Friday Facts #237 - Rich & interactive text

[Klonan]

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-237

[Gergely]

This early?!

-Those save file names just made my day. And that's freaking less than half of the actual saves you have there.... unless your scroll bar is wrong because it is in a temporary state.

[blueblue]

I have a pet peeve about prototype names in this game. I have a list of prototype names in the game that I've misspelled, just in the last month, during modding.

List

Code: Select all

{
		["gear-wheel"] = "iron-gear-wheel",
		["iron-gearwheel"] = "iron-gear-wheel",
		["machine-gun"] = "submachine-gun",
		ammo = "firearm-magazine",
		assembler = "assembling-machine-1",
		["assembling-machine"] = "assembling-machine-1",
		["mining-drill"] = "electric-mining-drill",
		["engine"] = "engine-unit",
		["electric-engine"] = "electric-engine-unit",
		["small-power-pole"] = "small-electric-pole",
		["medium-power-pole"] = "medium-electric-pole",
		["big-power-pole"] = "big-electric-pole",
		["lamp"] = "small-lamp",
		["portable-solar-panel"] = "solar-panel-equipment",
		["small-worm"] = "small-worm-turret",
		["medium-worm"] = "medium-worm-turret",
		["big-worm"] = "big-worm-turret",
		["portable-fusion-reactor-equipment"] = "fusion-reactor-equipment",
		["worker-robot-speed"] = "worker-robots-speed"
}

And then there's stuff like stone-brick (item) vs stone-path (tile) and accumulator (item) vs electric-energy-accumulators (technology). To actually make this work you need a way for players to access script names of things quickly. Also maybe make them a tiny bit more consistent before you get out of early access.

I want to say I love the decision to make this available not just internally and for modding but also to players.

[ske]

Now this is some innovation i didn't hope for but am happy that it's coming. You keep surprising us, Great Work!

[quyxkh]

One related thing I saw in Spore was, it'd embed creature blueprints in creature images. Could you examine images dropped in the blueprint-pasting box for text metas that look like blueprint strings?

[pingger]

add the possibility to CTRL+Click (or similar) on an item or even place building and it automatically written to the chat bar, so we don't have to actually write [recipe=advanced-circuit] (I'm thinking of diablo 3 right there) ...
But nice feature

[HammerPiano]

I guess it can be also used in chat, alert strings, gui string etc. Can't wait for more sneak picks of 0.17 to come!

[jkgamer2000]

Now, that's cool. Colors in chat will be handy.

[keyboardhack]

Damn that's an awesome feature! How do you come up with those ideas?

For this to be easy to use we need a way to easily write those tags. Maybe some kind of autocomplete could be useful.

[DOSorDIE]

When you update the GUI, will then come this?

...: building ghost buildings without having the required item.
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-191

That will awesome!

After 4 Years and 2133 hours still playing Factorio ...

[KleinerNull]

How about [signal=red] / [signal=green] to read out the icon of connected circuits?

I would see a usage in interactive train station names, for example if there is still iron to mine the signal is the iron ore icon otherwise something that represents emptyness and so on. The sorting will be interesting, sorting by the bb code or by the actual value.

[steinio]

Damn that's an awesome feature! How do you come up with those ideas?

For this to be easy to use we need a way to easily write those tags. Maybe some kind of autocomplete could be useful.

Yes but localised.
This would need to create the function also wished here: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=59296

[TuckJohn]

I love the idea of using rich text to create clickable links and "hover-able" tooltips not only in chat, but in the map and anywhere else there is text.

I could really see this becoming useful in multiplayer; Instead of saying "we should research that electric smelting one next; the 4th one on the second row" in chat, a link to the technology could be sent that when clicked opens the research window.
Perhaps map locations in chat, so "come help me" could be typed with syntax to make it clickable to other players, and your location would open when clicked.
There are so many good ways to implement this.

One this to think about is how it is implemented. I think if it is reserved to knowing and memorizing a syntax and the names of all the items and research, this feature would only be used once or twice before it becomes just too tiresome and inconvenient to bother typing everything for what is gained(A neat emoji-like icon? Saving your friend a few seconds in the GUI? street cred?). I think there should be an "advanced chat" button that puts a GUI element to this feature. (Perhaps a small box to the left of the chat box when it is open?) Clicking an icon(say for iron ore) would insert the correct syntax into chat(like a macro or something). This allows new players easy access to the feature, and experienced players a quick and easy way to use it.

Please do escuse my poor excuse for a mock-up I came up with in paint.

[Engimage]

This is an incredible feature to come. I can definitely say that this is one of the best social features I remember being in different MMO games - being able to "link" different kinds of stuff to chat:

• Items
• Recipes
• Research
• Waypoints
• Blueprints
• Achievements (description + Date/time achieved)

The point is to let user easily (like Ctrl-Click or similar) to link items to chat and then anyone pointing at the link will see item popup.

You can go even further. You can completely rework copy/paste configuration functionality and include instant blueprinting in it. Simply make shift-rightclick (or click and drag) copy item configuration (blueprint) into text buffer and let it pase to chat and/or on top of items to change their configuration/place blueprint. Chat link will also copy the content to buffer to be placed. This way users can interexchange item configurations/blueprints using chat and/or forums etc.

Such functionality will also implement feature request for quick blueprinting.

So generally text links can embed every object in the game and dramatically extend social side of the game!

[DanGio]

Really nice. This will be really useful to me with station names.

I hope this will come with the ability to use more special characters in saves names...?

Edit : yes to Pacifiers message up there.

[Nedreow]

Does this work with modded items? And what happens if the mod the item is from is uninstalled?

A quick way of using icons might be dragging the item/blueprint into the text bar. That could be useful for other commands as well.

[SkullTitsGaming]

I second TuckJohn's request. A GUI menu, accessible via hotkey combination and/or on-screen GUI section, which has various icon selection would be useful. To that end, it might be worthwhile to adjust the location/functionality of the console, perhaps to an optionally-persistent GUI window (i'm thinking of chat windows in MMOs here). I know it's asking for an entirely new system upgrade, but I think building a better "chat engine" into the game would yield some great results, especially if that chat was saved to the world, rather than the player, and was then searchable (a use case: John and Jim are online, talking about what the 4 markers on the map need to become, and work on 2 of the markers before leaving. Jack comes online, searches the chat for the icon's referenced by the map, and sees that there is a need for 3 blue belts of copper smelting needed at icon "copper-plate" and 12 blue belts of iron needed at icon "iron-plate". Now, Jack can get to work building these smelting areas without waiting for John and Jim to get online.) On that note, it might be useful that when in full-screen map view, hovering over a particular icon highlights all map icons of the same type (similar to the highlight which appears when hovering over a contiguous oil patch).

As for the tooltip, bring able to see a similar tooltip as the one which appears when hovering over a recipie would be lovely, especially if one could then left-click the icon to be taken to it's corresponding recipe in the crafting menu, or right-click the icon to be taken to it's technology page in the tech tree. Alternatively, having one box which highlights the recipe, and a second tooltip box next to it which lists the tech branch under which it is housed, as well as the lowest-necessary tech needed to progress towards this item (eg, hovering over a blue splitter icon in the early game lists logistics 1, but later on lists oil processing) would also be useful, especially for newer players who don't have the tech tree memorized.

[Zomis]

I don't think anyone wants to write [recipe=...] (reminds me way too much about bulletin-boards) Instead I would recommend something like using a colon or a @ and then offering tab-completion to choose from recipe/item/blueprint/etc. and then continuing to offer tab completion so that you could write something like @it<tab>ele<tab><down> which would print out @item/electric-mining-drill and thus show the icon for an electric mining drill.

Another nice feature would be to support *markdown*.

[kovarex]

I completely agree, that there will have to be some easy of use, as the player doesn't even know the prototype names, only the translations.
I consider the manual [] syntax to be a base to be eventually built upon. Some kind of weird shortcut, like alt-click (on recipe, item etc) could do the trick. Or the tab completition would also be nice. We will experiment with that later.

[OutOfNicks]

Oh yes please tab completion!
P.S. Awesome game!