Friday Facts #337 - Statistics GUI and Mod Debugger

[purdueme91]

I feel that the UI would be easier to understand if we added both the current and max values on all bars; this would answer at a glance:
- What is my current max production capacity?
- What is my current max capacity?
- How much spare capacity do I have?

This ^^^^ needs to be implemented. Helps with both knowing how much extra capacity you have to expand and how much shortfall you need to overcome.

[gGeorg]

Seeing the new statistics windows for electricity, I was suprised to see the same figure in satisfaction (100%=37.8GW) and production (37.8GW = 95%?) with different bar widths — but obviously one is "37.8GW satisfied out of 37.8GW requested" while the other is "37.8GW used out of a max of 40GW".

I feel that the UI would be easier to understand if we added both the current and max values on all bars; this would answer at a glance:
- What is my current max production capacity?
- What is my current max capacity?
- How much spare capacity do I have?

I know those could be manually computed by multiplying the number of producers/accumulators by their power/capacity, but having an aggregated value would make things more readable.

Yes.
Previous version, all bars vertiicaly it was easy to asume by naked eye what is answear to the qestions mentioned above.
New version, looks more clean, however useability is lower.
Set bars verticaly as it was, or make some other smart solution which help give answers.

[Illiou]

[...] I feel that the UI would be easier to understand if we added both the current and max values on all bars; [...]

Yes please!

A huge issue with the statistics is only having one digit after the comma. Could we please get more significant digits, rather than rounding? For example display 1.24k instead of 1.2k. Or maybe better 1240 instead, since going to kilo doesn't actually save any characters in that case. [...]

Yes please! Or at least make it show the accurate amount in a tooltip while hovering the entry.

And now is the right time to incorporate the logscale for production statistics, see also
viewtopic.php?p=259034#p259034

Yes please!

[...] Another intresting view would be a net yield graph, where Production - Consumption = net yield. So you could easly see which products are currently running low.
("The net yield of iron ore was -500/min in the last 10 minutes, better start building a new iron mine!")

That would certainly be sweet.

My own wish would be to give the graph more height. I mean why does the list of stuff occupy three thirds of the window? And in this regard I'm also a bit concerned about the greater height of each entry in the new GUI. Talking about the list, why is it sorted top to bottom instead of left to right first...?

Hmm, so much potential for great improvements here.

Good change to put the graph on top btw!

[coppercoil]

Still no log scale for production
Time zoom steps still are inconsistent and too big

[still__alive]

It always confuses me what satisfaction is when i initally look, it doesn't make sense, the word means provided, but this is showing required, where as demand means required.

But that is what the satisfaction meter shows. The colored bar is the amount being provided. The total width of the scale is the amount demanded. These are only the same when your power demand is fully satisfied.

I agree with TreefrogGreaken about the wording, it is a little awkward. I too always have to think twice when glancing at that because of the poor labels. I decided to log in just to point this out, in hopes the devs will see and change it.

What he is saying is that the Satisfaction meter shows how much power your base demands. But the word "satisfaction" itself actually feels like it is describing how much power you are producing -how much of the power demand you are satisfying. In other words, the words "Satisfaction" and "Production" are kind of describing the same thing. The actual bars and numbers are showing the correct stuff, just the labels are misleading.

I too think it would be better and more intuitive if they changed the word "Satisfaction" to "Demand". As in "this is how much electricity your base Demands" and "this is how much electricity Production your base has". Then I personally wouldn't 2nd guess the numbers I'm looking at because of the labeling.

[bman212121]

I second the satisfaction and production graphs could use more / different information. Maybe it's a different wording of English, but just glancing at those two it's not really obvious what they represent. I have an idea of what it's trying to convey simply because I've watched the graphs move and change colors, but it's still not ideal.

Reading the wiki page:
https://wiki.factorio.com/Electric_system

I would interpret satisfaction as consumption. But maybe it's not what you're trying to convey by those graphs?

Is the bar supposed to represent that your electricity consumption could be upwards of X units, but you're only able to consume x units because there isn't enough production to meet peak demands?

If that's the case then I'd definitely say the problem with the bar is that what's actually relevant to a user is knowing how much draw to actually plan for. If the bar is red all that does it tell me I don't have enough, and doesn't really tell when what to aim for. If you're already using those numbers to calculate the bar, then I'd completely agree please list the total. The example doesn't really spell out if that number displaying for satisfaction can go above the number for production or not. It would make a lot more sense if it did. I don't really care that I'm only satisfying 35GW of 45GW, I need to know that combined I need to be able to provide 45GW. Having to guess that because the bar is red and showing 35GW isn't particularly useful. I can see that I'm only producing 35GW on the bar directly to the right of it. If the satisfaction number is bigger than the production number, then it would be much more obvious I don't have enough production, and I could easily calculate how much I'm short by. Then I know exactly how much additional power I need to build to meet the demand.

[Hiladdar]

Like many others, I would like to see hundredths, rather then tenths after the decimal.

I already know, that I would like the pause button on the statistics screens.

Pause button is an good solution. Another possible solution is the allowing the user to select the default sort order, for the statistics display. Off the top of my head, I can think of 3, low to high, high to low, and alpha.

The mod debugging tool will be nice, but I would like to play around with it for a bit, prior to commenting.

Hiladdar

[MasterBuilder]

The only thing I would like to see different is a boundary between accumulator production & non-accu production.
With a lot of accumulators, you may think you have extra production to use, but you don't really. You can push the generator to 100% and still have 'leftover' production if you're accus have production to spare.

It's really the only thing that bugs me on that view.
I'd like to see a little vertical line somewhere along the bar to mark where normal production ends, and accu production begins.

[Jiehong]

Nice changes, but that new unified search icon is extremely small! Very hard to spot.

I've always wondered why the accumulators' charge was in Joules, while the production is in Watts.

It would be quite a lot easier to have them in W.h (with 1 W.h = 3600 J).

Having it in W.h would easily allow the player to understand if one has enough capacity for the night.

Ex: if the factory needs 36 GW steadily, and if the night is 10 hours, then we know we need at least 36 * 10 = 360 GW.h of capacity.

Right now, in Joules, it always need a conversion on the side.

[valneq]

Nice changes, but that new unified search icon is extremely small! Very hard to spot.

Just use Ctrl+F

[MakeItGraphic]

Given that, and the relatively short timeframe for 1.0 release, the update of the statistics GUI has really just been a style update, no new features or heavy logic rewriting.

Does this mean we will be losing out on a lot of potential features for other interfaces as well?

Stating a short time frame just sounds like you want to rush to get this finished. I remember in another FF the team all ready expressed it didn't want to spend forever on this build so they could work on other things. But IRC that was mainly in regards to polishing as true enough you could most likely do that to death.

I all so know losing team members can't be easy. (I can't seem to find anything on these forums, even manually searching user post) But I remember TOGoS posting something like:

"I feel confident leaving as there are people here that know enough about the map generation process"

It was a link to a user who did a write up on it however they were not a member of the staff. And I know a lot of users have lost source access, it is starting to feel as if we won't see additional implementations until the game is either finished, or way down the road when it goes to open-source.

Again I say "sounds" or "feel", not brushing off all the work you put into this.

I don't really see a need for open-source for a very very long time but it would be nice to expand the access the logic mods have access to.

The GUIs and the logic to make them work is incredibly complicated and fragile. Mods don't have access to any of that logic.

At the end of the day is expanding the access more to avoid the headache of documentation, and dealing with the problems mod authors run into while trying to implement such changes?

Mods as they are now can write their own GUIs. Is it possible for them to suppress native GUIs and essentially replace them without actually editing the native GUI? Maybe even having read access to their logic to be used/manipulated?

[Deadlock989]

just sounds like you want to rush

I mean, it's only been seven years.

As a modder I look forward to the game being stable and the end of feature drift.

[netmand]

happy to see a search added

[MakeItGraphic]

just sounds like you want to rush

I mean, it's only been seven years.

As a modder I look forward to the game being stable and the end of feature drift.

Yeah and I understood that viewpoint, I was just comparing the release cycle to the previous ones.

aha no doubt, I think you speak for the majority of mod authors when you say that. Becomes tedious after awhile having to constantly make small changes, and other times frustrating with bigger changes.

[Melerion]

Will we get a keyboard shortcut to open the trains window?

[Yxen]

Better to see the electricity consumtion/demand as a single bar for both

When available > demand/use
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxxxx

When available < demand/use
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

[still__alive]

Better to see the electricity consumtion/demand as a single bar for both

When available > demand/use
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxxxx

When available < demand/use
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I sort of like this idea, but I think I'd still like both bars, just formatted like:

Demand: (instead of the "Satisfaction" label)
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Where green = current demand and white = maximum possible demand.

Production:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Where green = total power production you have and red = the amount of power production you are short by.

Numbers for all 4 of those (current demand, maximum demand, total power and power shortage) would be nice too, I usually don't like it when games just have the bar and no actual numerical value displayed. I'm not sure I like how they have those numbers INSIDE the bar in their first screenshot in this particular case. It does make it a little harder to read like someone else suggested. I guess if they want it in the bars, I'd make it so it stays completely in the bar (i.e. moves with the bar) so you don't get that effect where half the number is outside and in a different color.

[Zomis]

Overall great changes - especially the log improvements (although it might make my current awesome Jenkinsfile obsolete - see my mods on GitHub if you're curious)

A notable change with the electric stats is that the Satisfaction/Production/Accumulator charge are next to each other in a single row, as opposed to each in a separate row. The label for the exact amount has also been moved to inside of the progress bar, which itself is much thicker.

I'm not convinced this is the best decision. Having them next to each other makes it IMO harder to compare them, so it's not that easy to see "Okay, I'm on approximately 80% satisfaction, so I need to add about 4 new steam engines". Just notice the difference between having Production and Satisfaction on top of each other instead of side-to-side. (A/B test? )

[Hellspawn]

"You can also see we took this opportunity to integrate the Kill statistics in with the rest, instead of being its own window with its own hotkey."

Me: Oh cool, they add a kill statistic to the game!
...
Me: Oh wait... this is already in the game...
...

Soory for being a noob, i just startet with that game. Only 1650h played so far....

[Yxen]

Better to see the electricity consumtion/demand as a single bar for both

When available > demand/use
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxxxxx

When available < demand/use
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I sort of like this idea, but I think I'd still like both bars, just formatted like:

Demand: (instead of the "Satisfaction" label)
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Where green = current demand and white = maximum possible demand.

Production:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Where green = total power production you have and red = the amount of power production you are short by.

Numbers for all 4 of those (current demand, maximum demand, total power and power shortage) would be nice too, I usually don't like it when games just have the bar and no actual numerical value displayed. I'm not sure I like how they have those numbers INSIDE the bar in their first screenshot in this particular case. It does make it a little harder to read like someone else suggested. I guess if they want it in the bars, I'd make it so it stays completely in the bar (i.e. moves with the bar) so you don't get that effect where half the number is outside and in a different color.

good point