Friday Facts #330 - Main menu and File Share Shenanigans

[Kiu]

Had some QNAP and Netgear stuff in the past (was in the company already) and had alot of fun with that *CENCORED*...
Synology is OK, but you have to take care about not using to many features/apps. At least, if something went south, there are manuals how to access your data with a common linux (if you avoid those syno-raid-stuff). And don't use desktop drives.
FreeNAS/ZFS if you want to build something with a nice UI (Supermicro has some nice cases)
And if things get "interesting" - some kind of Ceph cluster (SuSE Enterprise Storage etc)...

Nice menu redesign. With the continue button - how will it work if your save contains different startup settings as the game is using atm? Because for me, that is quite common (sync via GOG between desktop and laptop).

[_Attila_]

Since you are working around the save files menu, it would be very useful to have the save files sorted on creation date. I tend to save in files Temp[n] and rotate through them. If the last save is an autosave, I have to hunt and find the file with the longest play time to find the one before the autosave.
So, a button to sort on date/name would be very useful.

[netmand]

lol QNAP for a development firm? Glad to see that you guys went with a serious solution to replace the home office appliances you tried. Hopefully it didn't stop there and you have off-site data storage implemented too.

[OvermindDL1]

ZFS is fantastic!

If all you need is a simple ZFS RAID for a network drive or so, then get a lot of drives and go.

However, if you want even higher throughput and better reliability then an object store system (like ceph mentioned prior, which does use zfs underneath as I recall) is absolutely unbeatable!

[Stargateur]

I will stand with linus on this one.

[BattleFluffy]

The main menu redesign looks good :>

[CrushedIce]

Will "continue" work if your last save was a locally hosted multiplayer game? Such that it hosts this game again with the settings used last time?

[Merssedes]

I've quastions about Steam integration.
From what I know, there is currently 3 types of players in multiplayer:
* users with Factorio account, not lincked to Steam account (they use non-Steam version);
* users with Factorio and Steam accounts linked, who uses non-Steam version;
* users with Factorio and Steam accounts linked, who uses Steam version.
What you want to add is 4th type:
* users with Steam account, not linked to Factorio account ("mini-accounts", they will use Steam version).
So:
1) Will it be somehow checked is entered username for mini-account is already in any use (Factorio account or other mini-account)?
2) Will there be any changes for non-Steam version of the game?

[eradicator]

Uh..."continue". I always prefer "load game" in every game because continue gives no information about where it'll continue. For most games it's some sort of autosave that happened at some point i didn't even notice it happend. I prefer to continue playing at the last point where i conciously decided to save the game. If it shows the name of the savegame file that's one large step, but i'd still like to exclude autosaves from continue without disabling autosave completely. *sigh*. I'm just weird like that :p.

*me looks at screenshot* -> User scenarios: Little Big Adventure 3. We need to talk *cough*.

*me looks at other screenshot* -> Spidertron confirmed. Horse confirmed. (How much time did you spend on faking that picture :p?)

Vender lock-in -> Ah well, totally expected that punchline.

[malventano]

Your QNAP was fine, as is OpenZFS (I doubt you're running the proprietary ZFS branch - that's what Linus has the issue with, btw), but any 'storage thing' should be treated as a black box that can fail. If you replaced your single QNAP with a single Linux box running OpenZFS, then you are no better off than you were before. Since you had two of them, you should have had both QNAP's running and syncing with each other, offering redundancy and online failover. Now that you've moved over, you should be doing that same thing (add a second Linux box).

Separately, while ZFS is great and offers snapshots and other useful features, that QNAP was more flexible for its use case in that you can add a drive and expand the existing array, while for ZFS you would have to add another VDEV. ZFS does not yet support expansion of existing VDEVs, so you can't just 'add a drive' to it in the same manner as other solutions have been able to handle for decades.

[Kyralessa]

If we are talking about the main menu, you should make it's background [...] load a factory as a background

Yep! Put the image of the last save as background. How perfect smooth transition into game after hitting "continue" button would it be...

Yes! Doesn't the game already save a thumbnail screen shot whenever it saves your game? What if Continue were a big button/panel of its own that displayed that thumbnail along with the Continue button?

[maniak1349]

While you at it can we have all those buttons on a single screen without need to hop between dialogs? Pretty much exactly like that:

btns.png (22.96 KiB) Viewed 7688 times

And about new game dialog - I think it will look better if instead of a list it will be a table with all sorts of additional information in columns - requires modes/not, user-made/added by mod/from base game, multi-map campaign/single map, etc. With that it will only need two groups - for core content and for additional content, which will make differentiation between those two much more clear.

[Gummiente27]

I've quastions about Steam integration.
From what I know, there is currently 3 types of players in multiplayer:
* users with Factorio account, not lincked to Steam account (they use non-Steam version);
* users with Factorio and Steam accounts linked, who uses non-Steam version;
* users with Factorio and Steam accounts linked, who uses Steam version.
What you want to add is 4th type:
* users with Steam account, not linked to Factorio account ("mini-accounts", they will use Steam version).
So:
1) Will it be somehow checked is entered username for mini-account is already in any use (Factorio account or other mini-account)?
2) Will there be any changes for non-Steam version of the game?

I have no clue but I thought multiplayer accounts 2 and 3 are equal.

[PunkSkeleton]

ZFS is fantastic!

As someone working a few years with T5 servers with ZFS I have to disagree. It was OK unless more than 50% disk usage, otherwise it was getting painfully slow. Now we switched to x86 with a different FS and evweything works fine even at 99% of used space. I don't even know which FS it is - I support software not OS and from my perspective it just works. Which wasn't the case with ZFS.

[Jan11]

Satisfactory pipes and Bethesda Horse Armor DLC

[ili]

Wow that's bad luck.
I have a 4 bay QNAP running for 8 years 24h without any problems.

[conn11]

If we are talking about the main menu, you should make it's background [...] load a factory as a background

Yep! Put the image of the last save as background. How perfect smooth transition into game after hitting "continue" button would it be...

Yes! Doesn't the game already save a thumbnail screen shot whenever it saves your game? What if Continue were a big button/panel of its own that displayed that thumbnail along with the Continue button?

This would really be the (opt-in) cherry on top of all the polish. Making even something straight forward like the main menu interesting and refreshing.
AND it would avoid loading some unwanted save, as the thumbnail couldn’t be overseen.

[Philip017]

i am very interested in how the continue button would work, i would prefer continue in multiplayer as well as single player, making them a subset instead of at the top, thus i can continue my last single player game, or continue my last multiplayer server joined, i would like it if, it would also tell me, when using the multiplayer continue button, the name of the server, and if it is the same map, or a new one, it could remember the number of hours on the map compared to the last time i was on it.

as for any NAS system, i have never used one, and heard of them failing far too frequently, and with their proprietary file systems and data encryption, when the nas crashes it makes retrieving your files much more complex than if you use a standard system, (NTFS for windows, or ext4 for linux), even if you have your files encrypted, using a standard file system and encryption method, means less down time and quicker access to your files when a hardware failure occurs. get a reliable PC, or server board, a case that can handle the number of drives you need, and set it up yourself so you know how it works and what hardware and software it is using. also it is always wise to use some method of backup as well. your files are valuable, so having both onsite and offsite backups is a must, heaven forbid your work site get destroyed (fire/natural disaster) and everything is lost, but if you have offsite backup then at least you didn't lose all that work, across town backup is ok (a dev's home), but another city/country (aka cloud, or remote dev) is even better. i know you have probably heard this many times before, but it's either back it up or be ok with it getting lost if that time comes. backing up terabytes of data will take a while, but once you have it all backed up it's incremental after that. setting up automatic backups will make life easier, but i recommend at least once a week making a manual offline backup, if possible rotate the backups in 4 week increments, in case of infection, with ransom ware and viruses that destroy, all it takes is one little mistake and disaster can strike and make life miserable, i am sure you have made some people mad as indicated by those that grief servers and ddos your community testing maps so take the proper precautions and make backups. i wish you all the best and am greatfull you have made this fantastic game.

[seyfahni]

I do really wish for the Continue button to also continue Multiplayer!

Also the idea with the last-played map as main menu background is really nice.

[Uristqwerty]

"Continue <save name>", "Rejoin <server name>", and "Rehost <LAN server name? save name?>" seem like distinct verbs, and I can imagine some players might prefer having both Continue and Rejoin quick options present simultaneously. If/when continuing multiplayer is added, how much customization will there be, if any?