Factorio Forums

2.0.23

"Improved the behavior of god controller"

Politely, I strongly disagree whatever changed was an improvement.

I used to be able to seamlessly zoom out to the "charting" ("map"?) view while in sandboxes, I can no longer do so. This has significantly reduced the usability of the god controller and sandboxes in general for me. I hope this change is reverted, I'll be sticking with 2.0.22 until it is.

+1

I am here to agree as well. While I think the only Controller that did this was the God, and it's probably tied to some bad/old code with the old map/chart view (that has been and continues to be replaced with the new Remote View Controller), this further points to the fact that users want what they used to have with the simple map view.

Especially in a sandbox settings, we frequently plan large designs that cannot be easily viewed even at the widest zoom setting for Characters. Gods weren't much better, but seamlessly zooming out to the the alternative view for finding and selecting large areas was the ultimate experience. The Editor can zoom out even farther, but it lacked the seamless transition.

Swapping to the Remote View for this purpose is clunky, and in some cases not ideal or possible. The Remote View is coupled to a lot of features/functionalities that are unnecessary and cannot be controlled, so it isn't a direct alternative or improvement to what came before it.

I frequently use the God Controller, and I basically did not notice improvements after this update. I did recognize a few times where I zoomed out and was "blocked," leaving me confused for a few seconds. My hunch is that the "improvements" were to clean up code, since there's no link to feedback or reports, and no details on what changed.

+1 inability to seamlessly zoom out into a map view in a sandbox is a huge downgrade, please revert the changes

I completely agree; I am forced to revert to version 2.0.22 because it's impossible to enter map mode in the sandbox where my projects are placed at huge distances from each other; they are simply impossible to find. I hope this fix will be rolled back or changed to something acceptable.

Morgott wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2024 12:03 pm I completely agree; I am forced to revert to version 2.0.22 because it's impossible to enter map mode in the sandbox where my projects are placed at huge distances from each other; they are simply impossible to find. I hope this fix will be rolled back or changed to something acceptable.

you still can press tab to get in to map view even in god mode and in sandbox

I would like to point out that this is how god controller behaved in 1.1. The transition to map rendering was a bug introduced during the implementation of remote view.
Nonetheless, we are discussing the best behavior so please continue to leave feedback.

PureTilt wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2024 1:24 pm you still can press tab to get in to map view even in god mode and in sandbox

I think there is a confusion between the sandbox scenario and sandbox mods, which allow players to have a sandbox environment in a normal game. In a sandbox provided by mods, the "map view" is disabled for whatever reason (the Tab or M key doesn't do anything), but there was a very nice option just to zoom out beyond the normal view limit and seamlessly transition into the "map view". With the latest God Controller changes, this is no longer possible.

Twinsen wrote: Thu Dec 05, 2024 1:38 pm I would like to point out that this is how god controller behaved in 1.1. The transition to map rendering was a bug introduced during the implementation of remote view.
Nonetheless, we are discussing the best behavior so please continue to leave feedback.

Thank you for looking into it. It was a good bug and should be adopted

+1 on this - I use sandboxes to design large blueprints and lots of small blueprints that only being able to zoom to the map view made usable. I had just been telling a friend how perfect the implementation was and how it felt just like being on a planet surface while designing and then the update hit

Agreed with the request. Being unable to press Tab or M for a wider overview of the sandbox is a huge limitation to using this tool. It's really hard to work on multiple blueprints without being able to zoom out and see everything like in a typical game.

Echoing the need to roll back to an earlier version for the time being.

Being able to zoom all the way out to map was an unintentional bug - you should be using remote view for that. Mods shouldn't be restricting your access to remote view.

Given the overwhelming feedback, I decided to revert this change.
Other changes remain, such as the fact that the god controller will teleport to a new surface when exiting remote view on a different surface.
I also removed the player circle icon that was always in the center when zooming out to map view.

Twinsen wrote: Wed Dec 11, 2024 1:35 pm Other changes remain, such as the fact that the god controller will teleport to a new surface when exiting remote view on a different surface. I also removed the player circle icon that was always in the center when zooming out to map view.

These are nice features, and they make reasonable sense! We definitely appreciate the improvements to the God controller, especially in a "sandbox-only" style game like the revived scenario.

raiguard wrote: Tue Dec 10, 2024 7:24 pm Being able to zoom all the way out to map was an unintentional bug - you should be using remote view for that. Mods shouldn't be restricting your access to remote view.

This is where I believe the overwhelming number of users would disagree, and this is a problem with perception. The intention of the designer/implementer, therefore whether they believed this was a bug, was not expressed or known by the users. From my understanding, I do not believe "it should not be able to zoom out to the map" to be a very reasonable take, but I understand a few perspectives on the matter. I would suggest that even the Editor should be able to zoom out to the map. The Remote View is a distinctly different concept than the map/chart view.

I think I speak for most users when I say that zooming out to the map was considered a welcomed feature for 2.0. There is no clear reason why it should not do that. And there is no clear reason why we must alter the game state with a hotkey in order to be able to do that. Even if 1.1 did not behave that way, since 2.0 does, and 2.0 is designed to be better, and with many quality-of-life improvements, that is how this change was understood by users.

So, when this capability was removed, that is what felt like a bug to users. We have nice functionality that we frequently used, and then it was gone. And the reason for that was "improvements." That is very clearly not an improvement from our perspective.

I can now understand the intention behind the change. Whomever implemented it did not intend for that to be the way it worked. But, to call it a bug? It was an unintentional feature.

I don't intend to harp on this matter. I appreciate that the change was reverted. I don't appreciate this response from developers.