Factorio Forums

When building circuit logic with combinators close to each others, it's very hard to see which one has connection to which ones. It also takes some time to figure out what signal type each circuit logic entity is broadcasting or receiving.

It would be nice to have some sort of power-pole-like highlighting (those orange bracket showing up when mousing over a power pole) of connected entities when mousing over some entity which is connected to a logic network.

We currently have entities which either only broadcast a signal or only receive a signal. Combinators are split into a tile which is responsible for receiving (the input side) and a tile which does the broadcasting (the output side) therefore each tile either broadcasts or receives.

So if I would mouse over an inserter (connected with red wire) which works when there are less then 50 coal in the circuit network, it will highlight all the entities (chests, constant combinators) which currently output coal to the red wire network in bright red, all the ones which are connected to red wire but don't output coal will be highlighted dark red. If the inserter is looking if there is more coal then iron, the mousing over it should highlight the "iron-broadcasters" in bright red, too.

It should work the same way when mousing over "broadcasters": highlight all "receiver" entities connected to it but highlight them in bright red and/or green if they actually looking for a signal that's been broadcasted by the entity beeing moused over.

Beside showing the input/output type over entities by pressing ALT, as suggested in the forum here, this should make the combinator logic debugging process way easier in my eyes since we can spot accidental connections or missing links fairly easy.

I know, in order to implement this, one has to check for the combinators orientation to find out which tile is the input or output but I believe it will be worth it:)

Regards
Fahrradkette

What about generating a SVG circuit diagram for the circuit that the highlighted item is connected to, that is saved to a file that can be opened in a browser or displayed in-game?

That way, the circuit can be shared or reviewed.

I don't ask for much....

lyallp wrote:What about generating a SVG circuit diagram for the circuit that the highlighted item is connected to, that is saved to a file that can be opened in a browser or displayed in-game?

That way, the circuit can be shared or reviewed.

I don't ask for much....

a large circuit build will be many separate circuit networks

you'll need something broader but not too broad so that the input from outposts also gets pushed in

I agree, I would love to see some highlighting in the circuit network as well. It gets messy really fast.

I'd love to see this as well. I've been getting into some really dense, complicated circuit networks lately and would love to be able to see what is connected to what. Minimally, it'd be great to have something like when you mouseover a building and it shows the electric pole that powers it. But if it could actually highlight the wires themselves when you mouseover a circuit network connected thing it would be amazing. I find myself often removing a wire and replacing it, just to verify whether it had actually been connected in the first place, and even then with some dense layouts its hard to tell.

NateDangerous wrote:But if it could actually highlight the wires themselves when you mouseover a circuit network connected thing it would be amazing. I find myself often removing a wire and replacing it, just to verify whether it had actually been connected in the first place, and even then with some dense layouts its hard to tell.

Coming in 0.13:

Friday Facts #138 - Better Circuit Network III wrote:Wire highlights

This is something for those who make huge combinator networks. It's really easy to get lost in wires when making complicated setups. Now hovering over entities that have red/green wires connected to them will highlight the wire network.

lyallp wrote:What about generating a SVG circuit diagram for the circuit that the highlighted item is connected to, that is saved to a file that can be opened in a browser or displayed in-game?

That way, the circuit can be shared or reviewed.

I don't ask for much....

I really support this proposition (it can be any diagram standard). Diagrams are very clear and understandable.
It would be great even if we could generate .graphml file to import it into yEd or other graphs editor.

daniel34 wrote:

NateDangerous wrote:But if it could actually highlight the wires themselves when you mouseover a circuit network connected thing it would be amazing. I find myself often removing a wire and replacing it, just to verify whether it had actually been connected in the first place, and even then with some dense layouts its hard to tell.

Coming in 0.13:

Friday Facts #138 - Better Circuit Network III wrote:Wire highlights

This is something for those who make huge combinator networks. It's really easy to get lost in wires when making complicated setups. Now hovering over entities that have red/green wires connected to them will highlight the wire network.

Whoa! Awesome! I hadn't found the Friday Facts things until today. This will be super helpful.