Factorio Forums

I am honestly getting a little tired of all the bug reports that are effectively:
"The game updated, now your mods cause the game to not load. Please update them!
EDIT: Ooops, you already did... sorry!"

My first thought is... the game needs a launcher.
Okay, I know a lot of the devs are anti-launcher, and I must admit that as a player, I am against the whole forced launcher system. with most games I play, the launcher is good for updates, and changing settings, but then after that it's just annoying, I just want to load via the executable and get going, but most of them refuse to load at all unless the launcher launched them.

but basically... there's 2 main reasons why a launcher would be a good thing.
Lets start with updates.
1. You can check for and install updates without loading the game itself (Which can save several minutes)
2. It can check for updates of mods too, not just the game, which gets around these bug reporting issues.
3. You could also use it to edit the game and mod settings, so you don't have even more restarts later.

Now, assuming there are no updates... consider that with mods like mine, you have settings that require you to restart the game to take effect. since the game can already take several minutes to load, having a launcher... a tool that lets you change them outside of the game itself could be useful.
now consider someone uses a bunch of settings that makes the game unable to load. (Could be poorly modded settings that the game just doesn't like, or could be multiple mods where certain settings make them incompatible.) Currently, the only solution is to delete mod-settings.dat, or remove a mod (and since mod-settings.dat keeps uninstalled mod's settings now, if you do have a setting that breaks a mod, that mod would still be broken if you just re-installed it)
so being able to change the settings outside of the game itself is important.
Although I wrote that from the perspective of mods, it also applies to the base game itself, Lets say your computer is a bit of a potato and you have to tweak settings just to get it to work... I've been there, going through text files and changing things just to see what happens. having a GUI system with checkboxes and dropdowns outside of the game would be useful.



Okay, like I said, Devs are anti-launcher... so lets explore some non-launcher possibilities.
what if the game, when detecting it has an update, would also let you check mods for updates?
instead of just being "The game has an update. install it now, ask me later, don't ask again." there could be a 4th option "Check for mod updates first", which brings up the mod menu, and lets you check for mod updates, then upon exit of that menu, downloads the game update and does it all in 1 restart.
of course... Steam would break this, because it just downloads and installs updates without the game loading itself, so... less useful than a launcher. if you did want to fix it for steam, then steam would need to be able to update mods too, and that would mean putting mods on the steam workshop. I am not suggesting we do this.

+1 for updating the game and mods in one restart

There really should be an option to download the new version but not yet restart. Or simply to open the mod portal after downloading the game update and on exit of the mod portal the game restarts.

It would also be useful if there was some sort of "snapshot" system like virtual machines have. I.e. the ability to store the current install, essentially freezing *all* versions including base version for that snapshot. This would make it much easier to a) play different large modpacks that might break if even a single mod is updated/has the wrong version and b) jump back to "the last working snapshot" if something breaks.

As mods+base are already hashed the system wouldn't even need to actually copy anything, just save a list of versions. It's basically "mod packs" with some decorations.

+1
It just makes so much sense to check for updates (including mods and settings) before you start the game, instead of having to do a restart (or more than one restart).

Here must be the option:
| Disable updates | Ask me later | Update the game | Update the game and all installed mods |
The last comes only if at least one mod is installed.

Every must choose what he wants.

One of those repeating suggestions...

ssilk wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 12, 2019 4:29 am

One of those repeating suggestions...

And I still stand by it as not only being a good idea, but an essential tool.

I am not suggesting anything be removed from the game, nor the launcher being mandatory, but an "Official" tool packaged with the game to assist in handling updates and settings of both the game itself, and mods, doesn't sound like too much to ask in my opinion.
Especially when you consider that "Delete mod-settings.dat" is the best option to fix broken settings right now, if you don't include 3rd party software, or using a hex editor to "fix" it, where previously with mod-settings.json you could just open it in a text editor and change the numbers manually. (Text editor vs Hex editor is a big difference in user skill level)

Yes.
Alone the number of tools that where programmed to match that need is a sign.

I think wube has the problem, that this suggestion (as said, there where many) lacks for clear and complete definition. As a “neutral programmer” I would say: yes, here are many suggestions, but some of them exclude each other.

playing a modded game and having automatic updates on is just pure madness.
this should be illegal.

Here must be stable and experimental flags for every version of the mod, that can be changed on the mod portal. The autoupdate to the experimental version is not good for long savegame.

ssilk wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 14, 2019 5:29 am

Yes.
Alone the number of tools that where programmed to match that need is a sign.

I think wube has the problem, that this suggestion (as said, there where many) lacks for clear and complete definition. As a “neutral programmer” I would say: yes, here are many suggestions, but some of them exclude each other.

Then just keep it simple: After downloading vanilla updates if mods are installed open the mod portal so users can update mods as well before the restart. No need for a launcher for that part.