Toggle Ghost Visibility in Shortcut Bar

[GreyFoxx]

TL;DR

Add a "Toggle ghosts" button to the shortcut bar to enable and disable ghost entity visibility.

What ?

A "Toggle ghosts" feature would allow users to selectively enable and disable the visibility of all ghost entities at once. Similarly to the "Toggle "Alt-mode"" feature, the "Toggle ghosts" feature would be entirely client-side, with no impact on server-side execution.

• When enabled (default), ghosts behave as they currently do in the base game.
• When disabled, ghosts are hidden. Hidden ghosts are not rendered, nor are they selectable by blueprinting tools or the hand. When holding a placeable entity or blueprint that overlaps with a hidden ghost, that ghost is temporarily displayed.

The "Toggle ghosts" feature would have an associated button in the shortcut bar, just as the "Toggle "Alt-mode"" button does (see below image).

ToggleGhostsCropped.png (484.05 KiB) Viewed 1208 times

(Note that I have also added the upcoming "Redo" button to the shortcut bar, to illustrate that there is a good space for the "Toggle ghosts" button.)

Why ?

Ghost entities often get in the way, especially in the early-game and mid-game. Ghosts can make foot and vehicle navigation a nightmare, often causing the player to get stuck on cliffs, rocks, and trees. Ghosts are difficult to work around when clearing out space for them, and it is very easy to accidentally delete a ghost when trying to cut down trees or remove rocks. The inability to disable ghosts can obscure a factory's size, making it difficult to keep track of progress as well as efficiently check which ghosts are yet to be built.

The "Toggle ghosts" feature is a simple idea which addresses a simple problem. The ability to disable ghosts is a feature which would fit seamlessly into the existing Factorio experience without disrupting the status quo. It feels as though this feature has been missing from the game, rather than it being a game-changing improvement.

Thank you for reading: Your feedback in welcome!

[GrumpyJoe]

1.)
...when attempting to clear out trees, rocks, and other obstacles, which causes annoying accidental ghost removal.

2.)Another problem I frequently encounter is that it is very difficult to use blueprinting tools to capture just non-ghost entities when ghosts are around.


3.) Finally, ghosts are also quite opaque, which makes identifying terrain elements like cliffs difficult to spot when traversing the area by vehicle.

1: You can whitelist entities in decon planners.
Pretty sure ghosts can be whitelisted too.

2: so you place preplanned BPs over your starter base?
That's some strange way to play. But in this game, I wouldn't hold that against anyone.

3: if you place ghosts over cliffs, you should see a red X, marking that cliff for deconstruction.


The main problem is see, when you compare it to ALT mode: when you want to place another BP over an existing hidden one, which one wins?
I can already imagine the bug reports, asking why a BP can't be placed or is missing something, just because people forgot to activate that alt mode again.
At least your first problem is better be dealt with using my suggested decon planer.

If it's possible to hide ghosts, maybe there is a mod for that? Because I doubt there is huge backup for your suggestion.

[Koub]

1: You can whitelist entities in decon planners.
Pretty sure ghosts can be whitelisted too.

That's highly unlikely, as the decon planner on a ghost just makes the ghost disappear.
However, there is a whitelist/blacklist feature, with the possibility of including/excluding trees and rocks.

but a deconstruction planner used on a ghost will make it vanish.

[GreyFoxx]

1: You can whitelist entities in decon planners.
Pretty sure ghosts can be whitelisted too.

You can whitelist ghosts, though you cannot use that feature to discriminate between different ghost entity types; it considers all ghosts equally. However, even if a workaround exists for that one particular problem, there might still be a place for a more convenient option, just as having the ability to manually place rails is not a good argument against the addition of the rail planner.

2: so you place preplanned BPs over your starter base?
That's some strange way to play. But in this game, I wouldn't hold that against anyone.

No, I often spend the early game designing blueprints to be built. I don't think it's too unheard of for users to play Factorio largely for the blueprint design aspect. Whether or not it works is a question best answered by my earned achievements.

3: if you place ghosts over cliffs, you should see a red X, marking that cliff for deconstruction.

This does not help much with visibility, as ghosts create a lot of noise that can make it very easy to miss the red X's. This also still does not help the fact that clearing trees, rocks, and cliffs manually is difficult to do without accidentally removing ghosts.

The main problem is see, when you compare it to ALT mode: when you want to place another BP over an existing hidden one, which one wins?
I can already imagine the bug reports, asking why a BP can't be placed or is missing something, just because people forgot to activate that alt mode again.
At least your first problem is better be dealt with using my suggested decon planer.

The obvious solution to this is simply to make an option in the settings (on by default) which forces ghosts to re-enable automatically for the duration the player is building. Or, have it so that ghosts become visible when holding another entity overlapping them.

Hiding ghosts seems like a natural feature to add, and it's something I've wanted for more than 7 years but just never got around to formalising a forum post for. Even if not in the method I've prescribed, it would be incredibly useful to be able to get a quick glance at what is built and what is ghost, because there is currently no way to see the world as it truly is.

Cheers.

[GreyFoxx]

Edit: Fixed post to adhere to the style guide, should be more legible now.

[Illiander42]

2: so you place preplanned BPs over your starter base?
That's some strange way to play. But in this game, I wouldn't hold that against anyone.

Speedrunners do this a lot.

I don't really speedrun (I'm not fast enough) but I do have blueprints for bootstrapping myself to construction bots quickly.

[Amarula]

I tend to move stuff around a lot, copy where it is and paste where I want it to be. Before I get bots, I have to build the copy by hand, and I frequently miss part of the build especially inserters. I come back after a while, and wonder why it isn't working and then realize that it isn't an actual inserter, it's a ghost. A ghost toggle might not be the perfect way to make ghosts more visible, but it would give me a definite way to tell right away if I have built everything I copied or not.

[FuryoftheStars]

I tend to move stuff around a lot, copy where it is and paste where I want it to be. Before I get bots, I have to build the copy by hand, and I frequently miss part of the build especially inserters. I come back after a while, and wonder why it isn't working and then realize that it isn't an actual inserter, it's a ghost. A ghost toggle might not be the perfect way to make ghosts more visible, but it would give me a definite way to tell right away if I have built everything I copied or not.

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-380
Search for the header "Ghost shader" and read from there.

[PennyJim]

I tend to move stuff around a lot, copy where it is and paste where I want it to be. Before I get bots, I have to build the copy by hand, and I frequently miss part of the build especially inserters. I come back after a while, and wonder why it isn't working and then realize that it isn't an actual inserter, it's a ghost. A ghost toggle might not be the perfect way to make ghosts more visible, but it would give me a definite way to tell right away if I have built everything I copied or not.

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-380
Search for the header "Ghost shader" and read from there.

And here's a mod that allows you to get the more visible blue blueprints in 1.1:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/TintedGhosts

[FuryoftheStars]

I tend to move stuff around a lot, copy where it is and paste where I want it to be. Before I get bots, I have to build the copy by hand, and I frequently miss part of the build especially inserters. I come back after a while, and wonder why it isn't working and then realize that it isn't an actual inserter, it's a ghost. A ghost toggle might not be the perfect way to make ghosts more visible, but it would give me a definite way to tell right away if I have built everything I copied or not.

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-380
Search for the header "Ghost shader" and read from there.

And here's a mod that allows you to get the more visible blue blueprints in 1.1:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/TintedGhosts

Or there's this one that I use: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Blue-Ghosts