[MOD 0.15.29+] Creative Mode 0.3.12 - Infinite resources

[Mooncat]

Quite a lot of messages... but I am not at home now, and my notebook is brokenly slow. I will check the problems once I get back home.

i was just reading this thread and about to report that the old problem still exists for me, that blueprints don't show a preview when items from this mod are included (using factorio 0.13.17 and the newest version of your mod), when i saw that you just posted an update a few minutes ago

I don't have this problem myself. Maybe a list of your installed mods will help.

i immediately updated it, but when walking a few steps in my factory, i got this error :

Yes, it seems the problem is related to instant blueprint. Like Nexela said, please try to change line 297 in scripts/events.lua to:

Code: Select all

if not game.active_mods["instant-blueprints"] and event.player_index and game.players[event.player_index].cheat_mode then

I will release a hotfix once it is confirmed. Thanks again, Nexela.

Can I toggle it off by toggling cheat_mode though? It's impossible to blueprint landfill and waterfill without ghosts since you can't mark the tiles themselves.

If you don't mind, I can add a command for that first. The UI toggle for that will be included in v0.2, but I can't promise when it will be released.

Toggling cheat_mode off will also turn off instant blueprint/decon.

um... I have changed the code. I want them to be separated cheats in my mod and be independent to cheat mode, they are only related when loading an existing game that have Creative Mode < v0.1.2 enabled.
So, toggling cheat mode will NOT affect instant blueprint/deconstruction.

But maybe you could fix that, the screenshot_tool mod by Klonan marks ground tiles. Well you did promise compatability with other mods so maybe you already thought about that too?

It is impossible to support all other mods without any user report. But since you have reported now, I will look into it.

For this reason, I propose to always have 1 free slot in Creative Chests, so you will have this voiding capability by default. This would be SUPER useful because then one could always place a creative chest, no matter if you need it as an item source or as an item void.

And mention it in the tool tip of the item, I more or less discovered it randomly.

OK, I will make this.
You meant add this extra slot in the tool tip? I wonder if it will make the tool tip too big. I will try that.

You should also make the "compact" inventory view the default.

The problem is, although compact view can make the inventory looks cleaner, it can also increase the difficulty to find items if they are originally put in different rows but then, because of compact view, put into the same or similar rows.
If more people request this, I will reconsider.

You should start working on something like Mjollnir now, because we really, really need that.

*whisper* Nexela is making a magic wand. It will be much easier to use.

Kinda like how HandyHands always makes sure I have a full stack in cheat_mode

Ok nice. Glad you are enjoying HandyHands.

It is good to know that there is another mod to refill items after they are placed. I will definitely try it.
Originally, I want to implement something like the actual creative mode in Minecraft - place item: will not reduce from inventory, mine item: will not fill inventory. But after reading this, I think it is not possible at this moment.

the item source doesn't output fully compressed express belt speed. Possible to fix? Was kinda obvious while filling my 512 belt balancer, it's easily visible at 10 UPS. And yeah 1024 item source + voids are not optimized enough to run at the same time as my balancer q:

hm... I have studied the behavior of item source and made sure that it can make compressed express belt. But I can check it again, as well as your balancer.
I have no clue about the performance right now. I would say it is a drawback of their functionalities.
But if you have connected them with wires, it is the main reason of having bad performance in this version. I can't fix it myself because it is caused by the modding API. Hopefully the devs can fix it soon.

Maybe it's possible to create a modded loader, the loader seems to be able to easily compress a belt with no performance issues. I do not know what else would be necessary to turn it into something like an item source, but maybe it's possible and then it certainly would be the best approach.

AFAIK, vanilla loader cannot create compressed express belt. Check the bottom part of my article.
But things may change since the devs have decided to support loaders. If that is the case, you can use the loaders to output from duplicating chests.

Creating a compressed belt is actually quite a complicated problem. You may simply create a loader that is faster than express belt to compress it. However, this will not work on modded belts that are faster than express belt, like bob's belts.
On the other hand, making a modded loader that can deal with all applicable belt speeds will require certain amount of process in every tick, and hence will also introduce performance issue.

Also the latest update seems to have broken the energy sources......
And Nexela Seems to have broken energy sources Silly typos.

LOL. You scared me. I have messed with the energy source to test electric-energy-interface. So it is really possible that I have broken it if I forgot to revert the change.

[Nexela]

Nexela wrote:
Toggling cheat_mode off will also turn off instant blueprint/decon.
um... I have changed the code. I want them to be separated cheats in my mod and be independent to cheat mode, they are only related when loading an existing game that have Creative Mode < v0.1.2 enabled.
So, toggling cheat mode will NOT affect instant blueprint/deconstruction.

After I had a chance to fully wake up I noticed that And at about the same time I noticed my copy did have the event.player_index check
The quick-fix I posted will work but needs to be tweaked back to use your cheat_mode vs player_cheat_mode

Also a couple of more things;
1. The check for "instant blueprint" mod needs to encompass the destroy and create code also. If not, if IB is installed you will get duplicate creates and duplicate destroys (big deal invalid entity crash).
2. Instant blueprint doesn't put in modules if they are part of the blueprint.
3. Instant destruction is exactly that it obliterates items , Then I realized how much of a PITA it is to actually find the item, get the count of items, insert them to inventory or drop em on the ground. Then what to do if we deconstruct "item-on-ground- if our inventory is full. Mark em for deconstruction for robots? Destroy Them? Ignore them!.
4. Creative mode isn't current on github :p

I have my son for a few more days before school starts, after that I will have more time to flesh out the magic wand and figure out how to turn a bounding box into a pseudo random circle.

[Anson]

part 1: about problems with blueprints and bugs

old problem that blueprints don't show a preview when items from this mod are included

I don't have this problem myself. Maybe a list of your installed mods will help. ;)

a bit insane, but i have 130 :-)
a minor miracle that it works at all :-)
i just started a new map with a minimum of mods and tested it again, and there were NO problems with the blueprint. and even while previews that include items from your mod are not shown, the blueprints themselves work perfectly with your items.
I'll have to test it in more detail later when i have more time.

Yes, it seems the problem is related to instant blueprint. Like Nexela said, please try to change line 297 in scripts/events.lua ...
I will release a hotfix once it is confirmed. Thanks again, Nexela. :D

i first had to install a new editor to find line 297 (LOL :-) but after unzipping the mod, editing that file, restarting factorio, getting the same error message again (although i had inserted a line and thus it COULDN'T have been the exact same message for line 301), restarting factorio again after disabling and re-enabling the mod, then deleting the old zip from trash, saving the modified file again, and restarting factorio again, i finally succeeded in applying your little patch and can play without problems now. after one hour ingame, no deconstruction has crashed factorio. thanks for the quick fix.

btw: when i did a test with a new map, i saw that there are more options for cheats now. it would be nice if i could access all those options more easily, eg to toggle fast walking and mining, to disable the blueprints and cheatmode after some first setup of a "core base camp", etc without having to use console commands. maybe there could be an icon at the top that enables/disables the mod, or the mod asks whether to enable cheats when loading a map (and that list of cheats then could have an option to not ask again on future map starts)? maybe you have an option in some config file to enable that question on map loading, but that is more difficult to change for most users, while mod authors who want to not be asked on every new map (re)start will edit lots of files anyway.


part 2: about item sources, throughput and related things

the item source doesn't output fully compressed express belt speed. Possible to fix?

hm... I have studied the behavior of item source and made sure that it can make compressed express belt.

I used the item source to test throughput of belts, using the factorioExtended-Transport mod which has belts MK4 and mk5, and they all seem to be compressed when using straight belts, with throughput of exactly 400, 800, 1200, 1600 and 2000 items per minute (per lane; up to 4000 per belt). the only value that didn't match was for sideloading MK5 belts with only exactly 1800, but that is currently a question on the FactorioExtended thread :-)

Here is a blueprint for testing the throughput (required mods: of course creative mode, and foreman to read the blueprint, nixie tubes to show the results, and factorioextended-transport and factorioextended-core for the mk4 and mk5 belts). let the belts run for 2 minutes to get stable readings after placing the blueprint.

Code: Select all

H4sIAAAAAAAA/+VcS5OjNhD+K1s+my0kENiVsLccckhOuW2lXIwtz6iCwQE82SmX/3sA22P0pCXwlqt8mgdqdevrVvcnJLEpvmTFOs2+rJIjWxd5lRyPLN/Q
HwmaV+w1T7PkWH/saTJjNd3N5nm6a36vyzSv9kVZey80q2en0/wihA1CZbpnG48X9Xb/4J54YBDP2Q9GvfrwQnsCoUFgQ9dsQ0tvXexeWJ7WRdkInuY0r1nN
aDvQc7t1SdOavVNvV2zoqu3Bq4pDuaaz+b6omrZFnhxb2z4Sb3mab1lW07KP07mbqqY08/ZZWjcG3vBQPGzNt1JNhlQfsu2hVGi9/N9aYTygcF3s9w2ymsHy
T62VLweUs7LIdar7z6wVIzSgmWZ0XTca2Npbs3J9YLVsgarNzZJeEHOqvahVHX8lgKYxvGkIb0qkplnxyqq6HccbrWqvpP8emp+0FARxJ3iaX56vIPNjvi4O
eZ0gJTJetUuzTKVlARhHcB1HoyNvHJGtXuhb+s6KMjleHLJqnmwuEltWNjbrkwg/q9sEWaeN5VHY/L7bp2WbVpJZ0qak5mHe+J51SfT7DM3+To6vJaWNlmOX
dD5WbJME7aCtQUY/BWR0BvmuyIW+D4OupBseuIADTihBcqpuxrFh5bnXJITLxZzcNFikGaO5l5Y126brug8H4sD41j66dE/z9CWjqw2r2p9JXR7o57Mmn21W
b2m+aY2oG4wq/vn1v+eGbdZLfBjKqIGt92fURM9cDmKhVRByrtmmTSSbcCYG/8CEn9xJEQc/9tVOklv1nER/7EtaVUaoY4OfwPJP7ip+pmAMmU9tq56rNMQZ
KWiTxlkWPTy3u5pJwjkiVLpL0WrYXVhFNu38peziyR2mnlDCDDLTbgKn3bCmBN40lJra0G4CYITnNaAj446gjJtMx7ivi9lbzOGlK9tGmJupBDuT73tCjc5Q
3wu/hSvlRiGPHp/nupF45/Vug+G+yITI8C+4AV3F0xUUxAptWbrbC0lQCNNBfh85rgvIGL6qUQoT1mgGMzCNcrC8Rr8FqdBYYNGDnQ3KQmlnhLILjRXm8hLA
ywusaQhvSqSmNuUlGM553Ls+xyITQotMMFmREV5g3krNMhjxYqefv+KFc6m5P+zoDPudscQjXvX0oVz4GjKnGtsFQWDra5g7A/HOyvqQZp/Ft3vovWTp+p8+
FiQGUhipBAtl8Npjf1dDHn84tCa4xRVkOH91Q+libH6Jw8YgiOTvkiS2Gg2+w2j+cB7Nb+bRDFKI0JF6BGq5QQIW3qLb9p0SIsThnZ5mgDBhzSjBNEWjHCyv
0W9BUjQWWPRgZ4OSo9gZoexCYwW/jfb5174s3s8brW1pEytNtwhAur04m04wdD2P4IQL1pTAm4ZSUxvChYYrf2+H05FuQXAMrsOYhiJwW7afRRGThSvZIvy6
HiHfmW3dG3N0xvyeQKLIlWmRUMARO7ANPG19Rs71Wa7sGCgZSJIBUDKSJEN7hjMxgjLrgiL4pzOCvjOCsmRoxao48DBILpRBh8shRxankYORI80gB4Ujw0hh
wqPM1giDOZlm2GD5EfoXBuTA8hr9FoxQg4BFD6NsuFKv0V3YWaGkpXZQKLsYZ4UiVzt1obOieClaWYn9fm3nEgbxz3bK+mD+C2sZglsSsaUF+QXwMMXZOjcO
7AMpsD8ZA1YeHbwx4SWQv8lMOOaPDqAg/NxVbfdBXWnxz/IG6rzxMzBGzttgC1+AmOghNm1T+XBS47txDAdqEoraIjt+4CpL9KMEyY5kFhrVUPGRvEIDGryo
a8yHdzCeFNiNQVWN7Qah6mF8OdeMQnF3QK6zmu2oi+wtc1Wjtg74pPVtNi8O9f4APAGw/1h1KXm1LYvdiuWNYHfyBrz74PdTHRLyIOIfKk+2tWc3+sly7t79
af59hnXnPJamnnyTDUifzQfDIH7kMBAOYI+NBRFipbuNUEs9mDxqjA0xqqycRh7YadJm6tRe42MfW89g4yQVp5bYvdHfyMLfBjWWwRA+cDAIb3tHJ3MTwvy6
QTe7MTiRDnVvDAXsHHGG1c9gKOAHDoWpk7noDx7FCBILgcEPRCqqV3fLlkRC02FlyM6vwQP7VbNmHe1e4wwSwRye6sbZbPT90FQ3xSESF97G9BNbRYX/wEEx
OQkQJzQP3AISDsQE/cLQvUUqQGK/EVipLm+QEXkDPXCITLnGC0zBIQKoRNnkJ5tSYCop0lu3YUt4f4POq2Pgvrl4WkqkoArjgnA6rvLIoTk1ayWm8AStSY09
LEwxp12wDphp7EcXu2IetoiHR6au96I4xqIDmI+SV8xV0eB6UCWSQgm+G6A5jzck5rrtT/QqQbIjNs1jvWqo+Ki96qVeP7wDjQXaraFu8p6GFKnef48/Lqqx
FcSNNHf+7ppwEk3CUXdG32n5Ub+x/HWSlAPLKlZvOozcy8jaRzDbuzuvoq08SKQB5aNzzs3Hv1r5+BYwlu5VuEN0MId4FBuLQGymDuYlsiqQiPT2FF4xHG8a
aO63gS4ahLBJFCEFqpb3DMZcMxh5mXLkJYPRVylHXzEYf5Fy/AUDjQ381QCa0/L1Q/mhLi/qTkRxX6vihatD+wLFELFeKHehK9DdC8TeFWPQqehYlV3tjvHe
MpvLUd7PxNoKB+0Jcd2B3oEvP7Ty+Kq8q2ewYkmEib6YPs3xV3qnOUWk//aFuPRx/vbFNs2qab4DJBSd2LeCLx6RR58eeuHcXYzt65gGf2gxeXYXxML2QMx/
nwIKo8YL8JL69H4QiHIccX6AA2nnCRWzeHpXOH+KSoO94tOp7wXbyLVkoaNiGhniIBM7yCwdZDpA2u83XD89TP9b4dnpl5LWhzL/svqF5pv/AXuS2ck5WQAA

I have no clue about the performance right now. I would say it is a drawback of their functionalities.
But if you have connected them with wires, it is the main reason of having bad performance in this version.
I can't fix it myself because it is caused by the modding API. Hopefully the devs can fix it soon.

with something like 30 item sources/voids and 30 super electric poles, F4 shows 0.7 for me, no problem at all. 20 sources/voids with one big pole (one of the sources creating the max of 1 item per tick) result in 1.8-2.2 and when i had a larger test setup with a lot more sources and voids, it was still around 3.0 only, good enough for playing and most of all good enough for testing.

Maybe it's possible to create a modded loader, the loader seems to be able to easily compress a belt with no performance issues.

AFAIK, vanilla loader cannot create compressed express belt.

that applies not only to blue belts, but to ALL belts. I just tested with the above blueprint, replacing the item sources with item-source > chest > loader. the item source easily keeps the chest filled, even when using only one of the two filters while loaders always feed both lanes, but the loaders only cause a throughput of 720, 1440, 1800 (instead of 800, 1600, 2400) which is 90% of max for yellow and red belts, and even only 75% of max for blue belts (maybe that limit is caused by doing only 2 items every 4 ticks?).

... devs support loaders ... If that is the case, you can use the loaders to output from duplicating chests. ;)

even if loaders are supported in the future, and even if they can then compress blue belts, i don't think they will serve faster belts than blue belts while there are a few mods with faster belts of at least mk4 and mk5, and creative mode has no problem of serving at least up to mk5 (5x yellow speed).
item sources from this mod can produce up to 3600 items per minute per lane (that is 1 item per tick) which would correspond to one lane of a compressed belt MK9 (!!! :-) although i didn't test the compression for mk6+. to transport those 3600 items (remember, that is the production of one lane!), three compressed blue lanes would be needed, or two vanilla express loaders (using all 4 lanes).

making a modded loader that can deal with all applicable belt speeds will require certain amount of process in every tick, and hence will also introduce performance issue. :(

yes, but that wouldn't be a problem of this mod !?

I enjoy the current fast item sources: there is nothing better than an item source to fill all my belts :-)
and since such sources should only be used for testing, a drop in UPS won't hurt too much. important are only the results of measuring throughput of belts, number of required inserters, testing factory layouts, usage of modules, etc. and if it takes twice the time because of lag, who cares? i don't.
the real problems start afterwards, when trying to achieve that "ideal throughput" in a real factory, without any type of cheats and item sources.

[Qon]

I enjoy the current fast item sources: there is nothing better than an item source to fill all my belts
and since such sources should only be used for testing, a drop in UPS won't hurt too much. important are only the results of measuring throughput of belts, number of required inserters, testing factory layouts, usage of modules, etc. and if it takes twice the time because of lag, who cares? i don't.
the real problems start afterwards, when trying to achieve that "ideal throughput" in a real factory, without any type of cheats and item sources.

If you tested big things then you would care. I had to spend hours just filling my belt balancer. Placing my blueprints takes minutes with instant blueprint. Performance issues are what's limiting me from making truly big factories. When testing takes so much time it severly limits the amounts I can iterate. Now the performance problems aren't only due to CM, Factorio is to blame too. Or maybe I'm to blame, pushing the game to hard q:

[siggboy]

even if loaders are supported in the future, and even if they can then compress blue belts, i don't think they will serve faster belts than blue belts

What makes you think that? You do not know the implementation of the loader. It might very well be able to fill any belt at any speed (if the speed is set accordingly in a mod).

The devs promised to fix it, I hope it will be a loader that can operate at any speed. That would make a performance efficient item source possible.

You meant add this extra slot [free slot in Creative Chest] in the tool tip? I wonder if it will make the tool tip too big. I will try that.

Just make the Creative Chest have 1 free (=filtered) inventory slot by default. It does not matter where it is. Then it will be possible to place a Creative Chest and put items into it which will be voided, without having to touch the filtering of the chest. Maybe you'll find an even better way to make this happen, I just want to be able to always use the voiding capability of the Creative Chest without having to change any configs or filters.

The tool tip DESCRIPTION should be changed so that it tells you that is possible to void items in the Creative Chest (due to the free slot).

I'm not for adding an actual inventory slot to the tooltip -- that would look really weird :).

[Mooncat]

And at about the same time I noticed my copy did have the event.player_index check

Be..be..because when I was implementing your code and saw that part, I thought "who the hell will skip player_index when raising that event!?" Now I understand it is possible.

The check for "instant blueprint" mod needs to encompass the destroy and create code also. If not, if IB is installed you will get duplicate creates and duplicate destroys (big deal invalid entity crash).

Thanks for the info. I will properly test with Instant Blueprint mod.

Instant blueprint doesn't put in modules if they are part of the blueprint.

I think it is also a limitation in the Instant Blueprint mod? Not sure if LuaEntity::get_module_inventory() can get the modules from ghost entities but I will try that.

Instant destruction is exactly that it obliterates items

I think it is a good behavior when you use with Instant blueprint, because you won't need item to build.

Creative mode isn't current on github :p

(It has been there since long time ago. )
I will add the link to the first post when I finish 0.1.3. I forgot to merge back to main branch after doing 0.1.2

I have my son for a few more days before school starts, after that I will have more time to flesh out the magic wand and figure out how to turn a bounding box into a pseudo random circle.

I am not sure whether it is necessary. Maybe I am just too used to bounding box.

------

a bit insane, but i have 130
a minor miracle that it works at all
i just started a new map with a minimum of mods and tested it again, and there were NO problems with the blueprint. and even while previews that include items from your mod are not shown, the blueprints themselves work perfectly with your items.
I'll have to test it in more detail later when i have more time.

Yes, that's quite insane for me.
It is good to hear it works now. Looks like the possible reasons for this issue can be:
1) a mod is causing sprites not being drawn properly in blueprint. Possible if you have mods that aim to improve graphics.
2) Factorio cannot handle certain sprites from certain mods properly, causing problem in blueprint.
3) Factorio cannot handle so many mods, i.e. so many entities or sprites, properly. Memory overloaded.

i first had to install a new editor to find line 297 (LOL but after unzipping the mod, editing that file, restarting factorio, getting the same error message again (although i had inserted a line and thus it COULDN'T have been the exact same message for line 301), restarting factorio again after disabling and re-enabling the mod, then deleting the old zip from trash, saving the modified file again, and restarting factorio again, i finally succeeded in applying your little patch and can play without problems now. after one hour ingame, no deconstruction has crashed factorio. thanks for the quick fix.

Sorry for the inconvenience.
A friendly note: if you are using Windows, you may try Notepad++. It is free. Not only for editing .lua files, but you can also use it for editing other text files. It supports tabs and split views. You will love it after get used to it.

btw: when i did a test with a new map, i saw that there are more options for cheats now. it would be nice if i could access all those options more easily, eg to toggle fast walking and mining, to disable the blueprints and cheatmode after some first setup of a "core base camp", etc without having to use console commands. maybe there could be an icon at the top that enables/disables the mod, or the mod asks whether to enable cheats when loading a map (and that list of cheats then could have an option to not ask again on future map starts)? maybe you have an option in some config file to enable that question on map loading, but that is more difficult to change for most users, while mod authors who want to not be asked on every new map (re)start will edit lots of files anyway.

The plan is to add a configuration menu in game whenever Creative Mode is enabled. If you have used Test Mode before, you will know that. Basically it will provide access to toggle all cheats as well as enable/disable Creative Mode. It will be in v0.2.
For now, a not-so-optimal way to achieve this is to disable Creative Mode and then enable it back using commands, so you can select the cheats.

I used the item source to test throughput of belts, using the factorioExtended-Transport mod which has belts MK4 and mk5, and they all seem to be compressed when using straight belts, with throughput of exactly 400, 800, 1200, 1600 and 2000 items per minute (per lane; up to 4000 per belt). the only value that didn't match was for sideloading MK5 belts with only exactly 1800, but that is currently a question on the FactorioExtended thread

Thanks for the test and blueprint. I will look into the MK4 and MK5 belts. Maybe it is not related to the FactorioExtended mod.

with something like 30 item sources/voids and 30 super electric poles, F4 shows 0.7 for me, no problem at all. 20 sources/voids with one big pole (one of the sources creating the max of 1 item per tick) result in 1.8-2.2 and when i had a larger test setup with a lot more sources and voids, it was still around 3.0 only, good enough for playing and most of all good enough for testing.
...
I enjoy the current fast item sources: there is nothing better than an item source to fill all my belts
and since such sources should only be used for testing, a drop in UPS won't hurt too much. important are only the results of measuring throughput of belts, number of required inserters, testing factory layouts, usage of modules, etc. and if it takes twice the time because of lag, who cares? i don't.

I am a bit relieved after reading this.
But the fact is... Qon had 180 Item Sources + Voids on his last report about the performance issue.
And maybe he has much more now since he has made a 512 belt balancer. I guess there are 1 Item Source + 1 Item Void for each lane? So there are 1024 in total.
I would say... there are always some crazy scientists somewhere on the world.

If you tested big things then you would care. I had to spend hours just filling my belt balancer. Placing my blueprints takes minutes with instant blueprint. Performance issues are what's limiting me from making truly big factories. When testing takes so much time it severly limits the amounts I can iterate. Now the performance problems aren't only due to CM, Factorio is to blame too. Or maybe I'm to blame, pushing the game to hard q:

(continue) but the purpose of Creative Mode is to provide assist to these scientists. So I won't blame you. (But I will gently remind to be not too crazy. xD)
I also hope that the performance issue can be fixed in any way. Maybe the devs will implement vanilla form of Item Source and Item Void in someday?

-------

What makes you think that? You do not know the implementation of the loader. It might very well be able to fill any belt at any speed (if the speed is set accordingly in a mod).

The devs promised to fix it, I hope it will be a loader that can operate at any speed. That would make a performance efficient item source possible.

I think the chance of devs implementing a generic loader that fits on any speed is small, but not completely impossible.
But even if they don't do that, if they fix the compression problem, I am sure that there will be mods to provide loaders of different speeds.

Just have the Creative Chest have 1 free inventory slot by default. It does not matter where it is.

The tool tip DESCRIPTION should be changed so that it tells you that is possible to void items in the Creative Chest (due to the free slot).

I'm not for adding an actual inventory slot to the tooltip -- that would look really weird .

Yes, I was talking about the descriptions.
Edit: forgot to mention, this feature is actually optional. It can be turned off in config.lua. But I agree it is useful to void unused items in the same chest, so, if no one disagree, I will remove this config and make this feature always turned on.

By the way, besides adding commands to toggle the instant blueprint and instant deconstruction cheats, I am thinking about shortcut keys, inspired by the Auto Research mod, to toggle each cheat provided by this mod. Do you guys know any good shortcut keys that are safe to use?

[siggboy]

And at about the same time I noticed my copy did have the event.player_index check

Be..be..because when I was implementing your code and saw that part, I thought "who the hell will skip player_index when raising that event!?" Now I understand it is possible.

... and this is why it's wise to leave comments in the code when you're doing something that is not obvious. Especially true in Factorio mods, where so many quirks exist in the API.


And I have to install this "Auto Research" mod, it looks great.

[Nexela]

By the way, besides adding commands to toggle the instant blueprint and instant deconstruction cheats, I am thinking about shortcut keys, inspired by the Auto Research mod, to toggle each cheat provided by this mod. Do you guys know any good shortcut keys that are safe to use?

Just one shortcut that opens up the gui to enable/disable cheats is the way to go. Otherwise we will get too cluttered with keybinds. And don't forget you can have stacked keybinds also CTRL + SHIFT + M --> Creative Mode GUI!

[Qon]

I agree with Nexela here. Or a GUI button to bring up the menu. I'm almost fine without being able to toggle any of the settings at all for my test worlds. Hotkeys are fine if there's not too many of them. I don't need one hotkey for each feature, that will be a nightmare to set up.

And leaving one slot open in the creative chests sounds great to me. It's not like you will insert into them otherwise so it won't hurt anyone who doesn't need the feature.

[Anson]

Instant blueprint doesn't put in modules if they are part of the blueprint.

but at least the creative mode's instant blueprint marks the assemblers with missing modules, and robots will insert them automatically.

a bit insane, but i have 130 :-) a minor miracle that it works at all :-)

Yes, that's quite insane for me.

I'm still looking for a nice combination of mods to do a real game. thus went through the entire list of mods on the portal (roughly 500 mods), and installed everything that looked halfway interesting :-) now i am testing which items are really useful and delete lots of mods one after another (too bad that you have to delete them manually instead of having a "deinstall" button next to the "toggle" ingame)

Looks like the possible reasons for this issue can be:
1) a mod is causing sprites not being drawn properly in blueprint. Possible if you have mods that aim to improve graphics.
2) Factorio cannot handle certain sprites from certain mods properly, causing problem in blueprint.
3) Factorio cannot handle so many mods, i.e. so many entities or sprites, properly. Memory overloaded.

i have no mods installed to improve graphics (like HD textures etc), and the other reasons would be strange too, since i already had the same problem with half as many mods, my computer has 32GB ram, and video is 20 GB total (4 GB dedicated). and just by removing the item sources and voids, the blueprint preview appears again.
I'll report back if i found something, but it will take a while until i have sorted and checked all mods ...

i first had to install a new editor to find line 297 (LOL :-) ...

Sorry for the inconvenience. :oops:
A friendly note: if you are using Windows, you may try Notepad++. ...

that's exactly the new editor i mentioned :-)
generally, i always like to see patches as some kind of diff, so that i can verify that it is really the correct line that I'm modifying, and/or to be able to search the old line with ctrl-F. when i did the change, i commented out the old line, added a hint that i changed something, and thus future patches to this modified file would no longer work by giving line numbers only.

The plan is to add a configuration menu in game whenever Creative Mode is enabled. Basically it will provide access to toggle all cheats as well as enable/disable Creative Mode. It will be in v0.2. ;)

that will be nice!

is it possible to uninstall (or ingame "toggle off") the mod in the current version, and later install (or "toggle on") it again ? how ?
the OP is very nice and detailed about the items and also about console commands, but it warns explicitly that the mod can never be enabled again for the same map when you disable it completely ...

the only value that didn't match was for sideloading MK5 belts with only exactly 1800, but that is currently a question on the FactorioExtended thread :-)

I will look into the MK4 and MK5 belts. Maybe it is not related to the FactorioExtended mod. :)

yes, maybe ... the value 1800 is a bit strange: exactly half of 3600, and thus 1 item every 2 ticks ...
but if it is a bug, it is in factorio and not your mod :-)

with something like 30 item sources/voids and 30 super electric poles, F4 shows 0.7 for me, no problem at all. ...

I am a bit relieved after reading this. :D
But Qon had 180 Item Sources+Voids ... And maybe he has much more now ... 1024 in total. :geek:

i just tested rockets ... 80 silos with speed4 modules (average of starting 34 per minute), with 160 item sources feeding them (and 50 more at other places), and the value went up to 11.5, UPS down to 40. still playable for me, but probably problematic for things like a 512 belt balancer ...

just for comparison: most of my 130+ mods have values below 0.05, with the exception of interfacechest (1.2 for 20 chests), nixie tubes (1.8 for 200+ nixies), creativemode (12 for 200), and renewal (grow trees once every 20 ingame hours, increasing the value from 0.007 to 30 or 40 for 4 ingame hours, thus disabled now)

If you tested big things then you would care. ...
Now the performance problems aren't only due to CM, Factorio is to blame too.
Or maybe I'm to blame, pushing the game to hard q:

other games start lagging with only a few hundred items, factorio keeps full fps/ups even on a map with 60k+ chunks, maybe a million biters, and several million ore ... we are just a bit spoiled now :-)

By the way, besides adding commands to toggle the instant blueprint and instant deconstruction cheats, I am thinking about shortcut keys, to toggle each cheat provided by this mod. Do you guys know any good shortcut keys that are safe to use? :)

i think there are NO safe shortcuts.
there are simply too many mods and many of them start flooding factorio with shortcuts now.
i probably wouldn't need any shortcuts at all when there is an icon at the top which gives me some gui. but having many mods installed now, i am running out of space for more icons and it becomes increasingly difficult to find the icon that i am looking for. thus maybe one(!) shortcut would be nice to get the gui.
do you need to specify values for shortcuts when you initialize your mod? if not, then you could set up one shortcut for the gui, and any number of "empty" shortcuts for the cheats, and people would have to select (in the factorio options) which keys they have available for those shortcuts they really need. only problem then might be if the list of shortcuts in the options grows too long.

[Mooncat]

I'll report back if i found something, but it will take a while until i have sorted and checked all mods ...

Thanks Anson.

is it possible to uninstall (or ingame "toggle off") the mod in the current version, and later install (or "toggle on") it again ? how ?
the OP is very nice and detailed about the items and also about console commands, but it warns explicitly that the mod can never be enabled again for the same map when you disable it completely ...

Without the optional "true" at the end of the disable command, you can disable it temporarily. e.g.

Code: Select all

/c remote.call("creative-mode", "disable")

The "true" means permanently disable for the current game. An extra popup will be shown for confirmation if you have typed it.

To enable Creative Mode again,

Code: Select all

/c remote.call("creative-mode", "enable")

yes, maybe ... the value 1800 is a bit strange: exactly half of 3600, and thus 1 item every 2 ticks ...
but if it is a bug, it is in factorio and not your mod

haha, I have also thought about this too! Maybe the communications between Factorio and mods have some issues when FPS/UPS are low. But let's see after I checked Qon's balancer. It will take time though.




About the shortcut key, I will make it as suggested:

Just one shortcut that opens up the gui to enable/disable cheats is the way to go. Otherwise we will get too cluttered with keybinds. And don't forget you can have stacked keybinds also CTRL + SHIFT + M --> Creative Mode GUI!

Hopefully it is not used by other mod when I finish v0.2.

do you need to specify values for shortcuts when you initialize your mod? if not, then you could set up one shortcut for the gui, and any number of "empty" shortcuts for the cheats, and people would have to select (in the factorio options) which keys they have available for those shortcuts they really need. only problem then might be if the list of shortcuts in the options grows too long.

According to the Auto Research mod, it is possible to customize the shortcuts. But I don't know whether they can be empty. I will try that. Thanks for the idea.

(I'm reading the previous posts to make sure I have not missed anything before releasing 0.1.3)

[Mooncat]

v0.1.3 is released!

From Anson:
Error
- Fixed!


From Qon:
works with Filtered Deconstruction planner?
- Fixed!

Can I toggle it off by toggling cheat_mode though? It's impossible to blueprint landfill and waterfill without ghosts since you can't mark the tiles themselves.
- Added commands.

But maybe you could fix that, the screenshot_tool mod by Klonan marks ground tiles.
- It doesn't mark the tiles for deconstruction. It just "select" the tiles. So it has nothing to do with instant deconstruction.


From siggboy:
For this reason, I propose to always have 1 free slot in Creative Chests, so you will have this voiding capability by default.
- Sorry, it is delayed for the next version.


From Nexela:
And at about the same time I noticed my copy did have the event.player_index check
- Surprisingly, there is no mod to blame for this issue. It is because LuaEntity::order_deconstruction does not take player index.

2. Instant blueprint doesn't put in modules if they are part of the blueprint.
- Fixed!

4. Creative mode isn't current on github :p
- Added. Also here: https://github.com/exsnowcat/Factorio-CreativeMode


From Thorman and rubberduck on Mod Portal:
Not compatible with ExoMan.
- The problem lies in ExoMan. I have contacted its author on Mod Portal and hopefully he can fix it.


Turns out there is much work to do in order to make instant blueprint and deconstruction work well with other mods.
I really have to sleep now. Will update the OP later!

[siggboy]

From siggboy:
For this reason, I propose to always have 1 free slot in Creative Chests, so you will have this voiding capability by default.
- Sorry, it is delayed for the next version.

You give everybody what they want, and then this. I will uninstall, unsubscribe, and block the whole lot of you!!1!

I've never liked this mod anyway.

[Nexela]

v0.1.3 is released!
From Nexela:
And at about the same time I noticed my copy did have the event.player_index check
- Surprisingly, there is no mod to blame for this issue. It is because LuaEntity::order_deconstruction does not take player index.

The marked for deconstruction event returns optional player_index though

[Mooncat]

You give everybody what they want, and then this. I will uninstall, unsubscribe, and block the whole lot of you!!1!

But this update is mainly bug fix + the 2 commands which are totally missing. You can still use a void chest to do the same as the extra slot.
And adding the slot is actually not that simple. I will have to deal with the 255 slot limit in Factorio. I don't want to rush and be like the first gif in Factorio development explained in gifs.

The marked for deconstruction event returns optional player_index though

ah! I thought optional parameters are only for function call and thus had no idea why some events also have optional parameters. It makes sense now.

[Qon]

You give everybody what they want, and then this. I will uninstall, unsubscribe, and block the whole lot of you!!1!

But this update is mainly bug fix + the 2 commands which are totally missing. You can still use a void chest to do the same as the extra slot.
And adding the slot is actually not that simple. I will have to deal with the 255 slot limit in Factorio. I don't want to rush and be like the first gif in Factorio development explained in gifs.

Siggboy is just joking (I thought it was hilarious)

I'm assuming you aren't since you explain why it isn't in yet...
If you are then I guess I didn't get your joke

[siggboy]

Siggboy is just joking

Our relationship is OVER!!!!!!11

[Mooncat]

[siggboy]

We'll get banned for this.

It's so much fun, though. Can't believe you thought I was serious BTW

[Mooncat]

It is hard to tell one's true emotion with text only. And I am not good at reading minds.

I used the item source to test throughput of belts, using the factorioExtended-Transport mod which has belts MK4 and mk5, and they all seem to be compressed when using straight belts, with throughput of exactly 400, 800, 1200, 1600 and 2000 items per minute (per lane; up to 4000 per belt). the only value that didn't match was for sideloading MK5 belts with only exactly 1800, but that is currently a question on the FactorioExtended thread

Here is a blueprint for testing the throughput (required mods: of course creative mode, and foreman to read the blueprint, nixie tubes to show the results, and factorioextended-transport and factorioextended-core for the mk4 and mk5 belts). let the belts run for 2 minutes to get stable readings after placing the blueprint.

The blueprint is awesome. I have no idea what the wires are doing but it just works!
Yes, the number for the purple transport belt is weird.
Wild guess: when the 2 lanes are merged into one, a slight offset is applied to each item when it moves to the merged belt, and this offset is causing the belt not compressed if it is in high speed.


I will create a super loader that has very high speed. Theoretically it will be able to compress belts that are slower than 0.28125. (Express belt = 0.09375 only)
So, when used with Duplicating Chest, it will be a low-performance-cost solution for compressing express transport belt. Need some tests though.