Friday Facts #279 - Train GUI & Modern Spitter

[pleegwat]

Why can't train fuel be in the same tab? It's annoying having to switch tabs just for such a small use case.

Fuel also needs to display an inventory. Though I could see workflows where you only want to view the amount of fuel, or refuel from your action bar.

[<NO_NAME>]

I love the new train GUI and I hate it.
It looks much better and the drag & drop and visual progress indicator will both be super useful.
However, the "and" and "or" operations are confusing as ever. I think they are supposed to be parsed from top to bottom without any precedence rules but even knowing that doesn't really help to parse it mentally. Wasn't the new train GUI supposed to introduce some kind of braces?

I won't write much about train skipping conditions because anyone who is interested already knows that this is one of the most popular requests.

[deepdriller]

Here's an idea: If the condition is set to Item Count = X, and current count is greater than X, have the entire bar be green, but overlayed on top of that is a yellow bar that fills in from the side. The width thereof could be (currentCount - X / X) or something like that. If currentCount is more than twice X, another red bar could be displayed.
Either that, or the progress bar has a marker in the middle, and if currentCount = X, the green bar reaches exactly to the marker.

[ahydra447]

What would be really useful for trains is dynamic routing. Example: go to station with ID given by circuit network, or to one of a number of stations in a list based on condition like lowest ore count / longest time since last train.

[Light]

The nests and worms need a texture update as they're lacking shadows and detail compared to their smaller brethren. The new biters and bile projectiles look great though.

[Cyonic]

Will it be possible to hide the waiting conditions in the new train gui? (something like a little checkbox expande/ fold up)

So the gui for trains with a lot of stations in their schedule (e.g. Some sort of supply train) is more organized and near and it is easier to find a station to make changes and such...

This is a good point, how does this GUI look if you have more than 1-5 trains and head into the 20+ trains territory. Will you be able to find any specific train at all..

Oh wait, I'm daft this the schedule for a specific train with all the different stations. In that case its only an issue for supply/fuel/building trains which tend to have many stops.

[kongobusinessman]

lol so much critizism Oo
im absolutely in love with all those changes!
train improvements are awesome across the board everything is so clean.
Imo the worms look intimidating so thats cool, just up the damage of the projectiles if they dont home anymore, problem solved.

just push it to steam already i cant wait

btw you should add emotes to the forum or atleast up/(downvotes) :p

[<NO_NAME>]

The progress bar for the wait conditions are kinda odd to me, maybe if was a thinner line under the condition box?

Good point. The bright green bars are magnets for eyes, to the point that it's kind of hard to find the current station, even knowing it's right above them. The gray bar just doesn't look important enough during the search.
I would add that it is hard to distinguish conditions for the current stations for ones for the next station. It's for the same reason - the color seems to be much more important than the spacial layout.

[Avezo]

Why can't train fuel be in the same tab? It's annoying having to switch tabs just for such a small use case.

Fuel also needs to display an inventory. Though I could see workflows where you only want to view the amount of fuel, or refuel from your action bar.

Wouldn't it be better for inventory alone to have a separate tab? Vanilla locomotives don't even have own inventories. Fuel would be just a small bar added at the top of the list, visible regardless of which tab is open.

[<NO_NAME>]

Worms look like they've got hit with a Gaussian Blur grenade

[<NO_NAME>]

lol so much critizism Oo

I don't know about others but in my case criticism means that I like the game enough to actually care.
I like most of the changes but the changes I like aren't the ones I want to do something about so I don't write that much about them.
(And I personally might be not that strong in the department of praising.)

[Maxi3000]

However, the "and" and "or" operations are confusing as ever. I think they are supposed to be parsed from top to bottom without any precedence rules but even knowing that doesn't really help to parse it mentally. Wasn't the new train GUI supposed to introduce some kind of braces?

Yeah, I have the same problem. I know that I have tested it, but it's still confusing me everytime.
Visual braces would solve the problem, but real ones would be awesome, even though I have no idea to realise them witout having weird clustering.

[Szpak]

Why can't train fuel be in the same tab? It's annoying having to switch tabs just for such a small use case.

Also, it seems spitters don't have eyes? It's weird, they should see where they want to shoot.

There are a lot of species on earth that barely use a sense od vision. In fact, most of mammals have better smell and hearing than vision.

[doktorstick]

The Train UI doesn't address logical operator precedence. My assumption is that and's precedence is higher than or (e.g., a or b and x or y => a or (b and x) or y), but it isn't obvious from the UI nor--would I expect--it to be obvious to the general player. And if my assumption is wrong, then it further illustrates my point Perhaps it's in the tutorial...

Regardless, I think giving the player the ability to group terms would clarify the situation. As you well know, programmers add unnecessary parentheticals for clarity; it's one less bit of cognitive load when processing or debugging a logical statement.

[dog80]

biterrrrssss !!!!! xD

[Henry Loenwind]

My main issue with the current UI is that there's only "manual" and automatic". When I get into a train and send it to the next station, it will switch to automatic and leave there by itself. Annoying, especially if you just got out and are crossing the rails to get to where you wanted to go...

So I'd like to have "manual" (only direct control), "paused" (drives itself to the station you send it to but ignores its schedule otherwise), and "automatic" (guess).

The green line: Yes, I think having it only in the lower third of the bar (basically below the text) would look nicer. And having a combined green bar on the current station may make sense. (min() for AND conditions, max() for OR conditions)

The AND/OR marker should be displayed vertically between the 2 conditions. And take more than 2 conditions, becoming a bigger box. That way you can add levels later, putting AND/ORs into the place of conditions. (condition tree)

[provet]

Will the new ranged attack slow vehicles as well?

Will the train know if it's a dead end where you create the temp. station?

[V453000]

Will the new ranged attack slow vehicles as well?

Yes, but a bit differently than the player. It decreases traction (the same thing concrete increases) and maximum speed (the same thing better fuel increases), or something like that.

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

The Train UI doesn't address logical operator precedence. My assumption is that and's precedence is higher than or (e.g., a or b and x or y => a or (b and x) or y), but it isn't obvious from the UI nor--would I expect--it to be obvious to the general player. And if my assumption is wrong, then it further illustrates my point Perhaps it's in the tutorial...

Regardless, I think giving the player the ability to group terms would clarify the situation. As you well know, programmers add unnecessary parentheticals for clarity; it's one less bit of cognitive load when processing or debugging a logical statement.

That was the first thing I (also a software engineer) was thinking of. Operator precedence will NOT be clear to a non-mathematically inclined person.

[Rhamphoryncus]

Combat needs to be harder. We can have V453000 surviving like that!

More seriously, how is MP combat coming? Any progress on latency hiding when firing your gun?