Friday Facts #250 - Dead end conclusion

[dgw]

I like proposal Zero quite a bit.
I have one more request: can we have a button or an option to sort the blueprints alphabetically?

They're already sorted alphabetically, books first, then standalone prints. Unless that goes away in Proposal Zero. Inventories can be auto-sorted as well, so the special blueprint inventory should be able to do that.

The functionality of automatic blueprint library sharing in multiplayer is removed. The "shared blueprints" panel is removed. Blueprints and blueprint books in multiplayer will be shared by manually trading the items or by linking them in the chat. Blueprints or books linked in the chat can be clicked to pick up a copy that can be used as a normal item.

This is the only part I don't like. I had a great time in a public multiplayer game where people would log on and we would look through their blueprint library and take the prints we liked and offer suggestions on some things. This would be a lot harder or impossible if the prints all had to be manually shared, and a lot of the best ideas came from the work-in-progress blueprints that wouldn't have been selected for sharing on account of lacking polish.

Sharing blueprint copies through chat links solves the added problem of transferring blueprint items across space (if you need a mall blueprint from the library of the person working on a mine expansion, for example) but it introduces friction to make that person interrupt their work to find the print you need and post a link, rather than you looking through their library and finding the one you want without their involvement. And also, if I can't see everyone's library, maybe I don't know that they have a blueprint that would solve my problem, so I don't think to ask them for a link.

Seeing that multiplayer sharing would go away gave me the only real sinking feeling I got while reading this proposal. It's just too convenient to be able to just go into another player's blueprints and pick up something you know they have, without bothering them or waiting for them to come back from AFK.

[AnimaMachinae]

I'm also a really big fan of the file tree idea for blueprints, it seems so much more organizable and expandable than any item/grid based blueprints system. With the inclusion of item icons in in-game text and sharing settings for blueprints the system would be far more robust than the current. It would also be a lot more unobtrusive in the UI and be a lot smoother to use than item based blueprints.

As for physical transfer of blueprints, an idea would be that you can create a physical item that has the contents of a blueprint or folder, then that can be stored in a chest or inventory. To be placed in a user's library, they can either use the item like a consumable and it would be placed in the root directory of the blueprint library, or it can be put on the cursor and placed in a specific location in the library by clicking. The physical item will be consumed and removed from its containing inventory. In the case of an existing blueprint, there should be a prompt to replace, skip, or rename the transferring blueprint. In the case of an existing folder, merge, skip, or rename should be the options. Any skipped files/folders should remain in the physical item and not be consumed.

The default sorting method should be lexicographical with folders and subfolders, but pure lexicographical, date last modified, date used, and type/subtype should be implemented. The type field is an optional field in the blueprint's metadata that can broadly define the use of a blueprint eg. "smelting/iron", "production/green circuit", "logistics/train/loader", etc. When sorted by type they should be displayed in trees like the default sorting.

The last thing, which is not needed, but would be helpful, is a way to organize blueprints via chat commands. Like /bdel ./prodution/greens/testbuild to delete a blueprint/folder at that path. /brn [path](rename), /bcp [path](copy), /bstr [path](outputs/links blueprint/folder string in chat), /bsav [dir](saves last blueprint in chat to [path]), /bexp [path]|[local storage dir] (exports string to text document at [local storage dir], defaults to %APPDATA%/Factorio/Blueprints), and /bimp [local storage dir]|[path] (previous, but for imports) are also command suggestions.

Any sort of feedback on my suggestions would be appreciated and I will update this post as necessary.

[SHiRKiT]

Please, whatever you do, allow SEARCH

[meganothing]

I like the proposal. It seems miuch clearer insofar as blueprints as items now are stored as items even in the BP library.

Two questions:

Wouldn't it be consistent with user expectation to also have the ctrl-x "cut" ability implemented as an automatic deconstruction planer/move tool?

One of the rules implies that the blueprint library is shared between all games of a player. Is that correct? And is the unique identifier an internal id or the name the player gives to the BP?
If the latter, what happens if you create two different BPs in the normal inventory in two games and name them both "fu", that should be possible because they are not shared. Now copy one of them to the library and start the other game. Wouldn't that be a name conflict then?

[KingIonTrueLove]

Proposal Zero is not bad at all, though also I do like the idea of having 10 hotbars still from proposal 4, even if it didn't have anything to do with blueprints anymore.

Though having blueprints done in a file-explorer-tree-like thing that has been mentioned here sounds interesting as well. (Might also be a good idea even if it isn't used to allow it to be implemented as a mod)

Either way, I'm absolutely hyped for having the hotbar be used for references other than holding actual items, that just sounds so amazing in general.

[Mike5000]

ERRNIH

For all the amazing talent at Wube it would be a miracle if you managed to invent something better for managing blueprints than hierarchical directory tree ("explorer").

You haven't.

[Oktokolo]

But I absolutely do not like the idea of inventory-like blueprint library.
Library is meant to help you storing and SORTING massive amounts of different items. Plain item heap just fails on sorting part. Manual placement of items is absolutely inconvenient and ultimately fails when you try to sort serious amounts of stuff. You have also mentioned how things can get messy if you accidentally add some items to it.
I never used manual placement of items in personal inventory or chests.

The main difference between the blueprint grid and the inventory grid is the frequency of change. If stuff gets constantly added and removed from a grid, keeping it sorted by hand just is too annoying. So you of course do not sort your inventory by hand.
But if you only add or remove an item once per hour on average, keeping a grid sorted by hand suddenly becomes real easy and is not annoying anymore. And then you can profit from the ability to have your blueprints organized spatially.
If you only got some tenths of blueprints you don't even need books. As the library grows, you would move groups of rarely used blueprints into books. If you would have several hundreds of blueprints, you would probably reach the limit of the grid approach - but i would expect that to be a rare case.

[SmotPokin42000]

The functionality of automatic blueprint library sharing in multiplayer is removed. The "shared blueprints" panel is removed. Blueprints and blueprint books in multiplayer will be shared by manually trading the items or by linking them in the chat. Blueprints or books linked in the chat can be clicked to pick up a copy that can be used as a normal item.

Being able to share things easily is nice, really hope this doesn't end up being the case, as sharing things manually just isn't the same. A choice of what to share would be nice though, maybe a separate 'share' library? Keep any shared books linked/paired (except for dupes) and have an easy, self-explanatory, way to tell whats paired(a thin green box around both books/bps on hover, maybe?).

If the Blueprinting Tool is removed (or destroyed) from the library, and a different game is loaded that had a shortcut to that Blueprinting Tool, the shortcut will become greyed out forever, and it can only be cleared. This is to give feedback that there used to be a Blueprinting Tool there.
If a Blueprinting Tool is explicitly destroyed using the trash button, the shortcut will become greyed out forever and it can only be cleared. This is to keep consistency with the two rules above.

As long as books can't be lost via death, great.

[QGamer]

I like proposal Zero quite a bit.
I have one more request: can we have a button or an option to sort the blueprints alphabetically?

They're already sorted alphabetically, books first, then standalone prints. Unless that goes away in Proposal Zero. Inventories can be auto-sorted as well, so the special blueprint inventory should be able to do that.

How about sorting the contents of each individual blueprint book? I know the library sorts things, but I wish each book would sort its contents the same way. It's kind of annoying to manually put them in alphabetical order.

[Tricorius]

I like the idea of not being able to construct with robots right away.

You still can’t construct with robots until you unlock them.

But blueprints are nice for manually filling them in as well.

I have a set of boring things that I like to just blueprint down while laying out a factory in my preferred patterns. (I’m curious to know if people really build things like smelting lines differently every game start.) I finally have an early smelter array I really like; and it lasts me until electric smelting.

I also tend to use very similar defensive layouts. So I like to blueprint it down and manually place items as they unlock. (Although I would still prefer to have bots from the beginning.)

But I can accept manually constructing the contents of blueprints while bee-lining to bots.

[riking]

A minor suggestion - make the "New Deconstruction Planner" button be a 'pick up deconstruction planner' item slot instead, so it gets replaced with a hand like a normal blueprint and will get "deleted" when you press Q. If you want to make a filtered decon planner, place it in your inventory or the library first.

When the hand is removed from the "fake pickup slot" (because you put the item somewhere else instead), create a new one and fill it in.

Same for new BP that gets cancelled or not used.

[thenonsequitur]

Any blueprints system that involves sorting icons in a grid is basically unusable. It's extremely cumbersome and ends up being too difficult to bother with.

Im my games, I've ended up using blueprints almost exclusively for copy/paste from other parts of my map or importing strings for one-time placement, simply because the library is too cumbersome. I'd like to use a library, I think it would really enhance the game, but it really needs to be easy to explore and organize (i.e. file tree structure) and the blueprints need to be readily identifiable (i.e. text not icons).

For example, the proposal in the reddit thread was near perfect.

Until we have something like that, it's just not even worth trying to use blueprints beyond copy/paste and import/place.

So I really hope proposal zero is not set in stone. There is an opportunity here to make the game so much better.

[cpy]

Looks better than it is now.

[TsBandit]

+1 for a grid-based library, allowing us to organize spatially

[AmbulatoryCortex]

When implementing deprecation of mods on the mod portal, please give us the ability to include deprecated mods in our searches. I have dug up abandoned mods multiple times with the goal of using their guts in something of mine.

[TsBandit]

I think these are both correct:

The user-filled 2D grid is well-suited for displaying small to medium amounts of items

Manual placement of items is absolutely inconvenient and ultimately fails when you try to sort serious amounts of stuff

The ideal UI should somehow balance between the advantages of spatial organization (when the number of blueprints is not large) and the advantages of hierarchical organization (when the number of blueprints is large).

[TsBandit]

Overall, I like Proposal Zero.

[Venatos]

can someone explain to me why blueprints absolutely have to be able to mix with the normal inventory?
as far as i can tell this is the cause of like 90% of complexity/problems with the system with out any benefit what so ever....

just give me the infinite blueprint memory(they are just savefiles) that is constant between playthroughs and let me share per links in chat.
why add all that dead weight?

[Lubricus]

The functionality of automatic blueprint library sharing in multiplayer is removed. The "shared blueprints" panel is removed. Blueprints and blueprint books in multiplayer will be shared by manually trading the items or by linking them in the chat. Blueprints or books linked in the chat can be clicked to pick up a copy that can be used as a normal item.

Being able to share things easily is nice, really hope this doesn't end up being the case, as sharing things manually just isn't the same. A choice of what to share would be nice though, maybe a separate 'share' library? Keep any shared books linked/paired (except for dupes) and have an easy, self-explanatory, way to tell whats paired(a thin green box around both books/bps on hover, maybe?).

That is quite a loss of functionality. It can be to the better and promote players interactions and coming up with your own builds. So maybe it is to the better.

[Lubricus]

I don't understand the difference between a blueprint and a blueprint tool!
Can't we have a blueprint tool that is on the level and switchable from the pickax. The the copy paste functionality could be built into the blueprint-tool and some function to easily transfer blueprint info from and to the tool->blueprints.

I would also like if it was possible to put blueprint books inside blueprint books.