Friday Facts #348 - The final GUI update

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-348

[Reika]

Those new icons look very nice, though once again that means tons of graphics redesign work for modders...

[Bilka]

[Omarflyjoemacky]

Looks so great! Love it.

[FinalPantasy]

The UI update looks really clean and the icons are great, too.

Not a fan of the UI sounds, especially the piercing click sound. Love the landfill sound though!

[raiguard]

Sad to hear that the blueprint library overhaul is delayed. It really is the low-hanging fruit of the game (besides the fluid mechanics).

I hope that someone can find some time to make blueprint books nestable, and allow storing decon and upgrade planners in the library. No GUI changes necessary, just some functional changes. That would infinitely improve the utility of the library without needing an entire overhaul.

[SuperSandro2000]

Can we disable those menu sounds? In modded i have many tabs and frequently change them and a sound all the time is annoying.

If you know those games where you get a sound when you hover a menu button, you know how annoying this is and how often the sounds overlap and just make it feel cheap and bad.

[Atraps003]

Can we please get sub tabs for the logistics tab in the inventory? Having multiple personal logistics and auto trash tabs with different configurations would make switching between projects (base building. biter clearing, outposting) a huge qol improvement.

[SuperSandro2000]

Don't get me wrong the new icons look great but they have room for improvement.

And what are those icons?

Burner Mining Drill MK2?


Spray can with sparking cable?


Are those engines?



Also feedback to other icons:

LDS looks like melted plastic


Almost all icons are 3D. Heavy Armor is 2D



Most icons do not have the shape of a square. This one does which is not fitting with most other icons.



The roboport is missing the bottom piece



Rails are 45° turns and not 90°



The locomotive icon suggests that it is twice or three times as long as it is wide. In reality it is more like 4 or 5 times as wide as it is long



Other questions:

Do the sounds overlap? How does it sound when I fill 20x20?

[conn11]

those changes seem pretty nice. I'm excited to try them out. Especially liking the new night vision and landfill sounds.

It doesn't look like the Blueprint Library will be getting an update before 1.0, currently making it a very low hanging fruit as far as the GUI is concerned.

Wich would imply, that the blueprint book and fluid dynamics could be in the cards for post 1.0 ...

[nastyslave]

Those new icons look very nice, though once again that means tons of graphics redesign work for modders...

MODDERS ARE READY:

under1-128.png (47.42 KiB) Viewed 13798 times

express-belt-128.png (36.94 KiB) Viewed 13798 times

MORE CRAZY RESOLUTION ICONS

rocket-fuel-128.png (71.15 KiB) Viewed 13798 times

landfill-128.png (107.6 KiB) Viewed 13798 times

electric-engine-128.png (86.18 KiB) Viewed 13798 times

automobilism-128.png (70.36 KiB) Viewed 13798 times

advanced-electronics-2-128.png (65.4 KiB) Viewed 13798 times

[BattleFluffy]

Wow lots of news this week :>
The new icons look awesome - wow, that must have been a ton of work.

Ian, the new sound effects are really cool!! I'm so happy the "can't build that there" sound effect has been changed to something softer.

The landfill sound effect is good too, I suspect it will be particularly good for multiplayer, as the first few milliseconds of the sampler are a bit softer. The previous sound for landfill had some extremely harsh transients at the very start of the sample, and if the server lags for a brief moment due to a network issue the sound will often trigger several times very quickly. With the old sound effect, the harsh transients in the first few ms of the sample basically meant the speakers blasted it like a kick drum in speed metal. I think this new sound effect will greatly reduce the impact of this.

[valneq]

The Icons look good. Although they appear to have a somewhat more cartoonish look than the placed entities.

Burner Mining Drill MK2?
Image

That is most likely an electric mining drill. Will this entity be redesigned?

Also, is there going to be the promised redesign of the assembling machines before 1.0?
Now, there are new high res icons for the old assembling machine …

[Reika]

Having gone over these in a lot more detail now, I have three reservations:

1) I am not sure I like the "glossy solid" look to the chemical icons (eg petroleum gas, sulfuric acid). The matte-texture space-filling model looked more like it was a representative icon, rather than it looking like the machine makes little plastic models of the molecules.

2) The "inventory slot" interaction sound is a bit grating, involving too much high-frequency "abrasion" noise.

3) The ghost removal sound is good in concept, but the current version sounds like what happens with really over-aggressive noise cancellation algorithms.

[Zaflis]

I like the logistics UI now but it could still be improved. It takes too many clicks to make a new request filter.
- When making a new filter by holding an item, it should clear the hand slot. Because you still need to click the buttons it would be clearer if the item you were holding was not in the way.
- When clicking an empty slot in the logistics grid, it should automatically open the list of different items. It's the only thing you can do at that point anyway and is a redundant step.

[Hiladdar]

Thanks for the heads up, on the upcoming possible mod crippling patch. This is not only good information for mod authors but also for players, since after .27 is released, mod authors will need some time to update their mods. At the same time, players know that they probably should delay patching their version of experimental for a few days, to give mod authors time to update their mods.

Hiladdar

P.S. The new graphics look great!

[gGeorg]

Icons add good feel. There might be some nitpicks, I couldnt tell if I am looking at batery, combinator or personal battery. There are three very similar icons.
Landfill sound and the night vision make me smile.

The logistic tab current - two GUI QOL -
1. Items need to autosort so they are same as in backpak (eventualy make option in the game setting same as for backpak autosort on/off)
2. On mouse over item in logistic tab, same item is highlighted in the backpak. Make it work also other way around. >> e.g. on mouse over item in backpak, the same iitem in logistic tab is highlighted. Much easyer to find the item.

The combinator GUI - the long time request -
there need to be a memo text in each combinator. It not fun to reinvent wheel when come back to old creation. Also, usage of creation of others will be more pleasant. Even 128 chars is ok. Please reconsider add it to UI, or at least make a space there, so the project can be done after the release, without overdo UI.

[Lubricus]

Can we please get sub tabs for the logistics tab in the inventory? Having multiple personal logistics and auto trash tabs with different configurations would make switching between projects (base building. biter clearing, outposting) a huge qol improvement.

I think it's OK to leave that to mods. Check out the autotrash mod I think it do what you ask for.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/AutoTrash

[ClevelandClimber]

The new icons look great, but the landfill sound is amazing!

[Optera]

The new locomotive icon finally looks nice and not like one squished to 1/3 after hitting a wall at 100kmph.
I hope you also take the chance to make the wagons have somewhat recognizable proportions. I still can't connect the single tank of the icon to the 3 tanks on the wagon and the cargo wagon just looks like a chest to me.

Almost 2 years ago I tried creating proportional icons for trains:

locomotive.png (1.66 KiB) Viewed 13589 times

cargo-wagon.png (1.58 KiB) Viewed 13589 times

fluid-wagon.png (1.92 KiB) Viewed 13589 times

They are not high quality and look awful on belts, but are easily recognizable as the actual entity.