Friday Facts #238 - The GUI update (Part II)

[Lubricus]

As more people has noted, when checking readability and contrast also check that for other parts of the game.
Not only the stone patches also Icons and signs that buildings like train-station is on/off. It's so hard to see if some of the buildings is active most players don't even know it's possible. Buildings and icons and so on should not only look nice close up but also be easy to discern from far away.

The part of the GUI I have most trouble with is finding things in the inventory the picker function helps but not always.
The crafting menu and so on is nicely ordered in tabs and have a search button, on the other hand the inventory is a total mess without any search function. Some rethinking how the GUI works is needed, one thing would be able to use the crafting menu to transfer the items to the hands.

[Oktokolo]

True, BUT, a large number of Mods in the Portal do not HAVE linked forum threads.

You could post forum thread requests on the discussion pages of that mods.

[EFLFE]

Did you have any idea to make transportation by air?

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

Did you have any idea to make transportation by air?

Oooooooh! That's an interesting idea!

Something like a helicopter with a container? Just like trains they could serve as (very) long distance transport.

[EFLFE]

The helicopter will not be the fastest mode of transport (as logistic robots), as opposed to the aircraft. Still wondering what will happen if the plane, during the flight, runs out of fuel?))

[WIZ4]

The helicopter will not be the fastest mode of transport (as logistic robots), as opposed to the aircraft. Still wondering what will happen if the plane, during the flight, runs out of fuel?))

If there was a character in the plane, a new game would appear.

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[Deadly-Bagel]

I know I have an obscure type of colour deficiency but it is worth noting that many people have difficulty between green, yellow and orange.

colourblindmode

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This is the new tech tree run through a GIMP filter I've been fiddling with to simulate my vision - yes it is overwhelmingly green, welcome to my life. Note the lack of contrast between queued and available options, I wasn't even aware that was orange until I read it further down, and orange I can normally see.

The green/yellow generally isn't a problem because in the list they are almost always separated by red unavailable options, though I can sometimes struggle in the tree. The main two concerns I have are distinguishing queued items, and picking out the item in progress. If the in-progress item is always the first item in the queue I can just glance there, not too big a deal, but seeing what is queued might as well not even be colour coded for me.

On an separate note, we currently have a nice long research bar that at a glance gives us a pretty good idea of how far along a big research is, but it looks like that's being condensed into a tiny icon. I dunno, that just doesn't seem as satisfying somehow considering how much of the game revolves around research.

[bobucles]

Flying a Plane

Absolutely disgusting. Real men fly by train.

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[mrvn]

If not already, it may be worth adding a maximum size to the research queue. This prevents players from planning out their entire research flow which kind of ruins the fun. Just a thought.

Assuming clicking an icon researches everything needed for that icon automatically then I see no point in restricting the queue. You only need one research item: Rocket silo. With any remaining queue slots you can fast track some techs you need imediately.

[YokoZar]

On the topic of blueprint gui, about half the time I use it I rename my blueprint but don't hit enter, causing the name to be lost.

There's no reason to require hitting enter when I hit a giant confirm button with my mouse.

[bobingabout]

Take a hint from traffic lights. The green intentionally contains some blue light, making it more of a turquoise than stright up green. This is done because of colour blind people. so although you can still use Red, Green and Yellow, there are some tips to make it more visible for colourblind people, such as using more than just the hue to satisfy their detection of the colour.

[Deadly-Bagel]

I don't really see the blue but green traffic lights appear sort of off-white - I suppose in the absence of red, green + blue = white?

When 1/3 (or more) of your colour vision is absent you tend to rely on shades, if you give me a yellow and a dark green then I can tell you which is which, same thing here. Put a bit more colour into the orange and make the green a bit darker and I wouldn't have a problem.

Just pretend you're looking at it through the old nightvision filter. To be honest I never really noticed much of a difference between that and daytime ^^

[Kevin Ar18]

I'm used to the standard (not only in Factorio), that a confirmation button is in the right bottom corner of every window.

This is true for 1 button but not 2 or more buttons. In Windows, the the confirmation button MUST be farthest left; in GNOME, the confirmation button must be farthest right. HOWEVER, all the buttons as a group, are aligned to the right in both OSes. If you do it different, you make the program hard to use for anyone that is used to a different Operating System.

Windows requires that buttons be layed out as follows:
1. The [OK] or [Confirm] button (aka the button that completes the task), should always be the farthest button to the left.
2. The [Cancel] button (aka the button that cancels whatever the user did) should always be the last button on the right.
3. Any extra buttons go in between these two.
4. All the buttons (whether 1, 2, 3, or 4) are usually aligned to the right, as a group.

STANDARDIZE PLEASE!
confirmations to bottom right! buttons that look like buttons!

As long as it is just 1 "OK" button then the standard is the same on all computers, but if they add 2 buttons then they will also need to make two versions: 1 for Windows and 1 for GNOME, since the layouts are completely opposite and would confuse anyone used to a different OS.

[Koub]

Seeing all people complaining about Factorio being color blind unfriendly, I wonder what proportion of the existing games does really care of their handicap out there in the world.
Not that I don't care, I do sympathize, but I'm just surprised so many people do ask for it, while I've never seen a game actually implement such a feature.

[Bauer]

Seeing all people complaining about Factorio being color blind unfriendly, I wonder what proportion of the existing games does really care of their handicap out there in the world.
Not that I don't care, I do sympathize, but I'm just surprised so many people do ask for it, while I've never seen a game actually implement such a feature.

This is in fact a problem. A good friend of mine has the most common red-green problem. It's shocking how many people have this kind of handicap and how little game designers care. Same with board-games, btw.

[bobingabout]

Another tip. Instead of using Orange to indicate that you've queued it, go with Blue. I mean, even I have a hard time telling the difference between yellow and orange, and I'm NOT colourblind.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Seeing all people complaining about Factorio being color blind unfriendly, I wonder what proportion of the existing games does really care of their handicap out there in the world.
Not that I don't care, I do sympathize, but I'm just surprised so many people do ask for it, while I've never seen a game actually implement such a feature.

Actually quite a few games do this, FTL and Into The Breach as well as a bunch of other small-studio games have good colourblind modes, Doom and COD have game-wide filters that tbh aren't really that effective but they tried at least, Overwatch and Battlefield 4 allow customisation of key information such as team colours which is extremely helpful.

Then you've got games like Guitar Hero that do use colour but don't rely on it, also utilising positioning and/or symbols as standard so that perfect colour vision is not a requirement.

The trouble with Factorio is it's a game where information is vital, when searching for ore you're looking for something specific, when looking at research you need to know what technologies you can, can't, and have already researched, chests and inserters have different behaviours, etc. It's a lot better with the map now able to tell you the ore type and quantity (although the map generation preview doesn't, which is a pain) but some areas (such as circuit wires) still rely heavily on colour and if you can't see it, it can make things very difficult. Heck, you're the devs, why don't you try it? Set all research icons to the same colour (slight shade offset for research progress), ores, chests, inserters, and circuit wires, then play a game (ensure you make a few circuit things like an S-R latch). You'll see what we're talking about.

[Deadlock989]

The trouble with Factorio is it's a game where information is vital

This. Colour doesn't really matter in Solitaire or even simpler games like Space Engineers. In Factorio it does, because that's how the game was designed, with game objects and UI features that are identical except for their colour, by people who presumably have average colour vision. Factorio has its own semiotics, it gives colours meaning, even if it's arbitrary and inconsistent, e.g. a blue inserter is faster than a yellow one, a yellow assembler is faster than a blue one. Me, I'm just very astigmatic, have been all my life, and now I'm getting long-sighted as well, so I'm switching between different kinds of glasses and I have a big monitor with the UI scaled higher than most people do.

In my career, I work with the deaf community. When I made Minecraft mods, I occasionally added text cues for things in the game engine that you needed to be able to hear to access, like a zombie moaning on the other side of a wall, or a big piston gate opening off-screen. Factorio doesn't have any purely sound-based cues that I can think of - you can play it perfectly well with the sound turned down to zero - so it's not an issue here. But just because you can play Factorio without sound doesn't mean that sound design isn't an issue in any other game. And one in seven people in the UK population have some level of hearing loss, more than forms of colour-blindness. But society is generally either ignorant of this kind of diversity or won't make much of an effort to adapt.

[Deadly-Bagel]

That's a pretty good point actually, playing Factorio colourblind is like playing any first-person game deaf. It's not that the game is unplayable, it's that you're missing out on a lot of cues that you take for granted when you have them.

[Sander_Bouwhuis]

Ok, now I'm also interested in colourblindness support.

I'm a software engineer myself, and to be honest, I've never put support in my applications for it.
I'm sure to give this a good consideration for my next project though. (I guess it's hard to test, unless I can find a few colourblind people).