Minor: excessive recipe time precision?

[Deadlock989]

This is a niggle and not really an interface request, so sue me, can't find a better place to put it.

Everywhere else - where admittedly space is more constrained - precision is rounded to something like four significant figures, or four printed characters including SI unit suffixes, or one decimal place, or something. (This occasionally results in averaged recipe products being displayed as 0.2 when it's really 0.25 but that's another story.)

When the base belt speed got buffed to 15 item/s in 0.17, some mods which pay a lot of attention to optimising belt compression ratios end up with a lot of crafting times that have a recurring decimal. So you can end up with whole pages of recipes like the thing below.

Is there are a need for that much precision? It's ... confusing. But I have no control over it.

Would it break anything if recipe crafting times were rounded to something easier on the eye? Arguably, 2.67 seconds would be just as informative, and less off-putting.

Cheers

many-many-decimals.png (88.18 KiB) Viewed 3027 times

[Choumiko]

Arguably, 2.67 seconds would be just as informative, and less off-putting.

When seeing 2.67 i'm more inclined to think it is 2.67 and not 2 2/3

2.667 is probably the point where i go: ah yeah, 2 2/3

[Deadlock989]

When seeing 2.67 i'm more inclined to think it is 2.67 and not 2 2/3

2.667 is probably the point where i go: ah yeah, 2 2/3

There is probably a whole field of psychonumerics or whatever which studies how people from different cultural backgrounds and education levels respond to this kind of shizzle but yeah, let's not go there.

I agree that 2.667 is less depressing than 2.66667. I'd prefer 2.67 but literally anything other than 2.66667 would do me

[Bilka]

If I use "the same format as most stuff" and round instead of floor, you get this:

[Qon]

I'd prefer 2.67 but literally anything other than 2.66667 would do me

Yeah please make it 2.666667!

[Deadlock989]

If I use "the same format as most stuff" and round instead of floor, you get this:

I can't round or floor because these crafting times are deliberately calculated to produce output which is perfectly compressed on the respective belt when produced by machines with a nice round crafting speed. I can move the recurring decimals from place to place but the least annoying way is to have them in the recipes.

0.16's belt speeds didn't produce these kinds of recurring decimals because belt speeds didn't involve factors of 15.

[Bilka]

I'm not telling you to round or floor. I'm just showing you what "use the same number format as the rest" means for the display of your recipe time.

[Deadlock989]

I'm not telling you to round or floor. I'm just showing you what "use the same number format as the rest" means for the display of your recipe time.

OK, I misunderstood.

That's an improvement from my perspective. I'm sure someone else hates it.

[DaveMcW]

As I mentioned in this thread, "the same number format as the rest" should really use 2 decimal places for numbers less than 10.

[Deadlock989]

As I mentioned in this thread, "the same number format as the rest" should really use 2 decimal places for numbers less than 10.

Agreed. It would fix both issues at once (recipes times with excessively accurate recurring decimals, and overly-rounded fractional products).

[Cadde]

If i may, my 2 cents are that it should read "2.6..." for anything recurring. That is, it detects if there are more than 3 or 4 decimal places and rounds it to the first recurring decimal and puts dots after.

Examples:

Recurring decimals
Actual value: 1.3333333333333333333333333333333333
Display: 1.3...

Non recurring decimals
Actual value: 0.015625
Display: ~0.0156

Recurring decimals after some point
Actual value: 0.013333333333333333333333333333333333
Display: 0.013...

Extreme case (Notice that the 4th decimal isn't recurring and so there is no recursion indicator.
Actual value: 0.0013333333333333333333333333333333333
Display: ~0.001

Odd case (Because it's not recurring to the end)
Actual value: 2.66666666666666666666666666666123
Display: ~2.6666

That would be better IMHO.

EDIT: I said "rounds" but i meant "floor".

And sure, internally you'd have to find out where the precision for 1/3 ends too.
Say the actual value is 0.333333333333333333333333333334
Then you would check for recursion up until the tenth decimal or something so you don't get "~0.3333" instead of "0.3333..."

[Deadlock989]

If i may, my 2 cents are that it should read "2.6..." for anything recurring. ...

That's a Western maths convention which I don't think is inherently meaningful to everyone. Way too complex.

Rounding numbers consistently in different tooltips, without too much or not enough accuracy, is what we're after. The dot dot dot notation wouldn't fit into some places, e.g. recipe products.

[Qon]

Odd case (Because it's not recurring to the end)
Actual value: 2.66666666666666666666666666666123
Display: ~2.6666

Test this lua code in the in-game console:

Code: Select all

/c
x = 1/3 * 10^9
x = x - math.floor(x)
game.print(x)

output:

Code: Select all

0.33333331346512

Was that what you expected?
Or how about 0.1 * 1000 (+0.1 a thousand times)?

Code: Select all

/c 
x = 0 
for i = 1, 1000 do 
    x = x + 0.1 
end 
game.print(x)

Output: 99.9999999999

You don't have the same repeating numbers in binary as in decimal. You can't store 1/3 in a binary float or double, so it is rounded to the nearest representable number. You can't store 0.1 either and it's not even a repeating decimal in base 10, because it is in binary! And then it gets rounded when printed again

Edit: You ninja edited your post

[Cadde]

I know qon, the point is what's important. Not the inner mechanics of IEEE 754

[Bilka]

For the next version, I introduced a new format that shows up to 2 decimals, we needed it somewhere else anyway. So, this is how things look like now:

[Deadlock989]

For the next version, I introduced a new format that shows up to 2 decimals, we needed it somewhere else anyway. So, this is how things look like now:

That'll do me nicely. I and my failing retinas thank you.