Enhance map creation settings with tooltip for pollution menu

[TheRealBecks]

TL;DR

Inform players what could happen if they change the pollution settings before creating the map.

What ?

I suggest to add an infomational or warning tooltip to the pollution menu in the map creation menu. The player shall be informed about the fact, that when pollution spreads new but unrevealed map chunks could be created. Biters and biter nests will spawn and will possibly slow down the game. Also the savegame size could significantly increase.

pollution_menu.jpg (412.44 KiB) Viewed 2517 times

Why ?

The game performance on large maps could be way higher with the correct pollution settings. Also savegames could be way less huge.

Reference: My own misconfigured savegame

[ssilk]

Are you sure you have been reading that two years ago?
My experience with user interfaces says: very low chances. Sorry no offencement.

My opinion: before confusing players I would point them to the wiki.

“You seem to be new to the game. Are you sure you want to open the extended map setting? Because we think you should read the wiki first! It explains how all those options will influence the game, it’s performance and size of savegame.”

With that the chance that the player reads it within two years is very, very high.

[Koub]

I respectfully disagree with you Ssilk : While the majority indeed does not care information, there is a significant minority who will read every single information bit provided to understand every option available.
And I'm within this minority. When I run a game, I first cycle through all the options, and on "new game" interfaces, I do the same. Knowing the purpose and having an abstract of the ingame effects of each option is invaluable for people like me.
Also I'm a strong believer in the fact that providing information right at the point where you need it is more effective than providing a link (or to redirect) to an external ressource where the information is gathered. My background is IT support, and everyday I laugh at the pitiful attempts from the high managers to get the people to use the self-care database in order to lower support costs.

So please, for every single setting, an information on the effects (direct and indirect) of it, like it' already done on some of them.

[eradicator]

So please, for every single setting, an information on the effects (direct and indirect) of it, like it' already done on some of them.

Have to partially disagree with this. While i'm totally for adding information that explains game mechanics, i'm against putting technicalities and implementation details into tooltips as it leads to information overload. If the pollution menu starts mentioning meta aspects like savegame size then logically you'd also have to show that for trees. If you start talking about chunks you have to explain what a chunk even is. If you talk about performance you'll have to explain how having biters inside pollution clouds affects UPS. Etcpp, it never ends.

In an ideal world the player should never have to think about the physically imposed limitations of the simulation. And GUI design should not suggest otherwise.

[TheRealBecks]

Interesting, everyone here has valid argument for and against my suggestion.

My very first intention is not about the pollution menu at all, but about the fact, that the pollution can and will create chunks. We had huge games in the past two years were the pollution spread out of our radar range and the games slowed down - the biters were the problem here. So we deleted the biters and nests. When doing that the pollution won't be consumed anymore and will spread even further, the biters will respawn far away and you will get even more of them than before, the game slows down, you delete the biters... and... so... on... I told that my friend today, he fell into laugh... He also didn't know about the pollution-chunk-mechanics until today

Or in even other words: If the pollution will be restricted to only e.g. 5 chunks behind the radar sight and every pollution from chunk 6 on gets deleted when it enters the 'void' there would be no performance issue at all. It can't happen anymore. So it's not needed to explain the user what pollution does with chunks and all that technical stuff.

[Koub]

So please, for every single setting, an information on the effects (direct and indirect) of it, like it' already done on some of them.

Have to partially disagree with this. While i'm totally for adding information that explains game mechanics, i'm against putting technicalities and implementation details into tooltips as it leads to information overload. If the pollution menu starts mentioning meta aspects like savegame size then logically you'd also have to show that for trees. If you start talking about chunks you have to explain what a chunk even is. If you talk about performance you'll have to explain how having biters inside pollution clouds affects UPS. Etcpp, it never ends.

In an ideal world the player should never have to think about the physically imposed limitations of the simulation. And GUI design should not suggest otherwise.

I think there is a sweet spot between "I don't know what this does" and "I have precise technical details on the influence of this value".
Something like "Pollution spreading further can make the game slower, the save bigger" could do the trick.

[eradicator]

I think there is a sweet spot between "I don't know what this does" and "I have precise technical details on the influence of this value".
Something like "Pollution spreading further can make the game slower, the save bigger" could do the trick.

Or it might be a slow spiral of death by information overload. Pollution is not the only thing that "makes the game slower/bigger". Infact some devs have mentioned before that pollution actually has so little impact on performance that it's barely measureable, and @OP seems to only have issues because they turned all the settings up-to-eleven.

My crystal ball says that 90%+ of players play on default setting and will *never* experience game slowdown or too big save files. And that is what my opinion is based on.

[TheRealBecks]

Man, it's not about the calculation of the pollution algorithm, but about the fact, that with new chunks also come lots of biters, that want to get your ass. That's the performance killer.

[ssilk]

I respectfully disagree with you Ssilk : While the majority indeed does not care information, there is a significant minority who will read every single information bit provided to understand every option available.
And I'm within this minority. When I run a game, I first cycle through all the options, and on "new game" interfaces, I do the same. Knowing the purpose and having an abstract of the ingame effects of each option is invaluable for people like me.
Also I'm a strong believer in the fact that providing information right at the point where you need it is more effective than providing a link (or to redirect) to an external ressource where the information is gathered. My background is IT support, and everyday I laugh at the pitiful attempts from the high managers to get the people to use the self-care database in order to lower support costs.

So please, for every single setting, an information on the effects (direct and indirect) of it, like it' already done on some of them.

Sorry, but that would be really, really bad software design. As eradicator mentioned: good software design doesn’t need that. Which means in this case, that the expert settings should not be available in an ideal world.

But because it is available it doesn’t mean that it reflects it’s docs into the software. It’s an expert setting, so it is incomplete by default. “Using by your own risk and read docs”, is a much more ”correct” implementation than trying to implement it.
That’s my sight as experienced software developer, working deep with user-interfaces and in UX-design.

[Koub]

I respectfully disagree with you Ssilk : While the majority indeed does not care information, there is a significant minority who will read every single information bit provided to understand every option available.
And I'm within this minority. When I run a game, I first cycle through all the options, and on "new game" interfaces, I do the same. Knowing the purpose and having an abstract of the ingame effects of each option is invaluable for people like me.
Also I'm a strong believer in the fact that providing information right at the point where you need it is more effective than providing a link (or to redirect) to an external ressource where the information is gathered. My background is IT support, and everyday I laugh at the pitiful attempts from the high managers to get the people to use the self-care database in order to lower support costs.

So please, for every single setting, an information on the effects (direct and indirect) of it, like it' already done on some of them.

Sorry, but that would be really, really bad software design. As eradicator mentioned: good software design doesn’t need that. Which means in this case, that the expert settings should not be available in an ideal world.

I really dislike this "you don't need to think, we know what's good for you" philosophy when it comes to design. I think everyone should be able to decide if one wants to fine tune one's experience, or to experience the standard average one.
And one might need to access and understand some of the settings in "expert" section even despite not being an expert.

[ssilk]

It’s non of those questions “we know what’s good for you”.

It’s more like: if there is hole in a wall then it’s not always a good idea to put a sign on it that explains, if it is a door or window, because it’s eventually just a chimney. If the hole doesn’t explain itself, it is just bad software design. Factorio devs try to eliminate such parts, so I’m sure they will not try to extend such parts in this suggested way.

Sorry for my harsh answer, it wasn’t meant so, and I can be wrong of course.