[MOD 0.14.x] Storage Cubes (0.1.1) [WIP]

[laige]

Storage Cube

• Factorio-Version: 0.14.x
• Description: Portal's Storage Cubes
• License: MIT
• Last Release: 11-23-2016
• Latest Download-Url: 0.1.1

This Mod is a W.I.P. and can not be found on the Mod Portal.

LONG DESCRIPTION

This is a crate mod with textures like that or portal. The Big difference is that items retain their ability when placed in a cube. Much more useful then just transporting items around. Example:

Cubes are made from plastic not steel.
Types of cubes
Storage Cube - Basic type of cube for most intermediate items.
Ammo Cube - Holds ammo and can be used as ammo.
Companion Cube - Hold equipment and can be used as equipment.
CPU (Cube Processing Unit) - Hold Modules and can be used as a module.

I also added the additional barrels of the many liquids.

One thing I always make sure of is that my mods are completely compatible with the Map Editor. Try it out.

I need you to test this Mod out and give good feed back.

Pictures

VERSION HISTORY

• 0.1.1
• Layered Icons to reduce sprite count and standardize sprites.
• Tech is now tiered for cubes. So you must research them in order.
• Some cubes have descriptions if its contents have a description.
• Removed Liquid Spheres migrations will change any to the barrel equivalent. Devs will add liquid barrels in near future to vanilla game.
  0.1.0
• Same as 0.0.9 except crates have been removed.
  0.0.9
• Migrations now working.
• Companion Cube equipment have all been tweaked and make more sense.
• Vehicle grids are disabled by default.
• Logistic Warehouses now function correctly.
  0.0.8
• Standardized Icons of Cubes.
• Bugfix
• Vehicles have grids for equipment. Enabled by default. Config can disable.
• Cubeing Machine tech cost doubled.
• Code now not as messy looking.
  0.0.7
• Cuber and Uncuber
• Bugfix -thanks Daniel
• Localization has been cleaned up.
• Code now not as messy looking.
  0.0.6
• Bugfix
• New config option for hand crafting of cubes
  0.0.5
• Some new graphics for recipes
• New types of cubes. Companion cube and Ammo cube.
• Loaders can be enabled in the config.
• Enhanced Flamethrower Ammo disabled and can be enabled in the config.
  0.0.4
• First Release Version

[aubergine18]

blue text on grey background is really, really difficult to read

[daniel34]

I included your mod in my current game and found a bug:
It's not possible to craft storage spheres as the recipe for the storage-sphere item results in a storage-cpu instead. I assume that's just a copy-paste error?

Otherwise a very interesting mod, will be fun to see how this will work out as I plan on putting productivity module 3 cubes into everything.

[laige]

Hey thank you^^

Yes its an error I will fix. Sorry I should have caught that before. I had been focusing so much on testing the cubes it slipped past me. I decided to go a different direction with the storage spheres in future. So next version will just have barrels as players already understand them and expect them. I will try to have version 0.0.5 available today or tomorrow. I will reuse the sphere concept elsewhere.

Additionally I will be reducing the amount that warehouses can store. It is far too much. But there will be a config option so players can still choose as they like to play.

[laige]

0.0.5 now available
-Some new graphics
-Companion Cubes are now the cubes that hold equipment for power armor.
-ammo cube. stores and can be used as ammo for weapons
-CPU recipe changed. All tier cubes types use a storage cube in their recipe instead of plastic bars.
-Warehouses store 500 slots instead of 1000. This can be changed by the config.
-Loaders can once again be enabled via config. Defaults as off for other mods with better graphics can enable them.
-Enhanced flamethrower ammo defaults to disabled. Just a fun feature you can enable if you like.

Please test this out and give me some good feed back.

[daniel34]

Found another small bug, when CraftedByHand is enabled in the config file the following error is shown on start:

CraftedByHand.png (46.13 KiB) Viewed 13280 times

The recipe has two crafting category entries, "chemistry" and crafttype. Removing the crafttype entry fixes the problem.

I also have a feature request: Would it be possible to split the CraftedByHand option into two options, one for filling crates/cubes and one for emptying them? I'd like to be able to only empty them by hand, not fill them.

EDIT: Another idea I had yesterday, adding a smaller assembling machine or "cuber" (name is WIP) that's like 2x2 in size and only used for filling and emptying cubes. Bobs mods does something similar, it has 2x2 assembling machines for Bob's own intermediate products. The reason is that normal assemblers do take away some space, see part of my robots factory for example:

factorio-storage-cubes.png (360.02 KiB) Viewed 13279 times

[laige]

^^ Thanks bro

I squashed the bug for the next version. I like how you are finding all my mess ups.

I added the config option you requested for the next version.

I have tried making a Cuber a few times already, but was never happy with it. When building up to the first release I dumped the Cuber, but it will return.

So why was the Cuber dumped? My idea for it was ambitious and more then just an assembling machine. I was trying to make the cuber into a furnace type machine so a player does not need to set a recipe. Feed the cuber and it would pack or unpack cubes automatically. All this to make the machine as simple as possible to use and setup, but I quickly found the limitations to furnaces. Furnaces just didn't like what I wanted to do with them. I keep going over it in my mind and it seems like a simple thing to do, but then I try to make it happen and it never works. It was going to be a 2x2 machine. Another planned feature for the cuber was the ability (or a mk2 cuber) that could fill/empty storage spheres by running pipes to it. I thought it would compliment the new loaders well as they feed machines.

A simple assembling machine that only does cube recipes is easy enough, I likely will do this until I figure out how to make a better cuber. The Cuber will happen its just a matter of time. I am working on it and most likely will be in the next version.

I like how you posted pictures very cool bro. Logistic robots love the cubes, the cube size is perfect for their tiny T-Rex like arms. =D

Here is a picture for you of a storage system that is meant to cubes items once a certain amount is reached. It is over-kill as building a bunch of warehouses is cheaper. Additional I didn't finished it as I see a problem with it now in the picture.

[laige]

0.0.6
This up date is mainly a bug-fix and internal changes. There is a new config option as to what can be crafted by hand. No drastic changes.

I'm feeling good about the types of cubes (ammo, companion, cpu, ect.) I think they and their recipes are (or close to being) in their final state. They feel right. Let me know your thoughts.

I like giving options to players via the config. I'm unsure how this works with multiplayer. In time I will wish to do multiplayer testing. It may need little testing or possibly a great deal. In a few weeks I recruit someone to play with me online. Are you smart about setting up and using the server? You could be the person to help me.

I was hoping to have the cuber out by now but again it proved to be a "one step forward and two steps back" Will try to have it out by Saturday; could always come out earlier. I'm just anticipating what life will bring me as barriers to the plan this week.

I am looking forward to all feed back.

[laige]

Some thoughts today.

How would instead of warehouses I had sea-tainers. Sea-tainers is the local term for those containers that can be transported on ships, rail or by trucks. They would be a 2x3 instead of the current 3x3 grid. An odd grid entity could make for some interesting build lay outs. They would be rotatably so a 2x3 would also be a 3x2 when rotated. Art wise they could be made to fit in with the Cube look as they are boxy.

Edit: It seems containers are not meant to be able to rotate. So having a structure with equal width and length is more ideal. I had experimented but it did not work out. Back to warehouses.

[daniel34]

Bug reports:

• The recipes for filling Science pack 2 and Science pack 3 cubes and crates are wrong, they currently require 25x Science pack 1 instead of Science pack 2/3.
• Emptying them is fine, but here the recipes for SP2 and SP3 have switched places in the crafting menu (cube/crate-science-pack-3-empty has the wrong order string).

Here's a screenshot of my current setup for basic items:

Setup

factorio-storage-cubes-2.png (904 KiB) Viewed 13183 times

The producing furnaces and assemblers are all filled with productivity module 1 CPUs and the beacons around it with speed module 1 CPUs, which gives assemblers +400% productivity and +1500% crafting speed while using 24 MW of power. The only bottleneck in that system is the speed of the stack inserters, they can currently transfer 10 items at once and that's not enough for some setups, but I'm using another mod that lets me research most incremental tech to level 25, which means 48 items at once for stack inserters, so I should be good.

The two electric circuit assemblers in that setup are able to produce 5.6k electric circuits per minute (only working at around ~60% capacity as copper cable is not inserted fast enough), the two iron furnaces can produce 5k iron plates/minute. I also use productivity modules in the miners and they stack quite exponentially for the complete production chain, from 3 iron ore and 1 copper ore in the ground I can produce 180 electric circuits. It's a little bit cheaty but because of the mod I mentioned and a second one for artificial alien science packs from lower science packs it takes around 16 million red, 10 million green and 5 million blue science packs to research one incremental technology to level 25 (EDIT: less when using productivity module CPUs in the labs )

Edit: It seems containers are not meant to be able to rotate. So having a structure with equal width and length is more ideal. I had experimented but it did not work out. Back to warehouses.

I already looked up a link explaining why non-square rotatable entities are a bad idea, only then did I see your edit , yes, you should stick to square entities or have two different entities (horizontal/vertical) that are non-rotatable.

[laige]

0.0.7 is out now!

The Cuber and Uncuber are here. Simple machines that just work with cubes. They are 2x2. For now they can have 1 module slot. Both are unlocked via a new Cubeing Machine.

The cuber is more advanced and can cube and uncube; however it needs to be configured by setting the crafting recipe. Crafting one is similar to the recipe of a lvl 1 assembling machine.

The uncuber is made from a cuber and does not require being configured. Just feed the uncuber and it goes to work. This machine can only uncube however. Crafting an Uncuber takes one Cuber. Mining (to pick up) an Uncuber will give a Cuber back.

The Code should look a lot cleaner if your one to look at it.

Technology Cost are still placeholders. They will change but I will wait for 0.15 as the next Factorio version should have major changes to Tech.

Localization has been cleaned up. If you wish to contribute another language localization that would be cool.

Config now looks different. Each option has a line following showing what the out of the box setting was.

Fixed a bug with recipe on the science packs. Thanks Daniel!

Try it out and give some feed back.

Edit: I'm going away Wednesday next week. I will try to have a bugfix version before I go if one is needed.

[laige]

0.0.8 Is Now Available
MAIN CHANGES!
I re-made the cube icons and so they are more standardized and colored more to look alike. CPUs are not very noticeable but their color slightly changes. Ammo cubes no longer look like the Antique Cubes from the game, but rather look like normal cubes with a metal frame; this is so to add a color theme to them. Companion Cubes color is more in line with the normal cubes.

Vehicles now have Grids in them. This means you can put equipment in them. Cargo-wagon, car, and tank have a 10x8 grid. The locomotive has a 10x15 Grid. I chose these sizes to optimizes the GUI space without making the GUI resize to accommodate them. I don't know how the Devs will use this space or if they ever will.

This update should work well with the previous version on maps using this mod. No hard changes. Test it out and let me know your thoughts.

IN OTHER NEWS
Completed a really good play-through. Unlocking the Tech feels good. The techs are in the right locations with the right prerequisites. They feel like the unlock at the right time in game. I know the tech cost is still off.

Had fun with new grids for vehicles. Made a battle train with personal lasers in the wagons. Using another mod that lays track for the train; I drove it right into a bugger base. Lasers were flying everywhere. Trains just are not made for battle. It was fun. Then I tried disconnecting the wagons and leaving them to cope with the waves of bitters. The Short-cut keys to connect and disconnect the wagons came in handy. Off-topic the train weight is way less then the tank. I wonder if the that accurate; and will weights of entities ever have a use?

I'm going to be looking now at the equipment cubes and possibly making tweaks in the future. I made them but didn't take the time to test each one out. They look good on paper and now I need to make sure they are good in game-play. One note is the Shield cubes. They have 25x shield but they charge at a rate of 1x Shield. This might not make sense to a player trying out the mod. I did this so a player doesn't become immortal. This has to change as having multiple normal shields in your suit would charge all at the same time. So all the shields in the cubes should charge at the same time. I will play around with all the Equipment cubes to get them just right.

I need to find an artist to make some entity sprites. For the Cuber, Uncuber, and Warehouses. I think a theme on these entities would be cool. Cuber and Uncuber should be rusty machine like in theme with factorio but I would also like to have a rubix cube theme too. Made so that the machine looks like it is solving a rubix cube as the action to show the machine is running. For the uncuber it could be a rubix cube getting less and less solved as well as other simple features to show a difference between the two. That would be kind of difficult to make sprites for that. Are you an Artist? Can you make these sprites for me?

I'm thinking of dumping the crates completely. I don't play with them, but I like players to have options. The problem is they take up space in the code and the icons causes my mod to bloat. Keeping the mods size down has its advantages for players downloading, with crumby internet speeds. I think getting rid of them might cut the mod size possibly by one forth. Is anyone using this feature? Let me know your thoughts.

Lastly I just updated one of my other mods https://mods.factorio.com/mods/laige/eco-trees Eco-trees has a config option so that when trees are killed (like stones) they drop some items. So you can mine them to get 4 raw-wood or blast them and get 1 or 2 raw-wood. It is disabled by default. I can see this as being both useful or annoying; and so let the players choose if they want it or not.

[steinio]

Sorry but what has your cube mod to do with vehicle grids?
There are a lot of mods which add them and there could be problems.

I just wanted to use your cubes but I have already grids enabled.
I would recommend to bring them to a separate mod.

Greetings steinio

[laige]

Thanks for your reconmendation. ^steinio^

Equipment cubes (companion cubes) are useless without putting them in armor or vehicles. Have you had a chance to try out the equipment cubes? I don't want someone to have to download anouther mod to get full use of mine. I see why you might not want this if another mod already does this for you. You can disable this feature by setting VehicleGrids = true to VehicleGrids = false in the config file. I have tried to make almost all features able to be enabled and disabled in the config file.

The default has it set to be enabled, but I'll think about whether or not to have the default setting as disabled for the next version.

[laige]

Double Update
0.1.0
Same as 0.0.9 except crates have been removed.
0.0.9
Migrations are now working.
Companion Cubes (Equipment Cubes) have been tweaked to make more sense.

Whats coming next?
1) I'm learning Blender to to make entity sprites. Warehouses and cubeing machine will get their sprites.
2) I would like to see about layered icons. Rather then have hundreds of sprites the having about 30 sprites would be all that's needed. Bottom layer is the cube, then a layer that colors the cube, and last layer would take the vanilla item icon from the base game.
--Edit: The icons are comings along well. I had hoped to get my sprite count down to around 35% of what is was. I may make that goal

[laige]

Update: 0.1.1

Here is a wall of text for you.

The most major updates are in the version history of fist post. Here is a big list of changes. Technology is tiered and so you must now research the types of cubes in order. I didn't have time to learn blender like I hoped, still some changes were made to the warehouses. Recipes for ware houses will return a chest when upgrading a warehouse. Warehouses entity sprite have their equivalent chest sprite incorporated and the logistic network wire connect to the chest. Recipes in general now take advantage of the main_product= tag so "total raw" of recipes is not messed up. Cubes that content items which have descriptions will now also have descriptions. Entity descriptions where needed. Icons of cubes now make use of layered icons and tint. The new icons look great and I cut back the number of sprites by 30-40% (I didn't do the math). I removes the liquid spheres as the Devs will be adding barrels for each liquid in the next version of vanilla. All liquid spheres will be replaced by their equivalent barrel. Removed the tech for liquids and moved the unlocking of the liquid barrels to the vanilla tech fluid-handling. Liquid barrels have different icons for filling and emptying. No more Red and Green arrow to show filling and emptying. I did a great deal of work on migrations so all previous versions can be upgraded. Let me know if you lose any items on update and I will fix that. Removed some config options for simplicity. Added colorful variants of module cubes so when they are inside a machine its easy to know which when using ALT-mode. Config option for the coloring if you want the more standardizes color scheme.

I probably made other minor changes. Post and let me know what you think of this new update.

[Tisaku]

The addition of the storage cubes is a great idea, looking at reverse factory and Omnibarrels would probably give you a direction to go if you want to ensure compatibility with other mods. But why include the barrels for liquids? It may fit the storage theme, but there is no need for it to be integrated, doing so only opens the door for incompatibility with other mods. If you want to keep the barreling, then you should at least include a config switch to disable it. The brick path on the other hand doesn't even fit the theme of the mod.

[laige]

Hi Tisaku

Thanks for your comment. I agree the barrels will be removed, but not yet. The Dev had mentioned that they will be adding barrels for every liquid I believe in 0.15. I am leaving them in for the fact that I will have a migration file convert my barrels to the vanilla barrels. So player wont have to start a new save right away in 0.15.

As for the stone path. I tore that out of the mod a while back, but never updated. It is gone and wont be returning. The next version will bring some good changes. The mod being WIP makes gives me the freedom to try out stuff... The next versions will have experimental features, but they have to be enabled via config. The stone path should have been considered experimental. I did realize it wasn't worth keeping before seeing your post.

I learned from the Omniberrals mod how to have layered Icons. The forums, wiki, and even the API doesn't explain it... so yes I consider that mod to be very helpful to my learning. It has done what none of the other mods before had done. I do not know much about that other mod you mentioned, but I'll look at it and see if I can learn from it too.

Compatibility with other mods is important to me, and I like to think I do well at ensuring it. Please let me know when you do find find problems, and I'll do what I can on my side.

I have been away working hard irl. I had fully expected 0.15 the be released a month ago, now I am back.

I will release a new version probably later today, and then another shortly after 0.15.