Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Items on belts should rotate in corners of belts, as the belt turning would make the items turn as well.

What ?

Currently, when items on a belt enter a turn (a 90 degree belt), the orientation of the item doesn't change. For example, an assembler on a belt will always have the roof of the assembler facing upward, the icon won't ever turn sideways or upside down. However, on a real life belt, the items on a belt would obviously turn the same way the belts do. So a belt going right, with the icons of the items on it facing upwards, if a 180 degree turn is added, the item icons should turn in the same way, making them be upside down on the belt that goes towards the left. This also applies for 90 degree turns where the items should end up being turned sideways after the turn.

Why ?

It's just a small yet obvious polish to the game to improve how it looks. Belts are everywhere, so small changes like this just make the game feel better. With that said, it's certainly not an important change, it just makes the game feel more natural.

Elyviere wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2019 5:45 amHowever, on a real life belt

Meanwhile, on a real life belt...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqLYhhV7u7Y


That being said, i think this suggestion would add a bit more flavor to belts.

Elyviere wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2019 5:45 am Currently, when items on a belt enter a turn (a 90 degree belt), the orientation of the item doesn't change. For example, an assembler on a belt will always have the roof of the assembler facing upward, the icon won't ever turn sideways or upside down. However, on a real life belt, the items on a belt would obviously turn the same way the belts do.

I sense it would need significantly more resource, as you'd need to store this information (angle of display) for every single item on a belt, and to update the information at each tick an item is rotating anywhere on a turning belt. All that while not adding much to the game (a slight touch of a visual polish) and removing a lot of readability (currently, you can identify in one glance what's on your belts, which would become more difficult with items at random angles).

Technically the game needs to add an angle for all items. I guess the display by itself is not a big thing, but the angle needs an extra byte of memory, which needs to be read any time the item needs to be displayed. That will lead to significant more cpu usage when the screen is full of items.

Besides that if you fill a belt with items from many sources, many items with different angels on one belt, they can have different orientation, which leads to less readability of the items.

For me it’s not worth the effort.

[deleted]

ssilk wrote: ↑Mon Dec 23, 2019 9:31 am Technically the game needs to add an angle for all items.

The item angle could be tied to the belt direction, so no extra memory needed.

Doesn't work : by side loading rotated items on a new belt section, the game would have :
1) either to reset the rotation, which would be ugly
2) or to keep the item rotated, therefore keep the angle attached to the item.

Trebor wrote: ↑Mon Dec 23, 2019 2:47 pm

ssilk wrote: ↑Mon Dec 23, 2019 9:31 am Technically the game needs to add an angle for all items.

The item angle could be tied to the belt direction, so no extra memory needed.

Ah. Ok, good point.

Hm. Thinking about how this would look then, I think it would distract me much more, that items have different orientations on belt, but have other direction if not . Only one of the four directions is not changing, which is kind of very illogical.
Compared to the current behavior: What is with broken belts? What’s with items on ground? Items in inserter hands? Items in player hand?

That looks like a minimal detail, but is (in my eyes) very important, how this will look. I’m watching the details of that game mechanisms very detailed, cause it offers a way to read how things work.