Friday Facts #191 - Gui improvements

[Spoon]

I love these ideas.

I've been wanting a way to filter slots in the player inventory for a while. It seems obvious to me that this should be a feature when you can filter the hotbar. I like the tab lay out as well.

I've only been playing Factorio all of two months but when I first got logistics chests (specifically requester chests) I didn't understand that the UI in the middle had changed from my own character requester slots to the chest.

[Tallinu]

I'd just like to add my voice favor of most of the changes described on the FF, with the exceptions of the points described by Xterminator and ColonelWill in a recent youtube video. I agree with their suggestions 100%.

I'd also vote in favor of a "craft to front of queue" option. It isn't going to cause crafting a certain number of goods to take any less time, it's just a way of having better control over the order in which the things you're crafting are made. I personally try to avoid ever having to craft subcomponents (like circuits or gears) by carrying a certain amount of those in my inventory at all times, and automating the production of those basic components that are needed for so many recipes is one of the first things I do, even before I start laying out any sort of main bus or automated science (even if I have to simply plop down half a dozen assemblers and manually stuff stacks of iron and/or copper into them, then come back later for the results, just like with early furnaces).

Having those components on hand allows me to craft otherwise fast items like inserters, belts, miners, assemblers, and so on in the bare minimum of time on an as-needed basis, until I reach the point where I have enough of the prerequisite infrastructure laid out for it to be worth setting up a "mall" (thanks KoS for that great term for it) that builds all the various things necessary for setting up and expanding the factory. As a result, I'm probably less affected by "long hand-crafting queue syndrome" than some people, but I would still LOVE to be able to say "Whoops, I should have queued this ONE item that takes 0.5 seconds to craft BEFORE these other 10 items that each take 20 seconds to craft! Good thing I can just send it to the front of the queue!"

Just like someone in the real world is capable of taking a break from one task and coming back to it later, there shouldn't be anything stopping your character from briefly setting aside what he was working on in order to quickly do something that unexpectedly comes up and is more important, then returning to the previous task right where he left off. Taking care of that more urgent task shouldn't require the equivalent of cleaning up and putting away all the tools and supplies involved in the first task, only to have to get them all out again a minute later.

[Zavian]

Hi

I'm also in favour of most of the changes mentioned in the FF. However I think that all your weapons and their ammo should be visible all the time, or at least during combat/until 20-30 sec after combat.

I'm also moving to having more and more blueprints directly on my toolbar. (I don't find the blueprint book to be as easy and convenient to use as simply grabbing the right blueprint directly from my toolbar/inventory). I'm hoping this Gui rework will lead to the ability to store blueprints in a blueprint book, and still have them all individually available on my toolbar. (Even better would be additional toolbar-like space for blueprints).

One final point please consider what should happen when your inventory is full, and your bots are busy deconstructing stuff. It is annoying to grab a stack of boxes from your inventory to put things in, then be unable to return the unused boxes to your inventory so you can actually dump stuff in the box. Maybe make what you are holding in your hand an index into your inventory, so that you can never end up unable to press 'Q' to empty your hands ?

[Dengo]

i would love the changes to the toolbar!
i understand that some or many people dont like changes, so why not making it
optional? turn on/off in the options menu?

The granularity of 2 inventories is lost. Putting your entire inventory in a chest while keeping your toolbar inventory is no longer possible

why dont you implement a function to the inventory which works like the limit chest space? in this case you just mark the inventory space which will stay
while you put everything else in a chest.

[robyoublind]

i understand that some or many people dont like changes, so why not making it
optional? turn on/off in the options menu?

From the fish shell design document:

"Configurability is the root of all evil

Every configuration option in a program is a place where the program is too stupid to figure out for itself what the user really wants, and should be considered a failure of both the program and the programmer who implemented it.

Rationale: Different configuration options are a nightmare to maintain, since the number of potential bugs caused by specific configuration combinations quickly becomes an issue. Configuration options often imply assumptions about the code which change when reimplementing the code, causing issues with backwards compatibility. But mostly, configuration options should be avoided since they simply should not exist, as the program should be smart enough to do what is best, or at least a good enough approximation of it."

[Dengo]

i understand that some or many people dont like changes, so why not making it
optional? turn on/off in the options menu?

From the fish shell design document:

"Configurability is the root of all evil

Every configuration option in a program is a place where the program is too stupid to figure out for itself what the user really wants, and should be considered a failure of both the program and the programmer who implemented it.

Rationale: Different configuration options are a nightmare to maintain, since the number of potential bugs caused by specific configuration combinations quickly becomes an issue. Configuration options often imply assumptions about the code which change when reimplementing the code, causing issues with backwards compatibility. But mostly, configuration options should be avoided since they simply should not exist, as the program should be smart enough to do what is best, or at least a good enough approximation of it."

oh nice information!
agreed, especially this kind of option would bring many many problems you have to think about. like what happens with the items in a full (and bigger) inventory if you reduce/switch back to the old inventory

anyway: i need this toolbar so much

[SpeedDaemon]

I like almost all of these UI changes!

The one suggestion I'd have is that on the inventory window, tab the character and logistics areas, but always have the crafting part to the right where it is now (except when replaced by an entity inventory).

Since crafting is often used in conjunction with the other two (and shouldn't interfere with the shift clicking problem), having it always there should reduce the amount of UI interaction required.

[BlackKnight]

Quick suggestion to make toolbar more logical.
Presently I find the groupings compared to what the shortcuts relate to, to be contradictory... at least in my mind.

Shortcuts 1-5, shift+1-5 are meant to be used as primary but the image doesnt suggest this with the big space separating the two. Yet the one below is adjacent yet you have to toggle x to first move to that new row.

factorio-toolbar.png (20.27 KiB) Viewed 9146 times

So either moving shortcuts Shift+1-5 to below from the right side of the bar or removing a majority of the space between bar groupings so its more obvious that the row below is separate (preferable), would solve this.
.. I know this isnt a problem before you research multiple toolbar rows when players are still learning.. but I still find it annoying.

[luc]

As existing player, I love the changes! Can't wait for them . Would they be included before 0.15 is out of experimental, or would they go to 0.16? (Please please 0.15!)

Minor nitpick: F1/F2/F3 are bad ideas since lots of modern laptops/keyboards don't have them (or rather, require fn+BrightnessDown to achieve F1).

Came here to say this. It's a minor thing, but a big thing for many casual players. The casual players with such setups, are also the ones who never touched their key config. They're the ones who type chat messages with a ` in front of every message because they have European keyboards with dead keys and don't know that this is something you can change. And honestly, I only thought of it after playing with them for months (also because I don't have the issue, but still).

Other possible keys are Ctrl+1/2/3 (though I've never understood why Ctrl+num is not the bottom row of the quickbar, might want to use it for that) or Shift+Z/X/C. Or Shift+QWE or Shift+ASD but then you interrupt walking. It's not easy to find a good solution for this one...

[Holy-Fire]

The basic idea is to change the quickbar from a separate inventory to simply a shortcut bar to the player's main inventory.

A thousand times yes! I've been waiting for this for a while.

[mrvn]

And while you are at it with ghosting items two more tiny features:

1) pressing "q" on an item that is not in the inventory should still put it into the hand for ghost placement.
2) when you place the last item of something switch to ghost placement for the next.

[BlackKnight]

And while you are at it with ghosting items two more tiny features:

1) pressing "q" on an item that is not in the inventory should still put it into the hand for ghost placement.
2) when you place the last item of something switch to ghost placement for the next.

I was assuming these would be implemented with the other suggested changes re ghosting because they are so obvious to me in terms of expected functionality... but no harm restating just to make sure they aren't overlooked... Thanks for the reminder!

[mrvn]

And while you are at it with ghosting items two more tiny features:

1) pressing "q" on an item that is not in the inventory should still put it into the hand for ghost placement.
2) when you place the last item of something switch to ghost placement for the next.

I was assuming these would be implemented with the other suggested changes re ghosting because they are so obvious to me in terms of expected functionality... but no harm restating just to make sure they aren't overlooked... Thanks for the reminder!

One more, and currently very anoying, obvious feature: When you have something in your hand and a construction robot takes the last of it for placement then one should still be able to ghost place the item previously in hand.

[BlackKnight]

And while you are at it with ghosting items two more tiny features:

1) pressing "q" on an item that is not in the inventory should still put it into the hand for ghost placement.
2) when you place the last item of something switch to ghost placement for the next.

I was assuming these would be implemented with the other suggested changes re ghosting because they are so obvious to me in terms of expected functionality... but no harm restating just to make sure they aren't overlooked... Thanks for the reminder!

One more, and currently very anoying, obvious feature: When you have something in your hand and a construction robot takes the last of it for placement then one should still be able to ghost place the item previously in hand.

Good point. Really, the transition to ghosting out-of-stock items should be as natural a transition as possible. So anytime there is a moment in the game like this, you should be automatically provided a ghost of that item

[kamegami]

I had another thought on Ghost Placement. It would be nice to have a toggle Ghost button, so we could go into a Ghost placement mode instead of holding Shift all the time. I could make a AutoHotKey script to toggle shift but it would mess up other Shift click controls.

[Knatte_Anka]

One other thing i have problem with is that if i have a thing locked in one spot it should not be able to take one more then i click on a new item. Like having a inserter in hand and selecting(mouse) a drill and it places the inserter where the drill was not the slot it came from!

Other than that i like the new update on most part but to always show all weapon i dont see as a problem but a feature!

[Factorie]

F keys please!

[mexmer]

F keys please!

while i share your sentiments, truth is, that Fkeys are slowly but steadily phased out of computer keyboards.

novadays lot of keyboards come not only with Fn + Fkey functionality, that we have here for long, and know (mostly from notebooks), now they have Fkey mode disabled by default and media stuff (you used to invoke with Fn+Fkey) takes precedence.

so adding Fkeys to app other way than user control customization is rather problematic.

and don't get me wrong, it's always my first thing i check, if keyboard is set to Fkeys without FN, because i use lot of software that relies on Fkeys.

but trend is going away from Fkeys, next macbook will not have Fkeys at all (only touchbar). this might come to pc sooner or later too.

[mrvn]

F keys please!

while i share your sentiments, truth is, that Fkeys are slowly but steadily phased out of computer keyboards.

novadays lot of keyboards come not only with Fn + Fkey functionality, that we have here for long, and know (mostly from notebooks), now they have Fkey mode disabled by default and media stuff (you used to invoke with Fn+Fkey) takes precedence.

so adding Fkeys to app other way than user control customization is rather problematic.

and don't get me wrong, it's always my first thing i check, if keyboard is set to Fkeys without FN, because i use lot of software that relies on Fkeys.

but trend is going away from Fkeys, next macbook will not have Fkeys at all (only touchbar). this might come to pc sooner or later too.

Oh the horror. This really bugs me on my laptop too.

[Engimage]

That is why I did suggest to drop the idea of Fkeys to switch tabs.
You should have dedicated keys to open those tabs directly and those will also switch between tabs if one is open.
Lets say:
E - handcrafting menu
L - logistic menu
I - inventory and equipment

If you have any tab open pressing the same key (or Esc) will close window. Pressing any other of 3 will switch to respective tab.
This layout is intuitive and used widely thoughout many games.

I do insist on using Esc to close any active window. This is so much intuitive that after hundreds of hours of Factorio I still try to do it.