Sound when successfully copy/pasting an entity
Moderator: ickputzdirwech
Sound when successfully copy/pasting an entity
When you shift click entities to copy over attributes from another entity, I always feel like I should double check if I didn't misclick or whatever, since that happens sometimes (especially with lots of small entities). Some kind of feedback could be nice here, like a sound
- Deadlock989
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Re: Sound when successfully copy/pasting an entity
Could be added by a mod, the way some mods have added a "rotate building" sound. Some tricky choices to make about when exactly a sound should be played - whenever you paste? Or only if you paste new settings, which would be my preference - but would be difficult to script for any arbitrary entity, e.g. modded entities that have their own custom on_entity_settings_pasted logic.
Re: Sound when successfully copy/pasting an entity
I think it would make more sense for undo, since with copy/paste you always see the result.
- Deadlock989
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Re: Sound when successfully copy/pasting an entity
I don't think Kirk meant C&Ping for construction - they meant copy-pasting settings from entity to entity. Recipes from assembler to assembler, combinator settings etc.
- 5thHorseman
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Re: Sound when successfully copy/pasting an entity
The only time I feel these doubts is when I click-drag down inserters or something like that and I doubt a little noise would help in that case.
Instead of thinking, "Did I miss one by accident? There's no sound to tell me" I'll be thinking "did I hear 6 dings or only 5? In all the confusion I lost count. Do I feel lucky?"
Instead of thinking, "Did I miss one by accident? There's no sound to tell me" I'll be thinking "did I hear 6 dings or only 5? In all the confusion I lost count. Do I feel lucky?"
- Deadlock989
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Re: Sound when successfully copy/pasting an entity
I had a go at modding this and as 5thHorseman suggests, it quickly becomes noise.
Also, while it's trivial to add a ping or a boing or a whoosh to settings being pasted, it's remarkably difficult to determine whether any settings actually changed because of the paste, because of all the different kinds of entity that can have settings copied and pasted. You could laboriously customise the check for every kind of entity there is, but I fall asleep just thinking about it. Then you have things like SimpleEntityWithOwner which is typically used as a dummy entity by modders and could be functioning as almost anything, with any kind of settings simulated by any mod, that your copy-paste-ping mod wouldn't have a clue about.
The best you could probably do is not repeat a noise if a player copies twice in a row to the same entity. But that wouldn't stop the "xylophone of doom" effect you get from running down a line of inserters for example.
Also, while it's trivial to add a ping or a boing or a whoosh to settings being pasted, it's remarkably difficult to determine whether any settings actually changed because of the paste, because of all the different kinds of entity that can have settings copied and pasted. You could laboriously customise the check for every kind of entity there is, but I fall asleep just thinking about it. Then you have things like SimpleEntityWithOwner which is typically used as a dummy entity by modders and could be functioning as almost anything, with any kind of settings simulated by any mod, that your copy-paste-ping mod wouldn't have a clue about.
The best you could probably do is not repeat a noise if a player copies twice in a row to the same entity. But that wouldn't stop the "xylophone of doom" effect you get from running down a line of inserters for example.
Re: Sound when successfully copy/pasting an entity
As the author of SoundOnRotate I can see both sides of this argument. I specifically added a sound to the rotate action because the action can very often be performed unintentionally, so the unobtrusive sound is there to alert, but not annoy or add further noise.
Pasting attributes is one area that could use some kind of feedback I agree. I'm not convinced a sound is the best solution however. There's a balance to be struck between confirmation and additional noise as @5thhorseman says. Perhaps floating text, or a brief colour change to the affected entities would be enough? That said, I do agree with @Deadlock989's observations on how to filter which and how many entities the feedback affects. I can see it becoming quite unwieldy very quickly.
As a brief aside, and with reference to the mentioned undo action, attribute pasting or changing is not added to the undo stack which can be rather annoying sometimes. Perhaps an action log would be of most help all told? This might consist of a history of the last x number of user actions performed, and could serve as confirmation and or reminder of what has been done. Especially when returning to a game after a couple of days. It would certainly aide my busy mind getting up to speed with what was happening the last time I played.
Pasting attributes is one area that could use some kind of feedback I agree. I'm not convinced a sound is the best solution however. There's a balance to be struck between confirmation and additional noise as @5thhorseman says. Perhaps floating text, or a brief colour change to the affected entities would be enough? That said, I do agree with @Deadlock989's observations on how to filter which and how many entities the feedback affects. I can see it becoming quite unwieldy very quickly.
As a brief aside, and with reference to the mentioned undo action, attribute pasting or changing is not added to the undo stack which can be rather annoying sometimes. Perhaps an action log would be of most help all told? This might consist of a history of the last x number of user actions performed, and could serve as confirmation and or reminder of what has been done. Especially when returning to a game after a couple of days. It would certainly aide my busy mind getting up to speed with what was happening the last time I played.
- Deadlock989
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Re: Sound when successfully copy/pasting an entity
Heh, that is pretty neat, I like the use of a symbol a lot
Re: Sound when successfully copy/pasting an entity
We now have vanilla sounds for cut and paste so this suggestion has been satisfied. I'm a little disappointed that entity rotation has been overlooked however.
- Deadlock989
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Re: Sound when successfully copy/pasting an entity
Vanilla does have them now. The sound depends on the entity being rotated. I took it out of my mod because vanilla provides it. See core/sounds/rotate-{small/medium/big}.ogg.
Re: Sound when successfully copy/pasting an entity
Good call. I thought I did read something, but lost it again while on a mobile device and could only find the rotate sound related to turret rotation again in the api docs. Possible I crossed over with an edit at the time.Deadlock989 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 25, 2020 8:59 pmVanilla does have them now. The sound depends on the entity being rotated. I took it out of my mod because vanilla provides it. See core/sounds/rotate-{small/medium/big}.ogg.
Thanks for the heads up.