[MOD 0.12.x] Nixie Tubes - numeric display elements

[Anson]

I'm not gonna go point-by-point again with quotes, ...

yes, that's also why i kept the long part hidden in a spoiler :-)

but you'll find some of the stuff I said I wasn't gonna do is actually done now in the latest release! Most notably, color is supported on everything but small tubes (where I don't have the right sprites to do it)! :)

you program changes a lot faster than i can keep up downloading them and testing them :-) (for several different interesting mods)

btw: nixie-tubes_0.2.7 is released :-)

in addition, I encountered another problem in the ingame mod portal (still using factorio 0.13.13) and probably have to fix that problem first, then update the game, update all mods, check that problem again and write a bug report, check changes in several mods and test them, and when done with all that, there probably are again some new versions of factorio and your mod again :-)

in the ingame mod portal (still using 0.13.13), I didn't want to update all mods, and the mod list has no option for update when selecting one mod. thus i simply clicked the install button. result: when i went back from the mod portal and factorio restarted itself, factorio returned an error that there is a duplicate mod for nixie tubes and then terminated. now i have to search for the mods folder in explorer and delete one of the nixie folders manually before i can start factorio again since factorio has another problem too: you can't fix bad mods (disable duplicates, update bad old versions, etc) ingame when factorio won't start because of those problems.
this also can happen easily when i don't remember that i have installed a mod (there is no indication in the ingame mod portal whether some mod is already installed and whether it is enabled or not) and thus accidentally try installing it again. in case it is the same version, i immediately get a message, but if the mod was updated, nothing happens until i get the "duplicate mod" error on restart.
temporary fix to avoid this: update all mods first before downloading new ones.

also, 0.13.14 and 0.13.15 seem to have fixed two related bugs:
- the mod portal didn't check or update all mods when you had too many mods.
- network state was not properly reset when some items were deleted from a circuit network, which caused increased (duplicate, sometimes even multiplied) contents of circuit networks to be shown on signals, causing some havoc to filling chests with smart inserters, and also displaying incorrect numbers on nixie tubes.

The options are because the entity you're interacting with is actually just a lamp ...
... but a wired roboport seems a sufficient workaround for now.

it would be nice to have such a hint in a prominent location, eg the first post "known issue: logical network options are shown but don't have any functionality since nixie tubes are based on lamps and factorio automatically displays these options, even when not needed and/or not used. To get that functionality, you can wireconnect a roboport" (and yes, i think too that that workaround is more than good enough. i would even call it a solution or recommended method, if only it would be documented :-)

with a few more options and abilities, there immediately are new ideas for even more options and abilities :-)

this refers to a saying we have, literally translated to "give someone a finger and he'll immediately take the whole hand" :-)

- I love this idea! ... output the divided-off prefix and the letter suffix.
- Also, I like using constant combinators to make signs next to things when I need to label something
- Maybe now that numbers can be colored, color code by the number scale also!

- I'll see what we got when I'm done updating everything tomorrow or the day after ... LOL
- hehe, i made up some nice text on alphatubes, and when i looked at the result, all the text was doubled, once on the nixies and once on the constant combinators, thus no longer needing the alpha nixies in that case. LOL :-)

- i would prefer colorcoding numbers myself, using the colors to indicate number ranges like too small, warning, too high, etc. to make it easier, we might get "integrated circuits": items like combinators that get some input values via signals and deliver some outputs, replacing a full set of a dozen or more combinators with complicated wiring that appear over and over again for each number that i want to display.

example 1: a combinator that gets an input signal on X, two or more thresholds on ABC..., any colorcodes (values 0 for uncolored and 1-6 for red to cyan) on 0123..., and then outputs the proper color signals to drive a lamp or nixie (one color set to 1, all others to 0) depending on the thresholds, eg colorcode from signal 0 if x<A, colorcode from 1 if A<=X<B, from 2 if B<=X<C, etc. then a single constant combinator connected to this circuit combinator on one wire could apply many thresholds to a number that is given on another wire connection.

example 2: a special arithmetic combinator which gets an input value by setting it as some condition (like nixies get it), and outputs eg the number of digits minus one to 0 (that equals the exponent when writing the number left adjusted with only one digit before a decimal), first n digits on signal n (for X=197235, output would be 5 to signal 0, 1 to 1, 19 to 2, 197 to 3, etc) and/or X/1000 to A, X/1000000 to B, etc, and/or the "best" value of those computed A,B,C values on signal X together with the exponent 3,6,9 on Y and the letter KMGT on Z. then again, users could easily connect only one such special circuit combinator between their circuit and a nixie and display whatever layout they want for the number, and with no need to do all those calculations on each and every nixie tube.

and here is a fake picture how such a simple display might be built. the chest at the right side stands for the output of any circuit network, the constant combinator above defines the thresholds for colors (warning levels, eg signal 3: 4=yellow for 900k-1M, and signal 4: 1=red for copper > 1M), and the two combinators are one each like described in example 1 and example 2, resulting in possible displays like on the left without any fixed layout by the mod, but fully configurable by those three combinators only.

fake example for IC (integrated circuit) combinators

circuitcombinators.PNG (303.17 KiB) Viewed 10206 times

[Peter34]

My MP group had a weird problem, yesterday.

We first played 4 hours Sunday, with a mod pack composed by me, containing about 50 different mods, including Nixie Tubes. No problems with the mods.

Then today, I sent the others an updated version of the mod pack ZIP, because some of the mods had been updated to newer versions. And this time around, one of the players couldn't launch Factorio. He kept getting an error msg about Nixie Tubes.

We tried a lot of things. We assumed (with some reason) that the mod pack transfer had been incomplete and there were files missing or partial files. Eventually we dropped that line of inquiry.

Finally we got things to work by every one of us either deleting the Nixie Tubes mod from the /mods folder or toggling it to OFF. Then this player was able to launch the game, and we could all play, and played for 2 hours without problems.

That player is running Windows 10, whereas we other 3 are still on Windows 7, and one of the other players thought that that might be the cause of the problem.

As far as I can see, we used the same version of Nixie Tubes both times, 2.7, and all four of us played both Sunday and again yesterday, so it's very strange. And I'm a bit unhappy at the thought that we won't be able to use one of my favourite mods.

[Nexela]

He kept getting an error msg about Nixie Tubes.

The million dollar question is... What was the error message?

[Peter34]

He kept getting an error msg about Nixie Tubes.

The million dollar question is... What was the error message?

I've found the cause of the problem:
It was something to do with locale files, in the locale/da folder, which is consistent with that player using the Danish language interface, whereas I and the other 2 used the English one. I was able to reproduce the error by re-enabling the Nixie Tubes mod, switching from English to Danish, and then restarting the game.

But I'm not sure it's good for that kind of error to happen. Isn't Factorio supposed to default to English, if the locale files if a mod are incomplete or erroneous?

Also, I'm confused about why the error only occured when we played yesterday, and not the first time we played 3 days ago. I haven't heard back from that player, but it's possible he was using English on Sunday.

[justarandomgeek]

He kept getting an error msg about Nixie Tubes.

The million dollar question is... What was the error message?

I've found the cause of the problem:
It was something to do with locale files, in the locale/da folder, which is consistent with that player using the Danish language interface, whereas I and the other 2 used the English one. I was able to reproduce the error by re-enabling the Nixie Tubes mod, switching from English to Danish, and then restarting the game.

But I'm not sure it's good for that kind of error to happen. Isn't Factorio supposed to default to English, if the locale files if a mod are incomplete or erroneous?

Also, I'm confused about why the error only occured when we played yesterday, and not the first time we played 3 days ago. I haven't heard back from that player, but it's possible he was using English on Sunday.

It's probably missing translations for something I added recently, because I only speak English Feel free to review the language files on github and submit a pullreq with correct translations!

[Murdersquish]

Howdy. What's a way to get leading zeros? I have a display that outputs MM SS, composed of two sets of two numeric nixie tubes. It works great save for one niggle. When the SS < 10, there's no leading zero and it looks funny. For the MM, the lack of a leading zero is fine (and preferred).

If I'm missing the obvious solution, my apologies. If not, would you be willing to add logic that if for left-most connected numerics had a signal to it, then it would display leading zeroes?

[Murdersquish]

Feature Request: Alpha Nixie input for ASCII value

For instance, the BLACK signal is reserved for ASCII values. If I use a constant combinator to output BLACK=58, the the alpha nixie would display a colon (":").

[Mengmoshu]

Just a thought inspired by the ASCII idea, if Nixie Tubes are going to have special responses to particular virtual signals, then it might be a good idea to add custom virtual signals specifically for those options.

[justarandomgeek]

Again - Feature requests and bugreports to github, please.

I thought about doing ASCII or similar character codes, but decided against it because there's already an obvious way in the vanilla signal system to represent characters. Besides, you can't put a whole 31 character string in a single constant combinator with ASCII codes, you can with signal coding

That said, I'm open to more symbols and proper signals defined for symbols, but I don't graphics.

I have to think about leading 0s a bit more (because negative numbers), but it will probably happen.

[Nexela]

but I don't graphics.

This! I can't even get a straight line when using a straight line tool!

[Anson]

Howdy. What's a way to get leading zeros?
I have a display that outputs MM SS, composed of two sets of two numeric nixie tubes.

if a number is too large to fit in the display, the leftmost digits are simply cut off.
thus you can just add 100 (or any other number ending in 00) to the seconds and will see leading zeroes on the display.
of course, this only works when you don't have negative seconds :-)
to add the 100, you can either use arithmetic combinators and do calculations,
or simply add another wire which gets 100 on the proper signal from a constant combinator.

for some such time display, i just used two small number nixies to display one 4-digit number MMSS, connecting the MM signal to an arithmetic combinator (to multiply by 100, and eventually changing the output signal so that it can easily be added with the SS signal by simply connecting the computed signal and the real SS signal to the nixies). then I connected one wire from that combinator's output to the rightmost nixie, and one differently colored wire from the source which gave the SS signal. result was a 4-digit display that counted from 0 to 59 (no leading zeroes, not even one zero for the minutes), then 1 00 to 1 59, 2 00 to 2 59, etc.
the grouping to 2x 2-digits by the small number nixies was a welcome side effect :-) and that principle can easily be extended to a display of realtime HHMMSSTT (see blueprint below, using only vanilla and nixies), or to a display of ingame time DDDDHHMM (by connecting a clock combinator)

and here is a blueprint for a 24-hour clock, consisting of 4 counters (for H, M, S and Ticks),
with the two display methods as described above :

Code: Select all

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[impetus maximus]

first... thank you for this wonderful mod. always loved nixie tubes, and valves for sound.
anyway, wanted to report something. i had a blue biter blocked by a large nixie tube.
it didn't attack it and it just sat there till i killed it. 0.13.17(18?)
this happened yesterday. should have screen capped it or something.

thanks again.

[Jelgadis]

I got this error when I load 0.12 save file (Nixie Tubes 0.1.8)

Error while running the on_configuration_changed: __nixie-tubes__/control.lua:456: attempt to index field 'entities' (a nil value)

I'm Using Factorio 0.13.19 (Nixie Tubes 0.2.8) and control.lua 456 line is...

if desc.entities[1] and desc.entities[1].valid then

how can I fix this?

[justarandomgeek]

I got this error when I load 0.12 save file (Nixie Tubes 0.1.8)

Error while running the on_configuration_changed: __nixie-tubes__/control.lua:456: attempt to index field 'entities' (a nil value)

I'm Using Factorio 0.13.19 (Nixie Tubes 0.2.8) and control.lua 456 line is...

if desc.entities[1] and desc.entities[1].valid then

how can I fix this?

Oh boy, this is gonna be a tricky one. Updating the data format got really weird as some of the newer features got added (because there were briefly two people adding features simultaneously), and it eventually got so complex I just dropped support for updating from very old versions (with the now obviously wrong reasoning that "these never ran on 0.13 anyway, and surely everyone's on 0.13 by now!"...), several versions ago. Nixies 0.2.2 should update cleanly from any prior version, and then from there you should be able to update to any version after that. I'll see what I can do about making cleaner updates from the very old versions in the future...

[Jelgadis]

I got this error when I load 0.12 save file (Nixie Tubes 0.1.8)

Error while running the on_configuration_changed: __nixie-tubes__/control.lua:456: attempt to index field 'entities' (a nil value)

I'm Using Factorio 0.13.19 (Nixie Tubes 0.2.8) and control.lua 456 line is...

if desc.entities[1] and desc.entities[1].valid then

how can I fix this?

Oh boy, this is gonna be a tricky one. Updating the data format got really weird as some of the newer features got added (because there were briefly two people adding features simultaneously), and it eventually got so complex I just dropped support for updating from very old versions (with the now obviously wrong reasoning that "these never ran on 0.13 anyway, and surely everyone's on 0.13 by now!"...), several versions ago. Nixies 0.2.2 should update cleanly from any prior version, and then from there you should be able to update to any version after that. I'll see what I can do about making cleaner updates from the very old versions in the future...

I tried 0.2.2 from ModPortal and got this error

Error while running the on_load: __nixie-tubes__/control.lua:158: attempt to index field 'entity' (a nil value)

158 line is..

d.surf = d.entity.surface.index

if possible, i wanna play continue my 280h base

[justarandomgeek]

I got this error when I load 0.12 save file (Nixie Tubes 0.1.8)

Error while running the on_configuration_changed: __nixie-tubes__/control.lua:456: attempt to index field 'entities' (a nil value)

I'm Using Factorio 0.13.19 (Nixie Tubes 0.2.8) and control.lua 456 line is...

if desc.entities[1] and desc.entities[1].valid then

how can I fix this?

Oh boy, this is gonna be a tricky one. Updating the data format got really weird as some of the newer features got added (because there were briefly two people adding features simultaneously), and it eventually got so complex I just dropped support for updating from very old versions (with the now obviously wrong reasoning that "these never ran on 0.13 anyway, and surely everyone's on 0.13 by now!"...), several versions ago. Nixies 0.2.2 should update cleanly from any prior version, and then from there you should be able to update to any version after that. I'll see what I can do about making cleaner updates from the very old versions in the future...

I tried 0.2.2 from ModPortal and got this error

Error while running the on_load: __nixie-tubes__/control.lua:158: attempt to index field 'entity' (a nil value)

158 line is..

d.surf = d.entity.surface.index

if possible, i wanna play continue my 280h base

I'll see what I can do about a better updater then.

Is there any reason you're not using Factorio 0.14? I suspect many modders won't be making 0.13 versions anymore, as this requires us to make separate builds now. I hadn't previously planned to make any 0.13 updates anymore (but will for this issue, of course).

[justarandomgeek]

0.2.10 and 0.3.10 should resolve this.

[Jelgadis]

Is there any reason you're not using Factorio 0.14? I suspect many modders won't be making 0.13 versions anymore, as this requires us to make separate builds now. I hadn't previously planned to make any 0.13 updates anymore (but will for this issue, of course).

oh.. no reason. I just started play new version (0.12+)
if u can fix this error, 0.13/0.14 doesn't matter to me.
----
wow. it works!
my base is back!
thank you so much for fix this

[doxsroxs]

I might be blind, but are there instructions for how the alphatubes work available anywhere?
Im also wondering if I can switch to the different graphical modes shown in the thread?
Mostly since I want to improve readability.

[justarandomgeek]

I might be blind, but are there instructions for how the alphatubes work available anywhere?
Im also wondering if I can switch to the different graphical modes shown in the thread?
Mostly since I want to improve readability.

There should be complete instructions on the mod portal page, abd probably also in the readme on github. This thread is just still hanging around from old versions, despite my repeated attempts to direct everyone to the mod portal for downloads abd github for support. I'm not aware of any alternate graphics that support all the characters required by the current versions.