Factorio Forums

With multiplayer getting ever closer to become a reality, one might begin to think about what methods of player-to-player communication the game itself can offer; obviously, some kind of chat comes to mind - integrated VoIP would probably be complete overkill.

However, there are also tools to assist in communication, and I'm reminded of a seemingly small, but very useful feature I observed once in a MMO-type game:
The ability to draw temporary doodles on the map.

In cooperative multiplayer, being able to coordinate actions with your co-players by showing your intent, as opposed to exhaustingly describing your intent, tremendously enhances and assists player communication, regardless of whether they use a built-in chat client, or communicate via headset - a picture is worth a thousand words.

Examples might include drawing crude circles ("how about smelting copper there-ish and smelting iron there-ish?"), drawing skewed lines ("double wall there - use chokepint!") to drawing slope-y arrows ("they came this way").

Players can even convey entire plans using nothing but doodles on a map - imagine looking at the map as your co-player draws a curved line from your shared position, around a large enemy base, toward a second, smaller base - ending the line in an arrow as he starts to strike out the whole second base, to then start drawing a second line, halfway back to the first base, ending in a second arrow. He circles a coal deposit next to the arrow, and puts a zigzagged line between the coal and the first base, seperating the two, that extends all the way westwards until it hits the coast. Finally, he puts a small cross next to the coal, and draws more lines, straight at first, then a bend and straight again, until it comes close to your shared factory's power plant, where he puts another small cross. Shortly after this, a chat message appears: "thoughts?".

Did you imagine? Can you tell what this player has in mind?

What are your thoughts?

This would be really useful for cooperative multiplayer since Factorio is a building game. Being able to draw on the map would be amazing for anything from a crude way of conveying plans to drawing a rought plan of a future factory.

The thing I'm concerned about is performance. The game can already have trouble when too many things are on the screen and even if it has to draw too many chunks on the map. It's not that hard to imagine a complicated doodle (or lots of crazy lines drawn by trolls) to bring even stronger computer to their knees.

I support this as well.

The thing I'm concerned about is performance.

This is not performance heavy at all, it shouldn't use more resources than paint and its not important to update every tick. There's no need for photoshop levels of detail, and simple vector drawings are extremely lightweight. Even if there's a lot of components to the drawing it will be very little overhead and nothing needs to be updated continuously.

I'm aware it can be done without eating too many resources. However, the question here is not "Can this be made fast enough?" but "Can this be made fast enough without having to make significant changes or additions to Factorio rendering system?" Keep in mind that the Factorio devs are just a little indie team, so all non-critical ideas taking too much time are probably going to get axed in favour of those that can get done in a reasonable timeframe.

Rahjital wrote:[...]Keep in mind that the Factorio devs are just a little indie team, so all non-critical ideas taking too much time are probably going to get axed in favour of those that can get done in a reasonable timeframe.

Well, I've made the suggestion, so I am of course unswayably conviced this an absolutly critical thing

Jokes aside, even something as simple as "map pings" or temporary markers (like many, many rts games offer) could help various players to "show where" instead of having them awkwardly "describe where", in chat or VoIP.

Then of course, drawing lines on the map is not fundamentally different from placing "pings" on the map, I'd say - instead of defining behaviours for selecting a type of marker, placing the marker on the map, sending the marker to the other players, and advertising the reception of a marker to the player, you define behaviours for picking a color (or just use the players color/a predefined one), drawing stuff on the map (same thing, fundamentally, as placing a single marker), sending the affected coordinates to the other players (same thing, but with color/originator instead of marker type), and advertising the reception of drawings (i.e. display them).

I might be completly ignorant (there's a fair chance for that), but blizzard-style map markers don't seem like a terribly daunting task to mimic, considering the game already has/is going to have the basic architecture for UI-interactions, interpretiation of player input, sending data over network, and advertisements of non-player caused events (e.g. "34 objects are being damaged" - *boiIIIP boiIIIP boiIIIP*).

Speaking as someone who plays D&D over the internet once a week, I can confirm that, yeah, this is some extremely useful functionality.

Of the functions that translate to a game where it's multiple players and not just players and a GM, "Pings" are the single most widely used, and useful, function when using voice chat. (A slowly expanding ripple seems to work pretty well, at least in games where all players are focused on the map at all times.)

Beyond that, drawing and typing on the screen is good for when you're leaving a marker to refer back to. Which in this game in particular I eexpect would be often useful. Even in single player I find that blueprints and ghost objects were useful to plan buildings for later.

As far as looking at this in action, roll20 is a pretty good example, and the one I'm cribbing from.

Even when I played Minecraft we'd do this sort of stuff all the time with random blocks as markers.

How does that differ to this: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... t=planning
?

ssilk wrote:How does that differ to this: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... t=planning
?

Here they're talking about drawing on the map, squiggly lines, circles, squares, etc, etc. The thread you linked talks about placing down ghost buildings.

A way for you to do this at the moment is to set down a Train Stop. You can give it a name, and it will show up on the map. It requires a bit of rail as well but you can label certain sections of the map this way.

An example I just made to demonstrate what I mean:

why i think about Scribblebots

kind of like in portal 2 you have those signals or what ever there called so your friend know where to put the next portal to complete the puzzle i like it

It's a good idea.

I think this is related: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=4682

So pretty straight forward idea. I was playing some MP with a friend yesterday and we were having a bit of a problem trying to explain where things would go, and how to set stuff up etc.
I have played several games in the past that had the ability to draw on the mini map, like with a pencil line if that makes sense. So you can draw out like where things will go and what your referring to etc.

Obviously no that important compared to a lot of other stuff, but would be a cool feature at some point.

Maybe ability to creating waypoints would be better.

A simple map ping/flare would be enough for me.
e.g. Press a button and a circled dot or crosshair appears where you are on the minimap for a minute or so.

Ultimately, drawing would be great, and would give a lot more use to the pause function, but until then, something simple is good enough.

wow that's really funny, I had the same idea a few days ago, I was half-done making a mockup and everything.

Should I post it here or go ahead and make a new thread? I don't want to hog someone else's thread with my own idea, but It might be beneficial to put both of them together to show more than one person wants the idea.

EDIT: I don't even think you would need to pause to draw, I think you could do it in the big minimap you get from pressing M, it doesn't seem to use left click anyway at the moment.

If your idea differs, make an own thread. I can finally join them, if not. if not write it here. In both cases,if a dev implements it, he will find it...

... eventually.

Look at Zero-K, an RTS. you can pretty much scribble over the entire map like it has a notepad overlay over the whole thing.

What the devs think:

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 511#p51509