Suggestion: Wait to Load Mods

[kong009]

Dear Devs,

Thanks for taking the time to read my post. I have a suggestion for you regarding the loading order of Factorio itself, which will ultimately (hopefully) impact users who utilize mods. I don't know how simple or difficult it would be to implement, but here goes:

In its current state, Factorio loads everything up front: 1) core engine, 2) mods, and 3) sprites. Pretty much everything except the actual save-game you want to play. This is not a bad way to go except Factorio has to restart if you make any changes to mods. This is functionality I would expect without the new Mod Portal in-game, but not with it in-game.

Now I have seen some suggestions on here already about matching which mods are being used on a server or on a particular save-game, and while I agree with those, I can see how difficult it would be to implement those changes with the current loading sequence in place.

On to my suggestion, which is to change up the loading sequence slightly: 1) core engine, 2) core sprites (since those typically don't change even with mods enabled). Wait on mod loading. Let the user go to a save-game or server, then once the user makes a selection, update and load any mods necessary, automatically. If you're worried about security dupes, then let Factorio automatically load up the mod portal and have it list the mods that are missing so the user can decide to download them or not. Yes, this will increase loading times prior to loading each save or joining each server, but you would avoid having to restart Factorio entirely. One would also be able to go from a modded game to a vanilla game without having to restart, also.

If you have any questions, please feel free to comment. I do apologize if this has already been suggested; I did search through the suggestions before I came here to make my own.

Thanks,

Kong

P.S. My suggestion is derived from how Space Engineers handles mods. Conveniently, SE is also Steam Workshop compatible, which I've also seen suggested and I'm sure is something you want to do now that Factorio is on Steam. When you launch SE, it loads some core game components and GUI, but before you load up a save-game or join a server, it lets you add/change/remove mods so that you don't need to restart the game in order to play. Yes, it means loading more before launching, but restarting Factorio each time a mod change is made seems a little excessive to me, and I feel like following the SE example will help save users on restart times and help further your quest for Steam Workshop compatibility at the same time.

EDIT: I'm sorry for posting here, I meant to put this in just a suggestion forum. My fault.

[daniel34]

Moved from Frequently Suggested / Link Collections to Ideas and Suggestions.

[ssilk]

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=16136 Faster start sequence / Update check / Load order