Factorio Forums

It would be nice if you could use pageup/pagedown to scroll the chat, maybe a quarter of a page at a time.

So it would be nice if you could view the back log of chat messages and not just the last few.

Perhaps there could be an "advanced" console view that lets you scroll to see all the messages. Maybe an option in the F4 advanced options.

It would also be nice to have higher contrast colors and more options as well.. Too many players with the same color.

Also have an option to show timestamps on messages as I think I suggested somewhere else.

When you press ~ the console opens.

but you can not scroll through the history.

If you don't want unlimited history you could make it a settings.

- hard limit
- player limit
- server limit

eg. scrollback limit: 250

Can't you use the up and down keys to go through the console history? Or was that not what you were referring to?
Also, if you can find player-data.json you can read your complete console history.

QGamer wrote: ↑Fri Sep 28, 2018 12:37 am Can't you use the up and down keys to go through the console history? Or was that not what you were referring to?
Also, if you can find player-data.json you can read your complete console history.

I believe that's just things you've posted - it's less user-friendly than scrolling, and I don't think it includes things from other players.

TL;DR

The chat history can be scrolled back/up.

What ?

Currently the chat history is not scrollable and entries can only be read as far back as they fit on the screen. I suggest to make it scrollable, so older entries which do not fit on the screen anymore can still be read.

Why ?

The usual gui implementations offer a scrollable chat history/console command history. So I suggest just that. I play factorio almost only in multiplayer and there can be a lot of chat messages, which may be impossible to follow while working on something. A scrollable chat history would ease that problem.

TL;DR

Make the console log/chat scrollable so that you can see more than a screen's worth of history.

What ?

Making the chat scrollable should not impact the current way of still beeing able to place entities behind the chat window, maybe something as simple as up and down keys or a scroll bar on the left would suffice as control.

Why ?

On larger factorio servers old chat history becomes unreadable in a matter of minutes, at most. Pings for locations etc quickly add up and push other information away. This means if you are away for a moment whatever has been written in the meantime will be gone.
Also it just feels wrong to not have a scrollable chat, I believe it's simply part of a chat to be scrollable nowadays.

Hmm, I wonder, as a temporary workaround, how feasible is it to make a mod that sends all messages displayed in the console to stdout ?

I've seen these getting merged a few times now, but every time it seems like the topic just get's forgotten.
Anyways, as BlueTemplar suggested I made a quick mod to print chat into the console, when opening the game with the console that is. I don't know how this works when starting factorio via steam, as starting the factorio.exe starts steam first and not the game. Also obviously everyone on the server has to use the mod, else you won't be able to join. But at least for now we have this mod:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/ChatToConsole

Amazing, thanks !
(You might want to rename "console" to "terminal" though, as the in-game console is already commonly called... "console" ?)

Good idea, done. Link is still "Console", but title and description now use "Terminal".

TL;DR

Make chat scrollable

What ?

Chat is not scrollable and you can read only recent messages

Why ?

On multiplayer games when a lot of people chat its hard to catch up and often i want to scroll up to see what they are talking about

+1

+1

Definitely.

To add to the motivation: Some mods use chat messages for additional important messages for info that's hard to find elsewhere (even true for very highly regarded mods), and not being able to see any past info sucks.

I slack this is called “pinning”. You can pin some messages. https://slack.com/help/articles/2052399 ... mark-links

I would say this would be a good idea in Factorio, too.

ssilk wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 7:46 am I slack this is called “pinning”. You can pin some messages. https://slack.com/help/articles/2052399 ... mark-links

I would say this would be a good idea in Factorio, too.

What about creating a separate suggestion for this ? I feel being able to pin something in the chat and the need to be able to scroll are not exactly the same thing.