Friday Facts #362 - Menu simulation, Spidertron, Ghost building, Confirm button

[Nosferatu]

Nice, but I was more thinking along the lines of PVP anti automatic spidertron defeneses

Spidertron is armed so that should not be a big problem

[seltha]

Can't wait for 1.1!! I was already drooling at the train tweaks, now spidertron is getting a buff and ghost building is getting perfected. So good!

Re: Wube Logo 'Water'
You said it's buildable in game... does that mean I can put an offshore pump in it when I need a well somewhere? Because that would be awesome.

Also... Would it be possible to have the blueprint editor use the new simulation frame? Because it would be life changing to be able to run about a blueprint, delete a misplaced power pilon, fix a missing rail signal, and place some landfill under my tracks, then save it and plonk it down for real.

[Mathematician]

Placing poles by dragging is what I needed in a long time. :thumb_up:

[hoidnyc]

Will the new ghost behaviors apply to ghosts created by blueprints?

I'm specifically interested in whether splitters and undergrounds from BPs can be placed over existing belts. This would allow for much easier BP based insertion of balancers and standard designs to pull from busses, etc.

[Ericwu91]

I have a serious case of arachnophobia, and I've been struggling to control my fears anytime I see spidertron move.

That said, I can't help but feel awe when I see the absolute precision it has. Sooo smooth!

Also, the build and train track avoidance clips were so strangely cute!

Very nice work, all!

[Twisted_Code]

I like it, does this mean you can now build a wall of rails to prevent a spidertron from going somewhere?

Spideyboi can still step between the rails:

Also when all those rails are curved?

I don't know what kind of intersections you will be making but I think it will be okay

Darn, I was hoping there would be some PvP potential there. It's not like you can, despite /u/talrich's claim "your mistakes have no cost but time", reverse/explode landfills... *AHEM*
edit: by the way, nice compression artifacts on that GIF...

[darkfrei]

Its already done for 1.1

Thanks a lot. Best Dev ever!

Really +1

[netmand]

It's great to see the improvements coming along. I particularly appreciate the one about preserving the copper wire connections in blueprints. Thanks guys for the continued tweaks to such a great game!

[Drury]

I like that the Start screen is finally getting some animation!
However it looks weird like it is currently now since you cannot really tell it apart from ingame intuitively. I know there is the logo and such, but still just deosn't feel like its a start screen.
Did you consider adding the "glass" effect from the research screen to it in the main menu?
This may make it a bit less noisy and tell it apart from ingame more naturally.

Quick mock up:
https://i.imgur.com/avawy8H.png

I kinda prefer it be clear as day so I can lean back and just stare at the machines working. That's the best part of these moving backgrounds in RCT and TTD.

My suggestion would be to make the view slowly pan around, kinda like how OpenRA does it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFCwI4uAFb0

[ColonelSandersLite]

Re: Wube Logo 'Water'
You said it's buildable in game... does that mean I can put an offshore pump in it when I need a well somewhere? Because that would be awesome.

Would it then pump pure Wubium?

[Impatient]

Kudos to you guys.

That degree of eye for QoL features and effort to polish the game should earn you a "dedicated developer" award.

[Squelch]

There are some great QoL improvements on the way, and I'm stoked to see that copper connections are getting some love as well as the appropriate ghost placement enhancements. These have in fact removed the need for a couple of mods I had on the burner (hacky and probably poorly performing ones at that) so I'm a little relieved that they'll never see the light of day

also: 1.1?
If i'm not mistaken that means having to change the Factorio version in settings of all mods. Are there any actual backwards-incompatible modding changes that would justify that?

There has already been an announcement regarding that in the modding section of the forums, so one would hope that all active modders would already be aware of what changes were incoming, and to update their major target version too.

Additionally, blueprints from 17.x are to be deprecated, so it might be wise for people to start loading their old BPs and resave them before 1.1.0 drops. I fully expect this will also have an official announcement nearer the time.

[PaulThe2nd]

Wube, you are great as always! Actually, I'm waiting for 1.1 even more than it was with 1.0, 'cause these QoL improvements look really game-changing.
But I have one question related to the new wire connections behavior. How it will affect the existing blueprints? I mean, if they don't remember wire connections as of now, will they be constructed without any connections at all after the patch? Or will they behave as if costructed by hand and try to connect automatically?
And speaking of new wires behavior, will you add the checkbox for this in the blueprint UI, or will it be applied to all blueprints just by default?

[NotRexButCaesar]

detecting and following progress in-game might feel more restrictive.

Can you not just look at the techs researched for the most recent save?

[FunMaker]

I feel great with these changes. But there is one thing that bothers me.

Keeping Copper Wire Connections between poles in a blueprint is a great feature. But connecting wires to existing contents "as usual" while placing a blueprint should be an option.
Imaging a blueprint, that contains a power switch to shut off the whole blueprint. If you place this blueprint next to another copy of that blueprint, the placed contents would be placed with copper cables conntected to the existing contents and the power switch looses it's function. If the Auto-Connection would be an option and placing a blueprint without that option, it should not connect anny of the poles to existing poles, so it would be possible to place the blueprint and connect power to the power switch manually. This way the function of the power switch would be kept and you could disable the complete blueprint with the power switch.

This could be used in high optimized, beaconized situation when you just shut off the whole komplex and reduce power consumption by beacons.

[SLywnow]

Can I use mods/scripts to add my own scenes to the menu? I think many global mods would really like to do this. Either I, as the creator of modpacks, would like to display in the menu what my modpack contains.

[Meddleman]

Per the menu backgrounds, I have two kinda broad-ish questions:

1.

We'd like the main menu background to be a real animated simulation of the game, similar to what Transport Tycoon or Rollercoaster Tycoon games have.

The FFF shows a sort of abrupt change from scene to scene, without even a fade or smooth transition.
Perhaps a menu background in the style of a cinematograph or even a very slow vertical+horizontal marquee/scrolling effect to actually show movement and action of the preview factories would be prudent. Factorio's strength lies in the "watching it go" effect, where all the pieces fit and everything works cohesively, like an intricate ballet. Would be a shame not to capitalize on this.

New players seeing this for the first time would most likely have a far easier time getting used to the game by already seeing actual practical examples at work, even if it is just the main menu.
Blurring out the main menu background when accessing sub-menu's could help reinforce that the player is a menu that is not the main one.

2. Will said backgrounds remain moddable/alterable? Could the UI still be able to aquiesce to those wishing to display custom snippets of high-res MP4 or other video/image formats to provide a personalized experience similar to Wallpaper Engine?

[luc]

I am very impressed with these improvements. Most of these are things I ran into and real additions to the game, and I recognize that some of them must have been quite a pain to implement (since they were pushed back for a long time, like the connections in blueprints). I had not expected this after the silence post-1.0, figuring you're working on a new game or perhaps an expansion, at least with a large part of the team. I'm blown away that you keep making this game as amazing as it could possibly be, that is really unique. Amazing work guys.

[planetfall]

Everything looking good as always.

Since we're talking about blueprints there's a really niche feature that would be nice...

In some of my past saves I've tried to create a nice looking rail system with a strip of hazard concrete along the sides.

The issue with this is in practice it ends up not-great because the rails are built from a blueprint - they have to be, placing each tile around curves manually would take forever - and rotating the blueprint also rotates the tiles so at some points the stripes switch direction and look awful.

Basically it would be nice for blueprints to have a checkbox to lock tiles to their initial direction when rotating the blueprint.

[FasterJump]

Very good FFF, I just wanted to express my reserve about the home screen. The excitement when starting/loading the game from the home screen is all about hopping into the game (a bit like the inception movie?). If you jump from a in-game screen to another in-game screen, there is less "woah" effect.

For example the home screen of openTTD is maybe too much? A calm factory (with light blurry filter/ color filter) might be ok

I'll wait and see, maybe it will be fine.

Good job for all the other new features!