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Factorio Access Unique Features
Some features of the Factorio Access mod are unique to it. In general, the mod design aims to keep the experience as vanilla as possible and so these unique features are meant to be alternatives to the vanilla features that depend on vision. All such unique features are or will be listed and explained on this page. Note that some of these features have custom sounds and visualizations of their own so that they can be identified more easily.
Factorio Access has its own launcher that uses a text-based multiple choice menu system. The launcher menu supports game configuration, map setup, savegame loading, and multiplayer setup. It is smoother to use than the main menu of the game, even with full OCR support, because the vanilla game menus rely on some none-button features such as sliders and text fields. The launcher is also how the game connects with the system vocalizer. Read more about the launcher in its own page here.
Some of the game configuration settings need to be overwritten for the mod to work successfully. This mainly includes keyboard changes, as described below. Other changes include settings related to updating the game and the mods list, and these settings are not accessible to the mod's players. In addition, the mod turns down the game's graphics settings to enhance the performance, but this can be safely reverted from graphical menus for users who prefer higher graphics settings.
Many keyboard shortcuts for opening graphical menus need to be disabled by the mod so that the keys can be used for mod features. However, the graphical menus opened by these shortcuts can still be opened using graphical buttons on screen. The mod also uses the keyboard for game inputs that normally depend on the mouse, which can thus be ignored almost entirely.
As of version 0.7.0, the mod has its own tutorial system. The tutorial gradually introduces the game from the mod's context, explaining mod features and game features in an ordered set of steps. The steps are divided into chapters for easy navigation, and the tutorial covers the first few hours of the game up until automating the first science pack's production. Uniquely, the mod tutorial gives the player some salvaged rocket fuel at the start of the game to explain building interactions before moving onto locating and mining coal. This also makes up for lost time by keeping buildings refueled while other controls are being introduced.
The mod tutorial also includes tips and tricks sections, similar to the same feature being provided visually by the game.
The mod releases include some demo maps, where already built factory areas can be found and explored in detail. The demo maps are important for understanding machines in action and in correct configurations. This is similar to how official tutorial levels include some partially destroyed factory areas. In addition, this is an alternative to exchanging screenshots to explain basic designs.
Vanilla Factorio is very extensively localized and the mod uses the localized names of objects when it can. However, apart from the launcher and some basic interactions, the mod is only partially open to localization. This is being improved gradually, and the actual translations of mod content are being worked on by volunteers in the community.
Pressing the "Y" key when examining an item in the character menu reads a short description of it. This feature is thanks to the team writing and integrating the short descriptions for every item. The feature is meant to provide the kind of information that is normally obtained through visual observation of the item and its behavior.
In vanilla, you cannot walk over pipes and you need to navigate around them or move parts of them underground. Since you tend to need a lot of pipes, some popular Factorio mods include making pipes walkable. We believe that this mod would greatly benefit from it too. Meanwhile, walking past one-tile electric poles is already easy in smooth walking mode, and so we wanted to make it easy to do in every walking mode, and so we removed the already-small collision boxes for them.
This mode exists for players who want to use the mod to play multiplayer with friends, but also want to keep the Vanilla Factorio experience. Several mod features are disabled, such as the narrator and the mod cursor.
The coordinate grid in Factorio is usually not explained to the player, who instead has a visual map of the world. Factorio Access uses the coordinates extensively, for giving the absolute or relative positions of objects. The origin point of the coordinate grid is the spot by the spaceship crash site where you begin the game.
One of the walking modes in the mod is telestep mode, where tapping a direction key moves the character precisely one tile in the selected direction. This keeps the character and the cursor aligned to the grid. In addition, in this mode the terrain type of an empty tile being checked is read out. This mode is an alternative to the default walking setting of smooth walking, which is also available in the mod.
The scanner tool is a unique device that scans entities around the player and reads them out in a navigable audio list. The scanner list can be sorted by entity category and it normally lists entities according to their distance from the player character.
The scanner feature is an alternative to viewing surrounding areas by zooming out or using the visual map. Note that selecting an entity with the scanner does not center the camera view onto it but instead the entity is visually highlighted and the virtual cursor is moved over to it.
The scanner tool requires distant chunks to be charted for it to be able to scan them. This can be achieved by walking to explore or by using radars. We have added a stronger radar known as the "access radar" that reveals less of the nearby areas but is much faster at charting distant areas and has a larger charting radius.
This feature make players not get moved by belts by default instead of doing it using special in game equipment. It is needed because the mod relies on the player location being constant for some of its features. Also, this feature prevents the unnecessary confusion related to being moved by a belt that you did not notice.
The mod gives sound cues when a running player is laterally shifted or gets stuck due to running into an entity. This information helps a lot with smooth walking around, and is already available visually.
This tool offers another way to jump the cursor between neighboring entities based on how they are positioned with respect to each other.
The player is able to teleport to the cursor's location, which might be a couple tiles away, or at a scanned object far away. In addition, the player has access to a fast travel menu where they can set and name any number of points in the world that they can teleport to. Teleportation includes a sound effect and a basic animation of jumping through portals in the ground.
Teleportation is the alternative to visually checking your path or map in order to run between locations. This is especially important in a crowded factory, when you are unable to squeeze between machines when playing in Telestep walking mode. Teleporting also has some game-changing advantages such as jumping over barriers and lakes. A player who does not want to overly rely on teleporting can place their own restrictions. They can for example choose to use only the fast travel system, or avoid teleporting in combat.
The fast travel menu also has the benefit of saving locations of interest to visit again later, which is an alternative to the vanilla game's map pins feature.
The mod uses its own cursor for every mouse-based action including entity selection in the world and creating building previews. The mouse pointer is locked by the mod to follow the mod cursor so that it displays building previews correctly. This arrangement allows selecting entities correctly, even when the selected location is not on the screen. If desired, the mouse pointer can be unlocked and used for selection either in Vanilla Mode or temporarily by middle clicking the mouse.
When the mod cursor is not on screen, the mouse pointer is brought to the center of the screen. Therefore some late game features still require correct cursor adjustment for them to be used remotely, but this will be worked on later.
In the mod, a building can either be dropped directly in front of the character, or it can be precisely placed using the mod cursor. When the building is held by the mod cursor, it is always held by its top left corner. The vanilla game holds buildings from the center, and so we force the mouse pointer to offset itself to correctly follow the mod cursor.
Cursor rotation behavior cannot be directly read by the mod. Therefore the mod predicts the rotation behavior and acts accordingly. The mod is always consistent with the building rotation information that it reads out, but it can sometimes lose synchronization with the mouse pointer previews. This can be restored by using the pipette tool, which guarantees synchronization.
When a previewed building is going to be placed, the mod automatically clears obstacles in the build preview area for you. The obstacles include trees, rocks, items on the ground, and remnants, but not built structures or structures that need to be removed using special tools. This clearing feature is used a little more aggressively when building rail structures because of their complex shapes.
The mod offers the option to nudge placed buildings by 1 tile to the side, if the new spot is a valid building location. This is essentially the same as rapidly picking them up and putting them down one tile to the side.
In this mode, items are placed down behind the player as they walk or as they move the cursor. This is the alternative to building by dragging the cursor using the mouse. The building previews are adjusted to match this.
When you press SHIFT + X on an empty tile, this feature lets you instantly mine up obstacles like trees, rocks, and ground items within a 5 tile radius. It also clears away tree stumps and scorch marks. Hunting down the precise locations of these objects is time consuming without visual assistance and so this feature provides a shortcut for that.
In vanilla mode you are able to rapidly pick up buildings using the mouse cursor when you hold down the mining button. This feature follows the same logic by having the player instantly pickup any buildings touched by the cursor while they have the instant mining (cut-paste) tool in hand.
The mod allows building underground belt chutes without having to rotate the cursor. This clarifies the building process significantly because normally visual observation is used to build these structures easily.
In the mod, when you try to place an offshore pump near water, the game automatically find and lists valid locations, starting from those nearest to you. Upon selecting an option, the pump is automatically placed. This feature is an alternative to to the visual overlay that shows which pump placements are valid.
Most if not all menus created for the mod draw an icon both on the player's graphical interface and above the player's character on the map. This is for easy visual following of the mod-specific menus being used.
The inventory screen is structured the same in both Vanilla and Access, but in the mod its slots are navigated using arrow keys instead of the mouse. The same applies for interacting with slots of building inventories.
The mod switches from the inventory to the crafting menu when you press TAB while the graphical interface for both menus are always shown side by side. Players of the mod can cycle through the crafting recipe lists and the tabs of the audio menu using the keyboard. The selections made are not reflected by the graphical menu (it is not supported by the API). The situation is similar for the crafting queue.
The technology menu is also accessed from the character menu, although the graphical interface for the vanilla tech tree is not shown. Therefore a player may be browsing technologies while the screen shows only the character inventory. The current technology menu in the mod simply lists which technologies are available, locked, or completed. For each technology in the three lists, information such as the cost, the prerequisite technologies, and the description can be learned. Players can check ongoing research progress at any time by pressing "T". Meanwhile, the visual technology tree can be accessed and navigated using the graphical buttons as usual.
Currently, chests in the mod have inventory row lengths of 8 so that they can be navigated easily, due to having capacities that are multiples of 8. This does not match with the vanilla chest GUI inventory rows that have a length of 10.
The warnings menu opens when you press "P". The menu allows navigating between buildings that are giving warnings using a list like the scanner results list. Many of the warnings match the warnings made by the game using flashing visual icons.
The mod includes tools that point to the nearest electric pole for you. These features work as the alternative to visually searching for nearby electric poles. The mod also reads electric network data from electric poles. This data is normally given in a graphical menu that opens when you click on an electric pole.
This tool allows reading the contents of an entire transport belt by interfacing with a single tile of it. It is able to read what items are on a transport belt's lanes, both upstream and downstream from the selected location. This feature is an alternative to visually observing the transport belt contents.
In the mod, logistic requests are managed via keyboard shortcuts per item rather than a character menu with an item selector, but we plan to add that too later on. In addition, logistic networks can be named so that they can be distinguished easily.
The train menu of the mod gives information about the structure and contents and schedule of a train. In vanilla, this information can be obtained from visual observation and sidebar menus and the graphical train menu. Similarly, the train menu allows examining and editing train schedules like in the vanilla menu.
The mod currently allows you to build a basic train schedule in one click. It makes the train add all reachable train stations to its schedule with a predetermined waiting time. This is a simplified alternative to building complex train schedules with the vanilla graphical menu.
In vanilla mode, you can rename train stops from the graphical menu. The mod menu for them allows this tool.
In addition, the mod has advanced train schedule building features to the train stop menu. This is instead of the train schedule building options in the vanilla train menu. The idea is that you reach a train stop with a train and then at the stop you set its wait conditions.
This feature reads the next entity ahead along a rail. It is a simple alternative to visually observing what is ahead on the rail. The tool also gives precise distance information so that trains can be manually aligned with stations.
The vanilla rail planner tool is mouse-based and not accessible via scripts. Therefore the mod has its own rail building tools. You can place vertical or horizontal rail pieces freely, and then there are building menus to add curved rails, rail signals, train stops, rail forks, and the like. There is also the rail appender tool to simply extend forward an end rail.
In the mod, pairs of rail chain signals can be placed on straight rails. Signal blocks can be designed accordingly. Single units of chain signals or any number of regular rail signals cannot be placed freely. This means that one-way rails cannot be set freely, but the systems designed in the mod have a minimal likelihood for deadlocks. This is desirable because sorting through deadlocks requires visual problem solving and we do not yet have tools that would be alternatives to this.
Meanwhile, we have recently added rail bypasses as structures that can be built. The bypasses include one-way regular rail signals, and so the benefits of one-way rails can be accessed in a limited but deadlock-free manner.
The mod allows you to name every train so that you can easily tell them apart. This is the alternative to changing the color of a train in vanilla gameplay. It works by renaming every locomotive of a train to save the train name.
When you stand on or by a rail tile, this feature gives audio cues when trains are moving around you, towards you, or towards the rail near you. The audio alerts let you know that you should get off the rails. They work as an alternative to checking the map or observing the surroundings in order to see if a rail is safe for crossing.
The mod makes trains honk when you are manually driving towards a closed rail signal or when you are on a train that has other trains in its rail signal block. This serves as audio warning about possible train collisions, as an alternative to visual observation of trains and signals.
The mod release packages now include the mod Stop on Red by DaveMcW. The mod makes manually driven trains brake when approaching closed rail signals. This serves as a safety feature, as an alternative to visual observation of signals.
Depending on how close a player is to the nearest enemy, an alert sound plays. This is an alternative to visually tracking enemies.
Some guns in the game automatically aim at enemies for you. Others allowed only shooting freely at the cursor. We have added automatic aiming assistance for all guns, and we added a sound cue to indicate when the aim has locked.
These audio alerts read out damaged or destroyed building locations, as an alternative to the visually drawn arrows and icons used to show damaged or destroyed buildings in the vanilla game.
This is an optional feature that allows rapidly reaching alert locations. It is an alternative to running straight to a location shown by visual maps.
This tool allows repairing all damaged structures within a certain radius in one action. It is an alternative to walking around and individually checking every structure for whether it needs repairs. Repair packs are consumed as usual, except for tiny repairs being made for free.