Friday Facts #174 - Mod gui

[justarandomgeek]

Can I put in a request for Twinsen to do a FFF soon on upcoming 0.15 circuit network/combinator additions and changes? I have many ideas planned combinator-wise and would love to hear exactly what come out of the development proposal thread (viewtopic.php?f=9&t=30853).

Hey, I'll second that request! I'm sure something of mine will break, and would love to think on what I'll do about that while I'm waiting !

[Wingman24]

Do we have an ETA on .15? (Sorry if I missed this in a previous FF)

No ETA yet - Further news when we have it folks

Wait, last FFF it was said to be February 2017....

No, we didn't: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-173

Agreed from above. Definitely take your time, I just can't contain the excitement and I'm looking forward to it so much! Keep up the good work guys!

[eradicator]

If you're already introducing a wrapper-ish gui element manager it would be nice if you could add the following two features so they don't have to be implemented by every mod on its own:

1) The ability to change the order of mod buttons (currently unpossible). Because currently it's dependant on code loading order and thus often ultimately mod name. And when people start removing or re/-adding mods mid-game it's totally random. (And yes, i think it's THAT important as to mention it even tho it's probably been suggested many times before. ymmv )

2) The ability to temporarily hide infrequently used gui items. Kinda like the Windows®™ task tray can hide icons that aren't used often. A square quad-button to control this could be located in the upper left corner where it could control both horizontal and vertical gui elements. Hiding could even have several "stages" of importance. I.e. every gui element gets a priority level x, and then you can say "show all icons above priority y", similar to logger code levels. (This would probably also require additional code outside of the "wrapper" :< but be pretty useful to the player and help the "fighting for space" issue.)

[Yoyobuae]

Will the mod-gui LUA script itself be moddable? Seems like the perfect way to allow players/modders to customize mod GUIs the way they want.

[SHiRKiT]

Are you still planning to add the configurations for mods as you previously said?

It has been done for a few months now.

In those cases some mods could totally have their buttons removed from the main screen, which I personally think it's pretty damn ugly.

[equitime77]

Hey its good to hear about train stuff. If you could fix a train not trying to get to a station if the signal prior to it is closed by circuit condition that would be fantastic. My play style is to have loads if little factories n I depend greatly on trains. I'm currently working on a game where the trains are going to be greatly controlled by circuits.

Looking forward to having .15 come out whenever you are ready.

[tclack]

One thing I have been wanting for trains is the ability to name them with Route Names, (and sort by this function). In a large factory, I have dozens of trains, and I have to identify them by their stops... which is time-consuming. They also change their order on the page, so I can't remember them by their position.

With a Route Name, it would be MUCH easier to identify them, enabling simple Copy & Paste of their schedules to add throughput, etc.

I would also like to see Route Names introduced. This would be very helpful for larger factories.
Also KatherineOfSky does great factorio videos and tutorials. They helped me a lot when I was very new to the game.

[bobingabout]

Sorry Bob, I removed the button because it didn't conform to my "standards"
viewtopic.php?f=89&t=31641#p199567

oh, so it's your fault is it!?

Anyway, I thought the newer version did conform to the... more accepted standard of button layout.

Are you still planning to add the configurations for mods as you previously said?

It has been done for a few months now.

In those cases some mods could totally have their buttons removed from the main screen, which I personally think it's pretty damn ugly.

My mod with a button, has the button to open a menu that you'll likely want to be accessing fairly often. It configures inserters.

I have thought about removing it and replacing it with a hot key(After all, the inserters mod is entirely done with hotkeys, even opening the menu), but then people who just "Do" without reading wouldn't even know it exists.

Another one is a hotkey to hide the button, but once again, you might press a key combination and hide it by accident, and without looking it up, not know why it disappeared, or how to get it back.

[Nexela]

Anyway, I thought the newer version did conform to the... more accepted standard of button layout.

The newer version is a lot more acceptable. Even though it does cause my eye to twitch a little bit.

The sizing and spacing/padding is still just a wee bit off.

moar_buttons.png (184.38 KiB) Viewed 6971 times

[mrvn]

While I like train and train station colors they still seem a bit limited. What would be cool would be color patterns.

For example I have a black train hauling coal and a red train hauling copper ore. Now the train station at the smelting plant could have black/red stripes to signal that both black trains (coal) and red trains (copper ore) stop here.

With just a few patterns (uniform color, stripes going left or right, checker board pattern) and multiple color selectors you would get exponentially more color combinations that are easy for humans to not confuse.


I also think that naming train (routes) would be a great help for finding trains. Or just grouping trains with the same route together as a single entry in the main list.

[factoriouzr]

These are all great changes.

Since you are expanding the scope of copy and paste, can you please resolve the issue where we can't copy between factories and inserters.

You should be able to copy from a factory to an inserter and this should:
1) set the item condition on the inserter to the one being produced by the factory. Eg. factory makes laser turrets. Then copying to the inserter will set the condition of "blank < 100" to "laser turret < 100". Ie. it should set the item in the filter but not touch the condition or count.
2) if the inserter being pasted to is a filter inserter, then it should also (in addition to 1 above) set the filter to the good(s) produced by the factory (goods if using a mod that adds multiple outputs)

You should be able to copy from an inserter to a factory and this should:
1) if an item that can be produced by that factory is set for the inserter item count condition (eg. "laser turret < 100), then the factory should be set to build laser turrets
2) if 1 doesn't apply (eg. the factory can't make that good or the field is blank), then set the factory to make the item in the first filter slot. If that item can't be built or is blank, then go on to the second filter slot, etc until you check all of them or find one that the factory can build.

It would also be a nice to have, to let the user interact with ghost entities like they were already built. This would be get for setting up factories and inserters before you have the actual factory or inserter placed down. This would really speed up the game flow and the player will have to wait around less. For eg. you place down a ghost of a factory or even a generic blueprint with request, passive provider and factory and you want to set it up to make whatever good but you don't have all the inserters or the factory built yet. This way you can place down the ghost and configure the factory and inserter to make you whaterver and later when you have the buildings, they will be put down manually, or by robots and you know they are already set up.

Setting up ghost buildings and inserters would also be tremendously helpful for planning factories. As a plus you will be able to see the picture of the good the ghost factory will produce if you have the icons over factories enabled with the "Alt" key.

Keep up the great work!

[Cabanur]

Having the full RGB space to color is great, but if I'm honest it's a bit cumbersome to get the exact same numbers when i want the same color on two trains with different routes (i color them by cargo type, not by route).

How about a selection of colors (16, maybe 32) with a button for "custom color" with the current GUI?

[justarandomgeek]

Having the full RGB space to color is great, but if I'm honest it's a bit cumbersome to get the exact same numbers when i want the same color on two trains with different routes (i color them by cargo type, not by route).

How about a selection of colors (16, maybe 32) with a button for "custom color" with the current GUI?

Or at least the colors we have signals for!

[bobingabout]

you know what we need? Tintable icons. So we can just specify a tint, like we do with entities.

I'd do that on my ores, so they can truely be dynamically created by my library mod, instead of having to manually add an icon for each that I define.

[Klonan]

you know what we need? Tintable icons. So we can just specify a tint, like we do with entities.

I'd do that on my ores, so they can truely be dynamically created by my library mod, instead of having to manually add an icon for each that I define.

Tinting icons is already possible, instead of:

Code: Select all

icon = "__mod__/icons/my-icon.png"

you do

Code: Select all

icons = 
{
  {
  icon = "__mod__/icons/-my-icon.png",
  tint = {r = 0, g = 0, b = 0.5}
  }
}

[bobingabout]

you know what we need? Tintable icons. So we can just specify a tint, like we do with entities.

I'd do that on my ores, so they can truely be dynamically created by my library mod, instead of having to manually add an icon for each that I define.

Tinting icons is already possible, instead of:

Code: Select all

icon = "__mod__/icons/my-icon.png"

you do

Code: Select all

icons = 
{
  {
  icon = "__mod__/icons/-my-icon.png",
  tint = {r = 0, g = 0, b = 0.5}
  }
}

good to know.

is this in 0.14, or do I have to wait for 0.15 to use it?

[Rseding91]

good to know.

is this in 0.14, or do I have to wait for 0.15 to use it?

It's in 0.14.

Additionally I expanded it to include support for scaling and shifting for 0.15 essentially allowing masks for icons.

[Earendel]

good to know.

is this in 0.14, or do I have to wait for 0.15 to use it?

It's in 0.14.

Additionally I expanded it to include support for scaling and shifting for 0.15 essentially allowing masks for icons.

Multi-layered icons don't seem to work properly on sprite buttons.

[Klonan]

good to know.

is this in 0.14, or do I have to wait for 0.15 to use it?

It's in 0.14.

Additionally I expanded it to include support for scaling and shifting for 0.15 essentially allowing masks for icons.

Multi-layered icons don't seem to work properly on sprite buttons.

They seem to work fine for me (in 0.15)

[Cabanur]

How about a selection of colors (16, maybe 32) with a button for "custom color" with the current GUI?

Or at least the colors we have signals for!

I wonder if this would make it possible for a station to light up a bulb with the color of the upcoming train. I don't see how this would be useful, but it'd be cool.