Wire connection visibility improvements

[macdjord]

It can be quite difficult to tell what buildings are connected to what. Here are some ways to improve that:

• When you mouse over a building, all the wires in any circuit network are highlighted. This is very useful, but could be improved in a couple ways:
  • When the building in question connects to two seperate circuit networks of the same colour - ie.g. a combinator's input and output sides - highlight those networks using different outline colours, so that they can be told apart.
  • The highlighting is good for telling what a building is connected to, but not how. Making the wires which connect directly to the building being moused over be highlighted in a different colour (or a different intensity, or flashing, or something) would make it easier to trace connections.
• When in map view, you are presented with a diagrammatic 2D view of your factory. One of the options in this view is to show power network connections as blue lines. This, too, is very useful, but could also be improved:
  • Add an option to display circuit network connections using lines the same way.
  • Currently, once you zoom in past a certain threshold, the diagrammatic view is replaced with the standard sprite-based view. Add some option - maybe Alt-Mousewheel - to zoom in past this limit while sticking to the diagram. More than once, while trying to deal with tangled power networks, I've wished I could zoom in closer which sticking to the diagram to see exactly which poles are connected to what, and if a circuit network connections overlay were to be added as I suggest above, being able to zoom in closer would be even more valuable.

[AileTheAlien]

I think an animated, colored spark traveling down the wires could help. Like, green or red sparks going into the things that they are connected to as inputs, and coming out of the things they are outputs from. Most objects in Factorio are visually fairly busy (for art/coolness), so I'm always squinting and mousing back and forth a lot, to try and see the difference between the highlighted and non-highlighted circuit wires.