Friday Facts #412 - Undo/Redo improvements & Car Latency driving

[Lou]

Do these changes also apply to the Spidertron in manual control mode (not via remote control)?

No, only "cars" meaning entities with CarPrototype, which in the base game is only the car and the tank. Simulating spidertron would be both more expensive (legs) and less needed (no running into electric poles if you don't react in time).

Doing this would probably be possible, but we have currently no plans on doing so.

[Terry]

I have been instictively using ctrl+y a lot. Nice to know it will do something now!

[Potipecan]

If I'm understanding this correctly, we'll have one undo/redo stack shared across all surfaces. It'd be nice if each surface could have its own stack in case you're working across multiple surfaces at once.

[Ghoulish]

Stop teasing us, and release Space Age already!

[Shadow_Man]

Please support CTRL+Shift+Z redo for Windows and Linux as well. Not only is it a very common shortcut for redo but it is also one-handable which is very useful for a game like Factorio where you are often using the mouse in the other hand while building.

We generally try to make all controls configurable in settings, including undo and redo. I use a Mac normally, so when I play on Windows, I also remap it to Ctrl+Shift+Z.

One action can be assigned multiple hotkeys in the game settings, so for Redo, let Ctrl+Y be the first assignment and Ctrl+Shift+Z be the second.

[BEEFE]

Oh man this is really good stuff! I haven't played a lot of multiplayer, but the car latency was noticable when I did, so it's good to see that get smoothed out.

[Dial-up]

oh, that reminds me, is there a way to hide latency problems if the action is executed in scripts? for example, placement of an entity, I dug through all the runtime APIs but did not find how to do it

[EustaceCS]

> interaction with not yet published mechanic
Teleportation?
agent_smith_laugh.gif

[aka13]

Ohh, redo!!
As exciting as getting undo was back in the day.
Also, having wires in the same queue finally is a godsend.
And the preview! All I could have wished for and more. Great work, thanks a lot, looking forward to it.

[Phredward]

I'm very excited for low latency driving!

Any chance this will help with throwing grenades at trees (with no biters around)? I'm sure weapons are a whole other thing, but I noticed those things together last multi-player game I was in.

[Xcone]

The undo/redo improvements look awesome. I tend to stay away from undo-ing, as it seems flakey at times. Having insights and better covarage will surely help!

I, too (like the 3rd poster), would like this also exposed in the modding API in one way or another.
As the author of P.U.M.P. I would very much like to hook the (ghost)entity-placement I do into the undo system. With the better-coverage of undo, is that maybe already included? And if not; would you be willing to expand on it?

[Lou]

I'm very excited for low latency driving!

Any chance this will help with throwing grenades at trees (with no biters around)? I'm sure weapons are a whole other thing, but I noticed those things together last multi-player game I was in.

Grenades do not have latency hiding. That being said, there is indirect improvement in that now the range visualisation is actually accurate (throwing grenade in the (by default) green circle eventually results in thrown grenade; without latency hiding you could drive out of range and not throw)

[gGeorg]

Undo-redo system is sounds great.
When I discovered the pipette function, it changed my gameplay. It smooth out game experience, instead of repeatedly force player to click back and forth, allow use logic - I want this once more, while dont disturb your mind flow by needless UI interaction. I dont understand why other games dont use it ... .
Also, from the same box, the nice feature which adds underground entity when needed so player just drag belt, but no need to bother click back and forth to select different item.


I guess that undo-redo aim the same target. Smoot out the game play experience, allow thinking.

I wish Wube gets contract from Micosoft for UI - especially Menu Start Controls & setting area.

Regarding car latency - looks like the engine is more and more ready for an RTS game :-]

[gGeorg]

Latency hiding in combat is generally problematic, because we would need to simulate a lot of expensive stuff.

The game excitement comes from various resources.
In single player you develop an finely tuned blueprint or get familiar with game basics.
In multiplayer you have major fun from interaction.

Is it possible to develop two code path?
One for single player - optimized for max performance.
Second for multiplayer - optimized for people interactions.

It would means, a ultra-megabase made in single player might be unplayable in multiplayer. But, who cares when you can shoot your friend, right?

[Seelo]

Already waiting for a video by some circuit wizard controlling remote parts of their factory through Undo/Redo Morse code (flipping a single piece of belt and counting how many items end up each direction)

[FritzHugo3]

Soooo needet the strg + z/streg + y!!!!
Thanxs for that and also that it write what he do.

How often i make the mistake and want rollback the kable and think OH DAAAAAM what he have now deleted, not de cable!

[mmmPI]

The car prediction is very mysterious, how can you predict things all the time ? that seem like magic. the "what if the car collide with a train?" and you are not showing the exact location but a predicted one and the prediction become wrong, seem like impossible to me when considering another player could be driving that train. It made me think of "coyote time", the little hidden tricks to help players. Makes me curious to try it out

The debug ghost look like adept from starcraft phasing out to me, i assume this is protoss technology then...

I also like the redo being there, not being only the hotkey but also the visual indication, and the modification to make "undo" "undo" everything. This one seem less mysterious, and that's very good, i don't want things to mysteriously be undone.( or redone).

Curious to see where the little text is going to pop up when you are undoing something while driving a car and experiencing latency spike just after been teleported to another surface and assigned another force or something

[tk0421]

the only change the car needs is better brakes.
This has been my biggest factorio pet peeve for years, i've been harping on it since the nuclear update... if you make it faster, you must make it stop faster too.

[rhobium]

If I understand right, rotations with the R key can't be undone. This seems confusing? I'm not sure what is special about rotations vs copying recipes, placing wires and so on. And I often accidentally rotate something not realising where my cursor is.

[GregoriusT]

Awesome, now please fix shooting weapons in Multiplayer, which is far worse than the Vehicles.


Like merely holding the "Shoot" Button causes the Game to lag like mad, if there is any latency, even if you dont have Ammo at all, its like its trying to send my mouse coordinates every game tick... (speaking from transatlantic multiplayer experience)

Latency hiding in combat is generally problematic, because we would need to simulate a lot of expensive stuff.

I am not sure what do you mean by "lag", but currently when you are shooting, the latency hiding is dropped -> you should have a delay but not lag in the sense of minifreezes.

What i mean is i suddenly walk significantly more slowly with a lot of input delay to the point i always frikkin die when engaging in combat in transatlantic Multiplayer. Anything that is not a Nuclear Rocket Launcher is basically impossible to shoot in Multiplayer for me.

Same goes for the Vehicle Mounted Guns, I have to resort to AAIs Automatic Gun Turret on Tracks to be able to even have any sort of Combat at all, so clearly Combat CAN work with no latency as long as the weapons I use dont have to transmit my mouse position to the Server and back. (is what i suspect)

Obviously some of this can be mitigated by overpowered modded utility that makes me practically invulnerable, and throwable weapons like Grenades and Poison Capsules. (I am not agile enough for turret creep, unless I got the picker dollies mod installed)

Edit: Spidertrons and Laser Armor are ofcourse a bit too endgame and are not considered fun Combat, since they just wipe out everything passively.