[MOD 0.15+] Electrified Belts

[Viper54K]

Mod name: Electrified Belts
Version: 0.1.0
Category: Gameplay
Description: Bobs, Angels and AAI-Industry friendly mod that adds realism mechanics around needing to provide your transport belts with some form of energy (no more magic belts!)

Long Description

Electric belts now require power to run. This power can be provided to the belts via a new building, which is essentially a motor/node that gives an aura to all belts in a radius.

Early game, this will be a burner node which needs coal in order to keep the belts turning.
Mid game, this will be an electric node.

Im toying with how to make the node scale more energy requirements, or burn more fuel in order to keep the belts running when there are more around. At the moment, this will be added on the TODO as I want to keep it simple for V1.0

[Viper54K]

Just a heads up folks, its currently being produced. Will be providing update with release 1.0 after an initial alpha test.

[eradicator]

Use an EEI with LuaEntity.power_usage.

Do you plan for the "power aura" to just be an area around the provider? Imho logically it would make more sense if the provider had to be adjacent (or even on top of) a belt and would provide all belts going in the same direction with power - like a motor at the start of real-life conveyor belts.

If it was "on top of" a belt it would also not cause any additional layout challenges that would otherwise make very-tight or very-short layouts impossible. And it would be easy to make it generally compatible with any belt without requiring mod-specific code.

Also i hope you have a good solution for performance. Because belts are already a huge hit on performance in most factories.

[Viper54K]

Id love to have it be directionally and linearly (ie: all belts connected) dependant, however at the moment im trying to cobble together a proof of concept.

Im keeping it to a very (lame, i know) simple electric-pole variety aura, being generous on radius (probably 10x10 tile radius). Before I go making it more complex, i need to be very careful not to make it on-tick heavy and a power aura is the simplest idea I can think of at the moment.

To give more details on what im thinking of with the sprite/structure - I'm going to use a boiler from the pre-0.15 factorio days as a sprite as the burner node. Should give you an idea of how small i want to make the structure. I also messaged Yuoki to see if he would let me use 2 of his generator sprites instead, since theyre much better looking and also fairly small, sprite wise.

If you have any ideas on where to get better sprites, or how to carry through with a more complex simulation, let me know. Im all ears!

[eradicator]

10x10 doesn't sound generous at all. given that factories tend to be huge.
I also wasn't thinking of any sort of "simulation". You just associate a list of belt-tiles that form one "strand" with the "motor" block. and then check the motor block regularly if it has enough energy to last until the next check. If it does do nothing. If it doesnt disable the corresponding belt strands. You might still want some sort of maximum reach/number of tiles (200-500ish?) so that you can't power a 16 lane iron bus with splitters just from one motor.
That way you have to do some medium/heavy lifting in on_built but otherwise it's pretty harmless.

What is your current solution? You said something about a "power pole" but how are you keeping track of which belts are powered etc?

As for sprites...your best bet is to have a fully functional mod and then ask one of the more talented people if they care to make one for you. If you ask them without a functional mod... chances are greatly reduced