Offer to update before/after loading mods / Update on restart/startup/shutdown

[ptx0]

How about an option to remove that annoying popup every damn time I start game? I do not care about new version, that's why I play version I play.

what an edgy way to hijack a thread! just never close the game down and it'll never bug you.

[Koub]

Currently the game the popup about updating the game is shown after it has been completely loaded. Especially when a number of mods are enabled, starting the game one time can already be a bit of a wait... So often I find myself skipping the update, thinking I will go through this process when I finished playing (finished??? yeah right...), but usually I have forgotten about the update by then, only to be reminded about it when firing up factorio again.

I admit I like it on startup. I know my experience is biased by the fact that I don't like playing modded, so things are quite fast. Usually, when I'm playing and I quit is when I'm turning the computer off (go/get back to work or to bed). I wouldn't like the update to take place at that moment. It's different for the OS, where I can tell it to update and shutdown, but for the game, I'd have to wait for it to update before actually shutting down the computer. And I wouldn't want that.

[BlueTemplar]

This is generally implemented :
- Either by the OS update manager (if it has one) and if the program can be trusted to be updated in the background
(Not the case for Factorio for me - I always copy the whole folder before updating, *especially* for modded factorio games.)
- Or by using a launcher that phones home to check - and most of these (including Steam, which has lotsss of other bloat too like a whole OS-independent game updating system !) have a bad reputation because of all those companies that made them non-optional !

Alternatively, you could also sacrifice some disk space to cache Factorio startup to make it faster (on subsequent starts, if there are no game or mod changes) :

Some people report it speeds up startup 6-7 times on heavily modded games !
Why can't data/atlas caching not be turned on from the GUI? (It can.)
viewtopic.php?f=49&t=100473
(I personally don't use that because I don't restart that often and I would forget erasing the cache on factorio game folders I no longer play.)

[ssilk]

After rethinking, I could imagine a “splittend” close button. E.g. the close button in the main menu looks like 2 buttons: a left big part which takes 9/10 and does what it is doing yet and the small 1/10 on the right has an arrow down.

When clicking on it it has two options:
- update game & installed mods, don’t close game
- update game & installed mods, then close game

In both cases it shows for some seconds,what it will do yet.
“Update game: lookup new version”
“Downloading new version” or “no new version available”
“Rebooting”
“List of mods for update”
“Download mod …”
“Rebooting”

[ptx0]

well obviously we need a group of 30 buttons and one for every scenario

[ssilk]

Obviously… two buttons.

[Sworn]

Auto restart or close after update mods

What ?

On the update mod windows, we could have a radio button with 2 options
- restart after finish
- close after finish (default selection)
and than it save whatever options you select for the next time you open the update window

Why ?

There isn't anything else one can do anyways after updating the mod, why not do it automatically?
Most people play with tons of mods, and we either gonna restart the game after updating it or close it (no much choice here).
When you have a large amount of mods, updating it takes time, where one would probably alt tab out of the game or go lunch or shower.
Would be very hand if when they got back, the game is ready, or closed. Specially if one have a tons of mods, which take time to update and open again, so having it do things automatically would just be a plus.

[ssilk]

Merged a lot of similar threads and not so similar threads into this big topic.
Goes now about restart options for the game and update-options for mods to make the restart kind of faster and with less interaction...

[bNarFProfCrazy]

From what I have read so far, there are now two related issues in here.

1) Update the game (non-steam-version)
2) Update mods


As for the base game updates:
Instead of adding a special close button, I would rather have an option/button in the update notification itself "apply on next restart".
Or maybe invert the checkbox into:

[x] Apply now (requires restart/restarts Factorio)

It would still download the game (ASAP with progress bar), but it would not trigger the update procedure for now.

IMO the game should not download anything after the main window closed
(if you wish to restart the game, the invisible background process should not keep it from starting it again).


As for the mod updates:
I would be fine with both a separate button or a checkbox:

[x] Apply now (requires restart/restarts Factorio) [Confirm >]

It would still download the mods (ASAP with progress bar), but it would not trigger the update procedure for now.


If such an update is queued, then the main menu should contain a button "apply updates and restart".

[BlueTemplar]

Frankly I'd love an option to start in "check mods mode" where all it does is check for mods that could be upgraded and offer the upgrade. I mean, you have to restart anyway so why spend all that time loading graphics and stuff that won't get used?

But +1 to this. It's a pain as-is and would very much be welcome

Could be two command line options (one for game, one for mods). How does it currently work in the headless version ?