Redo functionality

[Nikee]

+1

I’ve found myself pressing control z once too many times and not having any idea what I just did, only to find a missing belt a few hours later.

Some hint to cancel undo actions: switch to map view, press shift and select with deconstruction planner all of your base. That will cancel planned deconstruction.

[evg-zhabotinsky]

My reasons to want a "Redo" option:
1. I often habitually try to undo text edits, which results in in-world undo.
2. More rarely I try to undo other things in UIs, to the same effect.
3. Some edits are not recorded for undo, e.g. entity config changes, manually edited wires, and usually rotations. But I automatically try and undo the wrong thing.
4. To undo the "Undo" if it does something I didn't expect. And to just try instead of having to guess in advance what it would undo.
5. Just plain convenience, I change my mind sometimes.

Problem 1 is better fixed at the text field level.
Problem 2 is harder to properly fix, because many UI components (All except text fields?) lack the ability to get input focus. Even just blocking in-world undo would require implementing window focus and treating world as one of the windows.
Problem 3 is better fixed by recording everything for undo, but I suspect that is highly problematic.
Problem 4 of having to remember or guess can have other solutions than implementing "Redo", but just trying is by far the most intuitive and convenient.
And the 5th point is just a nice bonus to rendering all above be "non-problems" by implementing "Redo".

As to "how", can't the "Undo" be treated as any other edit but with its own separate "Undo history"? I can't be sure what the code looks like, but I suspect it is possible to basically instantiate most of the "undo" functionality once more without much new code.

[eradicator]

2. More rarely I try to undo other things in UIs, to the same effect.
3. Some edits are not recorded for undo, e.g. entity config changes, manually edited wires, and usually rotations. But I automatically try and undo the wrong thing.
4. To undo the "Undo" if it does something I didn't expect. And to just try instead of having to guess in advance what it would undo.

Yea. Things that aren't even recorded for undo are the worst. Fiddle with combinators / recipes / modules -> make an error, press undo -> undid something at the other end of the map that I changed half an hour ago and have long forgotten >_>.

[Sachertorte]

Ctrl+Z undoes. Sometimes I'll instinctively press Ctrl+Shift+Z to redo, which obviously doesn't exist in the game. However, Factorio interprets Ctrl+Shift+Z as a superset of Ctrl+Z and undoes again, which was the opposite of my intent and may lead to me accidentally undoing lots of things. I'd love for Ctrl+Shift+Z to do nothing instead.

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into older thread with similar suggestion.

[mrvn]

Well, I didn’t explain it deep enough. I thought you will find it yourself after that hint.
It’s complicated, because other players can also undo/redo.

So let’s say two players. Both are building a big power plant. Player A undoes (is that a verb?) something. Player B puts something at the same location A has undone. Now A redoes it. What should happen? Just deny to “overwrite” it seems a bit too simple for me...

Now think that for more players and with blueprints and with many levels of undo/redo. It gets really confusing.

I think only admin should be allowed to undo/redo anything from another player and that should be an admin tool and not the standard keybinding.

If two players build in the same area then expect problems with undo/redo. There simply isn't a good way to decide when it's ok to undo/redo another players work.

That said undo/redo should still handle the case of player A placing a ghost, player B builds the ghost (personally or via bot), player A undos. So don't block an undo just because the last user of something is another player. I would say just try to undo and if something is blocking that then beep so the player has feedback that undo failed.


Also +1 of giving some visual feedback of where an undo happened. An icon on the (mini) map would be nice. An arrow pointing to it at the edge of the screen if it's off screen would be good too. An alert icon next to the toolbar would be great too. If you think you hit undo too often you can just click the alert icon and the view jumps to where the undo happened.

And then you would need a redo to undo the bad undo.

I think the two suggestions would go hand in hand really well.

[Shadow_Man]

+1
Add redo functionality with Ctrl+Shift+Z default hotkey.

[FuryoftheStars]

Redo would be nice to have.

That said, as for the default hotkey being ctrl+shift+z, the default hotkey in 99% of programs I’ve used with an undo/redo use ctrl+y as redo. I’d rather that be the default key as it’s already engrained.

[mikehendi]

TL;DR

Add "redo" (CTRL+Y) to "un-undo" accidental CTRL+Z presses.

What ?

I love that the CTRL+Z hotkey was added to the copy/paste/cut arsenal a long while ago. However, not ALL operations can be undone with CTRL+Z, things like cable wiring, belt/inserter rotating, etc. However, as CTRL+Z is ingrained in the brain to undo the last change, sometimes it is accidentally pressed attempting to undo thes anyway, and after hearing the Undo sound, you experience the o-no-second... When the undo DIDN'T quite undo what you'd expect... Staring at the screen in horror, as you have NO idea what you just accidentally broke in your massive base... But you know one thing: Somewhere somehow a single belt is now missing, or a single underground pipe is now missing, or a single inserter is no longer there to feed an assembler... The bigger your factory is, the longer it will take to find the accident site (if at all), and the more "accurate" your builds are, the bigger the impact can be...

Hopefully you saved somehwere in the last 15 minutes, because reloading might be easier than tracking down the undo...

Why ?

It would be great if after an accidental CTRL+Z press, you could simply press CTRL+Y to fix whatever you accidentally just "undid", it would save a certain type of player lots of time scouring around the base in horror!

[mikehendi]

Sorry if this has been posted before, given the functional characters in the search command, I couldn't figure out how to search correctly (searching "CTRL+Y" returns every post containign just "CTRL", which are many)

[ickputzdirwech]

[Ick] Merged into older thread with same suggestion.

[Qon]

[Ick] Merged into older thread with same suggestion.

Move to implemented for 2.0, please?
Confirmation: