Lab progress bars are fake , so not being able to set them should be a purely graphical issue. To do something on the same keybind as a built in hotkey, https://wiki.factorio.com/Prototype/CustomInput#linked_game_control can be used. So the "progress" is all in the force research progress...

How about pass-through steam connections on all sides, like on the uranium miner? Of course this simplifies the player's routing puzzle as well since they would no longer need to route a separate pipe through each lab. That is option 1 above. I don't really like it - the pipes stick out exactly whe...

Here is how I managed to automate this in Blender 2.79 for a custom offshore pump (the only entity that will always have a visible reflection) in case anyone else has ever struggled with this. 1. Set up a water reflection plane and put it on a special layer all of its own. It should be about 16 pixe...

Im trying to do a furnace that accepts only rocket fuel, but I cant wrap my head around how to define the fuel-category. I just need help with this, becouse Im really new to this and I dont really know if you can define specific fuel types. Fuel items can only have one category. In vanilla rocket f...

Thought so. I guess there are options. (1) Do nothing and just have four pipes sticking out of every steam lab. (2a) Provide two versions of the lab to the player, horizontal and vertical. (2b) Ditto but hide one from the player and provide a hacky control script method to "fake rotate" by...

What makes an entity rotatable? Crafting machines have support for Animation4Way in their main sprites and they become rotatable if crafting or energy source fluid boxes (a) exist and (b) if there are only crafting fluid boxes then either off_when_no_fluid_recipe is false or a fluid-using recipe is ...

This is not a big deal and might or might not have been fixed already: https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=88263 I'm experimenting with machines that are directly powered by steam and mostly it's smooth sailing. You can get easy and expected results from the standard energy value of...

I'm not asking to change the behaviour of inserters in any way at all. I don't need it to be a dynamic property (by which I understand accessible at runtime). It's purely about the rendering of the stretchy arm segments.

Is one offset sufficient for all 4 directions? Uh ... probably, for my use case. You could assume the platform is just rotating around the Z axis through the same pivot point, in which case, the centre of the platform would be offset by the same amount regardless of direction. But I guess it wouldn...

Following this . It would be very useful to be able to offset the point around which the inserter arm pivots when moving. Something as simple as a shift vector: data:extend {{ name = "fairy-dust-powered-inserter", type = "inserter", pivot_offset = {0,-0.225}, ... }} This would on...

Yeah, it just works better as a two-way underground pipe. Except for the fluid box filter icon being double-overdrawn in alt-mode and the blue pipe connections being visible always in alt-mode, but those are minor things.

Is "placeable-off-grid" an option for your usecase? I don't believe so. The use case is literally a steam powered inserter. The steam powered part works (as well as any fluid-powered entity works). So it needs to be aligned to the grid because it needs to connect to the pipe grid. Unless ...

I'm experimenting with steam-powered inserters on an inline (input-output) pipe. Before I go to the trouble of making sprites, I want to be sure it can work. The "pivot point" of inserter movement seems to be hardcoded to the exact centre of the tile. All the inserter bases are designed so...

So here questions to determine those numbers for any modded entity that can be put into the game; what i understood 3x3 is the possible pipe positions to the entity that can be connected to, so in the assembly machine example the pipe can be connected from three sides(although it's 4 sides in the g...

Sorry, didn't read that before (page scrolled down to the next post automatically)! But if you and Deadlock both suggest simple-entity-with-owner, I think it's a safe road to travel on. :-) But I didn't remember that you also want turrets to target them. I don't know for an absolute fact that they ...

Your fluid boxes are located oddly. There is a limited range of locations they can be with regard to the collision box of the entity they belong to. See viewtopic.php?f=25&t=40659&p=240470#p240470

That's why biters are absolutely furious about Earendel's text plates.

simple-entity-with-owner is the better prototype for "dumb" objects that don't have any strategic combat value.

Brilliant. Thanks very much.

A big shout-out for adding the "fadeout" parameter to working vis as well. That's awesome. Vanilla seems only to be using it for mining drill smoke but it makes effects like additive furnace glows so much better (e.g. intermittent starting and stopping due to a partially blocked belt).

Just another note of appreciation to recognise how much better lit-up things can look at night now that we can use draw_as_light in crafting machine working vis, so you don't have to spam everything with huge coloured lights any more. I found a couple of places in vanilla that would benefit from thi...