Friday Facts #280 - Visual Feedback is the king

[<NO_NAME>]

So I am reading through the FFF and there is this button bar and I'm thinking:
"WOW, moders will be able to add buttons to toggle roboport... wait, what is this text here? I think I have a hearth attack."

I love every part of this FFF.

[emp_zealoth]

For trains. I'm pretty sure it was suggested to death, but can you add some logic to trains that allows us to have a designated fueling depot that doesnt have to be visited every single time in schedule? Basically train will go there only if conditions are met. (Mainly fuel, duh. But could be expanded to other conditions too - for eg. skip if there isn't enough material mined/produced in the station, or the train has no relevant cargo in inventory?)

For the GUI/blueprint management. Could you make it so a blueprint book can be set to always have an empty blueprint in it? Or a simple way to create a fresh BP when holding a book? It's pretty annoying when I have to periodically spam new blueprints and fill the books I have...

Also, could you add an option for a button for blueprint library in the toolbar? It's really far away in the top corner

Can you bind hotkeys to the new toolbar part?

[Flamethrower turret]

Will there be a possibility to send a signal while train station is enabled/disabled?

[rcbrito91]

I keep wondering why the name of the stations, in this FFF, is in portuguese....

Capturar.PNG (54.49 KiB) Viewed 6516 times

[bobucles]

Alt Mode

Sounds cool! What's that? Is it some kind of info overlay?

Factiorio 2: Revenge of the Locomotive is looking very nice!

[Klonan]

I keep wondering why the name of the stations, in this FFF, is in portuguese...

Someone sent me the save game, just to diagnose a bug,
and the base was really nicely laid out, so I used it for the GIFS

[Schallfalke]

FFF #237 had mentioned about using icons (by sprite path) in station names, but that is not shown in these two recent FFF on train GUI. Is it still a thing?

And for the text formatting (font and color) mentioned in that same FFF, do they apply to station names as well? Can developers show us a screenshot about that?

[disarm2k10]

Amazing. Specially the toolbar, and toggles.

Would you kindly add an option to Toggle Personal Logistics? For example, when you die, you don't need to re-request everything, since your stuff is waiting for you in your body. Actually, it would be really convenient if there was an option to automatically turn off the personal requests when you die. Another use case is that sometimes you don't want to dump your auto-trash slots unless you are in the correct zone. Or maybe you just want to reorganize your inventory, and need the personal requests to be off for a little bit.

Seems very useful to me, and shouldn't be too complicated to implement.

Like he said

Some mod add this and imho it should be in Vanilla.
Dealing with trains early on shouldn't be an inventory hassle

[rcbrito91]

I keep wondering why the name of the stations, in this FFF, is in portuguese...

Someone sent me the save game, just to diagnose a bug,
and the base was really nicely laid out, so I used it for the GIFS

Nice... For a moment I thought that a portuguese or a brazilian were part of the team

[Engimage]

Man I literally pissed myself reading this FFF.
So awesome guys!

And regarding toggles - adding personal logistics switch and belt immunity switch would be absolutely awesome additions!
Also when we were discussing toolbars long ago I did suggest things like "player skills" and such toggles - just be compatible with the main toolbar itself and not be a separate toolbar-ish thing. You just have to get the list where you pick those skills to drag them to the toolbar.
Player could just add more toolbar rows to be visible (instead of 2 current) or even could possibly drag different toolbars around the UI with chosen layout (horizontal vs vertical).
To see how this can be done in an ultimate way see Final Fantasy XIV interface. Player can switch toolbars on/off (up to 9 on the screen), change layout (1x12, 2x6, 3x4, 4x3, 6x2, 12x1), position, transparency. And you can pick which preset is shown in each toolbar.

Overall I just admire your work! You are definitely THE BEST game devs of all times.

[Silden]

Oh my, those UI changes in FF279 and FF280 look AWESOME! 0.17 is looking to be one of the best updates for an already fantastic game.

Thank you all for your hard work on this.

[quyxkh]

stop next train passing nearby

That's easy: wire a rail signal to anything at all, set it "close if chest=chest" or something, next train through will stop there. To continue, cut the wire or pull the signal or have a two-bp book and paste the blueprint with no-close parameters. Maybe a constant combinator-railsignal pair would be easiest, that's unusual enough to make it easy to spot one you've already placed, but anything would do.

[koyarno]

I like the idea of the AND/OR visualization, but it's still are confusing. These are binary operators that exist between conditions, not on the same line as each.

There is no nesting. So if you wanted to have a OR condition that is nested in a AND condition, you would have to duplicate the

So, I'm not the only one.
I think, that something like that would be more intuitive. It's quick edit, but you can take the idea.

Your idea to visually show and/or precedence is great!
But the UI you show is not so great. It is not obvious if the "or" falls in between the grouped areas or inside the second one.
The UI you had shown us is easier to understand, yes, but it is still not understandable enough.
Do something like this:
Factorio_Train_GUI_Mockup.png

I need some easy way to see where the groupings fall, and how the groups are nested.

Also: I just noticed: "passenger present" is a valid condition! That's pretty cool.
Thank you for taking the time to care about us players and our understanding of the game.

I think just having a button that shows as a chain - either broken or linked - to AND conditions. It maybe is not as orthogonal to the UI style, but it both solves the visual cues like the left bracket and the buttons in one. There is only 1 problem with this still... it is only 1 layer. There is no nesting. So if you have A + B*(C + D), it has to be done like A + B*C + B*D. It makes it harder to see what is happening. From a developer standpoint though, nesting is also harder to setup with buttons and visual stuff.

[Silden]

If a station is not reachable because of no pathhow about drawing the yellow line backwards from the station until it breaks? So it would be easy to see where the failure is.

Third gif down sounds like it might help with this problem, Ctrl will highlight the route from the station to your cursor point, go along the route you think the train should take, and when it stops highlighting the route, the problem is in that area.

[Millefleur]

Though, they've added the functionality for temporary stops, allowing you to "hijack" a train, set a temporary stop and then the train will continue as normal after dropping you off. So there isn't much need for toggling automatic/manual mode anymore.

Yes that will help somewhat, but I'll still need to toggle manual mode anytime I want to manually move my construction train. (I often build rails by placing blueprints as I manually drive the train slowly forward).

Also everytime I build a new train, and set its route, I need to switch it to automatic mode. I can do that by opening the train's gui and clicking goto station XXX, or by opening the train's gui to toggle automatic mode, but it would be faster and more convenient to just point at a train, and hit a hotkey to toggle automatic mode.

Exactly this. I'll probably use temp stops a lot with my PAX/construction trains, but I'm still going to want them to stay where they are when I get off. I can't see myself hijacking random busy trains very often when I have dedicated trains loaded with things I need expressly for getting around, so a manual toggle will still be used a lot. Also, as a keyboard shortcut; as Zavian said before, I don't think I've ever used the connect/disconnect keys in anger, so they're ripe to be reassigned for something more useful.

[Anthlon]

a little bit better presentation but still not predictable

here the screen of FFF



is the 2nd condition
- A or ( B and C )
- (A or B ) and C

The 2nd condition doesn't have an or in it. That or splits the 2 conditions.
It's
(Empty Cargo AND 30s passed)
OR
(Passenger Present AND 20s inactive AND Circuit condition)
I'd actually like it if the groupings didn't include the OR, they'd be a bit more clear. But still it is what it is.

I would actually like to see a bit cascade of this conditions as they are applied with AND,OR, both visible, but technicaly to "brackets in equation be apparent"

[Razorlance]

How about reducing the size of the 'Add' buttons to make them less prominent, so that the stop name and conditions stand out more, something like this:



I made them approximately the same size as the slightly raised dark portions of the GUI where no information is present.

[Horatio]

1. I very much hope that trains will have access to a logical system. Sometimes I think that the absence of this function is connected with something. But I do not understand what. Please give an answer.
2. I would like to be able to disable all the innovations of the interface. In order to be able to connect them in a fashion only by studying the necessary technologies and making an object that, when put on a player, will give him these benefits of civilization.

[steinio]

Alt Mode

Sounds cool! What's that? Is it some kind of info overlay?

Factiorio 2: Revenge of the Locomotive is looking very nice!

Press literally the ALT key and details of your factory appear. It's there since ages.

[jockeril]

I love everything you guys are doing to this game !

The new GUI changes are not only a amazing but very much needed - I don't think I've ever played a game who's developer was so in touch with his community that he shaped parts of the game as the community requested or ever considered the players requests, or needs for that matter -you guys do it in spades and it works - The game has the best review score on the leading sales platform (yes I mean STEAM )

Noting left to say but "keep up the good work" !