Friday Facts #338 - The (real) Character GUI

[invisus]

what's left to fix?

From what I know, the last bit of the fluid system that wasn't completely implemented was a new algorithm.

Previously mentioned in FFF 260, 271, 274, 312.

Although, I believe sometime later it was decided to NOT include the new algorithm being worked on, but I'm struggling to find that... Can anyone else fill in here?

[Jap2.0]

- We don't know what exactly would be the use for the spidertron.

Memes.

(Although as much add it pains me to say it, it probably serves that purpose better now than if you were to actually implement it.)

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Afterthoughts: Could it feasibly new a mid-game vehicle? Faster than walking but slower than the exoskeleton, and good for walking in the midst of the factory before the large-scale work is done with bots?

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After-afterthoughts: since the factory seems like the place where it would shine, could it feasibly do something like extend your building range by a tile or two?

[Frizi]

Why exactly does the pop-up need to be two level? It seems like something like this should work just fine and spare us the extra click.

factorio-request-onestep.jpg (932.88 KiB) Viewed 17612 times

[dyce]

I could also imagine spidertron being some kind of robot controllable by player, not just a vehicle. (it reminds me of Automatons from frostpunk)

[meganothing]

- We don't know what exactly would be the use for the spidertron. The original idea was it would be a late game vehicle, with almost unrestricted movement. That would be it for a simple solution, adding an equipment grid would be the cheap option to add. However, as a late game thing it should be able to move very quickly, otherwise it would be inferior to just stacking exoskeleton equipment in your power armor. One of the significant issues we've already noticed with the first prototype shown in FFF#120 was that the legs start looking really stupid at higher speeds. The spider would need some ability to jump/blink or something I guess. With all that, I feel like exoskeletons in power armor and/or using trains to move around in the late game would be better in all ways. I can imagine the spidertron being really convenient in being able to walk over pipes or walls. In walls people usually build gates, and how often do you actually walk over pipes that would motivate you to enter a vehicle for it. Maybe the player would actually become the spidertron by some SpiderLeg equipment to avoid having to enter a vehicle, but that would again look stupid when moving fast. It was a cool technical experiment and became a meme, but frankly, I don't see the use as of now, and I know that when we see something as being awesome useful, we just do it immediately with top priority.
- there is nobody working on the spidertron code-wise, and the branch from FFF#120 has not been maintained since
- there is nobody working on the spidertron graphics-wise
- both programmers and gfx are busy enough with 1.0 as it is
- even if somebody has time before 1.0, I believe there more places worth putting time into (for programmers more GUIs, for gfx more entity graphics improvements, more iteration on high resolution icons, or updating some technology icons)
- However, never say never (permanently true statement)

I'm perfectly fine with you not doing spidertron for 1.0, but really, your first DLC/expansion has to have a spidertron in it.

Re looking silly: The bigger you make spidertron the slower (compared to its size) the legs have to move to achieve the same speed.

Re purpose: I see the spidertron as the ultimate weapon. Either conventionally by having a main weapon (cannon, mortar or rocket) and a few lasers to defend his legs or even better as a weapons platform with an inventory similar to power armors where you put in 1-2 fusion reactors and a selection of possible weapons and shields.

[Omnifarious]

I often autotrash all wood, coal, and the various ores. I hardly ever request it. It might be nice to not have a limit on the slots you can have 0 requests for.

There is no limit on auto trash. You may setup auto trash for any amount of different items. Limit is in trash slots itself. Auto trash is a function that automaticaly moves items from inventory to trash slots if they are above configured limits.

Thank you for clarifying. I'm very much looking forward to the new character GUI. It looks very nice.

[BattleFluffy]

- there is nobody working on the spidertron code-wise, and the branch from FFF#120 has not been maintained since
- there is nobody working on the spidertron graphics-wise
- both programmers and gfx are busy enough with 1.0 as it is
- even if somebody has time before 1.0, I believe there more places worth putting time into (for programmers more GUIs, for gfx more entity graphics improvements, more iteration on high resolution icons, or updating some technology icons)

[muzzy]

Please nuke those gradients, especially the inner shadow gradients on the item grid, or at least ease their falloff curves into something that doesn't strain the eyes so much. I actually preferred the old flat UI look, it was sharp and had high usability value.

[unobtanium]

One of the significant issues we've already noticed with the first prototype shown in FFF#120 was that the legs start looking really stupid at higher speeds.

Now I imagine the legs/inserters forming a sphere when you start sprinting with the Spidertron and you are rolling around like a Droideka

I think two modes for the Spidertron would be ideal. One for fast travel over large distances and another for moving around in your factory at slower speeds. Moving slow would disable collisions while moving fast would enable them again (because you are now a ball on the ground). While being a ball you would have to accelerate (to great speeds) and decelerate and have slower turning speed at higher velocity, so there would be some skill and planning ahead involved as well as prepare clear paths from A to B to roll around. Movement would not use the standard vehicle control scheme, but more the normal player behaviour. If you press W you apply an upward/north force, D a force to east, etc. but with the difference that you have lower friction so that you dont instantly stop when stop applying a force. Bumping into something as a ball would bounces you back with the "entry angle equals exit angle" rule. If you have the Spidertron as an armor module, you could use entering a vehicle for switching between the two modes (also preventing you from entering a vehicle with the Spidertron equipped). In my mind that sounds like a lot of fun.

You could even make Spidertron race parcours where you can bump your competitors off the track and have to switch between walking modes when you have to walk over obstacles then have a piece of track you can roll through at larger speeds

[LostInTheForums]

I'm so happy to see slider for logistic trash/supply like the one I sugested long time ago.

[Hiladdar]

My 2 cents is to focus on cleaning and polishing what we currently have for release as 1.0 in late September of this year.

Regarding the expected breakage of some mods due to some upcoming changes: First off thanks for the heads up in the FF 338, and hope to see this change sooner rather then later.

Regarding the Spidertron, I'm not against it. I do think it will be a fun exoskeleton, especially if the player will have the ability to stomp the bugs into submission rather then turning them into tank tread mush. At this time, it might make a good mod, or post 1.0, part of DLC.

Hiladdar

[steinio]

How about the graphics already existing for spidertron are published for the modding community and a talented modder gets them animated.

[invisus]

The new UI work looks amazing and I can't wait to get my grubby little hands on it!

Now a not-so-short rant about spidertron.

I'm just fine with spidertron not being actively worked on for the v1.0 release. That said...

As far as what seems to be one of the big issues with the design, if you don't want it to look silly while moving quickly you could use different speeds on the up/down stroke of the legs while running. Effectively giving the "vehicle" two different cadences to it's movement.

e.g. At or near top speed (or whatever speed begins to really look silly), you could begin to change the speed of the up stroke where the leg is being lifted. Keep the down stroke of the leg quick, but slow the up stroke so imply some "hang" time in the air. I think this would allow the same awesome inserter-leg design, and prevent such scrambled flailing when moving at speed.

In my eyes this implementation could be similar to a simply great mod; Progressive Running, that effectively gives you two speeds. If spidertron were given the same treatment, you could give spidertron the movement from FFF120 at low speed:



And with either a configurable key press or time based threshold, change the cadence into more of a gallop but with more legs to even out the stride:



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And as far as not really having a "niche" for spidertron to fit into... I'd love to leverage a "vanilla" way to obsolete my want of the infamous Squeak Through mod. Everyone (and every powerpole) knows what happens when you drive a car/tank through a factory. I would love to swap to spidertron for moving around the main section of the base. Or maybe instead of the mechanic of stacking so many exoskeletons, let spidertron be a togglable/deployable piece of suite equipment that you can enable or deploy to easily move about the base.

Just thinking out load here, but after initially installing so many QoL mods, I found I'd effectively rounded off a few too many corners, and the game became a little too "soft." Along these lines, I've been going through my modlist and finding ways to make myself work for the QoL nicety, instead of allowing the mod to just hand it to me for "free." For example, I've come to love Armor Reach as it emphasizes the importance of upgrading your suit, and gives me some thing back for going through the hassle of researching, and crafting the equipment.

I've felt that squeak through some what removes a bit too much "texture" from the base, allowing you to just breeze through so many obstacles on the ground (like pipes). I know, I know, this is why the mod exists, but I'd personally rather have to "earn" these types of QoL features through in-game mechanics.

Spidertron would be something you have to earn via technology and building the equipment itself.

Squeak Through's existence and popularity are evidence that the "want" is there for the feature. I think spidertron would be a way to "solve" this problem in-game.

[Deadlock989]

How about the graphics already existing for spidertron are published for the modding community and a talented modder gets them animated.

It's not just about animating them. It will look like weak sauce at least some of the time no matter what sprites it is given.

Inserters use a different animation method to every other entity in the game, one that modders have almost no control over. A couple of sprites (with double the resolution of any other game entity) representing the upper and lower halves of an arm are stretched and distorted to approximate a robot arm moving in 3D space, with fudged shadows and Z depth. The spidertron demo that we see in that short, low quality GIF apparently uses the same method: it's a floating block suspended over 8 giant upside-down inserters. It will never live up to close inspection at the same standard set by Factorio's newer graphics even if the sprites are made by Banksy.

I fully expect to see Spidertron soaring over the horizon in Factorio 1.0, being ridden by Herobrine.

[Shingen]

Why exactly does the pop-up need to be two level? It seems like something like this should work just fine and spare us the extra click.

The double pop-up and extra confirm might seem strange, but it's made this way to solve the problem of robots bringing you items before you finished setting up your request.

I fully agree with that decision.
I only hope it will be enough to press Enter after inputting numbers, so we don't have to actually find the button with our cursors :p

Why there is separate Thrash only area on logisitic tab?

For logistic slot, You can set number of request items 0, and number of max to 0 then you just created the auto-thrash slot. its ok.


Perhaps you can make UI even more clean, combine thrash with logistic.
Perhaps add a thrash bin icon next to +/- button. So when you drop an item from inventory on the thrash icon it add "logistc slot" with red color values. e.g. moves items to the logists area.
Maby add sorting so thrash will be sorted as last.
Such dynamic thrash UI would me more clean than dedicated reserved area.

"Thrash" are the kind-of-inventory slots from which logistic bots take items away.
You can add items there manually, or they'll get automatically moved there automatically if they exceed the maximum/"auto-thrash" number set in the logistic grid.
It's the same thing that exists in the game now.

Sure, I know how it works. What I say is, : It looks redundant to reserve area of UI only for thrash. Becouse (regular) trash is just a special case of auto-trash. Therfore it would looks more fluent, to combine regular thrash into logistcs.

no, trash is not a special case of auto trash. "trash" are inventory slots, while "auto-trash"/"logistics" are slots where you set rules.
adding trash inventory slot functionality to the rules would mean, besides just the increased complexity and bug-proneness, having to fit a 3rd number in this already crowded square.
in addition to that, you'd either be limited to 1 stack size per item type or devs would have to make it unlimited, where the first option is annoying and the other OP. also you could set an unlimited number of item types to be taken away. both of those combined, compared to the current max of 30 trash slots, would effectively make your inventory unlimited, as long as there are no logistic bots nearby.

[Oktokolo]

How about the graphics already existing for spidertron are published for the modding community and a talented modder gets them animated.

There probably is nothing to release. It is likely, that they did the example animation in blender tailored to that specific background landscape. Wonder if there ever was an ingame prototype at all.

[posila]

How about the graphics already existing for spidertron are published for the modding community and a talented modder gets them animated.

There probably is nothing to release. It is likely, that they did the example animation in blender tailored to that specific background landscape. Wonder if there ever was an ingame prototype at all.

I'd hope it's little bit recognizible when prototype is NOT made by an artist in graphics editor, but by programmer in engine
When prototyping something new, it'll usually get surprisingly fast to a point you can make GIF out of it, but in reality it is still long ways for being ready for production. That's what happend here ... kovarex had an idea, spent two days prototyping it, used inserter graphics and grey square because that's what he had on hand. Than maybe he felt FFF was too short that week, so he made the gif and it was not touched ever since, but was added to bottom of TODO as "maybe if we have time sometime".

[Oktokolo]

I'd hope it's little bit recognizible when prototype is NOT made by an artist in graphics editor, but by programmer in engine
When prototyping something new, it'll usually get surprisingly fast to a point you can make GIF out of it, but in reality it is still long ways for being ready for production. That's what happend here ... kovarex had an idea, spent two days prototyping it, used inserter graphics and grey square because that's what he had on hand. Than maybe he felt FFF was too short that week, so he made the gif and it was not touched ever since, but was added to bottom of TODO as "maybe if we have time sometime".

Kudos to Kovarex then. That leg animations match the background quite good.
How did he made the animations look like the legs seek solid ground? Could they be implemented in a mod without extra engine support in a performance-friendly way?

[ownlyme]

ugly af

[Deadlock989]

ugly af

You're a nasty piece of work.