[MOD 0.12.20] Wrench

[luan]

Description

The Wrench mod is a simple mod that tries to cover a very specific and useful hole in the Lua API: the inexistence of a entity clicked event.
Such an event would allow you to open a totally custom GUI, and make very unique machines (or anything, actually).
With this mod, it exists -- with one drawback: the player has to click the entity with a Wrench item.
Not very fancy, for sure, but as far as I've researched, the desired behavior is simply impossible (currently).
So this seems, to me, to be the best second way. Besides, your mod structure will be ready to replace this custom event with a standard and remove the dependency, once it is added in the API.

The mod also comes with a API to help to design the GUIs.
For now it only contains one element, but it is very helpful: the item slot (a single inventory slot).
More are planned, I just don't know which.

Example

Code: Select all

	-- This custom event is called whenever an entity in the world is clicked with the wrench
	entity_click = remote.call("wrench.events", "entity_click")

	script.on_event(entity_click, function (e)
	  local player = e.player -- the player who clicked
	  local entity = e.entity -- the entity clicked

		-- Check if it is one of your mod's entities
		if (entity.name == "my-modded-chest") then

			-- Add your gui with
			local frame = player.gui.center.add{type="frame", name="wrench", direction="vertical"}
			-- Using the name "wrench" so that it will be closed automatically
			-- You can do anything else if you don't have a gui, of course

			-- Want to add a inventory slot? Easy:
			remote.call("wrench.gui", "add_item_button", frame, id) -- id is just a number to identify your slot within the gui

			-- How does a simple chest look like?
			frame.add{type="label", caption="Awesome Chest", style="caption_label_style"}
			local main = frame.add{type="table", colspan=4}
			for i = 1,12 do
				remote.call("wrench.gui", "add_item_button", main, i)
			end

		end
	end)

Source

Code speaks louder than words, so: https://github.com/luanpotter/factorio-wrench
Or download a zip file: https://github.com/luanpotter/factorio- ... /0.0.3.zip (just save as Wrench_0.0.3.zip and drop into the mods folder)
Versions and changelog can be found there too.

Disclaimer
This mod is still WIP! It works but is limited and has several known bugs I am already working on.
But I'm posting it right now to collect feedback to further development

Also, this only work on 12.20 (and potentially further (as of this writing 12.20 is latest)). Because of the huge renaming of the apis.
Not that there were any limitations previously, so I believe it is easily converted if needed.

How it works

As for now, there are two main parts of the mod: the GUI opening and the inventory slots.

# GUI opening
This is done with a huge workaround, very ugly, but also very clever, functional and in no way detrimental to the user experience, that I copied from the turret-range mod (see Thanks section).
Basically the wrench item places a wrench entity in the world when clicked, that can be placed anywhere and doesn't collide.
That triggers the entity built event, where the entity name is checked and, if matched, the entity is immediately destroyed and given back to the player -- not without the position being recorded and the custom event being fired.

# Inventory Slot
Well, sadly this API isn't exposed either (that I'm aware of). So I figured out a way after a lot of thinking and trial and error.
The image, that I thought would be the easy part turned out to be a big workaround as well, I got the idea from the test-mode mod.
In the data-final-fixes.lua I iterate through every item in game and create for each one a style, that is them accessed by item name.
The item type and count is stored in the Wrench mod global variable, indexed by the entity position and name.
When the entity is destroyed, the records are deleted. When it is mined, the items are added to the player who mined inventory's.
On gui click handler, I check for the player.cursor_stack and make the necessary adjustments.

TODO

These are missing features I plan to add (for now). As I work in my other mods that will use this, and as I gain feedback, we might change the roadmap.

* Add progress bar to indicate health/durability/ammo just like vanilla
* Add more types of custom GUI that would be useful in several scenarios (even if just a wrapper)
* Make some vanilla items in a project for testing and example purposes
* Add some screenshots here
* Make cool mods using this

Bugs

There are bugs I'm pretty sure are solvable and that I'm tackling right now.

* I had to remove the item slot button hover (borders turn white) because they were only triggered when you placed the mouse exactly over the button, but not over the icon and label above it (so in the borders, basically). I'm pretty sure there is no way to trigger the hover in the child element hover, but I will try to find a way to propagate or make unselectable the front elements.
* Blueprints and ammo data are lost when stored in the slots (durability, health, etc from other items already work)

Limitations

These are limitations that, AFAIK, are sadly not possible to circumvent in any way with the current modding API. If anyone know any way to fix these, please, reply to me

* Well, the wrench is **very** inconvenient, but that seems to be the best way to me :/
* The inventory slot is not exactly like the vanilla, specially the number, that seems to be written with a mysterious font and some dark magic border I couldn't reproduce
* Can't shift click -- no idea how to
* Can't distinguish the button of the click, so it is all treated as left click (though the right also triggers the event, so there might be a way to know)
* To close the GUI you have to click on other gui or in any empty spot with the wrench. So ESC, E, other vanilla GUIs, etc, won't close custom GUIs.

License

MIT -- that is, do whatever your heart desires

Thanks

Idea for wrench clicking solution: turrent-range mod (https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=14783)
Idea for the tool to be a Wrench: any Minecraft mod ever (probably started with Buildcraft or Industrialcraft back in the days)
How to add icons to buttons: test-mode mod (https://forums.factorio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=46)
Wrench icon : http://www.flaticon.com/free-icon/black-wrench_61431

[ILMTitan]

I was literally about to start coding this same solution for my Overflow Valve. I will try it out.

[ILMTitan]

I created a pull request. Overflow-Valve has three entities in the same location, so your code was simply rejecting it. The given changes would fix that.

[luan]

That is an interesting request. As I said the in PR, the problem is to know which entity was clicked. So I did this: first, ignored a few useless things in the map (decorative and corpses, though I'm not sure yet if that is wise). After that, I check the amount and if more than one is found, I trigger the event and set the Entities to hold the entire array of entities. So your client code can choose how to handle them
Check this commit: #3ee34f3
If this fixes your problem, I can release a 0.0.4

[ILMTitan]

That does indeed work for my purposes. Thank you.

I needed it because my entity actually has two hidden entities that are just extra flowboxes. I can ignore your event on those other entites and only trigger on the main one. I also don't see a use for your entity tracking with what I am doing.

[Supercheese]

So, is this mod any different from the similarly-named WrenchFu? It looks to me like more than just the names are similar, they both do nearly the same thing.