Factorio Forums

tldr: So, how many of you have bluprint libraries like mine: hundreds of the same things over and over because when you look through it, your eyes just 'gloss over' because you arent sure of the details?

the problem: I keep making new blueprints of things, and trying to fit a clever condensed code into the title box to say what it does, but in the end when i come back after a few weeks or months, it is just more confusing than helpful.

what I would like to see: I would love a little notepad inside the blueprints. It doesnt need to be huge, but at least a few lines to denote: what does this do? what is the throughput? how much power does it need? how much resources does it need?

my non-solution solutions: I always try to do this with filter inserters in front of belts to say "____ goes here" but the bigger the prints get, the harder those get to see, and eventually you have inserters all over the place that you dont really want to build.

maybe there is a mod for this? if so, I would love being pointed to it

We noticed that players try to put a large amount of info about a blueprint in its name, so we are planning to add a possibility to write a textual description of the blueprint.

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-282

tk0421 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 19, 2019 5:59 pm

my non-solution solutions: I always try to do this with filter inserters in front of belts to say "____ goes here" but the bigger the prints get, the harder those get to see, and eventually you have inserters all over the place that you dont really want to build.

dont know what exactly 0.17 will bring there, but i´d stick to inserters/constant combinators in any case.
its just so much easier to look at them than to look at your blueprint notes to figure out what goes where.
Once you stamped it down, you´d have already forgotten your notes if they include 20 (maybe even split) belt inputs of a mall BP

Koub wrote: ↑Tue Feb 19, 2019 6:36 pm

We noticed that players try to put a large amount of info about a blueprint in its name, so we are planning to add a possibility to write a textual description of the blueprint.

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-282

wow, I dont know how i completely skipped over that part on the library, having only just read it last night! ty.

TL;DR

I miss the place to put a description for the Blueprints

What ?

Giving a "Notes" field for blueprints would be nice.
It can be limited to something short e.x.: 250 bytes, but it would be great to have a place for credits, notes, usage info, power needs, throughput, etc...

Why ?

Right now I use the title to store all the info that should be in a description

Currently, blueprints can only have text associated with them in the form of their title/name. It would be useful to add the ability to write a description of the blueprint. This would allow for the possibility of attaching documentation or usage instructions for blueprints, especially complicated ones involving circuits.

Adding this would require a change in the blueprint format by adding a "description" string attribute to the blueprint object itself: https://wiki.factorio.com/Blueprint_str ... int_object

With the new GUI changes, there's a nice spot of empty space to the left of the blueprint image where this text box can go:
---

If and when the blueprint library is revamped, perhaps this suggestion can also be incorporated along with any other planned changes and the blueprint string format version can be bumped up from 0 to 1.

I think a pure description isn’t enough.

My thoughts about features for bp-handling in unsorted order:

1. there should not only be text descriptions, there should be signs to describe for example the input and output belts or complex combinator combinations. Arrows. Circles. Lines.

2. If we are on a bp-description add fields like for mods, aka
- who has created it
- copyrights (I don’t know if that makes much sense to forbid usage, because you always can paste it and make another bp)
- links to other blueprints in the same book; the game can interpret that as preferred follower after using this bp.
- Tags , that help finding the right bp In game and if uploaded to a bp-search engine.

3. And when we are here you want to have a simple way to edit that. A bp-editor, which is really useful. There are mods, but none of them is stable, or has the needed features:
- simulation; let the bp run and you can add infinite chests and so on, to help simulate it, which are not part of the bp.
- Support very big blueprints by not placing them at once but placing only some parts per tick (avoid waiting times, when going into/leaving the editor.
- support research level changes: you can simulate missing entities if you reduce the research level. See below about versioning.
- with two bps you * can combine them into one, * divide one bp from the other (masking, entities of bp2 remove entities from bp1), * upgrade/downgrade entities
- support scripting. Some library of scripts, to do things with blueprints and a simple script editor to ad own.

4. BP-versioning. Every time you use the editor by default a new version is created.You can go back in time and create another branch. Only one of the versions can be the current active version. You can add dependencies to that, e.g. “the active version is dependent by the research level.”, so it automatically places the version which matches best.

I have many more ideas, but i think I have already made a bit off-topic.

Of course, it would be nice to have all of the things you mentioned. But if that leads to scope creep (by essentially trying to reinvent a version control system for blueprints and a closed-box simulator) which leads to these features being indefinitely postponed, it's useful to consider that most of these things could be manually managed by the blueprint creator in a text description (which would be a relatively easier feature to add).