't zoomed out too far.

Edit: like following a tutorial bot that scapes in size similar to the zoomed out percentage in a way.

[5thHorseman]

Would be quite simple to have Factorio determine if it's being run from a .scr file, check the arguments, load a map and run some custom lua script from a mod/scenario/whatever to control it.

Other than breaking the convention that screen savers are generally lightweight and take less than 5 minutes to load.

[featherwinglove]

I do have a suggestion for the cutscene controller: Homeworld letterboxed the screen as a clear signal that the game was taking control of your view for such purposes. I highly recommend implementing such a signal, as without it, I start wondering if I'm crashed, hacked, or softlocked when such things happen.

Edit:

• Indicating that a cutscene is playing (vignette,letterboxing or using the cctv filter from map view).

Thing is, the cctv filter you have on the map is not easy to notice. I recommend cropping the bottom and top of the screen while a cut-scene is playing. Like this:
fff-273-cutscene-edited.webm
Of course, you might want a smoother transition and it doesn't have to be fully black.

I think most players are used to these and "sit their minds back" while this is in effect.

Here I go jumping in without having read all the replies.

[SpiffyTriffid]

Zoom-out and then zoom-in on the location seems like a much better solution to me. In my mind, zooming out so that the midpoint of the screen is halfway between the target and the user, and then zooming in would be the best way to handle transitions. That, or have the screen grow very fuzzy with the CCTV filter, then do what you're doing (though please zoom out first instead of zooming along the ground).

Love the cheeky paper on the whiteboard btw

It's not DNS
There's no way it's DNS
It was DNS

[Swich]

Fonts in russian localization is terrible but the words translation is good

Font suggestions would be appreciated! Could you perhaps list some fonts and other games that use them.

IMHO this is the best fonts in Russian:
Proxima nova, Roboto, Ubuntu

Anyway, I think the current font is nice.

[wheybags]

Love the cheeky paper on the whiteboard btw

It's not DNS
There's no way it's DNS
It was DNS

Damn man, how can you read that?

[Oktokolo]

Love the cheeky paper on the whiteboard btw
It's not DNS
There's no way it's DNS
It was DNS

Damn man, how can you read that?

NSA-grade convolutional neuronal network confirmed!

[ikarikeiji]

I do have a suggestion for the cutscene controller: Homeworld letterboxed the screen as a clear signal that the game was taking control of your view for such purposes. I highly recommend implementing such a signal, as without it, I start wondering if I'm crashed, hacked, or softlocked when such things happen.

For most games I'd agree with having letterboxing during cutscenes. However Factorio is a 2d top down game where the vertical screen space is quite important, so it might cause more trouble than it's worth. It's probably not a problem though, as seen in the FFF, the HUD GUI elements disappear during a cutscene, which imo is a good enough indication.

Would be quite simple to have Factorio determine if it's being run from a .scr file, check the arguments, load a map and run some custom lua script from a mod/scenario/whatever to control it.

Other than breaking the convention that screen savers are generally lightweight and take less than 5 minutes to load.

Hahaha... touché. Maybe some load-time optimization is in order...?

[featherwinglove]

For most games I'd agree with having letterboxing during cutscenes. However Factorio is a 2d top down game where the vertical screen space is quite important, so it might cause more trouble than it's worth.

Then letterbox it horizontally. Feather the screen edges or change the lighting direction. It doesn't matter to me what the signal is, just as long as it is obviously a deliberate interface change to signal that the controller is taking the camera, and that it is the same every time it does so.

It's probably not a problem though, as seen in the FFF, the HUD GUI elements disappear during a cutscene, which imo is a good enough indication.

One reason it isn't is because unrelated scenario and mode code already does that, e.g. where's the minimap in First Steps-01? I really like the idea of mods being able to do such things because I like the idea of having to do research or build something to enable interface features (already got that with the toolbelt research.) For example, you don't get a minimap and map view is disabled in Bob's until you research the second tier radar (first non-vanilla tier and it's surprisingly cheap - this is a suggestion, not how it currently behaves.) Another reason it isn't good enough is that it's not distinguishable enough from bugs which might be affecting the GUI - this could be a problem for modders who might even misdiagnose the sudden disappearance of GUI elements as a problem with their GUI-related code when it's actually the controller taking over when it's not supposed to, or the converse situation.

[Oktokolo]

Then letterbox it horizontally. Feather the screen edges or change the lighting direction.

Horizontal letterboxing is a good idea - should work fine and it still is the effect that most other games use (rotated 90°, but players will probably recognize it).
Screen edge feathering might be too subtle and might be associated with character health issues.
Lighting direction changes would require another set of sprites - so is probably not worth the hassle.

But whatever it is, they use as in-cutscene indicator - it should be suppressable by mod API, so that we can abuse it for teleports, fasttravel, screenshakes (earthquakes, impacts...) and what else someone out there might imagine would profit from non-instantaneous forced camera movement...

[nicmac]

Make the cut scenes have like, black bars top and bottom? Cinematographic quality guaranteed right there guys. How can you *not* know you're in a cut scene when them bars slide in from top and bottom? Also I do agree with all the smoother movement transition ideas.

[featherwinglove]

Screen edge feathering might be too subtle and might be associated with character health issues.

Good point, I missed it because Factorio, Minecraft, and Kerbal Space Program have been the only games I've played in years, and none of them implement such an effect. I don't think it's much of a problem because Factorio has always had a red tint effect for the same and I don't think we need to accommodate the conventions of other games. One case where it would be both associated with a character health issue and perfectly legit is when you die, the controller takes the camera back to your spawn point, and you respawn. This would really highlight exactly which direction you need to go to find your remains.

But whatever it is, they use as in-cutscene indicator - it should be suppressable by mod API, so that we can abuse it for teleports, fasttravel, screenshakes (earthquakes, impacts...) and what else someone out there might imagine would profit from non-instantaneous forced camera movement...

Agree about the rumble effect, but not about character warping. In the game sense, it's just like death and respawn: the old character entity is destroyed, the camera moves to where it is going to reappear, and then it respawns. In the case of a rumble effect, it's basically a diminishing oscillation around the point where the player's camera focus is located, and that point may or may not be on the move under player control. It's not really taking the camera in that situation.

[Nightinggale]

screenshakes (earthquakes, impacts...)

Multiple people complain about the screen movements causing motion sickness, yet now it's proposed that the screen should shake even more. This is precisely why I wrote something about NOT giving completely free access for modders to control screen movements. As much as I prefer modding freedom, I'm against providing modders with the tool to actually harm other players.

Maybe you don't get the problem if you don't feel it yourself, but for people who are actually negatively affected, the idea of adding screen movements (especially shaking and similar), this is no joke. When I mentioned that screen movements could send Factorio to the "can't play list", I was being serious and quite literal.

[bobingabout]

I had to quit playing Warframe when they first introduced the panning GUI because it gave me motion sickness.

I created a new character on Startrek Online recently. I got to the point where I was in a space battle getting shot, and the screen started shaking when a torpedo hit me. I realised that I hadn't set things up yet, so immediately went into the settings, and disabled screen shaking. my ship blew up in the process.

I seriously can't deal with that shit.

[NeXuS]

In our test lab we had a car simulator on six hydraulic bases.
Therefor we know what motion sickness can do. One of our tester was one week off, after using the simulator the first time.

So, no, I'm not a friend of it either. If something like this is added to the game, you need a control in the settings menu that is affecting every mod, so a player can shut this feature completely off.

[Nova]

@Nightinggale: Just because you can't have such features means no one is allowed to have them?

Modders should have complete freedom about this camera feature. Players with serious problems with camera movement will then just not be able to use them (at least not if they have no way to disable them).
Suggestion: Add pre-defined "shake camera" funtions which are disabled with an ingame option.

@NeXuS: Sounds like the guy just wanted a week off. Also, was it because of screen movement or movement of himself? That makes a huge difference.

[Nightinggale]

@Nightinggale: Just because you can't have such features means no one is allowed to have them?

I don't have a problem with whatever people do on their own computers. The problem is when people can gain the ability to do something on computers of other people.

Say person A makes a mod, which unannounced has a feature, which shakes the screen really badly. Next person B downloads the mod without knowing this and is then exposed to it against his/her will.

Combine this with the idea from another recent FFF thread about being able to add a mod to a server and then people joining will download and add the mod automatically. This combo seems rather dangerous and way too easy to add features unwanted by players.

@NeXuS: Sounds like the guy just wanted a week off. Also, was it because of screen movement or movement of himself? That makes a huge difference.

Now that statement shows you haven't understood anything about the issue and have chosen to believe it not to be a real issue. Motion sickness can be movements and it can be a desync between movements and vision.

As for motion sickness from the screen alone, the Pokemon seizure episode shows that it is indeed possible to get severely affected by a screen alone. 685 people were taken to hospital after watching the same 6 second of Pokemon on TV with flashing colors. 150 were kept by the hospitals and after two weeks, two of them were still in hospitals. Most of those people had no medical history of seizures and apparently haven't had them since either. Sure this was far less than 1% of the viewers, but for those affected, it was a very serious issue.

Back in the day when sailing ships were the main mean of transportation, seasickness was a real concern. It was a well known fact that if somebody got seasick, they had to be moved to land ASAP because death from seasickness was a real issue. Multiple islands have stories about being colonized by people who had to be dropped off due to seasickness and then unable to leave the otherwise uninhabitated island, they had to start a settlement. Seasickness was really feared because it seemed to strike at random and an otherwise healthy man could die if he happened to get seasick far from land. Today we don't have any scientific reason to doubt those claims.

Motion sickness is a real thing for those affected and maybe it's hard to understand for those not affected, but it's still a major issue for those affected. It's in the same nature of say allergy against nuts. The majority of people can eat nuts without issues, but some people can die from eating them because it makes the neck swell and block the airways. Basically saying "deal with motion sickness because it's not an issue for me" is like saying "ignore that you can't breath after eating nuts because I'm fine after eating nuts". No amount of willpower or training can fix this problem. That's just not how it works even we would like it to be like that.

Or another analogy is to say "I don't get why you don't just walk up the stairs. I do that daily and it's very easy for me". Anybody in a wheelchair can't use the fact that it's not a problem for you.