Quickbars

[peak sinew]

I think a great feature, taken from Factorio, is their quickbar system. Factorio is similar in some ways to Turing Complete, and so I think taking ideas from Factorio is a great idea. Especially considering Factorio has been around for a while and many people are already used to it. That's why I think adding quickbars, or something similar would be a good idea. (it doesn't have to be full feature parity)

I'll start by describing the feature as it exists in factorio. In factorio you have up to 4 on screen "quickbars". There are always 10 quickbars, they just aren't on screen at the moment. You can drag items to the quickbar, and the keys 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0 select the items in the top-most quickbar. To add an item to the quickbar, you just drag it and it creates a copy of it there, or clicking an empty slot opens the item selector menu.

Left click and right click are consistent with what would normally happen if the item wasn't in the quickbar, and middle-clicking on it will remove it from the quickbar.

Pressing X will "rotate" the quickbars. Meaning, in the image with the rocket, pressing X will move quickbar 1 to the bottom and move the other ones up by one. This doesn't rotate in quickbar number 5 though, it only rotates the 4 that are already on screen.

Clicking on the number on the left of each quickbar allows you to swap it out with another one. This opens the menu from the other image (without the rocket). You can also change the top-most ("selected") quickbar with another one by using SHIFT+(1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|0) This chooses quickbar 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0 respectively to replace the top-most quickbar. So in the image with the rocket, pressing SHIFT+2 will replace the topmost quickbar (#1) into quickbar #2. This also means there will be 2 copies of quickbar 2.

So now that you understand quickbars in factorio, how do I suggest they work in Turing Complete?
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I think they should work generally the same, keeping in mind the differences between factorio and Turing Complete. Many quickbars, and being able to rotate them and interchange them arbitrarily. However I think wires (in addition to components) should be on the quickbar. So if you wanted use red and blue a lot together, put them on the quickbar and press 1 and 2 to change between them. No clicking needed. (clicking sucks, btw.)

To add a component to a quickbar, drag it from the other menu. Middle click to remove, click to put in cursor. Press 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0 to select the top-most, etc. etc. mostly the same as Factorio. This will allow people to edit and add things without clicking so much to other areas of the screen. It makes it feel a lot more productive. (at least I think it will).

[merry viper]

Isn't this already handled by having pinnable menus on the side?

[peak sinew]

I haven't heard of that, is that a thing already?

[merry viper]

Yes. When you hover over a category, just click it and it will stay open

[peak sinew]

well not really, this involves keyboard shortcuts

and allows you to organize them seperately from how they are already in the menus

[merry viper]

Yes, but I don't see how those are better than what we have

Plus, the number keys are used for selecting color already

[peak sinew]

maybe there can be a default hotbar full of colours, read the post :)

[merry viper]

I did read the post

[peak sinew]

Oh I thought you didn't because you typed so quickly after posting

I can't read that fast

I think this is better

[merry viper]

I'm a relatively quick reader 🙂

[peak sinew]

I'm not :P