Friday Facts #191 - Gui improvements

[dee-]

Wow, all of these sound like a really good idea -- Make it so !

[Ormek]

Go! Go! Go! You're absolutely right in doing those changes. The engine of Factorio is superb. What it lacks to be a superb game is exactly that kind of "minor" gold plating... and carefully designed scenarios for a campaign. You might need to do UI and gameplay testing with fresh players.

[samr85]

Great suggestions! I'd also like to suggest:
- Building (for example) a blue belt over a red splitter should upgrade the splitter to blue if you have one
- Rail planner interface for placing straight lines of anything - can use +/- to change the distance between each item, should have sensible behaviour for things like pilons and underground pipes/belts matching them and putting them at max distance unless "-" is pressed. Primarily for placing long lines of belts/spaced inserters
- +1 for the suggestion of a last crafted/picked up slot - I'm forever having to hover over the craft icon, to get the yellow background, so I can find what I just crafted...
- Mirror blueprint button (not just rotate)
- A blueprint modification system - like how the tutorials work, but the end product is the blueprint. Would help with things like where you want to change modules
- button to delete empty blueprints without having to fill them in first (might be possible to do this already, I just couldn't work out how!)

[Alice3173]

I have over 600 hours in Factorio and I like all this suggestions so I guess I'm weird or something.

Same here. But then the UI is something I've thought needed a serious overhaul for quite a long time now. I just figured it was something that they'd go back over when everything else was done with and they were just going back over the game for a final quality check.

- A blueprint modification system - like how the tutorials work, but the end product is the blueprint. Would help with things like where you want to change modules

The ability to manually populate a blueprint to begin with would be really convenient. A lot of the time I end up having to built a random assembly line or something as a template to get a blueprint going and more often than not it ends up getting disassembled shortly after.

[calfuris]

I never understood why all my weapons and ammo need to be shown on my screen all the time, when 95% of my time is spent building factories.

Because when you need to see them, you generally need to see them now without messing around with opening another window. The minimal amount of screen real estate it takes up is well worth it in combat. It's also well worth it when I get a bunch of alerts and realize that I needed to be at the other end of your base five minutes ago, because apparently I didn't build my defenses well enough. Do I need to detour to grab ammo? Is my Heavy Armor running low on durability? I want answers at a glance, and I want all of the answers. I don't want to look at my shotgun's ammo (that being the weapon that I usually keep as active), note that it looks good, and then realize when I get there that I'm out of flamethrower ammo and my armor is on its last legs!

The 95% of the time I'm spending on other things, I honestly don't even process that information visually. It's tucked off in a corner where I'm not going to see it unless I'm actively looking for it.

A compromise that I would support is implementing the changes you're suggesting but bringing back the character bar when in combat and when those yellow and red notifications pop up.

[The Intelligent One]

I think that with the new tabs, there should be an option to either open on the crafting tab (or maybe even allow to choose which to default to, if someone maybe wants to open the Logistics tab) or to open on the last used tab, instead of always opening to the Crafting tab with E

[Sloopy_DE]

I really like this outlook. Many hours of thinking and rethinking had to have been spend on it. If you want my feedback, please do it as described.
You mentioned many points I unconsciously was annoyed by and now I'm annoyed by them even more.

Keep up the good work!

This!

[Drynn]

I definitely understand the need for these inventory changes, but embedding tabs within tabs is going to create a hunting nightmare. One solution might be to add toggles within the inventory screen (near the new sorting buttons) similar to the way logistic attachment works. When all toggles are selected you end up with a screen similar to what we experience now, however these could be deselected by default to prevent confusion among new users.

The changes to the hotbar are mostly excellent, though I fall into the group that thinks removing any of the combat info will create problems when making urgent decisions.

I also think it would be nice if hotbar slots were configured by default to accept items you pick up, but could be locked with an empty selection from the filter menu to prevent this from happening.

[lachanfall]

I love your Toolbar suggestions. Just like you said, I'm quite annoyed of searching for Items all over the screen, cause i just emptied an unfiltered Toolbelt slot and now the newly crafted items don't appear in the inventory.
Placing ghost's of items I don't own right now, would make my life in factorio SO much more comfortable.

As for the inventory changes i'm not quite sure how to think about it. On one side there's the often not needed information about Logistics network stuff. I just overlook that if I don't need it, so it doesn't bother me wheter it's there or not.
And then there is the inventory screen, which i quite like having apart from the rest. So when i open my inventory, i see the crafting screen and not the stuff i did before (like changing from combat PA to building PA).
My point is that i don't like these tabs in every menu. I'm more the guy for one menu per function. I feel like placing these tabs everywhere will make me have to click on a hundred buttons to get the menu i want, compared to now where we have one menu per keypress (armor for character screen, "e" for inventory/ logistics, "p" for production stats etc.).

So while I can understand that you want to make the game more accessible to new players, i fear the time when we have to work us through page after page of menus just to place another exoskeleton on the PA rack.

[THENIRL]

Alright, the last time I came to these forums was 2013. I know, I suck, but I just had to say how wonderful it is that the UI is finally coming into the discussion. The way it is now (and how it always was) gets the job done, sure, but damn, does it need some serious spring cleaning! Do keep us posted on any decisions concerning this!

[Hanse00]

I love the philosophy of making it better at the cost of the status quo.

I've been playing this game for a while now And I still love it more with every update.

[befzz]

F1, F2, F3
- This keys must not(IMHO?) be used as a main shortcuts because they are hard to reach for fingers.

E or F3
Inventory + Crafting (Always)

SHIFT + E or F2
Inventory + Logistics

CTRL + E or F1
Inventory + Character

[leoch]

Great stuff. I especially like the idea of being able to shift/control-click stuff and make it go where you want, instead of dealing with fixed rules like "shift+clicked wood goes in trash".

Something i really want: to be able to get an arbitrary ghost item without crafting one. Toolbar is good, but also for anything else, say if I want to build one roboport.

[steinio]

Great stuff. I especially like the idea of being able to shift/control-click stuff and make it go where you want, instead of dealing with fixed rules like "shift+clicked wood goes in trash".

Something i really want: to be able to get an arbitrary ghost item without crafting one. Toolbar is good, but also for anything else, say if I want to build one roboport.

You'll get this.
Set the roboport as filter of a slot, select it and you can build a ghost of it.

Greetings, steinio.

[Jaimeraperalta02]

I LOVE IT, PLEEEASE, UPDATE THE GAME AND ADD IT!!!
I hate the actual toolbar

[Damaskox]

I also like what I read (at least the part I understood) =D
I never dreamed of showing to a friend how I want something to be built by using Ghost versions! This could ease up stuff a lot!

[Cobaltur]

I spent also 780h into the game. And I like the changes too.

But speaking making things easier for new players and inventory. I hate the group function. I'm searching so many time for an item in the inventory.
It's getting worse if you play with mods.

So why we do have registers in the crafting area but not in the inventory. Very inconsistent in my opinion.

I would like to suggest to continue the idea of grouping. The icons of the registers should be reused.

But in case of grouping you will lose the information how may free slots you got. So an additional used/total count is necessary.

maybe a screen say more (it's not exact):

grouped inventory.jpg (49.84 KiB) Viewed 7071 times

if it's too complex. The "group icons" can act as a filter on the whole inventory. And of course one additional "show all".

[Teomner]

I also like the suggested changes mentioned in Friday Facts.

One big suggestion I have is on the Load Game window.

I'd like to be able to see the actual date and time of the save.

Right now I go off of playtime, but I think, in addition to the map name, version, difficulty and playtime, it would be nice to see the date/timestamp of the save file.

As an added bonus, maybe the created date and time as well?

Excellent work guys! This is still my #1 favorite game at the moment.

[pleegwat]

I spent also 780h into the game. And I like the changes too.

But speaking making things easier for new players and inventory. I hate the group function. I'm searching so many time for an item in the inventory.
It's getting worse if you play with mods.

So why we do have registers in the crafting area but not in the inventory. Very inconsistent in my opinion.

I would like to suggest to continue the idea of grouping. The icons of the registers should be reused.

But in case of grouping you will lose the information how may free slots you got. So an additional used/total count is necessary.

maybe a screen say more (it's not exact):

grouped inventory.jpg

if it's too complex. The "group icons" can act as a filter on the whole inventory. And of course one additional "show all".

I could see going in that direction, and possibly merging the inventory and crafting (and possibly logistics) screens entirely. In this case I would suggest eliminating the stack size concept completely and using a weight-based system instead.
A major downside to that (apart from 'it's different') is that it reduces the immediate insight into which items are taking a lot of inventory space.

[RobertTerwilliger]

I'm okay with everything, but one tiny thing.
As a WOW player you should know there is 2 player categories: binders (hotkey users) and clickers (those who use mouse despite it is more awkward). Latter are players who simply don't take the game serious, it is the way they chill out, and nothing more, so they just don't bother learning all those hotkeys.

What I'm talking about: current weapon simply HAS TO BE changeable via clicking. You've wrote you want to leave only "current weapon", but you really have 2 options:
1) leave all weapons at the screen (will take away only armor slot)
2) make "choose weapon" popup onclick menu (probably preferable)
Also probably put ammo count on weapon icon. It won't show which ammo is equipped, but I suspect it is unneccesary to see it all the time ; )
Also ammo should be used directly from inventory, and be "loaded" as shortcut as well.