Friday Facts #278 - The new quickbar

[fur_and_whiskers]

I've really wanted to have different load outs available depending on what I'm wanting to do.
The 0.17 quick bar system goes a long way towards that, along with the benefits of them being shortcuts which can be used to place ghosts. Thank you!

Be great if we had something similar for logistic requests as well. The ability to set up different request setups then choose which one to use as required. This would also mean having a permanent blank logic request list when selected effectively turns off your logistic requests when you don't want them.

Would really like to see the option to turn our roboports and exo-legs on and off with respective quick keys rather than relying on picker extender mod. Along with auto hide mini map.

Please make it possible to change the position, the ability to hide and adjust the transparency of the quick bar. This would also make the option of having more than two quickbars more viable without blocking even more screen space.
At the moment it covers the bottom of the screen and with no way to move or hide the quick bars which affects game play blocking whats below you. (if hidden the quick keys and quick bar selection keys would still work)

Would appreciate making it possible to rebind 1-5 and shift 1-5 and using Ctrl to select which quick bar you're using. I prefer not to have to move my left hand from the home keys or my right from the mouse since it defeats the point of having quick keys to make building a quicker smoother experience. Or even make this default.

Great work guys!

[madpav3l]

If your rebuttal is "so just rebind them then":
I really don't want to have to rebind twenty+ keys each update and probably break half the functions of the multitoolbar in the process when the multibars could go easily onto a modifier key that doesn't break everything else instead. Wouldn't the entirely-unused Ctrl be a better choice for multibars? Wouldn't Alt be better used as a modifier key and "Show Info" be moved somewhere else? Ctrl wouldn't hurt anything, and Alt would be a small change to relearn instead of the massive 1-0 thing.
The current bindings already served most of us very well and this is a big and entirely avoidable hurting point.

There is nothing wrong on rebinding... you don't have to rebind 20+ keys every update, because they stay the same. I have changed almost all the keys back in 0.12 and they are still he same now in 0.16

[crysanja]

I would like to export/import/save my quickbar - this way i would not have to create it again and again in each following game. =)

[Reloecc]

Would appreciate making it possible to rebind 1-5 and shift 1-5 and using Ctrl to select which quick bar you're using. I prefer not to have to move my left hand from the home keys or my right from the mouse since it defeats the point of having quick keys to make building a quicker smoother experience. Or even make this default.

This is exactly what I hope is going to be possible: Ctrl+1-5 and Alt+1-5 to change topmost quickbar, X for rotating bars ("rotating" = more then two are shown onscreen), and 1-5 and Shift+1-5 for picking up from the topmost quickbar.

[Ubertwink]

Clicking the shortcut, will grab the first available stack from the inventory.

Wouldn't it be better to grab the last available stack from the inventory? So there is no more than 1 uncomplete stack of items at any given time.

[cellular]

The new quickbar looks great! There's one quality-of-life feature that could make it even better, though: the ability to set a slot to map to the last hand-crafted item that's not currently on your quickbar. For example, let's say you're setting up your first oil outpost. You handcraft a couple of pumpjacks and go to place them - and they're right there on the quickbar, no need to go digging through your inventory. You handcraft your refineries, same deal, they're right there. You handcraft your chemical plants, same deal. And if you maybe craft a few more common ingredients in between, stuff like pipes or power poles, then they're probably on the quickbar anyway so the last-handcrafted slot doesn't change. This would be particularly good for modpacks like AngelBobs or PyMods, where there are so many types of dedicated buildings that you can't reasonably set them up on quickbars.

[Shingen]

Clicking the shortcut, will grab the first available stack from the inventory.

Wouldn't it be better to grab the last available stack from the inventory? So there is no more than 1 uncomplete stack of items at any given time.

with unsorted inventory no order of getting stacks will change that risk, and with sorted there will never be 2 uncomplete stacks of X, because they merge together after all. did i misunderstand you?

[cohem]

Now the research of the second tool belt becomes a bit off. It won't affect the world - only the interface to the player. This is a bit like a research that would allow hi-res graphics.

Remembering a list of tool-belt/short-cut-list settings should be very convenient. Thanks!

[MrDrummer]

I bet the release date will be April 1st 2019. Heard it here first

[mcdjfp]

After thinking about it for a bit, I am finally sold on the quickbar changes. The ability to keep 10 pages of filters instead of 2 outweighs the negatives. The biggest annoyance for me is that I considered having items craft into the toolbar a positive feature. I love the history filter idea mentioned earlier in the thread. An official place for the one-off item I just crafted would make things perfect.

I hope that there is no forced toolbar persistence. While there may be enough slots for vanilla, with mods I will have to remove all of the items 15 hours away to replace them with start of game items. A way to save and load quickbar configurations (also mentioned earlier in the thread) would be nice though.

[Potenzo]

There was some talk following last weeks GUI progress update, as to why we don't release now, and finish the GUI's during the experimental phase. One major clarification I'd like to make, is that it is not only the GUI that is not yet finished. While GUI is currently the largest task remaining to be done for 0.17, there are still some other non-GUI features that are yet to be completed

Fair enough, but let's look at whether these things really are blockers:

• The new fluid system (FFF-274) is almost complete, but it is yet to be merged into master. After internal testing we have been making efforts to tune the new behavior, specifically how throughput over distance and flow with different fluids works.
  
  Potentially game breaking. Sounds like a valid blocker for 0.17 experimental release.
• High resolution enemies
  
  Purely cosmetic. I wouldn't consider this a blocker for a 0.17 stable release, let alone 0.17 experimental branch.
• Alongside a graphical update, we have also been experimenting with some functional changes to the enemies.
  
  Presumably this is something like enemy behaviour AI prioritisation, pathfinding etc. Unless it's something much more substantial, like introducing an entirely new mode of player interaction with enemies, I really can't see this as a blocker to an experimental branch release.
• Further map generation tweaks
  
  As long as this only affects the game at game start/initialisation time, (and not, say, on every reload), it shouldn't be a blocker for 0.17 experimental.
  Caveat, I can see the possibility of this introducing inconsistent behaviour in multiplayer between players using different point releases. But given that Factorio is primarily a singleplayer game, it seems reasonable to say that multiplayer players on the experimental branch must ensure they are on the same point release to join a multiplayer game.
• Playtesting, bug fixing, and design balancing
  
  Isn't this the very definition of what experimental branch releases are for? (Obviously, some bugs are unacceptable for release, but presumably your bug tracker marks which are considered "blockers").

Conclusion: Based on the published information, I think you should be releasing 0.17.1 on the experimental branch as soon as the fluid changes (and maybe enemy behaviour changes, if large) are merged into the master and tested. The rest, like the GUI, can be slipped out in point releases when ready, without being unexpectedly disruptive to those playing games on this branch.

Release early. We're eager!

[Nightinggale]

For the ghost cursor could we please get an option to auto place items in your inventory that are within reaching distance onto ghosts.
This would help the players that might get confused by the ghosts as a placeholder for future placements.

You could use the nanobots mod.
In vanilla this would make construction robots in personal roboports kinda obsolete.

What we need to make ghosts useful early on is a "place entity on ghost" mouse cursor. Instead of selecting the inserters, assembers, belts etc, just pick a certain cursor and if you click on a ghost, it will take the item from your inventory. This makes ghosts and blueprints useful early on while at the same time construction bots in a personal roboport will still be a significant upgrade. Think of it as a shortcut to press the right hotkey for the toolbar each time you place something.

Right now what we have is early bots and nanobots. Both are sort of mid game in the sense that they cost both research and resources. They are also kind of overpowered. As such blueprints are still kind of useless in early game.

[luc]

keys 1 to 0

[5thHorseman]

keys 1 to 0

Actually on a physical keyboard that makes more sense than 0-9

[striepan]

It would be nice if we could craft from the quickbar.

[5thHorseman]

It would be nice if we could craft from the quickbar.

How do you mean? Like shift click to craft? I could get behind that.

[Avezo]

keys 1 to 0

Not sure if that's that joke that only 10 people would understand it...

[pleegwat]

• Further map generation tweaks
  
  As long as this only affects the game at game start/initialisation time, (and not, say, on every reload), it shouldn't be a blocker for 0.17 experimental.
  Caveat, I can see the possibility of this introducing inconsistent behaviour in multiplayer between players using different point releases. But given that Factorio is primarily a singleplayer game, it seems reasonable to say that multiplayer players on the experimental branch must ensure they are on the same point release to join a multiplayer game.

This affects the game whenever a new chunk is generated. Discovering new areas of the map after a point release changed map generation leads to very strange maps, so wube understandingly wants to limit doing this after a release has gone experimental.

• Playtesting, bug fixing, and design balancing
  
  Isn't this the very definition of what experimental branch releases are for? (Obviously, some bugs are unacceptable for release, but presumably your bug tracker marks which are considered "blockers").

I presume during internal testing they are cycling through updates and getting internal feedback much faster than when interacting with the playerbase. This probably also includes fixing a lot of bugs that would have made us go "why didn't you spot this".

[luc]

keys 1 to 0

Actually on a physical keyboard that makes more sense than 0-9

I know that's how it is on a physical keyboard, but when reading it like that, it really drives the point home of how weird it is to have the zero at the end. Made me smile to do a double take on the text and realize it's weird but correct

[Hiladdar]

I would like to emphasize two things mentioned by others that I like

Someone mentioned no resupply unless player is wearing armor of some sort. Upon respawn after death, I like the idea of no resupply or limited resupply until armor is put on.

Alt + Tab keystroke combination. I do not recommend using that since that is a hot key combo used under W10 that removes focus from the window you are in.

My main question is how will compatibility be for mods which increase the size of inventory 10 rows, or hot bar for 2 rows?

What I like the most, is the disciplined and structured approach to releasing .17 based on when it is finished and tested with a high degree of stability and usability. I have seen way to many companies rush a release and end up massive customer relations issues. At the same time, what was mentioned in this FF and another recent one, there is a limit to the scope of what will be released with .17. Tabling other great ideas for .18 or 1.0 will help insure that this interim release will be of higher quality.

HIladdar