[quote="foodfactorio"]Hi, i had an idea about this, and it seemed this was the best page to post it.
(please feel free to move it if needed though)
From a player's perspective, i think it would be nice to be able to do something like this, at least for the stand-alone version:
(sorry if this post is a bit long, but i tried to mention real-user scenarios from my perspective as an actual player)
1) to Launch the game as normal. (even with lots of savegames already, or mods inside the mod folder)
2) to click on New Game, and be presented with a new screen, possibly as follows:
"New Game - choose your Mods for this New Game"
(The User-Interface would also include a checkbox to "unselect all mods", and a checkbox to "select all mods", but would also have a checkbox, and have a default setting of pre-selecting "all mods that are already currently enabled")
This way, we can use any combination of these checkboxes, to select, or unselect the bulk of the mods, and then refine the selection (by manually enabling or disabling any other mods for this new game)
3) The usual configurations screens/tabs appear as normal, such as resource amounts, richness of ore, biters, and any other applicable mod settings.
4a) the game prompts the user to enter a filename for the save... ideally a unique name
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4b) then the game starts to load all of the necessary mods and relevent data, (even if a small message appears saying that factorio needs to do a soft quit and restart of the game)...
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4c) physically-speaking, maybe the game can copy the mod folders (or zip files) into a 2nd copy, which is specific for that particular savegame (but maybe there is a smarter way to handle that in terms of programming, so i cant really suggest the code myself)
4d) then the game starts fresh, with all the selected mods and configs, and we can play it as normal.
5) the player can still press escape to bring up the in-game menu, to manually create another save whenever they like, as well as the usual auto-saves)
(note: maybe if the game detects that non-standard characters are being used, or a very long path name could cause a conflict, then it could give the physical file a filename identifier, as well as creating a tiny .txt file of the same fileid, and this .txt file would simply have the full savegame name inside it with a line of text, to help players identify what it is)
Extras: Sharing an existing save. (even for solo team work)
6) if a player wanted to share their current save game with someone else, to show them their base or something, then the new player ideally would simply put a copy of the savegame into their save folder, and factorio would download all of the specific mods and versions that the savegame was using, and create a new physical folder structure for that particular savegame, (assuming step 4c is used above), and using the same savegame name (taken from the savegame) or could simply pop-up a window asking for a name, (like in step 4a), of even to detect any conflicting savename, and display what name the savegame already has and allowing a change to the name)
6b) if the friend, is playing the savegame, and wanted to continue with the game, to help their friend with something, or just to expand the base, the friend could simply save any progress as normal (similar to step 5 above.)
6c) the friend would then be able to carry out step 6 again, if they wanted to pass the latest save of their game, back to the original player (and so on)
Extras: Adding a new mod(s) to an existing save:
7) if i wanted to add a new mod to my existing game (assuming the mod was compatible etc), i think it would be quite intuitive to have an extra button, on 2 screens.
7a) when i launch Factorio, and click on LOAD from the main menu, i could select my latest savegame (for example from step 5, or even from step 6c), and there would also be a button saying something like this: "Add Mods to Savegame".
The button would have a rollover text, or a small description, to help the player understand exactly what will happen..
for example:
"Click here to add an extra mod (or mods) to this particular savegame that you have selected. A backup will be made, in case of any compatibility issues, so that you can roll back to the current save, by selecting the "rollback" checkbox."
7b) an optional checkbox could also be added to the MODS screen, (for example when we load up Factorio, i could click on the MODS button, from the main menu, and also see a button saying "add mods to a Savegame". This is just because some players may go to the MODS screen, since it is MODS that they want to add, but clicking here will also take them to the LOAD a SAVE screen, similar to 7a) so that the code is just in one area.
(also, there could me a small message here as well, letting players know that they need to download mods via the usual method first, before adding)
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there could be a dialog box that pops up from the operating system, asking the user to select a mod that they happened to download manually, but it will probably be better to have them just use the ingame portal)
Extra Features:
The game could also do a quick check, to see how much estimated space is required on the Hard Drive, before creating any new games, or before downloading any mods that a savegame needs, or before adding any mods to an existing copy of a savegame, just to let the user know, and to warn if they are low on space.
sorry again for the long post, but these were my logical steps that i would feel are really intuitive, at least for me to use
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