Friday Facts #363 - 1.1 is getting close

[PaszaVonPomiot]

Yo the light changes are dope! So many cool features - this is great!

[darkfrei]

How about to rework heat pipes?
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/heat_glow

[SHADOW13]

Love the changes, belt building lock is going to make the life so much easier.

I was wondering about the lightning changes, the warm "fire" glow is great but it seems we are going to lose the uranium green glow, especially around the building, would be great if you kept that one as well?

[ickputzdirwech]

The entity was already showing its status in the tooltip, but it went basically unnoticed by everyone, and the proof is, that there were many different bugs related to the status that no one ever reported. We believe, that the status should help to understand what is going on, mainly, why the entity is stopped at the moment.

I really like this addition! I have a few questions regarding this though:

• Will it be possible to take items from the inserter/put items in its hand through the GUI?
• Will the preview contain connected entities and targeted entities?

Also i have to point out that issues regarding the entity status got reported previously put got ignored most of the time. See 65351, 69086 and 85341

When you hover the alert icon, the game shows the alert icons on the related on-screen positions, or if they are off-screen, it shows arrows on the edge of the screen to point you in the right direction.

Again I really like this feature. I am not very fond of the arrows however.

Speaking of breaking things...

Will you also take the opportunity and change some other inconsistent internal names like the ones mentioned in this topic 87089?

[dasiro]

I am not so certain about the inventory revert, I quite like the way it is right now. It is less busy the way it is now, and most of the time you don't need both at the same time.

Maybe someone from Wube can confirm, but the way I read it, the tabs will still be available as an option, just the default will be the flat layout.

My issue with the flat layout is that logistics should be on the far right. You won't have them by default, so the crafting menu is right next to the player, then sometime later this logistics menu crams its way into the middle.

And as tabs, the logistics menu is currently the 'far right' tab, so if flattened out, I would expect it to the far right panel.

Edit: Checked the current game, and even with 'flat GUI' checked, the logistics panel is the far right. Please leave it there.

yes, don't send the crafting "tab" suddenly to the right, this makes for a very inconsistent UX throughout the same game.

The minimalistic UI for entities like the inserter is nice, because you could keep an overview from what was happening in the background and in this case the entire UI with inventory can only confuse players.

what would be a great addition is increase the status lights size on entities, because even slightly zoomed out it's almost impossible to see them, causing people to use the Bottleneck-mod to see them more clearly (causing your game state to no longer be vanilla)

[svalorzen]

Also love the nighttime lighting!

However, it seems weird to me that the bolts of lightning from the batteries don't emit light anymore (arcs are usually *very* bright). Would it be possible to add some bluish light there?

[SupplyDepoo]

Did anyone else notice the equipment slots UI was moved to the bottom-left corner?

On the topic of alerts: please allow some way to cycle through multiple custom (programmable speaker) alerts.

Thanks!

[ickputzdirwech]

It looks like you moved the character stuff from the bottom right corner to the left. Is it right in the corner or attached to the quickbar? Will the crafting queue still be on the left side? Since that frees up a bit of space on the right will you expand the shortcut bar?

looks like it is attached to the quickbar

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looks like it is right in the corner

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[boskid]

Is it right in the corner or attached to the quickbar?

"Yes"

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[irbork]

Extrapolating bug graph to find if the game can be released in one week does not seem right to me. I would have just asked the team what they think.
I like the old lighting of Centrifuges, Reactors and Circuit connection boxes more than the new ones that do not have any light.

[Eydamos]

The new features look cool, except for removing the character tab and enforcing the flat layout.

I prefer my UI to be as compact as possible. Having the logistic tab again in the middle clutters the UI too much as I rarely look at this data at all.
I also liked the Character tab as I could digest all information about my character at one place in the middle of the screen where my eyes lay most of the time.
Being able to access the grid of you armor while being in a vehicle was also very nice and I have often used this to move stuff between my grid and the spidertrons grid many times.


Building belts in a line without spraying them all over the place is really nice. Could you maybe add this also while pressing a button so it can be used for anything? E.g. if I create a new station I have to drag a line of chests but usually spray them all over the place. Being able to go in a straight line while holding e.g. Ctrl would be very nice.


I also have a question. Will there be a beta of 1.1? I really liked it to be on the cutting edge when Factorio was still in early access and once a new beta was available I always selected it in steam immediately. I was a little bit disappointed when I heard about 1.1 and could not select it in steam.

[themightygugi]

Factorio development is really turning into a little minigame of project planning and forecast of expected deadlines using tasks. Lets see if you escalate into features, epics and roadmaps. That REALLY means progress!

With any luck, you will loose all agility and hope that tasks represent the reality of what needs to be done with the game.

Seriously guys ... Stay lean. Provide value and focus on what made you a great team that made the best game I EVER played! Don't go toward the darkside and believe that tasks, forecasts and deadlines means your game becomes better.

[Ziomek24]

And I still miss the old 0.16 campaign a lot
It would be great if you did some story campaigns like the 0.16 one.

[kovarex]

The reasons the logistics tab is in the middle rather than on the right:
1) It has an inventory, so it is faster to move items manually
2) It is actually used more in the late game I suppose
3) It was like that in the old versions

[Fractaliste]

The reasons the logistics tab is in the middle rather than on the right:
1) It has an inventory, so it is faster to move items manually
2) It is actually used more in the late game I suppose
3) It was like that in the old versions

I noticed the toggle button to enable/disable logistic inventory suplly changes to a checkbox, can you consider to add it to the shortcut bar on the bottom of main screen (the toolbox with alt mod, blueprints, copy/paste, ...)?

[simonszu]

Also love the nighttime lighting!

However, it seems weird to me that the bolts of lightning from the batteries don't emit light anymore (arcs are usually *very* bright). Would it be possible to add some bluish light there?

+1

Also, regarding the belt direction lock, does it only apply to placing belts when sitting in a spidertron? I have a similar problem when placing belts for longer ways with just holding the mouse down and walking, and everything gets out of sync when i walk over orthogonally placed belts which move me a tile or so sideways. Locking belt placement during walking would help with that situation, too.

[sorahn]

The reasons the logistics tab is in the middle rather than on the right:
1) It has an inventory, so it is faster to move items manually
2) It is actually used more in the late game I suppose
3) It was like that in the old versions

1) do people actually manually move things into the trash, or do they just shift or ctrl-click them out of their main inventory

2) even in late take I still look at the crafting tab more, I only want the logistics tab when I want to change what I am requesting from the network, which doesn't really happen a lot after you set it up. And even in the late game, the crafting tab ends up being a kind of 'refresher' for what your production chain needs to look like even if you aren't actually crafting the item by hand.

3) yes, but it was only about half/one-third of the width it is now so it balanced the UI better by being in the middle. All 3 tabs are the same width now, and currently in the 1.0 release it's already on the far right. (along with it being the far right tab when in tab view)

I use the flat UI currently, but if I'm honest, if the logistics panel moves to the middle in 1.1, I would probably start using the tabbed view instead.

[Durabys]

Not exactly happy with the removal of the Character tab. Not happy at all.

[SLywnow]

Wow, I just want to say that the new lighting system is awesome! I think that when creating new objects in the mod, we will need to specify a new sprite layer. However, I do not yet understand how we will specify the color of light and its intensity.

[valneq]

Will you also take the opportunity and change some other inconsistent internal names like the ones mentioned in this topic 87089?

^This

Also want to add this reference: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=77749