[MOD 0.13] EfficienSee : optimise your factory !

[siggboy]

one of them is a kid, How am I supposed to teach him what all the info means?

If he's a dumb kid, tell him to ignore the funny letters and numbers.
If he's a bright kid, don't underestimate him.

[Peppe]

I was just trying out this mod.

The % and the input/output indicator are very good. I used it in a creative world to test a long production chain to verify I had 100% duty cycle on the main machines and the expected duty on the support machines. I instantly spotted a machine not working in a pool of 64 that were 100% a 0% in red stuck out easily (a backward pipe stopped the machine).

I would use the mod if it was just that

I've tried the recipe thing a little bit. It is ok, but a get a big lag loading the recipe list, so usually have selected nothing and show only selected, so it is basically off. Over vanilla recipes I have Yuoki's mods installed and Atomic Power. Not sure if you tuned that recipe lookup to the vanilla recipe amount. Do you build the recipe list every-time the menu opens? Could it be indexed?

I initially thought that selected screen was asking me to select something in game and wonder if that would be better? Like lets say I have a dedicated green circuit production for blue circuits. I don't care about global green circuit production -- i want to highlight my blue+green section and chart just those machines and understand what that local resource economy is doing.

[binbinhfr]

@Zingo,
Thx for your return. I am 47 myself, and I'm afraid this mod is effectively not designed for kids
I did it the way I need it, and I won't radically refine it the way you want. You must find another mod if you want something simple, or just use the factorio 'p' key.
The mod can create lags the moment you use it intensively. But if you close its GUI and disable the on-map icons, now it does not consume anymore cpu. You can even temporarly totally disable it, clicking on the upper left button.
Have fun.

[binbinhfr]

@Pepe :

lag on the recipe list : do you mean the list on the right ? Or at the bottom ?
I'll try with yoki. But no, i do not load the list everytime. Just at the beginning.

EDIT : I installed yuoki. I have no special lags with the additive recipes.
- Can you describe what you are doing when you got lag ?
- are you in multi play ?
- Can you also tell me how maybe assemblers / furnaces you have in your base ?
And please update the very last mod version. It computes machines numbers only when they have icons on the map now. It's less cpu consuming.
Of course if you ask icons on all machines, you can expect a little slowdown This feature is not supposed to be used on the long run, but just for short period, to audit your factory

[binbinhfr]

1.0.10 - forgot the debug mode on in 1.0.9... please update to avoid strange messages !

[Peppe]

@Pepe :

lag on the recipe list : do you mean the list on the right ? Or at the bottom ?
I'll try with yoki. But no, i do not load the list everytime. Just at the beginning.

EDIT : I installed yuoki. I have no special lags with the additive recipes.
- Can you describe what you are doing when you got lag ?
- are you in multi play ?
- Can you also tell me how maybe assemblers / furnaces you have in your base ?
And please update the very last mod version. It computes machines numbers only when they have icons on the map now. It's less cpu consuming.
Of course if you put icons on all machines, you can expect a little slowdown

Single player.
I am clicking this selected toggle button (yellow arrow):



Every time I click it the whole game pauses for ~.5 second. That is what I meant by "lag."

880 assemblers.
367 stone/steel furnaces

On 1.0.6 at the time.

Loading whatever is on the mod portal right now, 1.10. And still see the pause on clicking that selected button.

[binbinhfr]

Ok pepe, I'll check that. Indeed you seem to have a huge list of produced items. It would be great if I can download your map to test it by myslef.

EDIT : this "selected" button is to display only the items that are checked in the list. So you can have a subset of items around one recipe line. When you click it without anything checked, it reconstructs the whole scroll list which in your case seems to be huge.
As I mostly play vanilla, I did not suspected that this list could be so long with mod packs. I'll have to think about it, because in this case, a such long list is useless.

[Peppe]

Ok pepe, I'll check that. Indeed you seem to have a huge list of produced items. It would be great if I can download your map to test it by myslef.

EDIT : this "selected" button is to display only the items that are checked in the list. So you can have a subset of items around one recipe line.

Save:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/9ufp2 ... y/main.zip

Mods folder:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/q5jcm ... a/mods.zip

[binbinhfr]

Thx Pepe, I'll check that tonight.

I initially thought that selected screen was asking me to select something in game and wonder if that would be better? Like lets say I have a dedicated green circuit production for blue circuits. I don't care about global green circuit production -- i want to highlight my blue+green section and chart just those machines and understand what that local resource economy is doing.

Alas, factorio API provides numbers about global production, not related to any machines in particular. That's where I got my numbers from. To study the local economy of a subset of machines would be something else. API does not provides any production number per machine. You can only see if a machine is crafting or not, and what resides in its inputs and outputs at a given time (that's what I used to update these on-map icons).

EDIT : I checked your map. Toggling the "selected" button creates an almost imperceptible lag for me, time to refresh the list. But maybe my computer is fast. Anyway I will study another approach for this mod. Maybe selecting an assembler as a first entry point, to display a recipe, and then navigate thru the production tree, from reciep to ingredients and other recipes, without showing the whole list anymore. Because these production numbers, especially dS are important : they show if you are eating your stock or overproducing.

[Jupiter]

Hey hey Tried your mod.

Well- it lags a bit as we have a huge base on our server with lots of stuff- thats 1.

Also its just way too much info- I mean ofc i can spend some time learning it all- but on our server there are like 4 other people- one of them is a kid,
How am I supposed to teach him what all the info means?

I mean i like the mod, it has so much potential but it must be user friendly. Not a chart.

I have 2 other chart mods and adding an extra chart it clusters the space so much. Ill give this mod another try once you refine all the hicks and stuff out but think about user friendliness- A mod is good if you can learn it in 5 min.

Think about- a 16 year old kid first sees this mod- how can he get best out of this and use it without saying- WUUT??? You know.

Keep up the good job! Ill definitely follow your progress.

This mod is supposed to be used to optimize mega bases. How is a regular 16 year old supposed to design a complex and efficient megabase? I think that the mod is perfectly adjusted to fit the needs of its target audience (I'm not saying that it is perfect though).

On your map, you can do the analysis and just tell your conclusions to the kid.

[binbinhfr]

(I'm not saying that it is perfect though).

Whaaaat ? Well I'm still working on it, and I do not forget your request about signals. But could you give me an example of how you would use these signals ?

[Jupiter]

Whaaaat ? Well I'm still working on it, and I do not forget your request about signals. But could you give me an example of how you would use these signals ?

Oh, that was not what I meant. Don't worry. I just said that to prevent people from thinking that I think it is perfect, not because I have something specific feature in mind that it is seriously lacking. (signals aren't lacking, they would just be a nice bonus to have)

I have been thinking about usecases for signals but I haven't been able to come up with a use for them that would seriously augment any conventional megabase. However, they might be useful in the more unconventional loop-based designs in which there is a single (or multiple) loop(s) with all the resources on them.
What you can do is detecting a shortage of a certain resource and then distribute the remaining resources according to certain priorities. For example, you might detect a shortage of copper and then divert all remaining copper to your ammunition assemblers (perhaps even cut-off the copper supply to other assemblers entirely).

It's also possible to make a factory that only produces certain intermediate products when they are actually necessary (and not always store a stack of them in a chest somewhere). So, for example, you want to make as many rockets per minute as possible. Then it is better to have a bit more production capacity then you actually need to process all the incoming resources (so you know you are not wasting any resource mining capacity). In that case you need to use your resources intelligently and you don't want to spend resources to create more of certain intermediates then is necessary to create a rocket, you just want enough. Implementing this logic is probably possible with combinators as-is (as you probably know, the system is turing-complete) but I think that it would be rather complex. Using your mod to track the stock of everything this becomes more plausible. Without the mod it is almost impossible to monitor every resource on all belts, in all chests and in every inserter-hand (let alone what's stored in assemblers and in train wagons).

If I'm not making any sense, it is probably because I am rather tired right now and unable to think :p

[binbinhfr]

@jupiter : thx for your explanations. As soon as this mod will get its final shape (the gui is still evolving), I will work on this.

From now on, to all interested users, please try the last version.
New GUI, simplified. And also a simplified interaction :
1.0.13 - new GUI : no more main list, too cpu consuming and too big and thus useless.
- 1 single window with 1 recipe pane, and one object/product-of/ingredients-of pane.
- use B on selected machine to toggle on-map infos of the corresponding family.
- if no machine selected, B toggles all on-map infos machines on/off.
- use N on selected machine to display recipe in main window.
- if no machine selected, N opens/closes the main window.
- Help button to display a short help.

It seems to me that it is more clear and simple to access.

I will go on with
- optimising data refresh that can be simplified with this new gui.
- introducing mining drills in the process (note that you can already open the recipe of the rocket-silo).
- introducing virtual signals

[Peppe]

Thx Pepe, I'll check that tonight.

I initially thought that selected screen was asking me to select something in game and wonder if that would be better? Like lets say I have a dedicated green circuit production for blue circuits. I don't care about global green circuit production -- i want to highlight my blue+green section and chart just those machines and understand what that local resource economy is doing.

Alas, factorio API provides numbers about global production, not related to any machines in particular. That's where I got my numbers from. To study the local economy of a subset of machines would be something else. API does not provides any production number per machine. You can only see if a machine is crafting or not, and what resides in its inputs and outputs at a given time (that's what I used to update these on-map icons).

EDIT : I checked your map. Toggling the "selected" button creates an almost imperceptible lag for me, time to refresh the list. But maybe my computer is fast. Anyway I will study another approach for this mod. Maybe selecting an assembler as a first entry point, to display a recipe, and then navigate thru the production tree, from reciep to ingredients and other recipes, without showing the whole list anymore. Because these production numbers, especially dS are important : they show if you are eating your stock or overproducing.

I don't think I was running factorio on a SSD at the time, but generally speaking I don't think my computer would be source of slowdown.

I assume the bottleneck would be single threaded CPU?

It is a few years old now, but I don't think single threaded CPU performance has moved much since then:
4670k @4Ghz
16GB ram DDR3
GTX770 2GB
Windows 10

Though I have not wiped/reinstalled windows in a while.

Looks like you have taken the interface a different direction anyway, but I'm still curious why it was more pronounced on my system.

[binbinhfr]

@pepe: I also have a 4670k @3.4Ghz, 8Mb ram + SSD. I don't think SSD makes a change once the program is loaded. I'm under win7 home, with factorio x64. But the 4670k has 4 cores and 4 threads no ?

The mod is not totally optimised yet, but with this interface simplification, it should already run smoother because not trying to update the full production list. PLeas try it and tell me.

[Peppe]

@pepe: I also have a 4670k @3.4Ghz, 8Mb ram + SSD. I don't think SSD makes a change once the program is loaded. I'm under win7 home, with factorio x64. But the 4670k has 4 cores and 4 threads no ?

The mod is not totally optimised yet, but with this interface simplification, it should already run smoother because not trying to update the full production list. PLeas try it and tell me.

Never noticed factorio had a multi threaded menu option... just assumed like most games it was mostly/heavily single threaded. I'll tinker with the menu option.

I did not notice any performance issues with the version from today. Like you said it is doing a more focused task, so performance stays high.

[binbinhfr]

Never noticed factorio had a multi threaded menu option...

honestly I don't know, but when I look at my 4 cores charge, on a big factory, it seems that 4 cores are working equally around 30-40%

[orzelek]

Never noticed factorio had a multi threaded menu option...

honestly I don't know, but when I look at my 4 cores charge, on a big factory, it seems that 4 cores are working equally around 30-40%

Side threads are used to handle few things but main simulation is limited to single thread.
I'm not 100% sure if render uses it's own thread or not.

[Peppe]

Never noticed factorio had a multi threaded menu option...

honestly I don't know, but when I look at my 4 cores charge, on a big factory, it seems that 4 cores are working equally around 30-40%

Side threads are used to handle few things but main simulation is limited to single thread.
I'm not 100% sure if render uses it's own thread or not.

Interesting... then for intel turbo strategy where it scales the turbo based on on the number of active cores more threads could actually slow down the game if it has to drop the overall turbo level to service multiple threads.

[binbinhfr]

New version 1.0.15, should be smoother for cpu.

1.0.15 - revamp all data, to minimise useless calculations, and optimise data refresh
- add production rate in recipes list, with a filter on unused recipes, to
lighten this potentially huge list (on the "ingredient of" side).
- default polling time to 88/60 s (now that everything is quite optimized)
1.0.13 - new GUI : no more main list, too cpu consuming and too big and thus useless.
- 1 single window with 1 recipe pane, and one object/product-of/ingredients-of pane.
- use B on selected machine to toggle on-map infos of the corresponding family.
- if no machine selected, B toggles all on-map infos machines on/off.
- use N on selected machine to display recipe in main window.
- if no machine selected, N opens/closes the main window.
- Help button to display a short help.