[0.16.x] Bob's Mods: General Discussion

[mrvn]

By any chance can we get support for Deadlock's Stacking Beltboxes? He provided a hook function that should hopefully make this easy and I feel it would help with balancing belts vs bots.

Looks like I have to specifically specify what items can be stacked, and do a call for each and every one.

suggestions on items that should be stackable?

I've attached basic items stacking - all ores and plates should work. Includes same things for Angels and Clowns processing. All with autogenerated icons. Thorium ore refuses to work with Clown's mod not sure why so it's disabled for now.
PS.
No warranties if it will work - tested only on my specific mods set

Thanks for the stacking.

Although I think with Angels mods the plate stacking should be disabled. There is already the sheet metal that compacts plates by a factor of 4 (instead of 5 for stacks) that I think stacking would make pointless.

[orzelek]

By any chance can we get support for Deadlock's Stacking Beltboxes? He provided a hook function that should hopefully make this easy and I feel it would help with balancing belts vs bots.

Looks like I have to specifically specify what items can be stacked, and do a call for each and every one.

suggestions on items that should be stackable?

I've attached basic items stacking - all ores and plates should work. Includes same things for Angels and Clowns processing. All with autogenerated icons. Thorium ore refuses to work with Clown's mod not sure why so it's disabled for now.
PS.
No warranties if it will work - tested only on my specific mods set

Thanks for the stacking.

Although I think with Angels mods the plate stacking should be disabled. There is already the sheet metal that compacts plates by a factor of 4 (instead of 5 for stacks) that I think stacking would make pointless.

I didn't play the mods yet just prepared stacking for all ores and plates. I looked into the sheet recipes and I'd see them mostly as resource efficiency multiplier but it's also a compression. Main reason to keep plate stack would be to have consistency between those and to keep using stackers instead of bigger assembling machines to unstack them.

Thorium ore is causing some strange issues that will need bigger debug to work. I think issue is caused by the fact that with thorium disabled in bob's ores actual items are added by Clown's nuclear mod on data stage. Since it has a normal non-layered icon there and stacking mod sees something it thnks requires layering of layers... it would seem that icon gets modified in some way that game doesn't mind but stacking and crating mod do.

I'm adding updated stacking mod here - might put it on mod portal if there will be bigger interest in it.
Main addition is crushed stone - it really needs stacking.

[mrvn]

I looked into the sheet recipes and I'd see them mostly as resource efficiency multiplier but it's also a compression. Main reason to keep plate stack would be to have consistency between those and to keep using stackers instead of bigger assembling machines to unstack them.

I'm not sure what you saw but last I checked sheet give no resource benefit at all. You get the same number of plates from molten iron going direct or through sheets. Sheets are faster and add a compression if you transport the sheets but that's it afaik.

Maybe stackers could just have the recipe for cutting sheets into plates.

On the other hand sheets have a larger stack size (same as plates). So for transporting by train a lot more sheets fit into a car than stacks of iron plates. The equivalent of 4 times the iron plates. Maybe that is enough incentive for sheets.

[Deadlock989]

...Thorium ore refuses to work with Clown's mod not sure why so it's disabled for now...

How very rude of it
Could you please pm me the error, I'd like to do something about that.

At the moment my code for Clowns-Nuclear adds a thorium ore item that is identical to Bob's, but only if bobores is not detected.

That's the only thing I can think of that could be causing issues.

I've tried to investigate this and I don't think the problem is with Clowns-Nuclear, though I can't rule it out. I can't reproduce orzelek's problem, but there is definitely something odd about the way thorium ore is defined in Bob's Ores. I'm disadvantaged by not knowing much (if anything) about any of these mods. This is one of those weird loading order / dependency issues. We discuss it on this thread.

[bobingabout]

...
oh, right, my ores mod...
it adds thorium ore item and resource with no autoplace in the data phase.
it then adds in the noise layer, autoplace control, and adds the autoplace definition to the thorium-ore resource on data.updates IF you have it turned on.

All my ores are added in this way.

On top of that Thorium Ore itself is a useless ore in my mod.

[mrvn]

...
oh, right, my ores mod...
it adds thorium ore item and resource with no autoplace in the data phase.
it then adds in the noise layer, autoplace control, and adds the autoplace definition to the thorium-ore resource on data.updates IF you have it turned on.

All my ores are added in this way.

On top of that Thorium Ore itself is a useless ore in my mod.

And here I have a warehouse full of the stuff

Since you always add thorium does that mean I can safely disable it in the config and then load my old game so I won't get any more thorium patches?

[bobingabout]

...
oh, right, my ores mod...
it adds thorium ore item and resource with no autoplace in the data phase.
it then adds in the noise layer, autoplace control, and adds the autoplace definition to the thorium-ore resource on data.updates IF you have it turned on.

All my ores are added in this way.

On top of that Thorium Ore itself is a useless ore in my mod.

And here I have a warehouse full of the stuff

Since you always add thorium does that mean I can safely disable it in the config and then load my old game so I won't get any more thorium patches?

All ores always exists, what you turn off is the autoplace. so if you disable it in the config, you'll still have everything you gathered and mined before, but won't generate more as you explore.

[orzelek]

I managed to prepare automated generation of icons for stacked items in a slightly different way (to show 2x2 stack).
I'm not sure if I could release mod with those... since I would be using and modifying graphics from original mods and that might lead to licensing issues.

Anyone has some ideas if that would be ok or not or I would need to ask author of each mod for permission separately?

Example icon for tin ore:

tin-ore-stack.png (3.11 KiB) Viewed 8478 times

[mexmer]

I managed to prepare automated generation of icons for stacked items in a slightly different way (to show 2x2 stack).
I'm not sure if I could release mod with those... since I would be using and modifying graphics from original mods and that might lead to licensing issues.

Anyone has some ideas if that would be ok or not or I would need to ask author of each mod for permission separately?

Example icon for tin ore:

tin-ore-stack.png

that depends if generation is done on the fly, or if resources (graphics) are generated into file in "offline" fashion, then reused.

if you do generation on the fly, and result sits in memory, there should be no issue, since resources are present within original mod, and mod has it's license and such, but if you create derivates (eg. files), then you creating derivative work, and that depends on license of original mod, what is permited and what not.

[orzelek]

I managed to prepare automated generation of icons for stacked items in a slightly different way (to show 2x2 stack).
I'm not sure if I could release mod with those... since I would be using and modifying graphics from original mods and that might lead to licensing issues.

Anyone has some ideas if that would be ok or not or I would need to ask author of each mod for permission separately?

Example icon for tin ore:

tin-ore-stack.png

that depends if generation is done on the fly, or if resources (graphics) are generated into file in "offline" fashion, then reused.

if you do generation on the fly, and result sits in memory, there should be no issue, since resources are present within original mod, and mod has it's license and such, but if you create derivates (eg. files), then you creating derivative work, and that depends on license of original mod, what is permited and what not.

I'd need to do those offline - thats the main reason I'm asking about licensing. Main idea is to not make game render item icon multiple times with layers and instead have them prepared in advance.
It basically means that stacking addon is not going to land on mod portal most likely - to many issues with licensing icon images from all mods involved. And then figuring out what should be the license for actual mod based on licenses of icon owners.

[mexmer]

I managed to prepare automated generation of icons for stacked items in a slightly different way (to show 2x2 stack).
I'm not sure if I could release mod with those... since I would be using and modifying graphics from original mods and that might lead to licensing issues.

Anyone has some ideas if that would be ok or not or I would need to ask author of each mod for permission separately?

Example icon for tin ore:

tin-ore-stack.png

that depends if generation is done on the fly, or if resources (graphics) are generated into file in "offline" fashion, then reused.

if you do generation on the fly, and result sits in memory, there should be no issue, since resources are present within original mod, and mod has it's license and such, but if you create derivates (eg. files), then you creating derivative work, and that depends on license of original mod, what is permited and what not.

I'd need to do those offline - thats the main reason I'm asking about licensing. Main idea is to not make game render item icon multiple times with layers and instead have them prepared in advance.
It basically means that stacking addon is not going to land on mod portal most likely - to many issues with licensing icon images from all mods involved. And then figuring out what should be the license for actual mod based on licenses of icon owners.

there is one more thing, which i'm not sure, if will work or not, i was using it in different game, but in that game all mods were public domain (at least according to EULA from game and modding, you either need to make mod public domain, or could not publish it ... btw. mods were published trough steam workshop). i needed "miniview" for ingame icons, so first time player access item (either from mod or from basegame), it did create "icon" for item, there was also table with version of each icon mod, in case people updated mods. but in that game, each mod could create own folder in game data, and store temporary files there (outside savegame i mean, for savegame it provided method to store your data in save - like production statuses, and such), but those were just temporary data, user could delete them anytime, they were not distributed to others.

i don't think factorio has such option, to create data in temp folder or elsewhere to be used by mod.

[DaveSh99]

I for one am most appreciative of your efforts on getting the stacking mod to work with the various Bobs plates and ores. If you do end up creating static images, i would love to have the link to use it.

I was just looking into what it would take me to build one, and... voila, even better, you've made one.

Dave.

[bobingabout]

I actually didn't.
I was thinking I should, but then someone made a mod to do it, so I started working on other things and kinda forgot.
I think it was orzelek.

anyway...

Tech 0.16.2:
Replaced Express inserter as possibillity for Logistics science pack with express filter inserter.


Logistics 0.16.8:
Added HR green/purple (ug)belt/splitter graphics.
Added Basic transport Belt (belt only)
Added Turbo inserters as Tier 4.
Added Fast filter inserter
Reworked all inserter graphics to colour code by tier
Science pack 2(green) costs Basic transport belt(grey) instead of standard(yellow)
Added option for belts to cost previous tier.
Added option for inserters to cost previous tier.
Re-added a cut down inserters pre-place menu with long inserters option only.
Reworked all the belt and related entity recipes.
Reworked all the inserter recipes.
Tier 1 - Standard (no prefix) - Yellow - Costs Iron.
Tier 2 - Fast - Red - Costs Steel
Tier 3 - Express - Blue - Costs Brass and Aluminium
Tier 4 - Turbo - Green - Costs Titanium
Tier 5 - Ultimate - Purple - Costs Nitinol

[clampi]

Hello Bob,

Your latest change to boblogistics is not quite what I come to expect quality-wise from you. To name a few issues I encountered:

• Updating in a running game breaks the game play-wise.
  • Fast inserter remains fast but filter inserter is now slower, because is converted to the new "fast filter inserter" or "red filter inserter".
    Recipe changes to inserters and belts makes many blueprints and layouts obsolete, recovering by re-engineering the running base is time-consuming due to new intermediates required.
  For a new game, balancing is broken.
  • New intermediates required to build simple items as belts and inserters.
    Changes to tech tree leave no real option for high-volume inserter at red+green science level. Stack insertes require blue science, red-green has only only a stack-bonus.
  No way to reduce GUI clutter by giving an option to remove the reintroduced button. I use adjustable inserters and have no use for the new button.

Coding-wise the new inserters rework is a naming convention mess. I understand some changes were made with mod compatibility in mind, but then what's with the red-inserter? No consistency.

Here are some suggestions on how I see the above issue addressed:

• Restore the old stack bonus or introduce a new "Fast stack inserter" inserter at red+green level of science.
  Create all the inserters needed for the respecive tiers and keep the naming convention. "Filter Inserter" paired with "Inserter", "Fast Inserter" paired with "Fast stack inserter" and "Fast filter inserter" and so on.
  Provide a migration script for running games that will convert inserter items and entities to their new speed equivalents.
  To keep the internal entity and item naming convention, make at data-final-fixes stage a foreach recipe replace(old ingredient, new ingredient). This is a heavy handed approach, a more cleaner way would be desired.
  Either check whether bobinserters is loaded and don't display the GUI button, or provide a keyboard shortcut alternative to show/hide the GUI button.

Now, not related in any way with the above changes, issues or suggestions, but with the overall tiring of materials. It pains me greatly to see that you still consider brass a higher tier material, above carbon-steel or cobalt-steel. Brass is great for some applications, but not really used where mechanical stress is involved. You do have carbon-steel, cobalt steel, and nickel available, why not expand upon them and let brass take it's niche place? Brass pickaxe better than carbon-steel pickaxe?
On the same note, I see you plan introduction of brass-bearing. May I suggest using bronze bearings instead? From wikipedia uses of bronze "Bronze also has very low friction against dissimilar metals, making it important for cannons prior to modern tolerancing, where iron cannonballs would otherwise stick in the barrel. It is still widely used today for springs, bearings, bushings, automobile transmission pilot bearings, and similar fittings, and is particularly common in the bearings of small electric motors. Phosphor bronze is particularly suited to precision-grade bearings and springs."

[steinio]

Has anybody complained or why change the inserters at all?

[orzelek]

I for one am most appreciative of your efforts on getting the stacking mod to work with the various Bobs plates and ores. If you do end up creating static images, i would love to have the link to use it.

I was just looking into what it would take me to build one, and... voila, even better, you've made one.

Dave.

I made the mod with static pictures - it's over on Agnel's mods forums since it's also for Anglels mod set.
Drawback atm is that it uses Angels Smelting icons so while it will work with bob's mods stracked items will have different icons than single items if you use it only with bobs mods.
Thread is here:
viewtopic.php?f=185&t=58341

[RocketManChronicles]

Hello Bob,

Your latest change to boblogistics is not quite what I come to expect quality-wise from you. To name a few issues I encountered:

• Updating in a running game breaks the game play-wise.
  • Fast inserter remains fast but filter inserter is now slower, because is converted to the new "fast filter inserter" or "red filter inserter".
    Recipe changes to inserters and belts makes many blueprints and layouts obsolete, recovering by re-engineering the running base is time-consuming due to new intermediates required.
  For a new game, balancing is broken.
  • New intermediates required to build simple items as belts and inserters.
    Changes to tech tree leave no real option for high-volume inserter at red+green science level. Stack insertes require blue science, red-green has only only a stack-bonus.
  No way to reduce GUI clutter by giving an option to remove the reintroduced button. I use adjustable inserters and have no use for the new button.

Coding-wise the new inserters rework is a naming convention mess. I understand some changes were made with mod compatibility in mind, but then what's with the red-inserter? No consistency.

Here are some suggestions on how I see the above issue addressed:

• Restore the old stack bonus or introduce a new "Fast stack inserter" inserter at red+green level of science.
  Create all the inserters needed for the respecive tiers and keep the naming convention. "Filter Inserter" paired with "Inserter", "Fast Inserter" paired with "Fast stack inserter" and "Fast filter inserter" and so on.
  Provide a migration script for running games that will convert inserter items and entities to their new speed equivalents.
  To keep the internal entity and item naming convention, make at data-final-fixes stage a foreach recipe replace(old ingredient, new ingredient). This is a heavy handed approach, a more cleaner way would be desired.
  Either check whether bobinserters is loaded and don't display the GUI button, or provide a keyboard shortcut alternative to show/hide the GUI button.

There was extensive conversations going for some time here: viewtopic.php?f=51&t=53548&start=40 You obviously missed the points that were discussed here to try to improve the progression. The ideas were to smooth out the material requirements so that earlier tiers were not as difficult and also utilized the new materials unlocked at each tier. These are welcomed changes. It is always understood (espcially when the game is still in ALPHA) that changes will break blueprints, layouts, etc. This should be no surprise, seriously. Read teh three pages in the link I provided over the discussion and enjoy the game!

Has anybody complained or why change the inserters at all?

See the link I provided above, read the three pages of discussion.

[bobingabout]

Hello Bob,

Your latest change to boblogistics is not quite what I come to expect quality-wise from you. To name a few issues I encountered

I was expecting feedback, complaints and suggestions. Consider the current version more of an experiment than final. I did have the "This isn't going to work" feeling quite often while re-working the inserters, so it is possible I didn't make the best decision in all cases.

Fast inserter remains fast but filter inserter is now slower, because is converted to the new "fast filter inserter" or "red filter inserter".
Recipe changes to inserters and belts makes many blueprints and layouts obsolete, recovering by re-engineering the running base is time-consuming due to new intermediates required.

I tried to keep changes to a minimum, but ingredient changes was part of the overhaul plan, especially things like iron gear wheel -> steel/brass gear wheel and iron-plate -> steel/aluminium. it was discussed quite heavily and most people gave positive feedback on the plan. Keep in mind the same changes were made to belts. The overall change is going to stay, however... I'll get to that in a bit.
as for the inconsistency with the filter inserter, I'll get back to that too.

New intermediates required to build simple items as belts and inserters.
Changes to tech tree leave no real option for high-volume inserter at red+green science level. Stack insertes require blue science, red-green has only only a stack-bonus.

The changes to the tech tree were one of the more painful moments, I wasn't going to increase the speed of any of the lower tiers, but decided to increase the speed of them to make up for locking the previously red science blue inserters behind blue science. it forces you to want to use the red inserters more, which have 75% of the speed of the old blue, rather than 50%, and the new blue have a speed of 125%.
As for stack bonuses, I made no changes to these in the current version of the mod, okay, it does push stack inserter stack bonus behind a blue science line, but the first tiers of research still cost red and green to research. This is purely because of the move to stack inserters research itself, and if it were moved back down to a red/green science level, but only give fast stack instead of express stack inserters, balance will be restored.

No way to reduce GUI clutter by giving an option to remove the reintroduced button. I use adjustable inserters and have no use for the new button.

If you're already using bob's adjustable inserters mod, then nothing should change at all, the button already exists in that mod, and the changes shouldn't affect that. Now, it does try to add/re-add the button even if it already exists, but the buttons are the same (copy paste those functions from the inserters mod to make sure). if this isn't the case, make sure you're using the latest version of my inserters mod, and if the problem persists, let me know. Now, adding this button wasn't exactly my favoured choice of things to do, If you have any suggestions on how to solve the issue, I'm open to hearing them, but given my alternative was to have a recipe, item and entity for long handed inserters, and removing the long handed inserter was the primary reason for doing this, yeah...

Coding-wise the new inserters rework is a naming convention mess. I understand some changes were made with mod compatibility in mind, but then what's with the red-inserter? No consistency.

The creation of the red-inserter entity was done because I couldn't come up with a way to convert old long handed inserters without breaking existing games. if you simply were to change the range values, oh, all your long handed inserters lose their ranges. so a new entity was required as an "easy" fix. now, the long way is to apply a script that checks for the existing entity's hand locations, then apply them to it. this is important because it then reads the locations from save, not entity prototype. which needs to be applied before the prototype is changed. I'll get back to why I changed only the entity too.

Restore the old stack bonus or introduce a new "Fast stack inserter" inserter at red+green level of science.

I didn't really want to, but possible. I did make graphics for a red stack hand.

Create all the inserters needed for the respecive tiers and keep the naming convention. "Filter Inserter" paired with "Inserter", "Fast Inserter" paired with "Fast stack inserter" and "Fast filter inserter" and so on.
Provide a migration script for running games that will convert inserter items and entities to their new speed equivalents.

for the red-inserter vs long-handed-inserter deal, and and reversing of red/blue-filter-inserter choice... well... the first one was for minimum disruption as mentioned, I redirected long-handed to red to avoid migration, rather than create an entire new set of red-inserter item/recipe set. As for filter, that was done mostly because I needed to maintain the filter-inserter locale entry as it is because of my auto-locale system, try load the game in german, and you'll see that the names of my inserters will be such as... "Express"(english) "Filter inserter"(german) as the second part is reading the locale entry of the original filter inserter entity.

To keep the internal entity and item naming convention, make at data-final-fixes stage a foreach recipe replace(old ingredient, new ingredient). This is a heavy handed approach, a more cleaner way would be desired.
Either check whether bobinserters is loaded and don't display the GUI button, or provide a keyboard shortcut alternative to show/hide the GUI button.

If you're using the latest version of both, the second GUI button shouldn't exist, should be the same button in both, logistics will ignore the button if inserters is installed. I'm not quite sure why you're sugesting putting a migration in data-final-fixes, but I can, and am thinking I should use migrations to some extent rather than trying to ignore them.

It pains me greatly to see that you still consider brass a higher tier material, above carbon-steel or cobalt-steel. Brass is great for some applications, but not really used where mechanical stress is involved. You do have carbon-steel, cobalt steel, and nickel available, why not expand upon them and let brass take it's niche place? Brass pickaxe better than carbon-steel pickaxe?

Brass gear wheel is actually a bit of a legacy item from DyTech days. I don't want to remove it because it's already used a lot in my mods. However, I could go with cobalt-steel bearings instead of regular steel bearings, and possibly add in a new cobalt steel gear wheel too. then you'll get to remind me how hard it is to craft cobalt.


Okay, from this review, the shortlist of changes:
Give red inserter a full recipe/item rename to go along with the entity.
Give Filter inserter a similar treatment, having a red filter inserter providing the fast functionality, and restore the old filter to it's express speed. (I'm thinking like long handed, the entity will remain unchanged, but give you a fast filter when you dismantle it).
Give fast inserter the same treatment as filter inserter, to maintain expected speeds, and restore internal name convention.
Stack and stack filter, the same, why not.
Migrate the items and recipes to the new naming scheme.
Express inserters... aren't really breaking a whole lot(as red and blue will be used instead of fast and express), Their names are consistent to each other unlike the red/blue mess, but consider changing them to purple too, to keep over-all consistency.

Give me more feedback on the button.

[ukezi]

currently cobal-steel is used in MK3 miners. A few additional uses would be cool. Also cobalt is not that hard. Then again, as I'm playing seablocks I'm clearly a masochist for complexity. Brass gears are used where precision is needed and the power is not that high, but not low enough for plastic gears(also a option for some stuff). Also corrosion resistance is a point. I personally would put brass gears in some hi-tech stuff like bots and chem plants and something like cobalt steel in the hi power stuff like miners and belts.

[Solarwuff]

Not sure if this is you intention or not
So far i can see with the last boblogistics update long handed inserters got removed as craftible item