Factorio Forums

First things first, make sure you have VS. Microsoft has released a free version of VS 2013 called Visual Studio Community 2013 that seemingly has all the features of the paid version, and only has restrictions for large companies that utilize it. Download from the linked Microsoft site and then install it.

Next, download my modified version of BabeLua that'll work, you guessed it, on any version of VS. Once you've downloaded the file, double click on it and you'll get a little installer pop up. Go through with the installer and you'll have it done in no time.

Now that it's installed, you need to create your project. Barring any startup or welcome message, you should see the VS interface with a number of large header buttons along the top. One such button says "LUA". Clicking said button will bring up the menu related to the plugin. With the menu open, click on the button that says "New Lua Project". You'll now have a white box with three file location fields and two text entry fields. Personally, I'd reccommend making a folder for all your projects, and then a folder for each specific project you work on.

Assuming you've made a folder for your current project, click on the browse button for the "Lua scripts folder" field and navigate to your projects folder. Once in the folder, click the "New Folder" button on the bottom and create another new folder, I personally name mine "Scripts Folder". Now that you've made your scripts folder inside your current project folder inside your overall projects folder, you want to choose your scripts folder to serve as, you guessed it, your scripts folder.

Now that you have the scripts folder selected, you need to select your Lua installation. For this you need to go download the Lua binaries, or compile them yourself. Once you've downloaded the Lua installer and started it, you should see a pretty standard install window pop up. As you would normally, go through the installer, leaving all the settings at default, and taking note of the install location. Now that Lua is installed you simply click the browse button for the "Lua exe path" field and browse to the exe inside the noted install location (default is C:\Program Files (x86)\Lua\5.1\lua.exe).

Now you should notice that the "Working path" field has automatically been filled in, you want to leave this as it is. The fourth field is "Command line" which you want to leave empty unless you know what you're doing. The final field is "Lua project name" which you want name after your project, usually your mod in this case.

Now that all the fields are filled (except for the fourth one!) just press the "ok" button. Congratulations! You're ready to start coding Lua the VS way!

Download my modified BabeLua plugin and install it.

Download the Lua binaries.

Create a new Lua project (under the new Lua header at the top) and make the scripts folder be the folder where you put your Lua scripts, the Lua exe path be the path to your Lua exe (from the binaries) and command line thing empty (unless you want command line args).