Friday Facts #243 - New GUI tileset

[ikarikeiji]

JESUS CHRIST CANT YOU FIX THOSE BEVEL/SHADOW/GLOW/ETC GRADIENT RAMPS INTO SOMETHING MORE REASONABLE FFS?!

YOU'RE MAKING THE UI EVEN WORSE THAN IT WAS!!!

Seriously. Like super seriously. SUPER SUPER SERIOUSLY. You're making everything look blurred and out of focus. The panel borders are a DISGRACE. The inner shadows are ATROCIOUS, and even more so when you're "softening" things with a weak dark outer glow (which has a slight red tint for some goddamn reason to top it, too). Let me tell you, that softening looks like shit. Those round buttons are somehow EVEN WORSE. The scrollbar bump pattern looks like a mushy mess. The slider button pattern just MIGHT look okay if it was only insets, but it isn't. There's some stupid bumps in the middle of them, with their shadows are hugging the bottom of the widget's face, making it looks like complete nonsense. The checkboxes are probably the worst of them all.

I understand you're more concerned about the color scheme, typography, layouting and such things ... but I haven't been able to play this game ever since you started your UI revamp because the fucking gradients in the toolbar/inventory grid are messing with my head, and now you're showing off things like THIS. *cry*

I'd very much prefer a completely flat UI instead of this monstrosity.

THANKS FOR YOUR OPINION!!!!!

Sorry for yelling. It's been forever since I was last able to play this game. It seems nobody else is affected by the issue, but certain kind of gradients (linear shadow gradients and certain kind of radial ones) wreck with my head and cause slight dizziness, headache, and make things seem like they're out of focus. Everything was great while the UI was flat gray, until in 0.15 the graphics were tweaked and bunch of pointless gradients were added for no reason whatsoever. I managed to play that version merely a few minutes until I just couldn't deal with the UI anymore. Every time I opened the UI it strained my eyes, and it was because of those stupid goddamn fucking gradients in the item tiles. I've been complaining about it occasionally and waiting, waiting to see if it ever gets fixed. You know, hopefully fixed when you finally make the full gui revamp. It's been over a year now, and that's a year without Factorio. I used to play almost every day. I would still play if I could. I eagerly wait every friday to read FFF, and when I saw "New GUI tileset" as a post title, I was SOOO excited! You know, maybe I could finally play again! HAHA, NO. Just more gratuitous gradients. Fuck this shit.

You're not alone, I dislike the way the Factorio GUI is going as well, though it doesn't cause me any health problems, I just find it unappealing. I've always felt alone with this opinion too.

Now I had to go open the game to check what you meant by the 0.15 inventory tiles - and I remember how I felt when I first updated to it, they are unnecessary, they still are, if someone offered me the old flat colors back I'd sign up right away, but with that said I'm used to them now and it hasn't stopped me enjoying the game.

I decided not to update to 0.16 because it doesn't really hold anything of value for me. I'd like to have the belt compression and priority splitters, but I don't want my underground-belt-based-belt-separation to break; I'd like to have the ability to connect chain signals but 0.16 only implements this for reading, not for setting; I've played with biters completely disabled ever since alien artifacts were no longer a thing so the artillery train and any other military improvements don't mean anything to me; I can't think of anything else off the top of my head. And, of course, you'll probably not be surprised to hear that I don't like the 0.16 concrete, either. Though at least there seems to be a significant minority on here that agree with me on that one, unlike the upcoming GUI which everyone else seems to love for some reason I can't understand.

I started playing in the 0.10 days, and 0.11, 0.12, 0.13/0.14 and 0.15 added many many features that I got super excited about in from reading the FFF's every week, but since the 0.15 release I haven't really seen anything further that appeals to me personally. And when I first saw the new GUI posted in the FFF's I realised I might never actually update again unless there is a substantial feature that will make it worth it for me to put up with the new GUI. I'll probably end up giving 1.0 a chance to see what it's like and then decide whether to go with that or stick with 0.15 forever, but we'll see. And that doesn't mean I hate the Factorio devs or anything, they've made an amazing game that I love and still sink many hours into every week, and I'm thankful that they let players play old versions, most game devs won't be that kind. Everyone will do something you greatly disagree with sooner or later no matter how much you liked their work in the past.

Yelling and swearing won't help our case though. Unless you count the fact that it did get my attention if that's worth anything. :| I think I posted a while back to say I didn't like the new GUI but was completely ignored (it might have been on the forum thread for the first FFF that revealed the new GUI designs, I don't remember).

edit gui.png

I'll definitely do that if the damn thing is still there in 1.0, I don't really want to tinker with the base files unless absolutely necessary. I just totally foresee murphy's law in action, and I bet right after I finished modding the graphics the game would start checksumming them to stop people altering landmine graphics to cheat in multiplayer. Anyway, I never thought I'd have to wait this long with the gui revamp moving forward in the roadmap again and again, but now that I've already waited a year I can totally wait another...

I might give that a go myself at some point; I didn't even realise there was a file responsible for the UI. If it can be replaced by a mod instead of manually altered in the base files, that'd be even better. I wouldn't worry about the devs putting in validation checks though. And who plays multiplayer with people who resort to dirty tricks like that anyway? If your friends are cheating against you then you deserve better friends; not that I can talk on that subject since I've never had anyone to play Factorio multiplayer with at all...

[brunzenstein]

YOU'RE MAKING THE UI MUCH WORSE THAN IT CURRENTLY IS!
A LOT...
Please have a look how elegant and user friendly Apple is handling the UI (and the Apple on board Apps) and let this gems inspire a complete Factorio reworking - but in the opposite direction your aiming currently.

[thereaverofdarkness]

"Apple UI is"

user friendly

[Sigma1]

"Apple UI is"

user friendly

It sure looks nice and friendly, but seems to lack features

*Continues using i3wm*

[Artman40]

Nice! I prefer bumpy UI over flat one.

[Engimage]

I do appreciate the GUI is progressing. Thanks for the work.
However if one would have customization options like themes which would suppress certain features like glow/blur and "flatten" interface by allowing style options.
The best solution would be availability to mod interface theme.
I do understand that would be a hell of a job but great minds set up great goals

[Tricorius]

Apple makes pretty good UIs for OSs and productivity apps. I certainly wouldn’t want to play a game that looked like Calendar or Notes.

[thereaverofdarkness]

Apple makes good UIs if you want them to only provide a tiny amount of usability functions, and then make almost all of them invisible.

[bobingabout]

Please, please stop measuring things, anything, in device dependent coordinates. Please stop using pixels. IMHO, nothing should ever surface pixels as a coordinate system, ever!

The use of pixels has caused enormous amounts of pain as people switch to 4k displays. They will cause enormous amounts of pain in the future when display technologies change again. Please stop using them. If you must, surface a 'DPI' configuration or something and have it operate at a very low level so coordinates used in almost all parts of the code do not depend on any details of the display like pixels.

We've known not to use pixels for literally decades, and yet people keep using them. Please stop.

Other than that, I like the new UI.

The units on the screen are measured in pixels. if we're not allowed to use pixels, what are we supposed to use?

if you have 200% screen scaling turned on, that's not our problem, and the OS itself SHOULD account for that (even the scaling in the game accounts for that)
DPI? okay, say you have a 24 inch 4K screen, or a 52 inch 4k screen. How many inches should a button take up? (also, seriously, inches? I know DPI is a common term and I'm not sure what the metric equivalent should be, but nobody uses inches anymore.) Honestly, that statement is like saying "I want this icon to be as big as a fish." How big is a fish? is it one of those teeny tiny ones a few millimetres long, or the giant 4 footers you find out in the deep ocean? The computer has no way of knowing (nor should it care) the physical size of your screen, but it does know something, How many pixels across, by how many pixels down. Why shouldn't it use pixels to measure things?

And don't blame software engineers for screens having a higher pixel count. This is one reason why my latest screen has a resolution of 2560x1440, and not 3840x2160, especially with my ageing eyes, I wouldn't have been able to see the detail that fine. If you can't even see the increased pixel density, don't get it!

[bobingabout]

To be a little more on topic this time.

1. Green is too green, you didn't listen to my advice about traffic lights, and why they're coloured as they are for colour blind people. Your green is TOO green, it needs more blue in it. you actually want to put about 50% of what you put in green, into blue. so that's a hue of about 100 on the 240 scale, 107 on the 256 scale, or 150 on the 360 scale. (This is why I don't like talking about hue, even though it makes so much sense when you're trying to guide to a specific colour spectrum, rather than an absolute colour. MS Paint uses a 240 scale, Paint Shop Pro (that I use) uses a 256 scale in some areas, and a 360 scale in others.)

2. I hope you allow for additional GUI styles... though, I think everyone has come to accept only having the style "default" now... but yeah, new style options for the GUI.

3. There's several things written on your white board there (and honestly, why would you show us a photo of the white board unless you wanted us to read it?), one of the things that caught my eye was a question mark of removing durability, and the pick. (There is no pick in the game, it's called a Mining axe!) Personally, my opinion on this is NOT to remove it, it offers a method of increasing mining speed, a method I might add that I make use of in my mods, by adding new tiers of mining axes. Something also exploited by the fact that I add ores of different hardness, so you need a higher tier mining axe if you want to be able to mine them by hand. Durability on the other hand, I am all for removing it.

[Zavian]

I imagine that if they remove buildable pickaxes, that steel research would grant a research bonus to mining speed, and that mods could implement further bonuses if desired.

[Deadly-Bagel]

I want to also mention that we are actually taking care of the 8% of the population who has some sort of color vision problems. This subject is still very new for us, but we are without a doubt researching solutions to different conditions.

*dances*

"Confirm" and "Cancel" are nearly the same color. This alone isn't too terrible due to other cues (button shape, text placement and the text itself), but...

Interestingly, when you can't see colour you become very good at recognising shapes and movement. With the different button shapes, their colours are irrelevant as long as I can read the text.

However, I'm not convinced of the disabled Confirm button... It doesn't look obviously disabled to me. The colour is the same, the text isn't bold like the rest but often these things are difficult to see without something for comparison, won't know until I see it in a live situation.

The only other thing is what the colour coding of the Filters is supposed to communicate? Obviously I have several problems with them, but I can't think of anything those colours would represent.

I whipped up a basic idea of what the colourblind buttons could look like.

SNIP

The left is the colours as one with normal vision should see them. The right is appears the way someone with Deuteranopia would see them.
Protanopia looks almost identical so I didn't bother to include it.

Protanopia is green-red colourblindness, Deuteronomy is red-green colourblindness, depends on what colour cone the fault is on. Functionally, the difference is when the colour is mixed with other colours - for example, purple (blue + red) should be difficult to see with Deuteronomy as the red cones aren't working, so it will appear blue, while someone with Protonopia should see it fine but won't be able to see yellow (green + blue). Lucky me, I think I actually have both as I can't see either.

I appreciate that you went through the time but it's unnecessary. As I said above the main identifier for me is the shape of the button, even with your high contrast options I'm recognising the shape before the colour. When almost everything is green you lose a lot of the assumption that "green is go, red is stop" so unless it's a very simple, frequent and easy to remember scheme (like blue = good, red/green = bad) well you get the idea. I'll also mention that the blue is really an eyesore, it doesn't fit in with the scheme and to me it's way too bright (though that might be me, fits in with my "both red and green cones damaged" theory as blue should theoretically appear brighter).

[kovarex]

3. There's several things written on your white board there (and honestly, why would you show us a photo of the white board unless you wanted us to read it?), one of the things that caught my eye was a question mark of removing durability, and the pick. (There is no pick in the game, it's called a Mining axe!) Personally, my opinion on this is NOT to remove it, it offers a method of increasing mining speed, a method I might add that I make use of in my mods, by adding new tiers of mining axes. Something also exploited by the fact that I add ores of different hardness, so you need a higher tier mining axe if you want to be able to mine them by hand. Durability on the other hand, I am all for removing it.

Yes, research modifier would do the same thing, without having to care about the pick and its durability as it is only a small annoyance in the game.

[bobingabout]

I imagine that if they remove buildable pickaxes, that steel research would grant a research bonus to mining speed, and that mods could implement further bonuses if desired.

Mining speed is good and all, but there's also Mining power to take into account, and that's the part that determines which type of ore you can mine by their hardness, and that's what the pick does right now.

Yes, research modifier would do the same thing, without having to care about the pick and its durability as it is only a small annoyance in the game.

So you're saying the pick will be replaced by a mining power technology? That would be a good alternative.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Though it doesn't make sense that you use a pickaxe to cut down trees...

I wouldn't say your mining axes add a whole lot to your mods Bob. Within a few hours of starting a game the only thing you use it for is cutting down trees and picking up machines, belts, rails etc and the absurd speeds your axes reach can actually be difficult to work with sometimes, especially when entities overlap as with gates on rails. Maybe if you had some sort of mechanic where you need some Platinum to make a Mining Drill that can mine Platinum, then it might have some importance, as it is I don't think anyone would notice any practical difference if all the bonuses were automatically and permanently applied once the research completes.

[AK90]

I cant wait for the new UI, it looks sick

[Oktokolo]

I don't like that edit boxes look like buttons. How am i supposed to know what can be edited?
I would completely drop all hover states. They never improved usability in any GUI in the past.
For me, the disabled buttons look like toggle buttons in their activated state. They look pressed and rather high in contrast. Better let it look like an ordinary button but with slightly darker gray text on gray background.

[Omnifarious]

I cant wait for the new UI, it looks sick

I'm looking forward to 0.17 because Allegro, Linux, and Factorio interact destructively to cause my machine to frequently lock up when Factorio exits, and sometimes even if I just Alt-Tab away from Factorio. It's the NVidia drivers and/or Linux that have the bug. No non-root program should be able to do that to a system. But, the only program I currently run that triggers the bug is Factorio.

I'm hoping that it's something Allegro is doing and that it doesn't happen with SDL.

It happens even if Factorio isn't in fullscreen mode.

The new GUI does look nice though. None of the elements are the problem for me that they are for some, even though I complained bitterly about things being measure in pixels.

I actually thought of a really good unit to use that's device independent and also lets you show things reasonably on tiny displays that are very high res and are close to someone's face.

The unit would be fractions of a viewport width. A viewport is always a fixed width. The height of a viewport will be expressed in terms of the width such that a 1 by 1 area is square. I would suggest a width of 2000. For a web page, the browser would absolutely refuse to tell the Javascript in the page what the size of a person's screen was, only the size of the page display area in the browser window.

[meganothing]

I'm looking forward to 0.17 because Allegro, Linux, and Factorio interact destructively to cause my machine to frequently lock up when Factorio exits, and sometimes even if I just Alt-Tab away from Factorio. It's the NVidia drivers and/or Linux that have the bug. No non-root program should be able to do that to a system. But, the only program I currently run that triggers the bug is Factorio.

At least with AMD drivers on ubuntu 16.04 and 14.04 I have no such problems, so Nvidia drivers might have something to do with it. (until someone else with no problems and an nvidia card speaks up, then we are back at zero )

[Sigma1]

I'm looking forward to 0.17 because Allegro, Linux, and Factorio interact destructively to cause my machine to frequently lock up when Factorio exits, and sometimes even if I just Alt-Tab away from Factorio. It's the NVidia drivers and/or Linux that have the bug. No non-root program should be able to do that to a system. But, the only program I currently run that triggers the bug is Factorio.

At least with AMD drivers on ubuntu 16.04 and 14.04 I have no such problems, so Nvidia drivers might have something to do with it. (until someone else with no problems and an nvidia card speaks up, then we are back at zero )

You got your Nvidia user with no problems
I did however try like three different drivers before even my Xserver worked...