Factorio Forums

How about some visual effects from our buildings when they have taken damage?

I know they display a HP bar already, but I still think it'd be more atmospheric if arcs would fly from damaged power poles, smoke columns from half-wrecked smelters, glowing sparks from barely working assemblers, etc.

It would really feel more real when coming back to a previously overrun outpost to literally find it a smoldering ruin.

That's a good idea, but it would take a lot of work from the devs POV. I would rather them work on other, more gameplay affecting features.

The idea is good, but as John already said it is not top priority.
But I think certain buildings could emit smoke if damaged. And this smoke could be an additional source of pollution and attract more biters and so on.

I like the idea, maybe the buildings might also slow down a bit when they are damaged? Well... maybe not...

But if the devs have higher priorities, which I'm sure they are, I might make a little animation myself as I've got much free time on PC.
I just have to know in what kind of format the animation has to be and I could do that. (If it's okay with the devs)

Even though I'm not a proffesional artist, anything is better than nothing, right?

Realistically, in 90%+ of all cases, damaged buildings will be automatically repaired by bots, so hardly anyone will see these effects past the early game. Seems like a lot of work for very little added value.

Boogieman14 wrote:Realistically, in 90%+ of all cases, damaged buildings will be automatically repaired by bots, so hardly anyone will see these effects past the early game. Seems like a lot of work for very little added value.

That's only if the bot network is actually up and running everywhere, with spare repair packs available.
Power outages, destroyed bots, wrecked power lines, supplies running out... the list goes on on what can go awry with your base.

In practice a fully functioning bot network, while doable with only Green science, is rarely up and running to its full capacity that early. You still need to set up the production line for the bots themselves, and as we all know that requires some work.
In pretty much all my games the construction bots are not up and running until the late mid-game.

Additionally, expand the damage effects to show on vehicles too and you'll see it a lot more often.

I agree it's probably not that high on the priority list, but as far as polish goes this should definitely be right up there.

lancar wrote:
I agree it's probably not that high on the priority list, but as far as polish goes this should definitely be right up there.

but it'll increase the art that needs to be done by a order of magnitude

emitting smoke owuld be simple (a timer that loops over all entities with some staggering) but would increase render cost

but it'll increase the art that needs to be done by a order of magnitude

If you have unique icons for every level of damage, yes.

But stuff like fire and smoke effects can work across multiple things.

bobucles wrote:

but it'll increase the art that needs to be done by a order of magnitude

If you have unique icons for every level of damage, yes.

But stuff like fire and smoke effects can work across multiple things.

That is really true; I had not thought about adding it in that way. As for the render cost, there could easily be a option in the settings to increase/decrease the effects.

Boogieman14 wrote:Realistically, in 90%+ of all cases, damaged buildings will be automatically repaired by bots, so hardly anyone will see these effects past the early game. Seems like a lot of work for very little added value.

May be, may not. As i said smoke effects would be not this hard to implement. And what is if you had a really big attack and somehow had not enough energy to cope it, then you would see those effects even when progressed.

I don't think any of the damage effects would be that processor intensive nor art intensive at all. Smoke is one effect, sparks is another, electricity arcs is a third. If you set them all to emit from entity center all you need is a scaling option. You then set them to fit the buildings they're attached to, ie a 3x3 building (like an Assembler) would be scaled larger compared to a 1x1 (like a power pole).

An alternative take would be to design the effect to work on a per-tile basis, so a sparking Assembler would actually have 9 spark-effects running at once.
Naturally, a setting for particle effects in the options menu is a given. Almost every game with them have one.

That's neither here nor there, though. I always say it's up to the developer to judge complexity, not us

lancar wrote: That's neither here nor there, though. I always say it's up to the developer to judge complexity, not us

Yep. I Totally agree. Many people (in many gaming communities, not just factorio) think that devs are stupid, slow robots that cannot think for themself's. Give em credit! They made an amazing game!

May I just add darkening and decolorization to the list of suitable post effects.