I am developing a game called Astral Divide, which has in common with Factorio to have factories and a tech tree.
Until this week, I had a fancy tree visualization similar to the article's content (except that the location of the nodes was hardcoded). I spent quite some time to implement it and get it right, and it was difficult to maintain and update when adding new content.
Also, one feedback that I got from early testers is that this is confusing, and they didn't know how to read it.
I think that the main problem is that in such a graph, it is difficult to know if a branch means "A is an ingredient to make B" or "A is a machine that you can use to make B".
I spent time this week replacing it with a dumb list showing individual recipes in the form of an equation like "A = B + C", and I find it not only easier to understand, but also way cheaper to maintain.
Until this week, I had a fancy tree visualization similar to the article's content (except that the location of the nodes was hardcoded). I spent quite some time to implement it and get it right, and it was difficult to maintain and update when adding new content.
Also, one feedback that I got from early testers is that this is confusing, and they didn't know how to read it.
I think that the main problem is that in such a graph, it is difficult to know if a branch means "A is an ingredient to make B" or "A is a machine that you can use to make B".
I spent time this week replacing it with a dumb list showing individual recipes in the form of an equation like "A = B + C", and I find it not only easier to understand, but also way cheaper to maintain.
You can see the previous version in one of the screenshots (fifth thumbnail): https://store.steampowered.com/app/2597060/Astral_Divide/
And the first draft of the new version: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@sebc/113327870376150885