Friday Facts #419 - Display Panel & Inserter pickup fixes

[GregoriusT]

What's with the displays being so tiny? Why can't I have a giant display, a stadium-sized display? Yes, the largest ever CRT (according to Wikipedia) is only 43", but maybe it could be made with the ultra low resolution using individual bulbs which in my memory seems to have been typical of giant displays before the LCD display era?

remember, the Factorio Engineer is filling out almost an entire Tile worth of space, so a 2x2 or 3x3 TV would still be within the realms of realism.

[adam_bise]

*yawn*

*clicks FFF*

rrrrRRRRRRRRGAH!!! Still no new military targets reveal!!

"Beyond Frustrating"

[EustaceCS]

One step closer to running Doom inside vanilla Factorio with tad more appropriate graphics...

Happy for inserters fix. It was beyond infuriating - to keep using old belts just to keep baseline inserters operational.

[peternlewis]

It's great to see the Inserter tweaks.

But I'd love to see the Burner Inserter tweaked so it would always retain enough power to pick up an energy unit (eg lump of coal) from the belt to feed itself - basically I don't think they should never get themselves stuck unpowered because they “wasted” the last bit of power messing around and then died requiring manual intervention.

[GrandMasterB]

These are my most negative changes:
1. Quality
2. Fluid
3. Inserter

These are my most negative changes:
1. Fluid
2. Quality
3. Inserter

Order is different but the list is the same. My top negative is Fluid without flow.

The fluid change would also be number one for me, considering that I would have liked to see an improvement in the physics and not the net removal of physics. But if it's just about the change, then it's in second place. Because I didn't think the old system was perfect either, even if it was better than the new one. The new quality feature, on the other hand, changes the course in a direction that I hate. It is a change of items just because of a level. No explanation as to why the item is better. No visual effect change. No negative effects that force you to weigh up whether the change is good. I don't care at all whether it is optional. Factorio is one of the few games that hasn't used this method so far and it's an extreme disappointment that it's no longer the case.

But we don't just want to be negative, what are your most positive changes?

In addition to new optimization tasks or physics, I find new enemies and worlds very exciting. This gives me a reason to develop.

[mmmPI]

My personnal order list :

1) Other planets environment
2) The space platform's mechanic to go there
3) elevated rails/ new curves
4) combinators rework / crafting combinator
5) the new sound system
6) spoilage mechanic
7) quality feature
8) map view improvements / remote view
9) stacking things on belts
10) so many other little things x)

Like the change of the pace of the game to go to space early/mid instead of late, the change for filter inserter to be an option on all inserter. The performance optimizations here and there would have ranked much higher if it was not also achieved by the fluid change. I hope we gain more physic things with the temperature and pressure of the different planet. I think the anticipation for new ennemy count as part of (1).

[Tertius]

My personnal order list :

1) Other planets environment
2) The space platform's mechanic to go there
3) elevated rails/ new curves
4) combinators rework / crafting combinator
5) the new sound system
6) spoilage mechanic
7) quality feature
8) map view improvements / remote view
9) stacking things on belts
10) so many other little things x)

Is this really your personal most negative change list? Because these short lists started as "These are my most negative changes". Not as "most impactful change". If you really mean "most impactful change", your view is not much different to mine. I would give the new fluid system not its own topic as well. It's just QoL. Only quality is something I would rate at #3 and sound at #9 instead in terms of impact. And nothing is negative. Actually, I don't see any change as negative so far. It might turn out something is negative, but this is something I can only say after playing the game.

[mmmPI]

My personnal order list :

1) Other planets environment
2) The space platform's mechanic to go there
3) elevated rails/ new curves
4) combinators rework / crafting combinator
5) the new sound system
6) spoilage mechanic
7) quality feature
8) map view improvements / remote view
9) stacking things on belts
10) so many other little things x)

Is this really your personal most negative change list? Because these short lists started as "These are my most negative changes". Not as "most impactful change". If you really mean "most impactful change", your view is not much different to mine. I would give the new fluid system not its own topic as well. It's just QoL. Only quality is something I would rate at #3 and sound at #9 instead in terms of impact. And nothing is negative. Actually, I don't see any change as negative so far. It might turn out something is negative, but this is something I can only say after playing the game.

No this is my list of most anticipated thing from what i read from the FFF. I think if you want devs to make things that you like you need to tell them what you like, not just say "bouuu nooo" everytime they try something that one anticipate some mild disconfort just from the idea of it so i made up a list of good stuff x).

The fluid system is not part of the top 10 most anticipated feature, it would be in the top 50 or so

[NaurEnForven]

I really hope there is an option to rebind the key that toggles whether or not the display panel text is shown.

The text either shows only on mouseover (if the "always on" option is unchecked in the display's GUI panel), or all the time when Alt-mode is turned on (if the "always on" option is checked in the display's GUI panel).
That's my understanding of :

By default the message is only visible when the Display panel is hovered by the player.
Sometimes though we want the information to be visible at all times, so we added an option to set the text to always show (in alt-mode).

So no key binding there, apart from the Alt key to turn Alt-mode on/off.

I get that. What I meant to say is that I am hoping for an option to toggle it in on and off in Alt-mode.
Because it seems like it could be very annoying to look at.

[scruffyvoltherder]

That new display panel is pretty cool. Perhaps it should also have an *Each* condition where it can show several icons at once.

[slane5526]

While you're at it maybe make the stack inserter less "jerky". Let it fill and then place the items on the next line, etc instead of spazzing all over the belt looking for items

[GrandMasterB]

My personnal order list :

1) Other planets environment
2) The space platform's mechanic to go there
3) elevated rails/ new curves
4) combinators rework / crafting combinator
5) the new sound system
6) spoilage mechanic
7) quality feature
8) map view improvements / remote view
9) stacking things on belts
10) so many other little things x)

Is this really your personal most negative change list? Because these short lists started as "These are my most negative changes". Not as "most impactful change". If you really mean "most impactful change", your view is not much different to mine. I would give the new fluid system not its own topic as well. It's just QoL. Only quality is something I would rate at #3 and sound at #9 instead in terms of impact. And nothing is negative. Actually, I don't see any change as negative so far. It might turn out something is negative, but this is something I can only say after playing the game.

No this is my list of most anticipated thing from what i read from the FFF. I think if you want devs to make things that you like you need to tell them what you like, not just say "bouuu nooo" everytime they try something that one anticipate some mild disconfort just from the idea of it so i made up a list of good stuff x).

The fluid system is not part of the top 10 most anticipated feature, it would be in the top 50 or so

My initial post also contained the three most positive changes. Unfortunately, only the negative ones were addressed. So my question was not which changes are the worst. Rather, which changes are very positive and which are rather negative.

[mmmPI]

My initial post also contained the three most positive changes. Unfortunately, only the negative ones were addressed. So my question was not which changes are the worst. Rather, which changes are very positive and which are rather negative.

I tried my best to make a list of positive change because i saw you asked the question

But we don't just want to be negative, what are your most positive changes?

But i have to update it to include the Fusion reactor !

[half a cat]

Instead of the display panel being dark, I feel it should be lit with text, to show that the player sees in the UI what the character sees on the screen. Obviously the screen won't be readable, and just a fixed "text" icon would accomplish this.

[Phauxstus]

So it seems these can't really be used the same way nixie tubes from mods can, which is a little disappointing.

[DarkShadow44]

Yeah, connected alphanumeric display support would be hype.

[mrvn]

Could inserters be changed to idle and pick up from the end of the belt. A large problem I see is that inserters try to catch up to items on the belt and have to chase them. With fast belts the items speed exceeds the inserters speed and the item escapes. If the inserter would idle at the exit of the belt then it would only have to adjust to which side of the belt the item is on and then move towards the item while the item is moving towards it without even changing anything else in the code. And probably 100% perfect for non modded inserters.

But things could be even better:

The inserter knows how fast it is. It also should know how fast the belt is moving. So instead of moving to where the item is the inserter should aim to where the item will be going by the belt speed. This optimizes for empty belts though. If the belt is backed up the item wouldn't move (a lot) so the inserters aim would be off. But as it gets closer and closer to pickup the projected position would approach the real position. The inserter hand would move in a curve towards the (nearly) stationary item.

Note: The inserter could also know that the item will go across the tile before it can reach the right position for pickup. If it then checks if the belt is backed up or not it can skip the attempt to pick the item up. If the belt is backed up at the moment it would still make the attempt and if the belt moves in the following ticks it might or might not still miss the item. Nobody is perfect. But really, in most cases the inserter speed should be large enough to switch to the right belt side. It's just with modded inserters that it can be a problem. E.g. Bobs adjustable inserters and setting an inserter to pickup at length 3 tiles and place at length 1 time. Changing the length by 2 whole tiles on the back swing means you will miss the item going across a blue belt.

[NootsyNootsy]

Could inserters be changed to idle and pick up from the end of the belt. ....

I actually wanted to join here to ask a similar thing. In FFF 309 it was discussed why they wouldn't change inserter logic

-It will graphically look much worse. While I believe we can do many things to make this look good enough (by separating drawing animation logic from game logic), it will probably not look as nice as it does now.
-It will remove some of the nice organic feel of the game. And it will remove some (arguably) fun emergent situations.

Combine this with the fact that changing something so core to Factorio in such a significant way would have big implications. So we decided this wont be done.

With the buffs to inserter extension speed I was wondering how many of those 'fun' emergent situations still occur and actually impactful. I guess the main concern now for changing anything is that inserters still need to be updated every frame to account for how much energy they are getting.