Friday Facts #265 - Nomenclature & Steam networking

[ecic2002]

My issue with Steam networking is that some firewalls (especially school firewalls) block steam servers. It would be nice if it were possible to do both, and if the game could figure out which is best. Possibly test access to steam servers, and if it fails try out different ports to test for access

[Korentoth]

When machine actions are functionally identical to player-character actions, they should use the same verb. A player understands that extracting ore from an ore patch is akin to the real-world action of "mining." So the player-character "mines" ore. Then the player builds a machine capable of accomplishing the same task -- the machine does what the player did, namely "mining." This consistent naming leads to an intuitive understanding of what the machine is able to do and what manual tasks it can replace.
If you want to require that the player use machines to do some task, then state it explicitly in the quest goal.

Construction robots are an extension of the player's arm. Whatever verb the player uses to create entities in the world, construction robots should use the same verb when it creates entities.

Placing/removing actual entities is not the same as planning to place/remove entities (that is, creating ghost entities and marking entities for removal), so they should have different verbs. (Don't say "place" ghost entities.)

Although I call them "yellow/red/blue" belts, it's important for flavor reasons to give them names that sound realistic, such as "conveyor/transport/express" belts. Likewise, the science packs should have expressive names, even if players tend to call them by color.

[5thHorseman]

Electronic Circuit, Advanced Circuit and Processing Unit should be called Logic Board 1/2/3.

And now you've (further) confused everybody about what a logistics network is.

[Sennek]

It probably has been brought up already, but i'd like to touch upon it too. If we're changing the vocabulary of the game, we might want to think of something regarding the colors. I.e. "Fastest belt = blue belt". While it's how i refer to it myself, i believe it would be better to refer to them as Express belts, so the game would be a little more friendly to all the colorblind folks out there.

[bobingabout]

Why should there be a difference between what the player and a robot does when building? IMO, construct/deconstruct all around.
Same goes for placing items in a chest/building. Why would you call it something else when an inserter or loader does it from when you do it? in this case I'd go with insert/remove all round.

Some of the questions are a bit... community oriented. blue vs express on belts... blue is a player created nickname, the game never calls it anything other than express, why should that change? Same with science packs, bottles is a rarely used nickname, most people I've seen just call it "Blue science" instead of "Science pack 3", though, why do they look like bottles?

The only thing that throws me a little, is with blue inserter being named "fast", but with belts, red is named "fast" and blue is named "express". Considering these are both Logistic items, perhaps the naming between them should be consistant?

Colour coded tiers across the board (EG, science packs going yellow, red, blue to match belts instead of red, green, blue, could use green for hi-tech, same colour change to assembling machines too) would also be better, but, we've been over this and I'm not going to push it.

[eradicator]

Why should there be a difference between what the player and a robot does when building?

Mostly because language is a grown construct and doesn't always care about hard logic. I'm totally for consistent naming, but sometimes a word is explicitly linked to using a machine, for example a human can not "pump" with his hands, they need some kind of devices. Luckily the game already reflects this by not letting the player manipulate fluids directly. Though there is the case of "mine copper ore" vs "pump oil" where you can't say "mine oil", as i've mentioned before.

The only thing that throws me a little, is with blue inserter being named "fast", but with belts, red is named "fast" and blue is named "express". Considering these are both Logistic items, perhaps the naming between them should be consistant?

Colour coded tiers across the board (EG, science packs going yellow, red, blue to match belts instead of red, green, blue, could use green for hi-tech, same colour change to assembling machines too) would also be better, but, we've been over this and I'm not going to push it.

I'm still against sacrificing visual variety for the sake of consistency. And i doubt it would help much. People are used to different things being named differently.

[quadrox]

When machine actions are functionally identical to player-character actions, they should use the same verb. A player understands that extracting ore from an ore patch is akin to the real-world action of "mining." So the player-character "mines" ore. Then the player builds a machine capable of accomplishing the same task -- the machine does what the player did, namely "mining." This consistent naming leads to an intuitive understanding of what the machine is able to do and what manual tasks it can replace.
If you want to require that the player use machines to do some task, then state it explicitly in the quest goal.

Construction robots are an extension of the player's arm. Whatever verb the player uses to create entities in the world, construction robots should use the same verb when it creates entities.

Placing/removing actual entities is not the same as planning to place/remove entities (that is, creating ghost entities and marking entities for removal), so they should have different verbs. (Don't say "place" ghost entities.)

Although I call them "yellow/red/blue" belts, it's important for flavor reasons to give them names that sound realistic, such as "conveyor/transport/express" belts. Likewise, the science packs should have expressive names, even if players tend to call them by color.

The above is exactly spot on right (though I am not sure what is wrong with "placing" ghost entities).

[mrvn]

Does steam networking route all traffic through steam servers or can is use the steam connection only to setup the connection between 2 players?

What I'm referring to is called hole punching with UDP connections. Most firewalls are setup so that is there was an outgoing UDP packet recently then UDP packets going the other way are allowed through. If both sides know the others person IP and port used for the game they can blindly send out some UDP packets to open up their respective firewalls and then packets can get through in both direction. The trick then is to use a 3rd party reachable by both, like steam, to communicate the IP/port that will be used by each side. So the indirect networking is only used to setup the direct connection.

[Oktokolo]

Electronic Circuit, Advanced Circuit and Processing Unit should be called Logic Board 1/2/3.

And now you've (further) confused everybody about what a logistics network is.

Logic and logistics are different words naming different concepts. Same as with statics and statistics. Different words have different meanings.
I don't know, whether Wube assumes basic reading comprehension skills on their player base - but i definitely do.

[eradicator]

Electronic Circuit, Advanced Circuit and Processing Unit should be called Logic Board 1/2/3.

And now you've (further) confused everybody about what a logistics network is.

Logic and logistics are different words naming different concepts. Same as with statics and statistics. Different words have different meanings.
I don't know, whether Wube assumes basic reading comprehension skills on their player base - but i definitely do.

Replacing memorable names with a generic term with incremental numbering destroys a tiny bit of lore at a time. On the contrary incremental numbering should be phased out in favour of distinct names. "Logic" btw is exactly what the actual combinator circuits do. If "circuit" is deemed confusing it could simply be replaced with "chip" - many people already call them that. Which would still be annoyingly confusing to modders, because the internal names are unlikely to change even if the localized ones did.

[posila]

Does steam networking route all traffic through steam servers or can is use the steam connection only to setup the connection between 2 players?

AFAIK, Steam tries to establish direct connection between client and the game host (including NAT punching) and if all fails, it will establish connection through Steam's routing servers.

[Oktokolo]

Replacing memorable names with a generic term with incremental numbering destroys a tiny bit of lore at a time. On the contrary incremental numbering should be phased out in favour of distinct names.

The problem with the basic/advanced circuit and processing unit is, that even the basic circuit is able to make an inserter be able to do proper computer vision - wich is definitely not basic at all.
Maybe, they should rethink the whole electronics stuff and have scanner units (for everything that has to be able to see/recognize objects), control units (for everything that does something apart from beeing switched on or off), navigation units (for everything that autonomously moves over the surface), communication units (for everything that is connectable to a network). Electronics would finally make some sense in the game then.
The different units would all contain some sort of processing board and other parts depending on what the unit does (obviously, you need some sort of sensors for a scanner unit). Care would have to be taken to keep the new intermediate tree simple enough to please the casual Factorio players - not easy, but Wube got harder stuff right in the past.

"Logic" btw is exactly what the actual combinator circuits do.

Circuit networks will surely be renamed before realease anyway. But in terms of computational power, the combinators (that name is fine) are capable of only the most basic 1D vector operations while every inserter has to have computer vision capabilities that are beyond current humanity tech level to possibly do what it is doing in the game.
So they may be doing a tiny bit of logic. But even if we had a combinator that is programmable in a turing complete language and featuring registers, branches and multiple completely seperate wire inputs and outputs - its computational power would still be almost negligible when compared to that of an inserter.

If "circuit" is deemed confusing it could simply be replaced with "chip" - many people already call them that.

Circuit is not confusing at all - it clearly means a composite of interconnected electronic parts (most often soldered together with parts of other circuits onto a printed circuit board wich contains the connections in form of traces and vias on one or multiple layers). the icons seem to show somewhat abstracted and differently colored circuit boards.
Chip means a component wich may be part of one or more circuits.
I most often hear them called green / red / blue circuits. But board would be more exact and shorter so it probably would stick fast.

Which would still be annoyingly confusing to modders, because the internal names are unlikely to change even if the localized ones did.

the whole thread is about what is confucing to players, not modders. Modders in general are able to deal with much more inconveniences than the regular player They even read API documentation.
Internal names are already different for some stuff by the way. And they will definitely always be different for modders who learned the game in any language but English.

[QGamer]

Even the green ones are the only electronics boards used in some stuff like inserters wich obviously does pretty advanced sensor data processing - of the sort that will change the world as soon as we get it in real life. Yellow inserters can reliably pick up any item from a moving sushi belt - no way to do that without a processor of some (highly advanced) sort...

Don't forget that burner inserters can do all of the same things that regular inserters can...but they don't require any circuits of any type.

About the naming of the circuit boards, perhaps simply call them "Basic circuit board", "advanced circuit board," "processing unit." It still retains the sense of tiers, and (hopefully) there's no confusion between the circuit boards and the circuit network.

However, I believe something should be done to help new players who are confused about the difference between the circuit network and the logistic network, although perhaps this would be better addressed in the tutorials than in the names.

One thing: shouldn't nuclear fuel (the one used in trains) be unlocked with the "nuclear fuel reprocessing" technology? It fits better with the fuel theme than it does with Kovarex Enrichment.

[foodfactorio]

hi, the steam networking seemed to work most of the time, unless a friend or my internet was slow. (usually my friend was hosting, and had a low upload speed)

any improvements that can make it easy for steam friends to join, is cool, since as far as i know the game can have a password, so if say 4 of you want to try a game, only those 4 can actually join, rather than anyone from the friends list, jumping in etc unless arranged.

[Therax]

The function seems to be the same as some robots I saw in automobile manufacturing plants.

The technical term is a "manipulator" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_manipulator

But I've always liked the common nickname "Waldo."

[bobingabout]

I'm still against sacrificing visual variety for the sake of consistency. And i doubt it would help much. People are used to different things being named differently.

Like I said, I'm not going to push it, but blue inserters being fast, when with belts, fast is red, and blue is express... this is the one place that stands out to me above all others.

[eradicator]

I'm still against sacrificing visual variety for the sake of consistency. And i doubt it would help much. People are used to different things being named differently.

Like I said, I'm not going to push it, but blue inserters being fast, when with belts, fast is red, and blue is express... this is the one place that stands out to me above all others.

Like i said, i feel completely different on that point. I've never felt confused by the different colors, and infact like how they make things visually different. No offense meant or taken :).
__________
@Oktokolo:
(excuse the lack of quotes, i'll simply answer text only)

Sure, from a realism point inserters are quite advanced. But realism only applies to games in a limited form. Almost every element of factorio (assemblers, robots, etc) are beyond humanities current capabilities. It's a sci-fi game after all. If you want to make a mod to demonstrate a better system for circuits be my guest. But that's a quite major change to the recipe system that requires a lot of typing and - more important - balancing work. So i find it highly unlikely that it would happen in vanilla.

@Turing complete: I thought minecraft was touring complete. Factorio i'm pretty sure it is. Turing completeness doesn't say anything about processing speed. People have rebuilt real CPUs in both games. I see no reason to rename "circuit network", but i haven't seen you suggest a vastly better name yet ;).

@Chip: Well, to update your reality, me and my friends always call them $color chips. "Board" is a word stem rarely used on it's own. I.e. "Advanced Board" doesn't really work, it needs to be "Advanced $Something Board" (outside the colloquial scope where "red board" would be ok). Mind you i know perfectly well what the difference between a board and a chip is. And i wasn't against calling them "$something boards" in the first place, just against making them boring numerical names. Also i don't know if the icons for them are final, many things have gotten a final overhaul to use 3D images instead of 2D sprites (modules, batteries), so it's quite possible that the final image won't be board-shaped...

@Modders: Sure, some things are different in the API. Many are confusing. But there is as of yet no instance of a remnant of renaming that results in the in-game term being completely different from the internal name. Non-English modders do have this problem, yes, but that's hardly a reason to force it on everyone. There's a lot of things to consider when renaming, and this is simply one of them. Not all problems can be solved, but that doesn't mean one should stop pointing to possible problems just because they might not be solved.

[bobingabout]

I'm still against sacrificing visual variety for the sake of consistency. And i doubt it would help much. People are used to different things being named differently.

Like I said, I'm not going to push it, but blue inserters being fast, when with belts, fast is red, and blue is express... this is the one place that stands out to me above all others.

Like i said, i feel completely different on that point. I've never felt confused by the different colors, and infact like how they make things visually different. No offense meant or taken .

No offence meant or taken either. I'm actually suggesting rename the fast inserter, not recolour it.

[eradicator]

I'm still against sacrificing visual variety for the sake of consistency. And i doubt it would help much. People are used to different things being named differently.

Like I said, I'm not going to push it, but blue inserters being fast, when with belts, fast is red, and blue is express... this is the one place that stands out to me above all others.

Like i said, i feel completely different on that point. I've never felt confused by the different colors, and infact like how they make things visually different. No offense meant or taken :).

No offence meant or taken either. I'm actually suggesting rename the fast inserter, not recolour it.

Thinking about it inserters just don't have 3 distinct tiers like other things. They have 4 or 2 depending on how narrow you define them. The wiki has the data. From how i use them in game they feel like 2 tiers to me. First is basic inserter + longserter, second is fastserter + stackserter (and filter variants). The burnerserter is kind of a special thing because in large factories it's used almost soley for power plants. While fast vs stack feels like a side-grade not a straight upgrade especially because stackserters only get to their full potential after quite a few researches. (Sidenote: Also Expressserter doesn't sound quite as nice as Fastserter :p).

The more i think about it the more i'd like to have moddable languages variants, like wikipedia has "Simple English" and minecraft has "Pirate English" :D.

[Zavian]

Well in terms of item transfer rate, the yellow inserter is slower than the red inserter, which is slower than the blue inserter, so in my opinion, they are perfectly consistent with belts.