Friday Facts #392 - Parametrised blueprints

[mmmPI]

This is one is unexpected/surprising. I suck at using blueprints maybe because most of my things are 80% done, not 100% as required for a nice blueprint. This or it's not properly enclosed/separated. I don't really have a good library except for a few combinator builds and some drawings. I saw some blueprint books with 4 or 5 level of depth. I could not maintain such organisation over month or years that i'm playing factorio without feeling it needs to be re-organized over and over and never being satisfied.I lost blueprints a few times, and came to use it more as a temporary library where backup are blueprint posted on the internet that i recover when needed with alt-tabbing, then using search engine, much easier for me than to try and find something, like that blueprint from 2 years ago i've only used once will be faster found by a robot on the internet than by me on my own folder of blueprints. ( things like combinators tricks or builds).

This new functionnality seems to highlight such failure in my general way of playing factorio, i'm not sure i will manage to properly use it. It's something that is clearly out of my habits but at the same time it sounds very interesting and powerful feature. It's not clear exactly what i'm going to use it for, train stations are a good example, but i had steamlined the process where i just need to change the train stop name and usually copy from map view since i cover everything with radar. I think i will try to seek for those situations where i can take advantage of the new feature, more than just using it where it's a very obvious shortcut, maybe it can be used in cosmetic combinator blueprint, then when pasting it, you change the color or frequency of blinking instead of remembering where the config combinator are located but that's pretty underwhelming considering the possibilities.

I can see how it make sense to try and make the blueprint less "rigid" things, the recursive blueprint mod comes to my mind, i found it hard to use, and ended up playing with the mod for fun instead of using the mod to do something. Those are different ways of thinking that makes it harder for me to really understand which possibilities lies in the parametrisation of blueprints, which i may end up using just for the sake of it, as i did with trains when i just bought the game, or combinators way later when i could understand them better. I think "blueprinting" is another such thing that could be hard to master all the most intricate aspects. I haven't spend much time using the grid snapping possibilities or attempted to make a set of versatile or elaborated blueprints but i know this is an appeal to many players, and i'm glad i can use their work for experimentation or curiosity, and curious to see what they can do with such system.

I think it could also be fit to use for space platforms so you can easily duplicate them, but change a few parameters so it follows a different path, or maybe in each planet near the landing area and then you configure the threshold/request. Considering logistic group will also be a way to edit constant combinators, and one could use similar thing for train schedule interrupts, it creates many interactions between those new things that makes it hard to picture how it would be to use them all at the same time.

It's not one of the thing that make me excited for the expansion, but if it was a mod on the portal it's very well possible that i would have downloaded it one day i was trying to make something with blueprint and it felt repetitive, and some mods discovered this way are part of those i use all the time in solo game.

I like how the request for feedback at the end is unsure that the article is "understandable". I think it is, but it's obvisouly less immediate fun/gratification than the train ramps and the bridges on island and space platform and all, more on the serious side of things along with combinators lua parser noise expression or fluid mechanic. To me it shows awareness concerning the balance between fun and 'complex' or that you are "probing" it with so that it correspond to the players and that's really a good point for me, instead of trying to push the complex as the challenge and having this as an excuse for poor ergonomy, making sure the difficulty is not battling with the UI and making the complex optionnal tools i find makes a good philosophy for such game, i don't feel like i would miss on something for not using maybe unlike the quality feature that has goodies locked behind some complexity, and got some complaints, here for the parametrised blueprints i think if a player don't use it because it sounds obscure it's also because the player don't feel the need such mechanism.

[toprakkoyun]

havent read it yet but hope it has a feature to flip and glip blueprints with chem plants, refinery, rail signals, and stations

[Beuteschema]

this is amazing
on my current save im mostly only outposting anymore, since i design all my actual blueprints in godmode
as my train station design relays its content to the circuit network of my base (including the contents of the requester chests), i cannot use a constant combinator to set the requests in each chest
thankfully i can just copy paste another outpost but with this ill be able to just select what i want, which is awesome
also all my station hold exactly 15 trains worth of items, which makes displaying the current item stocks of my base really clean

40 stacks * 15 wagons = 12 steel chests * 48 stacks + 12 requester chests * 2 stacks
currently, when outposting, i dont have to adjust the stack size in this combinator (this turns the rail signals in the station on 1 by 1 front to back as the station fills 1 train load and lets me see the progress of the station filling up from the map), since all ores have a stack size of 50
but when designing any other production chain, ill probably be able to set the stack size dynamically depending on the item i select when putting down the blueprint

this makes me really happy and i cant wait for the dlc & 2.0 (kinda reminds me of cyberpunk and its renaissance, only that factorio was never bad, it only became greater)

[Frozll]

This is great!!! Just a quick question: if I understand correctly the parametrization UI allows you to parametrize recipes and constant combinators?

My first thought on reading the title was that the entities in the blueprint themselves were parametrizable (is that a word?). For example: a station blueprint with a parameter for the amount of lanes. Or a powergrid blueprint with parameters for the amount of blocks it spans. This is not that I take from the post?

[MatrimVidz]

I hope that stack size of a given item is available. This is one of the things i miss most right now with my megabase blueprints.

[NotRexButCaesar]

If Factorio is like programming, you just added Vim, when before we only had notepad.

(To be clear, I like Vim.)

[NotRexButCaesar]

Instead of a fixed number of signals from 0-9 I would recommend a tag/name based system.

I agree that names would be better, but if you look at what happens when changing the parameters, you see that originally the variable signals are in the blueprint, and later they are changed to your selection: I think separate names would require some kind of reimplementation.

[foxoftheasterisk]

sounds amazing, can't wait

[bluewilson]

I think you are doing right in considering Factorio players a bit differently minded. At least you find a lot of love and appreciation for these things.

Me, personally, I'll probably potentially use it. If I could edit and manage blueprints in a more elegant way, i'd be more thrilled, though. Like entering a separate surface like blueprint sandboxes, if I click edit or something. The yet another rail signal is missing moments, and copy and paste and reenter name and proper grid x and y's and the right symbols all over again. I understand why streamers restrain themselves from publishing their BPs, as they even get external feedback on them.

[0log0]

It's awesome, but there are already mods that do this. What they don't do is add a button into the button bar in the blueprint window, like this feature does. It would make more sense to allow modded blueprint window buttons (which would open up a TON of other functionality) and then release this feature as a mod.

[Niyu.Cuatro]

This is going into the top list of features i never new how much i wanted. I'll have to get my hands on it and try it to form a more solid opinion, but it looks really useful for now.

[ElderAxe]

Add Blueprints as a downloadable mod. This somewhat makes them a mod. But more importantly cool creations should be shared and this is going to create some cool stuff.

Also, speedrunners can use blueprints, but not mods.

I would love to have a Blueprint portal in game. That would allow blueprint designers to share their designs similar to mods. It also allows players who use those public blueprints to be able to get updates for new versions of the blueprints they like.

I know there are factorioprints, factoriobin etc. to share blueprints. But they require everyone to manually update the blueprints they use.
Or some scripting capability for mods to access blueprint library so someone can write an adapter for these sites so people can be aware of the new versions and get updated versions if they want.

BTW I'm conflicting with myself on this idea. As a designer having a better way to distribute designs would be good. On the other hand, blueprints kill creativity in general. Introducing fully optimized blueprints to new players would harm their experience. I always recommend people to finish their first run solo without mods and blueprints and learn as much as possible . That is the best experience Factorio offers and after first run you cannot get it again.

[burninghey]

A really nice feature! I have one feature request though to help with UX:

Instead of a fixed number of signals from 0-9 I would recommend a tag/name based system.

True! I like variables with descriptive names

[Gemma]

It's beautiful.

[catpig]

Awesome feature!
Just two notes:
- I hope it's possible to re-order the parameters. Although it did look like it is.
- Ideally use of variables should also be possible on lines above the one that declares the variable. Although if re-ordering is possible this isn't super critical.

[xttweaponttx]

WOW this looks absolutely beautiful. Cannot wait to have this in game!!! SO STOKED for this new update, can't wait!!! =D

[mophab]

This along with the Railroad changes look great!
I am looking forward to them and I think most players are as well.
I am a programmer, but I think these new features will be interesting to all players.

-- Waiting for the new release with great anticipation.

[Joe Black]

Wow, das wird immer besser. Her damit!

Wow, this just keeps getting better. Bring it on!

[sOvr9000]

Can't wait!

[Blitz4]

Add Blueprints as a downloadable mod. This somewhat makes them a mod. But more importantly cool creations should be shared and this is going to create some cool stuff.

Also, speedrunners can use blueprints, but not mods.

I would love to have a Blueprint portal in game. That would allow blueprint designers to share their designs similar to mods. It also allows players who use those public blueprints to be able to get updates for new versions of the blueprints they like.

I know there are factorioprints, factoriobin etc. to share blueprints. But they require everyone to manually update the blueprints they use.
Or some scripting capability for mods to access blueprint library so someone can write an adapter for these sites so people can be aware of the new versions and get updated versions if they want.

BTW I'm conflicting with myself on this idea. As a designer having a better way to distribute designs would be good. On the other hand, blueprints kill creativity in general. Introducing fully optimized blueprints to new players would harm their experience. I always recommend people to finish their first run solo without mods and blueprints and learn as much as possible . That is the best experience Factorio offers and after first run you cannot get it again.

Brilliant statement that blueprints kill creativity in general.

Allow me to show you one extreme example to that theory. Could be the future, who knows. So nVidia, they wrote a paper for an AI that would beat Minecraft, but more than that. It wrote instructions to perform the tasks in the game that are required to beat Minecraft as fast a possible. It improved those instructions through a variety of ways, primarily by learning & testing over many iterations. Cool right. It gets better. This was crated using ChatGPT4. Doing so allows the AI to receive instructions from the player. The AI can be playing as if they were the player at every moment to decide what's the most efficient path to the end goal (beating the game), but not share what they're thinking to the player. (I just said AI is thinking, oh boy). What's cool is if the player needs help at any time, they can say, "What's the best thing for me todo right now?" Or "What's the fastest way to build a boat from where I'm at?"
Video covering it in good detail "Minecraft AI - NVIDIA uses GPT-4 to create a SELF-IMPROVING autonomous agent.":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yI4yfYftfM

I mentioned that as watching how new players use the feature will provide some insights into your theory.

Another factor. I mentioned speedrunners. What if you could create a blueprint that created a base. Yes this has been done before. But I can't imagine how it was done would work in all cases and that this update would. I could see DoshDoshington trying that. Recent video of his showing some of what that may look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzpUQZIr15g
What happens if this change prevents blueprints from being allowed in normal speedruns? If that happens, then that'd be something to consider to prove your theory.


I believe that sharing blueprints to newer players would hurt their experience that don't understand the why behind them. Until you can build a basic smelting line by hand, you don't need blueprints. Blueprints are solely to reduce the difficulty of the game for challenges that I've solved (by my measure time is the only difficulty in a game). I can't tell you how many years I went without knowing how the game wanted me to store my blueprints to be uploaded to steam cloud (it's still confusing). I only had blueprints per save and didn't use blueprints for things that I would only create once in game. I believe it contributed towards me wanting to restart more frequently. Now I get to use my blueprints in every game.

If there was a tutorial, as mentioned in that nVidia demo, that'd change things for newer players. Also there's not a tool like Helmod built into the game, likely for a reason similar to your theory. If i'm playing vanilla, I'm more likely to use blueprints, but if I could install helmod, I'm more likely to not use any blueprints.

I do believe adding a blueprint hub, similar to the mod hub we have in game, would cause people to play the game more. For some of the reasons mentioned above of my use case. I feel it's important for new players to:
* Know how to backup their blueprints (currently it's confusing/odd)
* Know how todo proper ratios with info presented in game (yes there's no calculator in game, making the calculator they use part of the gameplay)

EDIT: Mod used in that DoshDoshington video: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/recursive-blueprints