Friday Facts #191 - Gui improvements

[DOSorDIE]

GUI Improvements ... YES PLEASE!

And we need min() max() in Combinators that we can pick a signal of it!

Please Please Please Please

[mexmer]

honestly, i feel, like if this goes trough, my toolbar will finally make sense.
i hope, my toolbar will be able to retain all filters after researching expansions (i mean, when you start new game, you will have 1 toolbar again, so if other toolbars are lost, and need to be setup after reasearch ... you get my point )

and tabs with logistic/equipment/craft ... yet again makes sense, more space in ui. although i use dragging from craft to logistic to quickly setup logistic slot ... this will be lost, still can be setup from inventory (or by clicking), so it's not that bad.

[Twinsen]

I read through all 16 pages(and reddit comments) so far and I will keep all your suggestions in mind to further polish the gui changes.

I'll comment on a random few things:

Use 0-6 as toolbar shortcuts instead of Shift+1 - 5

While I agree that no other game does it, the shift works well with Factorio so far. It forced me to play this new way and I'm glad it did. In World of Warcraft for example I often mis-press any keys after 5, resorting to clicking them with the mouse because it was more reliable. And in the end if you feel strongly against it, you can easily remap the keys. So they will stay like this.

I'd like to see an additional tab with your crafting queue that gives you the ability to alter your queue, with move to front, move to back

We had many discussions about improving the crafting queue, including special shortcut to queue to front. After long thoughts I have strong feelings against improving the crafting queue like this, for an important reason: it won't force you to automate. If you were able to queue to front many players will act as walking assembling machines, constantly crafting things, since it would be an efficient way to play. I very often see new players spend many minutes crafting green science packs, sometimes even waiting there until their hand crafting is finished. Adding queue to front will only aggravate this problem. By making it annoying the way it is now, it forces new players to think "if only there was a way to do this easier...".

2) remember positions of in game windows viewtopic.php?f=6&t=48064

I plan on adding this as an option, including some other improvements such as ability to open an entity gui(and close the other gui) even if one is already open. This will make inspecting things much faster.

3) All in-game windows look like crap, if you must know. Not that I care. I just want them to work but to be honest they aren't exactly a master artist's work. Looks more like a preset style from your GUI library.

There are plans for that also
It's not a popular opinion among the devs but I will say that the Factorio GUI is one of the ugliest I've seen.

What will happen to the toolbelt research?

Toolbelt research might be changed to just inventory increase research. The new toolbelt will probably have 10 pages of shortcuts and you can resize the bar to have as many rows visible at the same time as you like. On each row you can select which of the 10 bars you want to see. Shortcuts can be configured for the first 2 bars.
This is the idea so far at least.

But please do: F1- Crafting, F2-Logistics and F3- Character. 95% of the time is in the crafting menu, 4.5% is in logistics, and the other 0.5% is in Character, don't make it the first.

I didn't give much thought to the order. What you said makes sense

I'd also like to point out the auto-request / auto-trash inconsistantcy.
A quick UI proposal is below:

with auto-trash and request researched:

Code: Select all

Min                                                        Max
[50   ]    -------#====#-----------    [200  ]
[×] Lock range

with just request researched:

Code: Select all

                                                              Max
               =========#-----------    [200  ]

with just auto-trash researched:

Code: Select all

Min
[50   ]    -------#============

I also don't like that gui. We had this idea also and I think it's the best solution so far.

[dactrin]

I would like to see percentage based "progress bars" (or some such visual indicator) under the logistics tabs that let me know how close I am to the amount I've requested be in my inventory.

I can't post a url in my first post so below is the imgur tag for a mockup

http://imgur.com/a/uRbtC

[BlackKnight]

....
-perhaps on the map view, you could have something akin to a filter bar for the movement of items? So any robots carrying the item, storage containers with it, or belts/pipes would show up? This would simplify the big-picture view of larger factories' production. having the equivalent amount of slots of a quickbar would enable somebody to follow the entire line of production of a higher-tech good, or a portion of the production tree for it, or just focus on a couple trouble spots/systems. I'm not sure what you'd use on the map to best do this.
-similar to google maps' traffic filter, perhaps something for belts/robots/pipes with goods that AREN'T moving showing red, indicating a blockage of some form and possibly a problem? Maybe a slider/toggle set like the production stats for the timespan it calculates by?
I don't know if the map ideas would just make things way too busy, but I think that's what toggles are for, and in any case there's nothing to my knowledge in the game that would give you this kind of functionality without a lot of patience and walking around. Having the radars allow you to extend this analysis range could be nifty as well.

I love these ideas and have suggested similar before. The potential visual feedback for the metasystem this could provide would be amazing - but I have a feeling (from what I've read) this is too complex to implement/would be too cpu intensive though mainly its out of the scope of the current game, sadly. Hopefully reproducible by a mod or if there is a Factorio 2.. Because being able to "pull-out" from standard view into a simplified analytics view/overlay with complete interactive realtime productivity feedback (seeing the flow of production like a liquid depending what product was selected) would be mindblowing. And like Excel, being able to click Trace Dependents or Trace Precedents would selectively flesh out the circulatory system of the factory - which would be really cool in its own right - but would allow new forms of troubleshooting bottle necks / optimizing for efficiency!

[denebarry]

Does this mean we could get multiple toolbars that we could cycle through? I could have my default toolbar, and additionally have a "Train" set, or a "Fluid" set for when I am focusing on those things.

I love this idea!!

[HurkWurk]

i havent read all 16 pages. my view based upon the FF.

1. shortcuts are fine.
2. number of bars shown at once should be configurable. also if the number of inventory slots could be configured as well, the default 10 wide isnt perfect with a wide screen, i would rather use 15 wide.
3. consider auto-populating certain shortcuts to help players along.
4. for control + click situations, its easy... have it transfer all non-blue backed things to the chest on the first click, then a second click transfers everything else. that way people can keep their "shortcut equipment".
5. tabs make plenty of sense, but i like having guns/ammo displayed all the time for 2 reasons. first, so i can check at a glance what i have if i need to upgrade etc. second, because i want to make sure i have my pistol/rifle equipped while in my factory, since i cannot accidentally fire them like i could my flame thrower, etc. especially if im chatting and forget to open a console before typing and setting several buildings on fire


as a final note, i dont think there is anything here to hate. it all looks like good changes with only small tweaks needed.

[glowack2]

Regarding inventory, it might be nice to have some kind of breakup of the monolithic bag inventory to help make it easier and more predictable where to find things. Even something like mirroring the filter selector as the categories: Logistics, Production, Intermediate products, Combat, and empty slots, and have each of those categories start on a new line under a small heading would give some nice boundaries:

Logistics
[ x ][ y ][ z ]...
Production
[ a ][ b ][ c ]...

You mentioned WoW, I used to play as well, and I recall all sorts of cool inventory mods that would do stuff like this that might be good inspiration.

You also mentioned "Useful counts" for items on the toolbelt... that would also probably be a more compact and useful way to view the inventory, though probably only as an alternate view, because stacks and stack sizes are an important part of how the game works?

[Xuhybrid]

These is a lot of good choices in UI design. I am proud of you. It's not change for change's sake. This is necessary imo.

[SirRuc]

I like all the changes you proposed with the exception that for simplifying the current equipment bar - it makes sense to not show current armor, pickaxe, and any empty weapon slots however i think it should still show all the weapons you have equipped not just the currently selected weapon like you propose
P. S. perhaps have the weapon and ammo slots be filters like the quickbar as well?

[BlackSheep308]

I had a few ideas for improvements;
Search Function in the production statistics page. We have it in the crafting and in the recipe selection page, I think it would be very helpful for finding production stats for specific products.

In the research window it could display number of research cycles remaining until the completion of research. There is the bar that fills, but the bar only gives a rough percentage that isn't that helpful when someone is waiting to test out those nukes.

I am kinda embarrassed so admit, I have accidentally quit my game several times returning from the Options sub menu in the in-game escape menu. If the option sub was reordered to have the back button in the top location, that could save some headaches. I know that it just makes sense to have the back button at the bottom, so another option could be a dialog confirming the exit of the game when you are the host of a multiplayer map.

Awesome Game, I like the new gui changes.
The menus and windows are: plain, grey, blocky, simple and sure could be called ugly. It fits the game though this is about making a factory, and the feel is very commercial. I like it.

[BlackKnight]

I've tried to read every comment and respond to as many items as possible with some of my own ideas

First of all, great FFF and yes to all the changes (with tweaks). You mentioned many great points I unconsciously was annoyed by along with the rest.
Most importantly mentioned in this update, I very much appreciate the introduction of ghosting items not in the inventory.

WEAPON SUMMARY
Weapon and ammo notification summary is still needed somewhere so you don't die in the middle of combat.
Keep similar to current but create something like the windows system tray notification box. Allow expanding to show additional weapons if desired but by default it would be a compact space showing just your primary weapon/ammo. The player armor, battery charge and axe could also be toggled. Clicking on this would also very intuitively popup the full player layout (either as a quick edit mode or to replace the tab shown in Twinsen's FFF example).

factorio-weaponloadout.png (58.46 KiB) Viewed 8822 times

Side notes
When in a vehicle, I have always found it annoying I cannot check my weapon status. Please make weapon(s)/ammo visible when driving
Could Auto-Open when in combat (with auto-hide timeout)


INVENTORY/ITEM SELECTION
For those concerned about the changes.. I know change is hard but I think overall the new suggested changes will make usability faster.
Tips - Personally, since starting .15, I have found using the pipette tool exceptionally useful and almost replaces my use of the inventory because it's a lot quicker usually to find an item ingame (most frequently used items are usually onscreen) than in my toolbelt, much less my inventory.

Consistency for Shift+Click
As it currently stands, some items are moved to the quickbar or weapon loadout instead of all moving to the Trash items. Now I assume all items will respond to this hotkey to moving to the trash inventory. The lack of consistency in the past has really bugged me so would really love to see this implemented.

Last Crafted Item To Cursor
A solution would be to add this via a special hotkey.
Bonus. As requested a number of times, somehow display a last x# items history.. possibly using another toolbar row--useful? Perhaps most useful earlygame but possible toggleable for lategame


QUICK INVENTORY
Toggle on or leave on indefinitely to quickly pick an item without having to bring the full inventory up. Has scroolbar.

factorio-quickinventory.png (39.35 KiB) Viewed 8822 times

TOOLBELT
The option to have Additional Toolbelt rows available upon research -- allowing you to cycle through them would be excellent! -- and would allow creating sets as mentioned.. train, defence, fluid etc. Each row could be cycled out and be exchanged with another filter row. Possibly the ability to name them too would be useful.

A permanent spot for the Deconstruction Planner/Blueprint icons on Toolbelt as they no long really have a place on the toolbar.

[BlackKnight]

BLUEPRINT LIBRARY UI
As others mentioned, this new interface certainly needs improvement. An option that at least a few others have suggested is make this as the Primary and Only way to interact with blueprints. This makes blueprints a lot more consistent suddenly as they never reside in your inventory and you must always use the library to access them. In order to make using blueprints more convenient, possibly a blueprint/hotbar row could be made available exclusively for blueprints and or blueprint books?
Presently the size of the icons in the library are too large. Please change to the same size as all others.
Optionally the *newly* proposed filter toolbar could accept blueprints/books being placed in them.

From now on, I suggest empty blueprints should automatically be destroyed - so clear blueprint and delete are now the same. This will solve housekeeping cleaning up empty blueprints scattered around.


GHOST PLACEMENT
In addition to allowing an item in the quickbar to be used for ghost placement, I would really like to see pipette tool also be able to place ghost-able items in the cursor (even if the item doesn't exist).

Place from inventory by CTRL?+Click researched(visible) item in the inventory to create a ghost version in the cursor


LOGISTIC REQUEST STATUS
As suggested, a visual indicator to show the status of a request. Some graphical examples:

OPTION 1

factorio_logisticsprogress.png (8.63 KiB) Viewed 8816 times

OPTION 2

factorio_logisticsprogress (2).png (8.69 KiB) Viewed 8816 times

ABILITY TO SAVE FILTERS
Save toolbelt filters, requester slots and trash slot filters to use in other games. Possibly by use of specially crafted text strings?

The menus and windows are: plain, grey, blocky, simple and sure could be called ugly. It fits the game though this is about making a factory, and the feel is very commercial. I like it.

I agree with this, its not "pretty" but for usability sake, I dont want a bunch of colorful menus and distractions... unless it really increases usability
I would appreciate a simplified UI design option without the "3D" effect on all the icons and non transparent UI background for 0.15. The new theme is just a bit overwhelming at times.

[mrvn]

Another problem is that E - which today always does what you want, will now only sometimes do what you want lategame and that is truly maddening. Sifting through tabs is not awesome. Adding more tabs to a website/app/game UI does not make it better it makes it harder to find what you're looking for. Even if you know what you're looking for many users will slap E (or the wrong F-key), and fumble around in the tabs until they find what they're looking for because it's muscle memory that they build and it's easier to build muscle memory around easy actions. Because it's that kind of muscle memory action the labels won't help, the hotkeys won't help, it's just how users are.

So just map F3 to E and you get the old behaviour. Problem solved.

[mrvn]

I really love that ghost placing. I already have blueprint books filled with every kind of single item just for that and it is wasting space needlessly. Whatever else comes with it that feature alone is so worth it.

That said: Concerning weapons ammo slots. Shouldn't they be just filters too? If I have 400 red magazines why should the machine gun stop after 200? You automatically sapped magazines 200 times already. Why not switch to the next stack in the inventory and keep going? This is annoying. I sometimes carry around 3 machine guns with 200 mags each just so I can quick change to the next one when I run out. But then when I need to fill some gun turret I'm looking for ammo all over the place in case I have more than the 600 in the weapon slots.

Also I think the current weapon should be displayed with ammo count at least under combat conditions. E.g. if there is any enemy in a certain radius (larger than the weapons range).

[mophydeen]

BLUEPRINT LIBRARY UI
...
From now on, I suggest empty blueprints should automatically be destroyed - so clear blueprint and delete are now the same. This will solve housekeeping cleaning up empty blueprints scattered around.
...

more than 1 empty blueprint.
It's useful to have an empty blueprint. Otherwise you always have to get a new blueprint.

[mophydeen]

...
LOGISTIC REQUEST STATUS
As suggested, a visual indicator to show the status of a request. Some graphical examples:

factorio_logisticsprogress.png

factorio_logisticsprogress (2).png

...

+ the merging of request and trash tab using 2 sliders (min, max)
+ ability to request blueprint (not a blueprint but the building blocks)

[mophydeen]

...

GHOST PLACEMENT
In addition to allowing an item in the quickbar to be used for ghost placement, I would really like to see pipette tool also be able to place ghost-able items in the cursor (even if the item doesn't exist).

Place from inventory by CTRL?+Click researched(visible) item in the inventory to create a ghost version in the cursor

...

a way to set/remember/store the recipe of a machine before it's unlocked.
- in blueprints
- in ghosts
- in active machines

Or
(a setting: base pipet vs advanced pipet)
pipetting a gear factory will let you place a gear factory ?

[drewtop]

+1 for a "Last Crafted" slot

or maybe just a full toolbar that's a last crafted queue.

[gghf]

I rather like the inventory and toolbar changes. I think they make lots of sense.

I don't know exactly how you want to change the weapon/ammo/armor gui, but I find myself looking at it rather regularly, just to check up on ammo counts, to access the power armor grid, etc.. Therefore, any changes to it's visibility behaviour must a) make sense, b) be controllable without extra clicks and finally c) be optional.

I'm not a fan of making tabs for the logistic/crafting/character screen. Doing this takes too many clicks. The F buttons are often used as hotkeys for mods. There's not enough information visible at the same time. I often plan ahead what resources I need, and being able to mouse over an item in the production tabs, while also seeing the logistic window, frees up brain power for efficient and immersed planning. No flow interruptions by having to navigate to different windows.

To solve your Shift+Click issues, it would be much better to add a help text to the window, which states what the various Shift/Ctrl/Alt/whateverElse+Left/Right-Click would do at that moment. Of course, combine that with expanded "combo clicks" functions, so we can actually transfer any item(s) anywhere, in one go. An actual help text/list above or below the inventory screen would make it very easy, as people wouldn't need to remember what's possible.