Suggestion: Show signals tip on circuit network listeners

[chapium]

Version 0.12.3 (Build 16287, mac)

I was trying out the new combinators last night, and found one thing that was rather fiddly. When trying to send a signal lights and pumps, I could not see in the tooltip what signals were being input to them. I could see the signal being output when hovering over the nearest power pole or combinator, but this required a lot of fiddly back and forth checking.

Therefore, my suggestion is as follows:

1) When mouse is hovering over a listener (e.g. lights and pumps), show what signal is being received to the tips on the right pane.
2) When viewing the rule for a listener, show the signal being received. Related to #1 because the tips in the right pane disappear when a rule window is open.


I believe this is useful in the case when a light or pump is triggered by x > y. It is useful to see what x is when accessing the rule.

edit:

I have discussed a specific implementation of my suggestion however, the end goal of this suggestion is to have the signal data on screen when looking at a listener or defining a rule. There are probably several ways to implement that

[ratchetfreak]

perhaps only show the signals affecting the outcome.

like a lamp with condition solars > green only show the signals green and solar and ignore the accumulators and red checked by the next lamp.

[Selvek]

This is an old thread, but still relevant.

Summary: Show active signals when mousing over combinators (and other circuit entities)

Combinators can be confusing to use - among other things, the each, any, and all signals are a bit enigmatic at first. It would improve the learning curve if you could see at a glance what the input and output signals of a combinator are by mousing over its input and output tiles.

You can do this to some extent by connecting the combinator to an electric pole, which then shows the signals on mouseover. Why not have it work on the combinator itself?

(P.S. - the new train mini-tutorial series is awesome, wish I had had it half a year ago when I couldn't figure out train signals to save my life. Looking forward to the combinator series!)

[quyxkh]

Not really a hardware guy, but I half-suspect it's a verisimilitude thing, if you want to know what's going on at that post, you're going to have to attach a probe. I know combinators gave me a pretty hardcore flashback to the old days of configuring hardware with jumpers and snips.

[mattj256]

It would improve the learning curve if you could see at a glance what the input and output signals of a combinator are by mousing over its input and output tiles.

If you mouse over a combinator it will show you the input and output of that combinator. I'd love to see the same circuit network information if I mouse over something that's connected to the circuit network, particularly inserters and transport belt. It feels weird to connect a transport belt to the circuit network and then have to lay down a power pole just to read the output.

[Selvek]

Yeah I actually just noticed that you can see them on combinators... I was thinking of things like inserters and belts... except I feel like I recently checked a combinator and it didn't show the signals, but maybe that was before 0.15... but I didn't see anything in the change list... and I thought I remembered checking it post 0.15 but I couldn't remember when... now I am questioning my own sanity... what is the meaning of life...????

[ssilk]

This suggestion is also part of viewtopic.php?f=6&t=41176 Improve Basic Circuit Overview

- You need to see, what's going on IN the wire. Now you need to place a pole anywhere and connect the circuit with a wire.