Friday Facts #267 - Experiments, Explosives & Extended tags

[Klonan]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-267

[HammerPiano]

I love the interactive tags, so cool!
Can't wait to see what more awesome ideas will be in 0.17
Edit: And the map pings, great for multiplayer

[Gergely]

The pickaxes are really gone...

[yousai]

The pickaxes are really gone...

Now there's an odd empty space above the armor icon... something should be put there!

[mmppolton]

i think the pic ax look great in that spot just regular game you get giving one mod can change it so it wher out and have to replace every one hapen regular game cant pick it up or craft one so new poeple doint get confuse

[nosports]

Nice that we can blow up cliffs in the future...

But i feel the thinking about explosion-range somewhat complicated.

I would have gone this way :

Define a cliff-explosives, fitting a single cliff-tile, so that a robot don't need to ask themself of explosionradius of other robots.......
--> Robot can not handle a explosion-pack, only the singular cliff-explosion.

For the user there could be a cliff-explosives-pack working as for now.
This would mean to produce two steps, first a singular cliff-explosive, then a second to string a pack together or an added recipe with a single cliff-exploisve and an adjusted Stack-size

I would mean this would take out some of the needed CPU-resources (albeit you won't do a very heavy bombing spree)

[Engimage]

My god the game is getting so much coolness!
Rich text is just blowing up my pants
With on-hover tooltips on both entities and rich text Factorio starts looking so mature!
Well done guys!

[psihius]

Can linking multiplayer servers be added, so you could go to the linked server directly if you wish? Would be awesome for Clustorio

[Intervencion]

These all look really really good, I specially like the optional Entity Info settings and the rich tags / interactive text
I think, however, that map pings could be even beyond. It's cool to have a ping/tag on chat, but would be really cool to be able to say shift+click on the minimap to generate an instant ping, without chat interaction (Like some Multiplayer games do. To say some, League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm, and World of Warcraft).

Thank for your constant work!

[wlfbck]

Two years ago, I was under the impression, that we need to eradicate all the weird options, to make the game just work for everyone. Over time and after all experience and feedback we have gathered, I started to realize that different people have different expectations, and their brains are wired differently. Some option might be useless for 99% or players, but for the 1% of players, it might be the most annoying thing to be able to customize it.

Sorry for the rant but: Can you please tell that to Bethesda with their wonky ass console-style menus all of whom have a delay of what feels like minutes on each transition? It's so god awful it's not even funny.

Anyway, thanks for not being like that and being awesome instead.

[Darinth]

I'm mildly mesmerized by the cliff explosives demo. Were there just not enough robots to do it all in one wave? I noticed that 2 cliffs survived the initial wave and had to be sent back out separately.

[zOldBulldog]

I am very glad that acknowledging that different people have their brains wired differently is now a thing. It will make a huge difference to the player base. The solution of letting people choose how things work via options is great. I hope that insight will be applied to many other parts of the game.

As for cliff explosives, nice work. But please keep in mind that the biggest problem with cliffs in 0.16 is it's shape and distribution, plus the fact that the recipe requires things that aren't available early, not how to blow them up. Unless they are relatively linear and can function as true barriers against biters then they are just an annoyance that most people will simply turn off (or worse... grow to hate, if they don't realize they can turn them off).

[torham]

Thank you for not making the tool tip jump into the middle of the screen. That would annoy the hell out of me. I very much dislike any UI near the center of the screen.

[Jasonlebt]

Could you maybe add an option to not show the minimap while looking at a tooltip? If your screen resulution is rather low the full tooltip often doesn't fit together with the minimap. It becoms especially annoying when working with circurt networks.

Also is it necessary to show the accepted equipment for the power amor?

[Pinga]

The shift-clicking and map location features are amazing, and much needed for online play.

But I'm afraid we also need an actual chat UI, and a few fatures. Like, player list, scrollable chat, send individual whispers, setable background opacity, etc. I know, not super duper high priority, but these are very missed in multiplayer and should be the plan to have one day.

[Rhamphoryncus]

I really hope the "3 inserters" comment refers to a future FFF of the upcoming version, not just a dead thought that won't be seen for a long time..

[H8UL]

Love the new chat interactions, and can think of occasions for each one where they would have been useful

The shift-clicking and map location features are amazing, and much needed for online play.

But I'm afraid we also need an actual chat UI, and a few fatures. Like, player list, scrollable chat, send individual whispers, setable background opacity, etc. I know, not super duper high priority, but these are very missed in multiplayer and should be the plan to have one day.

Those would be excellent too!

[Mike5000]

Two years ago, I was under the impression, that we need to eradicate all the weird options, to make the game just work for everyone. Over time and after all experience and feedback we have gathered, I started to realize that different people have different expectations, and their brains are wired differently.

Well done. Now can you please revert FFF 266?

[dekeonus]

I'm glad you opted to let the player decide where (and when? is that delay configurable) the entity info is shown. I, for one, would prefer to have the info out of my main view port.

Now that the pick-axes are gone we have an odd looking gap on the toolbar. If you don't have anything planned for the spot at the moment; Can I suggest a power switch for the armour sitting in the slot below.

[FactorioParadox]

For the entity tooltips, I think that info should be shown when you open the menu for the entity. I mean, in the second or two that we wait for the information to pop up, we could have opened the menu.