#Shape Preview

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

cold wedge
#

With really long space belts or space pipes the Shape Preview doesn't show up for a long time.

image.png image.png
sonic fox
#

Iv'e had moments it never shows up at all

#

and cant really understand when it happens

fresh pine
#

thats because its buggy behavior

half turtle
#

yeah I got it on a dispensing belt too

image.png
cunning burrow
#

Hey, yes the predictions went through quite a few iterations but they are far from the level we want to deliver them for 1.0. When they do not show it can be many things and since it can be quite confusing, I want to highlight some points to help understanding better the problem:

  1. The fluid predictions are not yet "predictive" as they require the fluid to be present in the painter to actually compute them. We do not navigate through the pipes to figure out what is supposed to be the paint arriving at the painter. Therefore, if your fluid blob has not yet arrived at the painting station, it won't show any prediction. We already implemented fully support for fluids in the past, but it was not really compatible with the current solution and we had to fallback to a simpler version due to performance concerns (it was really bad!);
  2. In the past, the predictions would need to navigate space belts and pipes to find the sender buildings. That is not the case anymore as we compute and keep updated a graph for the space belt and pipes networks; If you have an use-case that does not depend on fluids and you are using space belts, that might be a bug. In this case, please let me know.
  3. The main complexity with the predictions is not calculating what a building will do, but rather how to efficiently compute the order to navigate the computation graph. It also needs to consider the current placement to predict what will be produced in the future, in case you confirm your current placement. A lot of the requirements and solutions that we have now were not in place when the predictions were first implemented and we are fully aware that they require a rework. We intend to refactor them from the ground up; This should make them work with the fluids and increase their robustness.
  4. Predictions are asynchronously calculated to avoid ruining the gameplay experience when dealing with large factories. We used to have a loading icon. I will take a look why it is not there anymore 😅