Factorio Forums

Type: Mod
Name: Gloom
Description: It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black.
License: MIT License
Version: 0.2.1
Release: 2016-03-16
Tested-With-Factorio-Version: 0.12.22
Category: Gameplay
Tags: Darkness, Light
Download-Url: https://github.com/Afforess/Gloom/relea ... _0.2.1.zip
Website: https://github.com/Afforess/Gloom

I've been playing with Gloom. As far as I can tell from the game and reading the source, it chooses a light trend at "complete" random - I don't mean complete complete, but what I mean is that Gloom doesn't have a day night cycle AFAICT, it just has randomly changing light levels. Also it seems that along with a period of "gloom" being up to 12 minutes long, the logic can generate many periods of gloom back-to-back, so you can have solid gloom, well, forever. But probabilistically you can realistically have quite a lot of glooms in a row - scanning the log the most I saw was 14 "glooms" and "darkenings" in succession (12 glooms and 2 darkenings) which would last about 84 minutes - I cheated and accelerated time by 60x after I got fed up with about 30 minutes of darkness to see the long term trends.

I am wondering if over an hour of gloom/darkening is actually intended behavior. Seems a bit too depressing. Also I am wondering if not trends are meant to be non-repeating (i.e. if it should be choosing a trend other than the last one instead of just choosing gloom again and again and again).

BlakeMW wrote:I've been playing with Gloom. As far as I can tell from the game and reading the source, it chooses a light trend at "complete" random - I don't mean complete complete, but what I mean is that Gloom doesn't have a day night cycle AFAICT, it just has randomly changing light levels. Also it seems that along with a period of "gloom" being up to 12 minutes long, the logic can generate many periods of gloom back-to-back, so you can have solid gloom, well, forever. But probabilistically you can realistically have quite a lot of glooms in a row - scanning the log the most I saw was 14 "glooms" and "darkenings" in succession (12 glooms and 2 darkenings) which would last about 84 minutes - I cheated and accelerated time by 60x after I got fed up with about 30 minutes of darkness to see the long term trends.

I am wondering if over an hour of gloom/darkening is actually intended behavior. Seems a bit too depressing. Also I am wondering if not trends are meant to be non-repeating (i.e. if it should be choosing a trend other than the last one instead of just choosing gloom again and again and again).

Yea, trends are chosen at random, so repeat patterns occur. I think what you are observing is the counter-intuitiveness of randomness.

That said, 84 minutes of darkness is a tad extreme. I think a really simple solution here is to not allow repeated trends... so gloom can only be followed by brightening, clear, or darkening, rather than gloom. You could still get repeated gloomy and darkenings, but that's a lot less likely.

Afforess wrote: Yea, trends are chosen at random, so repeat patterns occur. I think what you are observing is the counter-intuitiveness of randomness.

Wouldn't it be more logical to assume that I'm observing the counter-intuitiveness of using randomness to simulate a process which we are used to operating like clockwork ? Sun rises it gets bright, sun sets it gets dark, like clockwork. In fact after my above post I rewrote Gloom to put back in a day night cycle because I like the feeling of being on a normal rotating planet, I modify the day/night brightness level by a cloud cover number. So I get days and nights like clockwork, but many of the days are gloomy and occasionally they are bright and clear. Not that there's anything wrong with a creepy tidally-locked-to-a-red-dwarf kind of atmosphere, but if Gloom really isn't meant to have a day/night cycle it should probably say so in the description.

BlakeMW wrote:

Afforess wrote: Yea, trends are chosen at random, so repeat patterns occur. I think what you are observing is the counter-intuitiveness of randomness.

Wouldn't it be more logical to assume that I'm observing the counter-intuitiveness of using randomness to simulate a process which we are used to operating like clockwork ? Sun rises it gets bright, sun sets it gets dark, like clockwork. In fact after my above post I rewrote Gloom to put back in a day night cycle because I like the feeling of being on a normal rotating planet, I modify the day/night brightness level by a cloud cover number. So I get days and nights like clockwork, but many of the days are gloomy and occasionally they are bright and clear. Not that there's anything wrong with a creepy tidally-locked-to-a-red-dwarf kind of atmosphere, but if Gloom really isn't meant to have a day/night cycle it should probably say so in the description.

Well, I'd really like to point out that weather can affect sunlight and the brightness too, but Factorio doesn't really have weather.

So yes, Gloom does not give you a predictable day-night cycle.

BlakeMW wrote:

Afforess wrote: Yea, trends are chosen at random, so repeat patterns occur. I think what you are observing is the counter-intuitiveness of randomness.

Wouldn't it be more logical to assume that I'm observing the counter-intuitiveness of using randomness to simulate a process which we are used to operating like clockwork ? Sun rises it gets bright, sun sets it gets dark, like clockwork. In fact after my above post I rewrote Gloom to put back in a day night cycle because I like the feeling of being on a normal rotating planet, I modify the day/night brightness level by a cloud cover number. So I get days and nights like clockwork, but many of the days are gloomy and occasionally they are bright and clear. Not that there's anything wrong with a creepy tidally-locked-to-a-red-dwarf kind of atmosphere, but if Gloom really isn't meant to have a day/night cycle it should probably say so in the description.

I rewrote gloom for myself for the exact same reasons! I I made night last a random number of ticks (between normal and 4 times longer) and made the light output during the day vary between 100% and 60% (kinda simulating clouds passing by)

Rockstar04 wrote: I rewrote gloom for myself for the exact same reasons! I I made night last a random number of ticks (between normal and 4 times longer) and made the light output during the day vary between 100% and 60% (kinda simulating clouds passing by)

I'll be the first to admit my approach hasn't been the greatest. Do you want to share your changes? I'd be happy to add you as a co-author.

Afforess wrote:

Rockstar04 wrote:...

I'll be the first to admit my approach hasn't been the greatest. Do you want to share your changes? I'd be happy to add you as a co-author.

Oh god, the horrible things I did to get it to work the way I kinda wanted...

As someone who is a developer for a living I'm not sure I could bring myself to put that code on Github where potential employers could see it. If I get some time to make another pass over the code, and try to make it look and run better I will open a PR on github.

Rockstar04 wrote:

Afforess wrote:

Rockstar04 wrote:...

I'll be the first to admit my approach hasn't been the greatest. Do you want to share your changes? I'd be happy to add you as a co-author.

Oh god, the horrible things I did to get it to work the way I kinda wanted...

As someone who is a developer for a living I'm not sure I could bring myself to put that code on Github where potential employers could see it. If I get some time to make another pass over the code, and try to make it look and run better I will open a PR on github.

Could always just send me a copy in a PM and I'll fix it up.

Please do so - I like the sound of slightly more predictable darker then brighter then darker, but with the levels of darkness and (especially) brightness not so guaranteed.

Rockstar04 wrote:

Afforess wrote:

Rockstar04 wrote:...

I'll be the first to admit my approach hasn't been the greatest. Do you want to share your changes? I'd be happy to add you as a co-author.

Oh god, the horrible things I did to get it to work the way I kinda wanted...

As someone who is a developer for a living I'm not sure I could bring myself to put that code on Github where potential employers could see it. If I get some time to make another pass over the code, and try to make it look and run better I will open a PR on github.

would like to have this, too.

even more darker nights would be great (so u hardly see anything)

User NoriSilverrage requested the modified version I made (which has a proper day/night cycle), so I'm posting it here. Strictly speaking it's not very gloomy at all, it actually has mostly fine weather, but occasionally you get prolonged overcast or heavily overcast weather which can last for days. It's very easy to modify the weather patterns and also day/night cycle in control.lua to make it gloomier or breezier. I've renamed the mod so it's perfectly clear.

Updated for Factorio 1.3.0

Curently, I have the weather commented out, and am using the Minecraft Daynight cycle speed. (10 minute day, 7 minute night, 1:30 dawn and dusk). Also fixed the weather and day-night messages for multiplayer. Should work at least.

modpack logic didn't change.
fixed for factorio 13+

modpack logic didn't change.
fixed for factorio 14+