Factorio Forums

Posted: **Sun Apr 19, 2020 9:29 pm**

TL;DR

One or two keyboard shortcuts to quickly zoom in or out on the map.

What ?

You press a keyboard shortcut and you are quickly zoomed in or out (instantly or over 100 ms).

For example, MMB (middle mouse button) doesn't seem to have any function in the map/world right now. So clicking the mouse wheel could be a candidate for this feature.

It would work kind of like the F9 / Ctrl+F9 shortcut, but much faster.

It would zoom you to one of two hardcoded zoom levels: one really close (enough to be able to see radar video feed, maybe even one or two notches closer in), and one far out (where you could see your whole factory and then some for a typical midgame base). If you're not already at the far out zoom level it will zoom you to it when pressing the shortcut. Otherwise it will zoom to the close up zoom level.

Why ?

Is it just me or are we zooming in and out a lot in this game, especially midgame and after? Like I'm often wanting to check on things (why is science slow, do furnaces have enough fuel, is my outpost okay, how far is u235 mining progress, is light/heavy oil clogging, dude where is my car?), but they're in different places, so I zoom out to be able to see all points of interest, then zoom in to see the radar video feed (often in reverse order since I like to be able to see everything when I open the map instead of being zoomed in on whatever random location I last looked at).

Sometimes I find it slightly frustrating the wait while flicking my mousewheel 3 to 5 times. One of Factorio's defining assets, the scale, is working against itself in this way. Now maybe I should increase my mouse wheel sensitivity, but it works fine for me everywhere else, so I think a quick-zoom feature could be appropriate.

Posted: **Sun Apr 19, 2020 10:33 pm**

There was a discussion on hotkeys in an FFF mentionning "power-user hotkey" (https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-309)

I think this is a good candidate !

If your mousewheel start to malfunction it makes the game very frustrating to play and highlight the amount of zoom in and out that are done while playing.

There is already 2 differents hotkeys to zoom in-out in map view depending on if you are under the "radar-level" or not. Maybe one hotkey can be used to reach this threshold in one click.

( Also that would help some people that can't use their middle finger as well as most young rebelz .)

Posted: **Mon Apr 20, 2020 5:52 am**

mmmPI wrote: ↑
Sun Apr 19, 2020 10:33 pm
If your mousewheel start to malfunction it makes the game very frustrating to play and highlight the amount of zoom in and out that are done while playing.

If your mousewheel starts to malfunction it makes YOUR COMPUTER VERY FRUSTRATING TO USE, for crying out loud. People, fix your god damn shit and stop complaining the game doesn't accomodate you fully to play on YOUR BROKEN HARDWARE.

/rant

Posted: **Mon Apr 20, 2020 6:01 am**

SupplyDepoo wrote: ↑
Sun Apr 19, 2020 9:29 pm
dude where is my car?

If that happens to you a lot, GCKI could be helpful.

Posted: **Mon Apr 20, 2020 6:02 am**

posila wrote: ↑
Mon Apr 20, 2020 5:52 am

mmmPI wrote: ↑
Sun Apr 19, 2020 10:33 pm
If your mousewheel start to malfunction it makes the game very frustrating to play and highlight the amount of zoom in and out that are done while playing.
If your mousewheel starts to malfunction it makes YOUR COMPUTER VERY FRUSTRATING TO USE, for crying out loud. People, fix your god damn shit and stop complaining the game doesn't accomodate you fully to play on YOUR BROKEN HARDWARE.

/rant

+1

Posted: **Mon Apr 20, 2020 8:11 am**

posila wrote: ↑
Mon Apr 20, 2020 5:52 am

mmmPI wrote: ↑
Sun Apr 19, 2020 10:33 pm
If your mousewheel start to malfunction it makes the game very frustrating to play and highlight the amount of zoom in and out that are done while playing.

If your mousewheel starts to malfunction it makes YOUR COMPUTER VERY FRUSTRATING TO USE, for crying out loud. People, fix your god damn shit and stop complaining the game doesn't accomodate you fully to play on YOUR BROKEN HARDWARE.

/rant

I TOTALLY AGREE

It highlight the amount of zoom in and out that are done while playing.
( Also that would help some people that can't use their middle finger as well as most young rebelz .)

in case i wasn't clear enough there are people that can't use their middle finger as much as the game requires it without it being painful.

There was no complain in my sentence about the game, i just wanted to express the fact that accessibility is something one can keep in mind when discussing power-user hotkeys, that were MENTIONNED BY YOU POSILA IN THE FIRST PLACE AND ARE A GOOD IDEA ! (sorry if you think the example i took is bad).

Sure there are already hotkeys for zooming, but does anyone here uses them ? probably as many as people that uses the hokey to switch from automatic driving to manual driving on trains, or the hotkey to connect/disconnect train, because those are niche usage, and in this case not even practical so i'm still supporting the idea that if they exist already, might as well make them faster, so that they are usefull, or maybe potentially, if it's possible to make a new one, as expressed in the OP's suggestion , that would be semi-instant.

This is just a thing that made me realise when it happened and i wish people who can't just fix their hand find solutions to play this fantastic game.

https://blog.ai-media.tv/blog/why-desig ... s-everyone

what's the name of the effect already ? the one that describe the benefit for everyone ?

Edit: The Curb-Cut effect, now i remember

/counter rant with affection

Posted: **Mon Apr 20, 2020 9:28 am**

mmmPI wrote: ↑
Mon Apr 20, 2020 8:11 am
in case i wasn't clear enough there are people that can't use their middle finger as much as the game requires it without it being painful

I got triggered at "If your mousewheel starts to malfuction" and rest of the message didn't go through. I am sorry about that.

I also appologize to OP, for steering the thread away from the original suggestion.

Posted: **Mon Apr 20, 2020 11:01 am**

posila wrote: ↑
Mon Apr 20, 2020 9:28 am

mmmPI wrote: ↑
Mon Apr 20, 2020 8:11 am
in case i wasn't clear enough there are people that can't use their middle finger as much as the game requires it without it being painful
I got triggered at "If your mousewheel starts to malfuction" and rest of the message didn't go through. I am sorry about that.

It made me think of this:

https://xkcd.com/1172/

Posted: **Mon Apr 20, 2020 4:47 pm**

Thank you Posila for your profesionnalism and your understanding !

Kyralessa wrote: ↑
Mon Apr 20, 2020 11:01 am
It made me think of this:
https://xkcd.com/1172/

I have to admit i'm not seing the parralel :

how is the proposed suggestion breaking anyone's workflow ? ( except for the devs that may implement it )
how is the proposed suggestion going to impact negatively anyone ?
what do you have against people asking for a hotkey if you are not (yet) concerned ?

because you know arthritis or broken hand happens even faster when it's brought by karma.

Posted: **Mon Apr 20, 2020 5:10 pm**

mmmPI wrote: ↑
Mon Apr 20, 2020 4:47 pm
Thank you Posila for your profesionnalism and your understanding !

Kyralessa wrote: ↑
Mon Apr 20, 2020 11:01 am
It made me think of this:
https://xkcd.com/1172/

I have to admit i'm not seing the parralel :

how is the proposed suggestion breaking anyone's workflow ? ( except for the devs that may implement it )
how is the proposed suggestion going to impact negatively anyone ?
what do you have against people asking for a hotkey if you are not (yet) concerned ?

because you know arthritis or broken hand happens even faster when it's brought by karma.

The broken mouse wheel part.

In point of fact I think the suggestion is a good one. It'd be nice to have a "zoom all the way out" key and a "zoom all the way in" key. It would also be cool to have a "in map view, zoom just far enough in to see actual things instead of map blobs" key too.

Posted: **Mon Apr 20, 2020 6:17 pm**

mmm the way i reacted i explain this way: i had seen this cartoon already on the forum, and to me it describe someone doing something obviously wrong and getting used to it to a point that this person would be annoyed by a change designed to benefit everyone. ( wrong AND selfish) thus being turned into ridicule by the cartoonist.

i'm glad this doesn't escalade into off topic arguing and hope those contributions helps the suggestion being considered from a neutral point of view.

Posted: **Mon Apr 20, 2020 11:09 pm**

Thanks for your comments!

The "power-user hotkeys" idea was indeed quite popular; the poll was 91% in favor and reading some of the discussion about it I don't think anyone would be seriously hurt by the change.

Anyways, I made an AutoHotkey macro to implement my idea (mostly).

The way it works is I press Shift+MMB and then scroll up or down and it repeats the scrolling action 12 times.

Code: Select all

#NoEnv
SendMode, Input
SetWorkingDir, %A_ScriptDir%

SetTimer, turnoff, -1

; ===========================
; END OF AUTO-EXECUTE SECTION
; ===========================

#IfWinActive, Factorio

+MButton::
Hotkey, WheelUp, On
Hotkey, WheelDown, On
SetTimer, turnoff, -800
return

WheelUp::
WheelDown::zoom(A_ThisHotkey)

zoom(up_or_down) {
    BlockInput, MouseMove ; minor consistency improvement
    if (up_or_down = "WheelDown") {
        MouseGetPos, mouseX, mouseY
        ImageSearch, foundX, foundY, 1170, 1020, 1800, 1080, *120 base-center-icon.png ; right side of quickbar
        if (!ErrorLevel) {
            MouseClick, Left, % foundX+10, % foundY+10
            MouseMove, 960, 540 ; screen center
        }
    }
    Loop, 12 {
        Send, {%up_or_down%}
        Sleep, 10 ; small delay makes it more consistent
    }
    SetTimer, turnoff, -1
    if (up_or_down = "WheelDown")
        MouseMove, %mouseX%, %mouseY%, 0
    BlockInput, MouseMoveOff
}

turnoff() {
    Hotkey, WheelUp, Off
    Hotkey, WheelDown, Off
}

However, I encountered a problem when zooming out: because the cursor position affects the direction it can lead to undesireable results. I cannot accurately position the mouse cursor before executing and it happens so fast that I cannot adjust it during the process.

So I decided what I really want is to see my whole base and outposts when zoomed out, and that's where programmable speakers come in! A speaker in the center of my base will constantly show an alert which can then be automatically clicked to center the map.

(This animated GIF is not sped up.)

: quickzoom.gif (2.15 MiB) Viewed 3377 times

: base-center-icon.png (3.26 KiB) Viewed 3377 times

A minor flaw is that if I change the zoom level by normal scrolling (e.g. if I need to zoom in very close to inspect a transport belt's contents) then this macro doesn't account for that, since there's no easy way to determine the current zoom level.

So I would still welcome a built-in feature like this, but I can see it being minor enough that it won't make it into v1.0, if ever. At least right now I'm liking this setup, but let me know if you have any ideas to make it even better. Thanks!

Posted: **Tue Apr 21, 2020 5:11 am**

SupplyDepoo wrote: ↑
Mon Apr 20, 2020 11:09 pm
So I decided what I really want is to see my whole base and outposts when zoomed out, and that's where programmable speakers come in! A speaker in the center of my base will constantly show an alert which can then be automatically clicked to center the map.

Sounds horrible

but that would be really useful map functionality if implemented nicely.

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