Tiny icons are causing me eye strain. What about a text based alternative to icon grids?

[adamwong246]

TL;DR

I find myself straining to find items within a grid by their tiny icon. What about a more text-based approach?

What ?

The GUI is heavily invested in the "grid of icons" ui element. Examples:
- your equipment grid
- the crafting recipes grid
- your logistics grid
- you trash slots grid
- the trunk space grid of a vehicle
etc etc etc

but perhaps there might be an alternate textual UI. Specifically, a scrolling, searchable, text list (with a larger font size!) rather than grid of icons.

Your equipment grid might look something like

Code: Select all

ITEM            AMOUNT   ICON
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Copper ore   50       WOODEN CHEST ICON
2) Copper ore   3        IRON CHEST ICON
3) Iron ore     3        REPAIR PACK ICON

Your equipment grid might look something like

Code: Select all

ITEM                            CAPACITY   ICON
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Logistics/wooden chest       3          WOODEN CHEST ICON
2) Logistics/iron crate         3          IRON CHEST ICON
3) Production/Repair pack       3          REPAIR PACK ICON

Also, these lists need to include *consistent* search fields, because many of the search fields as-is are all over the place. The search field of your equipment menu filters the crafting menu and but highlights matches in the storage grid. Vehicle trunk space has no search feature at all!

Why ?

I get fatigued by visually searching through icon grids, especially the "trunk" space of vehicles and the logistics grid. The equipment grids and crafting recipes are a little better, because at least they keep their order and can be searched. But the trunk space of vehicles and the logistic grid have no sort-iness so it's just a mess trying to find what you are looking for. The logistic grid is even worse because it has teeeny tiny numbers over the icons, many of which differ only in color. This problem compounds as mods are added, many of which recycle art assets with a shade of color to distinguish the new icon.

I really love Factorio but, as someone who spends a lot of time writing code, it's important that I'm not literally hurting my eyes trying to read the UI. I'm sure the designers are aiming for a mouse-driven, non-scrolling, graphical UI but IMHO Factorio is just way to complex for that paradigm. The icons are just too similar, too small and too numerous to discern between and often font sizes are so small I must resort to holding my laptop screen 6 inches away from my face, especially as I start to fade from a late night binge session. And these are not the only places where exceptionally tiny text or icons cause me to strain- the statistics on the production menu charts are too tiny for me to read easily- but these are the cases that cause me the most grief.

In summation, if I am going to play factorio into the wee hours ( and you know I will!) I need a UI that causes less eye strain.

I have searched for a mod that might accommodate this need but I suspect this is outside the purview of modding. If I am wrong please let me know, because I would love to implement it if it's possible.

[Xorimuth]

Do you know about the UI scale in the settings? I'm not sure that it increases icon sizes but it should help with everything else.

This mod may be of some use: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/QuickItemSearch

[kirazy]

Do you know about the UI scale in the settings? I'm not sure that it increases icon sizes but it should help with everything else.

It does.

[Koub]

I wonder if this would be moddable (and practically usable, without murdering game performance). If it could be modded practically, I suggest trying to give it a go.

[Deadlock989]

I wonder if this would be moddable (and practically usable, without murdering game performance). If it could be modded practically, I suggest trying to give it a go.

Can't be done unfortunately.

The best way to avoid eye strain is to play the game less.

[adamwong246]

I did not know about the UI scaling, but upon investigating I find it makes many UI elements unusable on my laptop. HOWEVER I dug my larger external monitor out of storage and the combination of 125% scaled UI + bigger monitor does help some. But even this is not a complete solution, because I play factorio on-the-go and also because many UI elements, like the production menu, look worse now.

[adamwong246]

I wonder if this would be moddable (and practically usable, without murdering game performance). If it could be modded practically, I suggest trying to give it a go.

Can't be done unfortunately.

The best way to avoid eye strain is to play the game less.

You are sure about this? I want to know for certain that modding this feature is a complete impossibility.

[adamwong246]

It also occurs to me that this problem could be alleviated by making the modal windows full screen. Many of the modals take up ~1/3 of the screen, yet are placed dead center, obscuring much of the game play. So I'm not sure why the UI does not take up the full real estate, because in it's current state, it already prevents you from multitasking.

[Deadlock989]

I'm 99.9% sure that what you describe in the original post is not currently possible for a mod. The API gives only very limited access to in-game GUIs. At most you can tweak some of the styles, i.e. a subset of properties of a subset of existing elements such as padding, fonts, and the sprites used to compose the frames and GUI elements. You can't change, reorder or overwrite any elements in a GUI that comes from the game engine. You can make completely new ones, but those can only replace game GUIs in a very limited and specific sense and they have some limitations that the native GUIs don't have.

[Deadlock989]

It also occurs to me that this problem could be alleviated by making the modal windows full screen. Many of the modals take up ~1/3 of the screen, yet are placed dead center, obscuring much of the game play. So I'm not sure why the UI does not take up the full real estate, because in it's current state, it already prevents you from multitasking.

1366×768 was the most common screen solution for PC gaming in the year that Factorio 0.6.0 was released. My current monitor has nearly 8 times as many pixels. I am not prevented from multitasking. I am composing a poem about sausages even while writing this.

As others have pointed out, the settings provides you with a slider than can scale the GUI up to 200% larger.

[ssilk]

When I read this I thought that this is not an issue of the game, but the gamer.
A) It is not good for the eyes to play a game like Factorio, where small details count on a very small screen. My eyes suffer too, if I do that.
If I do that I play only one hour or so. Or I look TV and do things during the commercials. That is a very slow progressing game, but sometimes I need just that.
A2) perhaps you need glasses. Seriously, if that happens very fast I would make a test.
B) the best (but most expensive) solution is to play it on a big screen with fine resolution and not to change Factorio to be playable on such screens over hours. It is a completely different game and if I have enough time I go into my room for playing.