Friday Facts #318 - New Tooltips

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-318

[Koub]

Ow YESSSS !
I came (twice).
New tooltips are gorgeous, and the bots

[Deadlock989]

Tile batching!

[TwoD]

Yay, this will make paving large areas so much more pleasant!

For bluprinted entities, could the reservation of multiple jobs per bot be done more efficiently as well?
First bot to get a job to place an entity checks if there are any others in the same blueprint and grabs as many as possible.
Blueprints are often relatively limited in size and scope of the item types placed, but also likely repetitive, so maybe there are some benefits to this?

[ManaUser]

Just talking off the top of my head, but the one entity type that seems like it would benefit from batching the most is belts. They're 1x1 of course, and when laying out a main bus for instance, common designs cover 2/3 of the path with them.

[danyg]

@Twinsen Have you thought that with the multi-tooltip solution for several recipes + mods or GUI above 100% in relatively small resolutions (1080), it could happen that the tooltips get taller than the height of the screen? As they are tooltips that appear on hover, you cannot hover them to scroll them.

I'd suggest that in that case user scroll wheel movements are intercepted (avoiding other interactions like watching your inventory in the map view to change map zoom) and redirect them to scroll such tooltip.

Please don't do auto-scroll!

HTH

[David24]

Why is the output heat of the nuclear reactor formatted like this "40MW" and the max consumption heat of the heat exchanger formatted like this "10.0 MW"?

[Koub]

Just talking off the top of my head, but the one entity type that seems like it would benefit from batching the most is belts.

Yes, belts, inserters too.

[Mecejide]

Why doesn't the offshore pump say "Generates Water"?

[chris13524]

Great stuff!

But please. For the love of god. Consistent capitalization!

[warlordjones]

Aw yes. I really respect the level of polish being applied here...it's not always the most rewarding compared to 'new shiny' but it is the difference between a great game and an excellent game.

Keep turning it up to 11.

[fendy3002]

Have you also change power's performance to current / max output? Thats awesome.

And generate x consume y tooltip will be very very handy for new players!

[Cribbit]

Forgive my ignorance, but why can't bots carry multiple items when placing a blueprint? I would imagine it should go something like

1. bp placed
2. ghosts assigned to bots
3. ghost is marked as "targeted"
4. bots go place items

So for step 2, a group of nearby structures all get assigned to one bot

I understand that it's the reverse - bots are assigned to ghosts - which is what allows bots to go find more things to place if you have more ghosts than bots, etc - but that's why I ask, to have someone alleviate my ignorance.

[Zomis]

Great news as always, but I am wondering a bit about the differences between "Consumption" / "Max Consumption" / "Constant Consumption".

To me, "Consumption" feels like it should be either "Max Consumption" or "Constant Consumption". What is the difference between a Boiler having a consumption of water, and a max consumption of burnable fuel?

A steam engine has a consumption of steam, but a heat exchanger has a max consumption of heat? At the same time, a heat exchanger has a consumption of water? What determines the amount of water being consumed? If it doesn't need to produce anything more (because output power/fluid is full), is it then consuming anything?

"Constant Consumption" sounds like it's consuming the same amount all the time, no matter if it needs to or not. If it has it, it will consume it.
"Max Consumption" sounds like it's consuming as much as it needs. If output is full, then no consumption.
"Consumption" sounds like.... eeh... ???

[Pridesfall]

Forgive my ignorance, but why can't bots carry multiple items when placing a blueprint? I would imagine it should go something like

1. bp placed
2. ghosts assigned to bots
3. ghost is marked as "targeted"
4. bots go place items

So for step 2, a group of nearby structures all get assigned to one bot

I understand that it's the reverse - bots are assigned to ghosts - which is what allows bots to go find more things to place if you have more ghosts than bots, etc - but that's why I ask, to have someone alleviate my ignorance.

I'd guess that the problem is the items aren't necessarily in the same location. If a bot was tasked to build two inserters, maybe there is one in your passive provider chest in the mall and another is in a storage chest that's far away. The bot going to both places would take longer than sending 2 bots. Calculating if that's true for a large bp could be expensive.

[Gergely]

Just talking off the top of my head, but the one entity type that seems like it would benefit from batching the most is belts.

Yes, belts, inserters too.

Bots don't have to build multiple entities in the same tick. They could instead be assigned to as many ghosts of the same type as they can carry, (with possibly some smaller logic to prefer neighboring entities) and after constructing one ghost they directly move to the next without returning to the storage for pickup.

Do something similar with deconstruction and modules.

[TroZ]

Specifically for the personal roboport tool tip: The area and number of bots should indicate that those are 'stackable' or some other phrase be used to indicate that having multiple roboports in your armor increases not only the active bots that you can have, but also that the coverage area increases.

Otherwise, those tool tips look great to me!

[eradicator]

but in game you will notice that they are slightly transparent and the also have a blurring effect

Please, please if that's anything like MSWindows™ Aero Glass add a "not transparent" setting somewhere. It has horrible readability for my shitty eyes.

Other than that the tooltips look really nice! I hope moddability of tooltips is also considered.

[Oxyd]

but in game you will notice that they are slightly transparent and the also have a blurring effect

Please, please if that's anything like MSWindows™ Aero Glass add a "not transparent" setting somewhere. It has horrible readability for my shitty eyes.

Other than that the tooltips look really nice! I hope moddability of tooltips is also considered.

We've been using transparency with blurry background in the technology GUI tooltips for a while now. If your eyes have no problem in the tech tree, they won't have a problem anywhere else.

[Amarula]

I love reading the FFF every week! Thank you again for taking the time to share with the community.

New tool tips squeee looking good! Second the comments about standard terminology and capitalization, and having the ability to scroll down to see all the tool tip.

Robot optimizations squeee!

Just talking off the top of my head, but the one entity type that seems like it would benefit from batching the most is belts.

Yes, belts, inserters too.

Oh yeah: belts may not be built in tightly packed squares, but they do go in rows. Inserters aren't always next to other inserters, but while there may be a space, they often go in a close pattern, inserter, three spaces and repeat; simlarly for small power poles. One check "is this entity 1x1? if so, batch it" might not be too expensive.