[Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

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Allaizn
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[Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by Allaizn »

As per request, here's a list of editor features that I compiled after talking with the people on the technical factorio discord:
Infinity inventory and automatic hand refill
The suggestion is to add an infinity chest filter to the main editor inventory, like this:
Image
And furthermore add multiple ways that automatically create & destroy items
  • Placing the filters to the left of the inventory will probably be the easiest way to do it, and it'll prevent confusion when the infinity chest is open.
  • Alternatively, the main inventory could be changed to have tabs, one of which would be the infinity filters. This would have the advantage of the filters being collapsable and not take up screen space when not needed, and also be more future proof since further additions could be added as further tabs.
  • The filters should apply on every inventory change - it would be bothersome if they only apply once per tick, since they would "stop working" when the game is paused with the time tool.
  • Actions that change item counts in your inventory that involve opening GUIs should behave "normally" i.e. no items should be created or destroyed in the transfer - but filters should apply afterwards
  • Actions that change items counts in your inventory without a GUI should create or destroy items depending on circumstance and apply filters afterwards:
    • Actions reducing the hand stack size to not zero (ctrl+right click, ctrl+click that fails due to full target, building, connecting wires, z-dropping items) should do so without any automatic item refill/ destruction
    • Actions depleting the hand stack by reducing stack size by 1 (building, connecting wires, z-dropping single items) should refresh the stack size to it's maximum value instead of emptying the hand (please make sure that the stack in the hand doesn't disappear when doing this, especially when handling stack size 1 items like nuclear fuel or cars)
    • Actions depleting the hand stack by trying to transfer it completely (ctrl+left click without GUI) should recreate the initial hand stack upon depletion (i.e. try to insert 37 but only 25 fit results in hand = 12, but if everything went in the hand will stay at 37)
    • Actions depleting the hand stack by reducing it by half (ctrl+right click) should let the stack deplete to zero and thus deleting the hand stack.
    • Actions increasing inventory counts (manual deconstruction, mining, picking up containers) should delete everything that would create a second stack.
Use cases
The current editor allows me, the player, to create as many items as I want, but it has a couple flaws: it's cumbersome to delete unwanted items, and it's cumbersome to create more than just a few items. The suggestions is a mix of "make the main inventory a infinity chest" and "refill the hand stack automatically" since those two suggestions interact heavily, which makes it necessary to consider both in order to get the best resulting behaviour.
Some example interactions:
  • I want to fill 20 chests/ cars/ cargo wagons with iron plates.
    Current method: I have to place an infinity chest that creates the plates, then repeatedly transfer plates via infi chest -> main inventory -> target inventory. This is super cumbersome, especially if you paused the game and infinity chests don't update anymore. (I could spawn in the items without the infi chest, but I'd rather not murderize my left mouse button and index finger to create that many items in the crafting GUI). The clone tool sometimes helps, but only if I want identical chests, which sadly happens only rarely.
    Suggested method: Set a single infinity filter in my inventory, and either ctrl+left & drag if I don't want to open the GUI, or open each chest and ctrl+click to fill it up directly. Both of these are a lot faster and much more pleasant :)
  • I messed up and want to remove those 20 chests/ cars/ cargo wagons I just placed.
    Current method: Manually deconstruct them and suffer your inventory being constantly full of iron plates, or use a filtered decon planner or use the clear destination feature of the clone tool. First method is obviously super tedious, second requires a lot of GUI fiddling with the decon planner and doesn't work with cars, while the last one is easy to mess up and remove more than you wanted.
    Suggested method: Just manually deconstruct everything and know that your inventory won't get more than 1 stack of all the things (I especially never want to have 50 cars in my inventory after picking them up to clean up)
  • I messed up and only want the chests/ cars/ cargo wagons half full instead of full of iron plates.
    Current method: Ctrl+right click and lots of emptying inventory into an infinity chest.
    Suggested method: Just ctrl+right click and everything just works :D
  • I want each of the chests/ cars/ cargo wagons to have 1037 green circuits in addition to the iron plates.
    Current method: basically a huge pain - you can ctrl+left click 200 circuits x5 in there quite quickly, but getting 37 into each afterwards is lots of clicking effort. Best workaround I know is to remove all circuits from your inventory and make an infinity chest that keeps exactly 1037 items, then ctrl+click them out and into the chests/ cars/ wagons one by one, but that still requires lots of inventory opening/ closing - and doesn't work in paused mode.
    Suggested method: Ctrl+left click with full stack x5 to get 1000 items into each, then get a single stack of 37 and ctrl+click that into each.
  • I messed up and want to remove those green circuits I just placed in there
    Current method: open each inventory and ctrl+click to get the green circuits out. Suffer from your inventory being full within seconds and having to place down a infinity chest to void stuff - that only works if time isn't paused
    Suggested method: set a infinity filter on your inventory for green circuits, and go through each inventory one by one and ctrl+click stuff out.
  • Now I want to connect all the things with circuit wires/ copper cables
    Current method: the game never gives them back to you when you disconnect stuff, which means that no matter what you do you'll eventually run out of them and will have to respawn them in again - the 200 stack size helps, but it's still an annoyance every time it happens (which is a lot). Same thing when running long stretches of belts or placing 100s of beacons (blueprints are rarely the most convenient option there)
    Suggested method: you just magically get refilled to 200 and everytime it happens you'll praise the Dev who made that happen :D
Add wires/ cables to the entity tool
The tool currently has pretty much all the things that can be placed into the world, but it doesn't contain red & green wires or copper cables. I'm not sure if other things are missing from it, but if so, those should be added, too.
Hotkeys
As mentioned in the recent FFF and basically well liked by everyone I ever asked: we want more hotkeys :D Here are a few that would probably be useful (most of them can be unbound by default):
  • A hotkey toggling the editor itself (basically /editor command in hotkey form).
    This is useful in workflows that benefit from frequent switching between editor and character mode - e.g. making tests or tutorials. It also doubles as a quick way to hide the quite massive editor GUI.
    Maybe expand this to a general "run command" hotkey set :?:
  • Hotkeys to switch the editor tools. One per tool or some to switch to the next/previous one would be great - the latter would be especially useful in combination with the ability to reorder the tools.
  • Hotkeys for game speed increment/ decrement as used in the Time tool (I wished for those since discovering that pause/unpause and step once had hotkeys)
Editor GUI things and options
  • Allow the editor GUI to be minized into a single small button similar to how a few mods do it. Even the smallest window is still really big and unnecessarily takes up valuable screen space
  • Allow the direct change of game speed via a text box in the Time tool. It can be done via command, but it's just nicer to have the text box (and it helps with not polluting the chat history which probably contains more complex/ useful commands).
  • A textbox to set the zoom level - though it's not clear which tool tab would be best for it
  • A textbox to set movement speed manually, the Time tool seems like a good place for it
  • Remove empty chunks currently only removes completely empty chunks. An option to remove chunks with no player build things would be very useful.
    A checkbox to ignore player build tiles is a further helpful option, and allowing to force keep the chunks in a certain radius around the player is nice too.
  • Extend “Fill with lab tiles” to work with any tiles
  • Extend “Edit map gen settings” to achieve feature parity with new game settings
  • More tools for cliff-editing. Being able to grab a chunk of cliff and rotate it would be highly appreciated. Blueprintable cliffs would be awesome.
  • Extend the Force tool to change force modifiers, e.g. to set a specific mining productivity level easily.
Editor mode blueprinting & building
  • Ignore build restrictions for offshore pumps when in editor mode, i.e. allow them to be placed anywhere. Same for miners and pumpjacks.
  • Currently, force placing a blueprint keeps existing entities and discards the ones in the blueprint. A mode that does the reverse and always prefers the blueprint entities would be great - this could even be a non-editor feature. Maybe Alt-Click?
  • The rail planner should place tracks rather than ghosts in editor mode.
  • Allow me to pick up and move entities without changing their configuration (especially circuit connections or which container an inserter targets). When in doubt over validity just allow it anyway since it's not too dramatic if things break a little in editor mode (but I would certainly appreciate it if there were some kind of safe mode that would only move it if all connections to other things remained valid)
Benchmarks
Factorio has a nice inbuilt benchmark tool that some of us use to great effect, but it's quite tedious to do so, and most often we only want a quick and dirty result anyway. The idea is to add a new tool or extend the Time tool with the ability to run a benchmark on the current map:
  • There needs to be a textbox that allows the user to specify the length of the benchmark
  • A checkbox for headless runs - per default it'll run with all visuals & rendering, but checking this will instead show the loading screen while running (bonus points for making the loading bar work with it, but not a necessity)
  • The result can either be printed to the chat in the usual (total + min/max/avg) way
  • Add a checkbox to track verbose timings and then present them at the end as a graph if checked (probably not too hard to do by reusing the production/ consumption graphing tools)
  • Maybe an option to save before benchmarking to allow the user to reload to a known spot
Here is a mockup for how verbose results might look like:
Image

Infinity chests and other infinity objects
  • Add “enable/ disable” condition for CN connected infinity chests/ pipes. I.e. the filters only take affect if some CN condition is met.
    This is useful in two ways: for one it's probably possible to minimize the UPS impact of infinity objects using CNs (which is important when benchmarking stuff), and otoh it also allows one to simulate things like trains or cars arriving to a station (which I personally would love to have)
  • Add hidden entities to the infinity filters, most importantly the infinity items themselves.
  • Move the EEI and the heat-interface to the "?" category so that all infinity objects are in the same one.
  • Allow infinity chests to be upgrade planned to other chests and vice versa
  • Add infinity cars, all kinds of train wagons and assemblers, which have an infinity filter for their main inventory and are also able to spawn in fuel/ ammo in a configurable way. Infinity assemblers would spawn in their ingredients when configured to do so, or void their results - they would ideally also have configurable crafting speed/ productivity/ pollution and whatever else can feasibly be set.
  • Infinity constant combinator that directly displays all values of the network connected to it - and crucially allows one to change them immediately without having to work around the timing delay of other methods.
    This would be invaluable for any work with combinators since it would make monitoring of values and debugging them a lot easier, since it's currently only awkwardly possible to read the current values (the GUI sometimes doesn't fit all of them, and even if it does, they're all truncated to the first few decimals) without delay and next to impossible to change them without having to wait at least 1 tick.
    As a possible GUI I suggest to use the constant combinator one, and color the signals corresponding to their source (maybe sort by color too). The GUI will most likely need a scrollbar to be able to display all signals in all cases, since there are almost 300 in vanilla alone (x2 for both colors) and even more in modded games.
Infinity Train station and train related things
Mostly a copy paste from the rough draft we have, will be fixed once a more thought out suggestion is ready
  • Fix the bug where cloned rolling stock flip their orientation if they’re on a diagonal and the bug where cloned trains lose their manual_mode setting. (see this report)
  • TheBloke took it upon him to make a mockup of how an infinity train station might look like, which is mostly self explanatory in it's feature set
    Image
    Some main points are that it's able to create trains and launch them/ destroy trains that arrived at the station with a configurable configuration of locomotives/ cargo wagons (and probablty fluid tanks & artillery wagons for that matter). There are also a ton of supplementing things like being able to spawn the trains in a regular interval.
Last edited by Allaizn on Wed Aug 28, 2019 1:37 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by Mylon »

It's hard to tell what''s a reasonable suggestion and what is effectively, "Let's turn Factorio into Microsoft Office 365".

What may support your use case may not support everyone else's use case and you may be better served by writing better tools for yourself. For example, I've got a text file with a bunch of complex console commands I use for mod testing. I don't need a /superman command, I just paste:

Code: Select all

/c game.player.force.research_all_technologies(); game.player.cheat_mode=true; game.player.insert{name="power-armor-mk2"}; local inv = game.player.get_inventory(defines.inventory.character_armor)[1].grid inv.put{name="fusion-reactor-equipment"} inv.put{name="personal-roboport-equipment"}; game.player.insert("construction-robot"); game.player.character_running_speed_modifier = 4; game.player.insert{name="electric-energy-interface"};game.player.insert("infinity-chest"); game.player.insert("infinity-pipe")
Though now that I'm here, let's squeak in a substation stack since I'm always crafting that right away.

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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by Bilka »

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I'm an admin over at https://wiki.factorio.com. Feel free to contact me if there's anything wrong (or right) with it.

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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by Allaizn »

Mylon wrote:
Wed Aug 28, 2019 12:22 pm
It's hard to tell what''s a reasonable suggestion and what is effectively, "Let's turn Factorio into Microsoft Office 365".

What may support your use case may not support everyone else's use case and you may be better served by writing better tools for yourself.
I don't get what you're trying to say with that? A lot of the above features are heavily GUI based in a way that is only very clunkily possible with mods (at least as far as I know), and others are common wishes of people that used the editor - and things that everyone would like to be added as a QoL improvement should imo be added.

And as always: none forces you to use any of that stuff, and a lot of people won't even know it exists since it's locked behind the editor.

Also: I updated the WIP section about the infinity train station

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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by slippycheeze »

Allaizn wrote:
Wed Aug 28, 2019 1:36 pm
I don't get what you're trying to say with that? A lot of the above features are heavily GUI based in a way that is only very clunkily possible with mods (at least as far as I know)
Are you accounting for the GUI enhancements made available to mods in the recent 0.17 versions? (I honestly don't know, and any answer is probably illuminating.)

Beyond that, I have to admit that any discussion involving "infinity" things in Factorio seems to me so far into the realms of "not the common case" that it isn't worth putting much effort into from the developer side. I'd rather more time spent on extending core mod capabilities (such as the GUI improvements) that made it possible to build these in a mod -- because most of those are likely solutions more common problems also.

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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by Allaizn »

slippycheeze wrote:
Wed Aug 28, 2019 7:28 pm
Are you accounting for the GUI enhancements made available to mods in the recent 0.17 versions? (I honestly don't know, and any answer is probably illuminating.)
I'm completely unfamiliar with those, and also haven't seen any mod use them - but I play mostly unmodded, so there's very likely something cool waiting to be discovered.
slippycheeze wrote:
Wed Aug 28, 2019 7:28 pm
Beyond that, I have to admit that any discussion involving "infinity" things in Factorio seems to me so far into the realms of "not the common case" that it isn't worth putting much effort into from the developer side. I'd rather more time spent on extending core mod capabilities (such as the GUI improvements) that made it possible to build these in a mod -- because most of those are likely solutions more common problems also.
I don't make the decision on whether or not a dev spends time on implementing this or something else instead. This post is the result of me getting to know that Rseding wanted to have suggestions on what to add to the editor, and since I like the editor very much, I contacted him about it and got told to make a forum post - after that I asked my friends on the technical factorio discord, brainstromed for a day and made the writeup above.
Whether caused by this post or not, the infinity filters for the editor inventory were implemented by Rseding on stream yesterday, which for me is already more than enough justification for this post :)

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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by raiguard »

I'm going to add my two cents here. I recently created Infinity Mode because I liked to use Creative Mode over the editor, but was unhappy with its performance. If the devs are willing to expand the map editor, then I would be ecstatic if it made my mod useless!

Here are a few things I would like to see in the editor:

1. More infinity/cheat tools
Vanilla currently has infinity chest, infinity pipe, heat interface, and electric energy interface. This covers all of the basic resources in Factorio: items, fluids, heat, and electricity. However, there are quite a few more things that could be very useful for testing:

- Infinity wagons: identical to the infinity chest/pipe, but in wagons
- Logistic infinity chests: the usecases for these should be obvious
- Belt interface: directly insert items onto / remove items from belts
- Infinity inserter: energy-free superfast stack filter inserter

I have implemented some form of all of these in my Infinity Mode mod, plus several more. These are the ones that I feel should be in vanilla because of their potential utility.

2. GUI improvements
The editor GUI is functional, but is somewhat hard to navigate and is very unpolished. In order to convince more people to use the editor, it will need to become more user-friendly. Aside from the general request of "0.17-ify the entire GUI", here are some basic changes that I feel would make it more navigable / better organized:

- Replace all of the tool buttons at the top with smaller buttons or tabs
- Always keep the quickbar/shortcut bar visible, instead of hiding them when using a tool
- Always allow the player to open the editor inventory, even when holding a tool
- Replace all of the integrated element pickers with a choose-elem-button. This will greatly decrease the amount of space the editor GUI takes up

There are several more that I would suggest, but hopefully the entire editor GUI will be redesigned as part of the finished GUI overhaul in 0.18, so I won't make any requests now.

The last GUI-related thing I want to talk about right now is the electric energy interface. I don't know about other people, but I find the EEE GUI to be extremely unintuitive and hard to use. I hate it so much that I full-on replaced it in my mod:

Image

Redesigning the EEE GUI to at least show proper units would be very helpful.

3. General features wishlist
And here are just some additional capabilities I would like:
- Auto-clearing and auto-tiling of new chunks on a surface with lab tiles
- Ability to use a selection tool alongside the cursor/spray/brush for entities, tiles, and resources
- More force/surface settings, specifically changing bonuses and modifiers. It would also be nice to be able to change player bonuses/modifiers as well
- Infinity filters for the editor inventory (apparently this has been added for the next version already!)
- HOTKEYS: hotkeys hotkeys hotkeys! Everybody loves hotkeys!
- Instant blueprint should be able to place rails with a train on them in one go:
Image

This last one is very probably impossible, but it's a primary reason lots of people prefer Infinity/Creative Mode over using the editor: being able to use a character. The editor is an unfamiliar mode of play, and people don't like unfamiliar things. If we could somehow use characters while in the editor, that would probably make tons of people more willing to use it.

That's it for now! If I come up with anything else I'll edit this post. Thanks for reading!

TL;DR: Moar features, better GUI!
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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by Rseding91 »

Raiguard wrote: - Infinity wagons: identical to the infinity chest/pipe, but in wagons
This isn't likely to happen. The same thing can be gotten by just using the infinity chest and an inserter. The code duplication and extra continuing workload this would add to the base game for what would be a minimally useful entity just isn't worth it to me.
Raiguard wrote: - Logistic infinity chests: the usecases for these should be obvious
I've wanted a runtime toggle for the infinity chest since I created it but haven't gotten around to making it work with the rest of the game logic yet.
Raiguard wrote: - Belt interface: directly insert items onto / remove items from belts
This can be done with loaders and infinity chests or just inserters and infinity chests. I don't consider it worth the additional workload it would add to maintain it for the rest of time in the base game.
Raiguard wrote: - Infinity inserter: energy-free superfast stack filter inserter
This would be a scenario only thing and not realistic since you would never get it in the actual game. It will be left in the realm of mods.

Raiguard wrote: 2. GUI improvements
The editor GUI is functional, but is somewhat hard to navigate and is very unpolished.
That's exactly what I was going for when I made it :) I didn't want to get loaded down with making it look nice and instead wanted to get the map editor feature finished. At some point someone will probably work on polishing it but right now that isn't something I'm looking to do.
Raiguard wrote: - Always keep the quickbar/shortcut bar visible, instead of hiding them when using a tool
- Always allow the player to open the editor inventory, even when holding a tool
The reason neither of these are a thing is because they make no sense to allow multiple things in the cursor at the same time. When in the entity editor the game completely ignores all item logic related to the cursor because it's acting like the "item in the cursor" is what the entity editor says it is. To have that all of a sudden be different if you open a GUI would be incredibly confusing. Additionally if you're placing cliffs and you press a hotkey for the quickbar it's not going to switch to what ever that item was in the quickbar; you're placing cliffs and it will stay placing cliffs until you're done with the cliff editor.

The inventory and quickbar just don't cooperate with the different purpose-built editors and I doubt they ever will.
Raiguard wrote: - Replace all of the integrated element pickers with a choose-elem-button. This will greatly decrease the amount of space the editor GUI takes up
This seems like it would not be useful and instead super annoying that you have to add extra clicks to find what you're looking for.
Raiguard wrote: The last GUI-related thing I want to talk about right now is the electric energy interface. I don't know about other people, but I find the EEE GUI to be extremely unintuitive and hard to use.
Well this might happen I really doubt it. The GUI is not meant to be a streamlined main-game GUI; it's meant to be a power tool and if someone doesn't understand how it works then they simply need to learn how it works. It's already super simple in what it shows. Stuff like changing the priority simply isn't possible to do runtime due to how the electric network works.
Raiguard wrote: - Auto-clearing and auto-tiling of new chunks on a surface with lab tiles
This is in for the next version of 0.17.
Raiguard wrote: - Ability to use a selection tool alongside the cursor/spray/brush for entities, tiles, and resources
I added this for tiles but I'm not really sure if it's what you meant. The selection tool is a specific item type; do you mean that exact item type (with the filters it can have set) or do you just mean the "select an area"? Because they are 2 very different things.
Raiguard wrote: - More force/surface settings, specifically changing bonuses and modifiers. It would also be nice to be able to change player bonuses/modifiers as well
This might happen but it's a very low priority. All of that can be done with console commands so if I did make something like this it would need to be automatically handled to avoid adding future work every time someone wanted to add/remove one of those bonus values from the normal game logic.
Raiguard wrote: - Infinity filters for the editor inventory (apparently this has been added for the next version already!)
Yes it has.
Raiguard wrote: - HOTKEYS: hotkeys hotkeys hotkeys! Everybody loves hotkeys!
I'd need to know exactly what kind of hotkeys because I also need to make sure they don't conflict with standard game hotkeys. Also that they would be useful and not just "they exist just to exist".
Raiguard wrote: - Instant blueprint should be able to place rails with a train on them in one go:
Image
That's just a bug that I'll work on fixing.
Raiguard wrote: This last one is very probably impossible, but it's a primary reason lots of people prefer Infinity/Creative Mode over using the editor: being able to use a character. The editor is an unfamiliar mode of play, and people don't like unfamiliar things. If we could somehow use characters while in the editor, that would probably make tons of people more willing to use it.
That's not likely to ever happen. The character entity is the freeplay character. It has limits and I'm not going to go hack a bunch of editor logic into it. The editor does everything it does (minus logistics) and more. The editor already works virtually identically to the character entity except that there isn't a little guy in the middle of the screen; all of the hotkeys are the same and the default interface looks near identical. I personally think you're wrong about this one.
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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by raiguard »

Rseding91 wrote:
Sat Aug 31, 2019 5:52 pm
Raiguard wrote: The last GUI-related thing I want to talk about right now is the electric energy interface. I don't know about other people, but I find the EEE GUI to be extremely unintuitive and hard to use.
Well this might happen I really doubt it. The GUI is not meant to be a streamlined main-game GUI; it's meant to be a power tool and if someone doesn't understand how it works then they simply need to learn how it works. It's already super simple in what it shows. Stuff like changing the priority simply isn't possible to do runtime due to how the electric network works.
Until yesterday I hadn't really messed with the editor at all, and for some stupid reason I thought that using the editor tools was the ONLY way to interact with the game while in that mode. But alas, you can get items from the crafting menu and just use them as normal, so that makes the editor a lot better in my eyes.
Rseding91 wrote:
Sat Aug 31, 2019 5:52 pm
Raiguard wrote: - Auto-clearing and auto-tiling of new chunks on a surface with lab tiles
This is in for the next version of 0.17.
Thank you!
Rseding91 wrote:
Sat Aug 31, 2019 5:52 pm
Raiguard wrote: - Ability to use a selection tool alongside the cursor/spray/brush for entities, tiles, and resources
I added this for tiles but I'm not really sure if it's what you meant. The selection tool is a specific item type; do you mean that exact item type (with the filters it can have set) or do you just mean the "select an area"? Because they are 2 very different things.
Yes sorry, what I was asking for was to be able to select an area, not specifically use a selection tool.
Rseding91 wrote:
Sat Aug 31, 2019 5:52 pm
Raiguard wrote: - More force/surface settings, specifically changing bonuses and modifiers. It would also be nice to be able to change player bonuses/modifiers as well
This might happen but it's a very low priority. All of that can be done with console commands so if I did make something like this it would need to be automatically handled to avoid adding future work every time someone wanted to add/remove one of those bonus values from the normal game logic.
If this doesn't happen, it's not the end of the world. That would mean my mod still has some use!
Rseding91 wrote:
Sat Aug 31, 2019 5:52 pm
Raiguard wrote: - HOTKEYS: hotkeys hotkeys hotkeys! Everybody loves hotkeys!
I'd need to know exactly what kind of hotkeys because I also need to make sure they don't conflict with standard game hotkeys. Also that they would be useful and not just "they exist just to exist".
Hotkeys for switching tools would be #1 on my list. Additionally, hotkeys for manipulating time would be very useful (even just one key for pause/resume would be enough).
Rseding91 wrote:
Sat Aug 31, 2019 5:52 pm
Raiguard wrote: This last one is very probably impossible, but it's a primary reason lots of people prefer Infinity/Creative Mode over using the editor: being able to use a character. The editor is an unfamiliar mode of play, and people don't like unfamiliar things. If we could somehow use characters while in the editor, that would probably make tons of people more willing to use it.
That's not likely to ever happen. The character entity is the freeplay character. It has limits and I'm not going to go hack a bunch of editor logic into it. The editor does everything it does (minus logistics) and more. The editor already works virtually identically to the character entity except that there isn't a little guy in the middle of the screen; all of the hotkeys are the same and the default interface looks near identical. I personally think you're wrong about this one.
Yeah, I didn't expect this to happen, and I could indeed be wrong.

Here are some additional thoughts I came up with since I wrote the post:

- When using a tool (e.g. the entities tool), pressing Q (or maybe escape) with nothing in your cursor and while having nothing selected should dismiss the tool and bring you back to the "none" state

And in defense of a belt interface, have a look at this screenshot. On the left is a solution using Infinity Mode's infinity loader (which has the behavior that I would expect from a belt interface), and on the right is a vanilla solution for testing the same (pointless) setup:
Image
Building the setup using the infinity loaders took less than half the time, and much less configuration, to achieve the same results. If I were using modded belts, the solution on the right would have been even uglier, since I would have had to significantly expand the number of inserters on the multi-item belts. Inserters also need electricity, requiring me to run electric poles to them and place an EEE (or in this case, an infinity accumulator) to power them.

Having a belt interface would be extremely convenient for testing, and I'm sure it would get used a lot. Or if that's completely out of the question, upgrading loaders to be able to have per-side filters would probably be enough.
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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by Bilka »

(even just one key for pause/resume would be enough).
That's already a thing.
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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by raiguard »

Thank you for the many additions! Especially the addition of editor inventory infinity filters, that's amazing. :D

I do have some feedback on the infinity filters. Is there a specific reason that it's designed to always be present, even when opening chests or other entities? IMO it should behave similarly to the logistic requests GUI, in its placement and where it appears. That way, when the player GUI is redesigned, you can simply add the infinity filters in place of the "logistics" tab:
editor inventory.png
editor inventory.png (70.49 KiB) Viewed 5008 times
Other than that (and the crash that I already reported), the additions are absolutely great!
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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by Rseding91 »

Once the new GUI is in I plan on using the tabs shown in that preview in the left hand side of the GUI - so it doesn't always show the filters.
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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by raiguard »

Hmm, that seems odd to me. If logistic inventory filters are going to be on the right in a tab, it stands to reason that infinity inventory filters should be in the same place, since they serve pretty much the same function, just instantly and for free. Always having the infinity filters accessible, even when you've opened a chest or what-naught, seems confusing and inconsistent to me. Having to add an extra tabbed pane wherever an inventory is in another GUI specifically when you're in the editor also sounds like a nightmare on the GUI design side.

Also, a bug:
Image

Also, another bug: If you're in any of the editor tools that dismiss the regular interface (quickbar, inventory, etc.), and you use a hotkey to bring up a planner, your cursor changes to the crosshairs and remains that way until you exit the tool, after which you'll be holding said planner. Basically it puts a planner into your cursor, but it doesn't actually do anything, and it's not dismissable until you exit the tool.
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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by Rseding91 »

The GUI for the filters is temporary until the new character GUI is finished and merged.

The tabs in the 2 lists syncing is by design: all of the lists like that in the game sync the selected tabs. Recipes with recipes and everything else with everything else.
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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by Rseding91 »

Extend “Edit map gen settings” to achieve feature parity with new game settings
I don't know what you mean with this? It's the same GUI in both cases (literally).
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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by Lubricus »

1. The undo function creates ghosts. In editor mode it should do an instant build. This is the case when you undo and deconstruction.
2. I also would like and infinity cargo wagon for easy testing and benchmarking builds
3. I also would like a quick button for Benchmarking
4. I would like to have production statistics in the benchmark results. For easy check that the builds is running correctly and some math for UPS/Production..
5. To somehow be able to manually drive trains, Impossible?
6. bulk removal of wires, should also be in the normal game.
7. Cheat buttons for setting as bot speed, mining productivity, do all research and so on. Stuff that I now need commands to do.
8. Quick bulk item removal from an area. Know I copy paste areas to remove all the items in buffers.
I really like the infinity filter for the character inventory and the fix for BP trains. Thanks to Rseding.
It's bad to use moded entities with LUA if you are doing benchmarks so that is not always an option.

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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by Rseding91 »

You can already drive trains. Just mouse over the train and press enter.
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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by Lubricus »

Rseding91 wrote:
Fri Sep 13, 2019 7:02 pm
You can already drive trains. Just mouse over the train and press enter.
Thanks didn't know that. I have always been going out from editor mode then driving then back again...

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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by raiguard »

So I have a potentially controversial suggestion here. I have two main gripes with the map editor GUI at the moment: it is always there taking up a bunch of screen space, and it covers the mod GUI by default.

I have two basic suggestions:

1. Anchor the editor GUI at the bottom-left of the screen.
2. Make the editor GUI collapsible.

I made this in-game mockup to demonstrate what I mean, and a potential way for it to be implemented:


The top gray area could simply be the current editor GUI for each tool, those don't necessarily need to be changed right now. The main thing I would change sooner rather than later is the tool type button style. Could be something like this:
map editor gui demo with buttons.png
map editor gui demo with buttons.png (9.7 KiB) Viewed 4587 times
Doing it in this style really helps it to fit in with the other things at the bottom of the screen, and prevents it from covering the mod GUI by default:
map editor gui in context.png
map editor gui in context.png (947.3 KiB) Viewed 4587 times
What do you think?
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map editor gui demo.mp4
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Re: [Editor] Wishlist of possible features for the editor

Post by Rseding91 »

Don't forget that the console is in the bottom left and that it's also used to talk to people in multiplayer. Having the GUI over it at all times would be quite annoying.

Mod GUIs being in the top left is a concern but not a huge one because most don't play modded and we have to make base game work nicely first then think about mods.
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