[MOD 0.15.29+] Creative Mode 0.3.12 - Infinite resources

[canidae]

Some food for the Mooncat:

Code: Select all

Error while running event on_tick (ID 0)
__creative-mode__/scripts/item-providers-util.lua:871: attempt to index field 'last_working_static_container' (a nil value)

Happens when I rotate a Matter void to eat up items on a belt.

[Mooncat]

Some food for the Mooncat:

Code: Select all

Error while running event on_tick (ID 0)
__creative-mode__/scripts/item-providers-util.lua:871: attempt to index field 'last_working_static_container' (a nil value)

Happens when I rotate a Matter void to eat up items on a belt.

Thanks for the food. I somehow triggered it by placing a Matter Void next to and facing a Matter Source.
It will be fixed in the next release.

[Mooncat]

I have a question in my mind for quite some time.... is it really useful to hide the Creative Mode menu?

As a note, the current behaviour is more like "Hide CM Menu" instead of "Disable", because CM is still functional. You just cant access the settings in menu. Existing CM entities/items are still working.

Should I just implement "Disable CM" (remove all event handlers and global data, but allow enabling it back later) and "Disable CM Permanently" ? This will disable all CM functionalities, but make the game more light weight.
Or should I keep "Hide CM Menu" as another option?

[Anson]

LOL ...
the following is a lesson to myself on what to assume and how to guess wildly where lag is produced.
it happened when using the creative passive provider chests ...

if you want to guess with me, read the first spoiler.
if you only want to see the solution, read the second spoiler.

creative passive provider chests and roboports create lag for me

i just got a very strange lag when walking around in my factory, but no lag at all when in the wilderness. the strangeness about the lag was that for 6 or 7 seconds there was no lag, then the game froze for 4 seconds. then i tested and tested, and finally believe i could reduce it to the following:

• when there is no roboport (no matter which type, normal or yours, or other modded roboports), there is no lag.
• when i walk around outside the roboport's reach, there is no lag.
• when i remove some creative passive provider chests, the lag still happens every 6 seconds, but for a shorter time.
• when there is no creative provider chest in roboport range, there is no lag.
• when removing boxing2 mod (and thus reducing the number of items in the game almost by half), i almost halved the lag.
• when i started a new test map with few mods that filled only one creative provider chest, lag was barely noticable.

from these observations, i guess that the problem is related to having installed lots (really lots!) of mods which add lots (really lots!) of items, so that i needed 9 (nine!) creative provider chests to make all those items available. but i have no idea why the problem shows up when there is a roboport near the chests, and why the lag is completely gone as soon as the roboport is removed.

edit: not really "as soon", but the lag happens exactly one more time after the roboport is removed, and then is gone completely.

the reason is clear now but is there also a solution

it always helps to "think loud", eg writing it down and thus sort the facts and guesses. having typed the first spoiler, i once again tested and tried what i had written, and suddenly it dawned on me when i looked at the top of my screen:

i had installed a very useful mod that shows current "logistical network contents" (and that's also its name). it shows a small window at the top of the screen which lists as scrollable view all items in the network. and thus it checked the logistical network periodically when i was in range of a roboport. and since it counts all items in provider chests and storage chests, it had quite some work to do when there are 1300 different item types in 1300++ stacks, and thus froze the game for several seconds.

without the creative provider chests, you may have lots of items in lots of stacks in lots of chests, but never will have so many ...
now, I'll simply use only the creative mod to experiment, and only the other mod in a real game.

is there some solution to using both mods at the same time ?
maybe some modification of the counting algorithm to spread it over more cycles instead of counting everything every 6 seconds. but that is no longer of any concern to the author of this mod.

merry Xmas and a happy new year ... most of all health, and the rest will come by itself.

[Mooncat]

LOL ...
the following is a lesson to myself on what to assume and how to guess wildly where lag is produced.
it happened when using the creative passive provider chests ...

if you want to guess with me, read the first spoiler.
if you only want to see the solution, read the second spoiler.

creative passive provider chests and roboports create lag for me

i just got a very strange lag when walking around in my factory, but no lag at all when in the wilderness. the strangeness about the lag was that for 6 or 7 seconds there was no lag, then the game froze for 4 seconds. then i tested and tested, and finally believe i could reduce it to the following:

• when there is no roboport (no matter which type, normal or yours, or other modded roboports), there is no lag.
• when i walk around outside the roboport's reach, there is no lag.
• when i remove some creative passive provider chests, the lag still happens every 6 seconds, but for a shorter time.
• when there is no creative provider chest in roboport range, there is no lag.
• when removing boxing2 mod (and thus reducing the number of items in the game almost by half), i almost halved the lag.
• when i started a new test map with few mods that filled only one creative provider chest, lag was barely noticable.

from these observations, i guess that the problem is related to having installed lots (really lots!) of mods which add lots (really lots!) of items, so that i needed 9 (nine!) creative provider chests to make all those items available. but i have no idea why the problem shows up when there is a roboport near the chests, and why the lag is completely gone as soon as the roboport is removed.

edit: not really "as soon", but the lag happens exactly one more time after the roboport is removed, and then is gone completely.

the reason is clear now but is there also a solution

it always helps to "think loud", eg writing it down and thus sort the facts and guesses. having typed the first spoiler, i once again tested and tried what i had written, and suddenly it dawned on me when i looked at the top of my screen:

i had installed a very useful mod that shows current "logistical network contents" (and that's also its name). it shows a small window at the top of the screen which lists as scrollable view all items in the network. and thus it checked the logistical network periodically when i was in range of a roboport. and since it counts all items in provider chests and storage chests, it had quite some work to do when there are 1300 different item types in 1300++ stacks, and thus froze the game for several seconds.

without the creative provider chests, you may have lots of items in lots of stacks in lots of chests, but never will have so many ...
now, I'll simply use only the creative mod to experiment, and only the other mod in a real game.

is there some solution to using both mods at the same time ?
maybe some modification of the counting algorithm to spread it over more cycles instead of counting everything every 6 seconds. but that is no longer of any concern to the author of this mod.

merry Xmas and a happy new year ... most of all health, and the rest will come by itself.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Yes, unexpected things are very likely to happen when there are too many mods running at the same time.
Although CM is specialized for testing purpose but not normal gameplay, I still hope that it can bring no impact to the game if the mode is disabled. This will be the focus for the next update. So please feel free to share anything you think I can help on cooperating with other mods.

Looking to your problem and solution, it sounds like the "logistical network contents" mod indeed is using a not-so-optimized way to count items in the network. And I think your solution will work! Please suggest it to the author! I am also using this approach to update the contents of all chests in my mod, so the number of contents will not affect FPS. The only drawback is that you will see delay before the contents are updated. But it is still better than lag.

And you too, merry Xmas and a happy new year!

[Optera]

I have a question in my mind for quite some time.... is it really useful to hide the Creative Mode menu?

As a note, the current behaviour is more like "Hide CM Menu" instead of "Disable", because CM is still functional. You just cant access the settings in menu. Existing CM entities/items are still working.

Should I just implement "Disable CM" (remove all event handlers and global data, but allow enabling it back later) and "Disable CM Permanently" ? This will disable all CM functionalities, but make the game more light weight.
Or should I keep "Hide CM Menu" as another option?

Hiding the menu seems like something only admins need after setting up a MP game.
Really disabling CM would make CM usable in megabases. For example I use only ~5 entities from the whole mod for testing my designs, passive electric void, duplicating chest, loader, void chest. So for a test I'd switch CM on do the testing and disable it afterwards.

Another option would be to add a toggle for which entities are available and all disabled entities are hidden and have their event handlers removed.

[Anson]

Although CM is specialized for testing purpose but not normal gameplay, I still hope that it can bring no impact to the game if the mode is disabled. This will be the focus for the next update. So please feel free to share anything you think I can help on cooperating with other mods.

this mod is one of the most reliable mods that i have used so far. many other mods aren't behaving well, eg do a loop on all items in 100k chunks only once every 10 minutes, etc. you also took great care of handling your own special items, occasionally hiding them, etc. in contrast i just got another problem with two other mods where one was adding its own items only in the end so that other mods couldn't see them, resulting in a crash unless the second mod would declare specific dependencies. When i write my first mod (i already have lots of ideas :-) I'll probably be one such programmer too since I'm missing the practical experience with factorio mods.

with all the additional functionality you have added during the last months, exploring this mod alone and how to use it best is already some interesting game by itself :-)


now for some real bug (or at least some strange mismatch) :

when i setup a train with creative wagons, i noticed that i needed as many wagons to get all items as i previously had needed creative provider chests. but since the wagons can hold 200 stacks (in this case 9 wagons for 1625 stacks) and the chests only 150 (in this case also 9 chests but for only 1294 stacks), there is some mismatch and the chests seem to be missing some items which are only available in the creative wagons.

comparing the two sets: the first 1251 stacks were identical, as well as the last 43 stacks (for a total of 1294, all that was available in the chests), but the wagons had some more stacks between the beginning and the end. the missing items were mostly 300+ textplates whose boxed versions were included in the first 1251 stacks, but also items from several other mods up to your energy absorption. the three loaders, railgun/ammo and the other creative items are those remaining 43 items at the end.


speaking of those creative wagons:
- how are they supposed to work at all ?
having personal bots on me, and a roboport in range (each having lots of logistic and construction bots), also having a fusion reactor and personal roboports in the provider wagon and in the engine and in another normal wagon, all didn't cause any robot to start working and build a few items on a blueprint or fill a requester chest.
- only to grab items from them manually ?
i can select an unlimited item in the crafting gui quicker than manually searching 9 wagons for such an item.
and having an unloader station do the searching doesn't make much sense to me when there are maybe 9+ wagons in a train.
- maybe for FARL ?
i have to test that ... would be crazy but nice to add creative wagons to a FARL train and thus never run out of rails, signals, poles, etc.

it would be really nice if we could get the same convenience for wagons that we already have for chests:
- creative chest and creative wagon
- creative provider chest

and creative provider wagon

- duplicating chest and duplicating wagon
- duplicating provider chest

and duplicating provider wagon

with the old factorio, it might be illogical to have logistic wagons, but since we got grids now, everything should be possible :-)

maybe active/passive provider wagons, requester wagons, and storage wagons would be an idea for a different new mod (there is already a similar mod which does logistic wagons by putting the functionality (provider/requester/storage) in the rails; but not yet with the help of grids in the wagons)
but then it would be really nice to have a counterpart as creative versions too :-)

Really disabling CM would make CM usable in megabases. ...
for a test I'd switch CM on do the testing and disable it afterwards.

I would like to have two or a few presets. one of them would be to reset everything to the values that CM had at the start of the map (to start over after experimenting and messing up), a second would be my favorite settings for testing something (most of the time, this is only a set of at most 4 or 5 settings, like cheat mode, creative tools' recipes, instant research). setting some values to my own defaults also could replace several other mods like enable loaders, extend reach, etc. the latter option would also be useful when starting a new map, but i have no idea where/how to store such settings between saves or maps, if that would be possible at all.


edit: PS : how do i get rid of living turrets (worms) and enslaved watchposts (spawners) ?
i can't remove them with rightclick, and killing them is a lot of work since robots rebuild them unless i remove roboports in those areas first.

[Mooncat]

Hiding the menu seems like something only admins need after setting up a MP game.

It sounds reasonable. Since the admin page can already let admins hide the menu for other players by lowering their access right, I will leave it there and replace such option from initial popup by a true disable option.

Really disabling CM would make CM usable in megabases. For example I use only ~5 entities from the whole mod for testing my designs, passive electric void, duplicating chest, loader, void chest. So for a test I'd switch CM on do the testing and disable it afterwards.

Another option would be to add a toggle for which entities are available and all disabled entities are hidden and have their event handlers removed.

The performance issue may be hardware dependant. The high usage on CPU is real, so I will optimize it for sure.
While the option for choosing which entities to enable is sweet, I think it is not a must-have feature. And it costs quite a bit of work, so I can't promise it. At least it won't be in 0.14.

this mod is one of the most reliable mods that i have used so far. many other mods aren't behaving well....

My first impression on LUA was: although it is easy to use, it is slow. (Can't expect too much from an interpreted language.) Therefore, I tried my best on optimization. It may be premature optimization in most of the time, but I know everyone will be happy once it is done.
Fell free to read and learn from the source code of this mod. I have put human-readable comments in all files as a habit.

with all the additional functionality you have added during the last months, exploring this mod alone and how to use it best is already some interesting game by itself

Sounds like I can put aside the wiki for some time. Good to know, so I can focus on the mod itself.

now for some real bug (or at least some strange mismatch)....

Not a bug. The default settings allow creative wagons to contain hidden items while creative chests don't. You can change them in config.lua.
The difference on the number of items in each cycle depends on how many hidden items your mods have created. Vanilla hidden items include the loaders, railgun and railgun dart, rocket part, coin, player port, etc.
I included them in the wagons because the wagons have larger size, I thought it would not be a bad idea to include more items that some people may find interesting.
In 0.15, this config will be obvious, thanks to the new mod config menu.

The wagons are supposed to work with FARL. They were implemented according to a request on Mod Portal.
As for logistic wagons, I haven't tried adding grids and roboports into the wagons. But I don't think it will automatically turn the wagons into logistic wagons. Need test though. Can't promise.

I would like to have two or a few presets. one of them would be to reset everything to the values that CM had at the start of the map (to start over after experimenting and messing up), a second would be my favorite settings for testing something (most of the time, this is only a set of at most 4 or 5 settings, like cheat mode, creative tools' recipes, instant research). setting some values to my own defaults also could replace several other mods like enable loaders, extend reach, etc. the latter option would also be useful when starting a new map, but i have no idea where/how to store such settings between saves or maps, if that would be possible at all.

1. Yes, it can be added in the next update, as a follow-up popup after disabling CM.
2. I have thought about this some time ago and come up with a workflow in my mind: you change some settings, save them as a preset, then export all presets as a string. In the next game, you import the string and the presets will be loaded. Just like how blueprint string works.
But it won't be in 0.14. We are still not sure about what 0.15 will provide. Maybe there will be a better option for mods to save things globally.

edit: PS : how do i get rid of living turrets (worms) and enslaved watchposts (spawners) ?
i can't remove them with rightclick, and killing them is a lot of work since robots rebuild them unless i remove roboports in those areas first.

Use the magic wands. The red one can remove them quickly in alt-mode (with SHIFT), while the purple one provides more options in standard mode (without SHIFT).

[Optera]

The wagons are supposed to work with FARL. They were implemented according to a request on Mod Portal.
As for logistic wagons, I haven't tried adding grids and roboports into the wagons. But I don't think it will automatically turn the wagons into logistic wagons. Need test though. Can't promise.

If you manage to have cargo wagons with personal roboports use the inventories of all wagons on the train instead of only the one where the roboport is installed you should make it a stand alone mod. That's a request I've seen pop up a lot ever since we can add grids to them.

[Nexela]

Also with FARL. If cheat_mode is true FARL will build without any items. you can even build without any cargo wagons attached if you want!

[Mooncat]

About the logistic wagons...

The closest thing should be the old Logistic Wagon mod. I have briefly checked its scripts on github. The way it works is placing a hidden logistic chest when the wagon is still. It requires the mod to synchronize contents between the chest and the wagons. I think it will cause lag if we do that in our creative wagons which have large inventory.
Adding delay may not be good because that will end up slower than getting/inserting items with inserters + logistic chests. (I personally expect that logistic robots should act instantly.)

The Logistic Railways mod also does similar things. It synchronizes contents between the hidden logistic chests and the wagons. Not so FPS friendly either. (Maybe that's why Supercheese has not updated the mod for 0.14?)

TL;DR I'm not dare to implement logistic wagons on my creative wagons at this moment.

Also with FARL. If cheat_mode is true FARL will build without any items. you can even build without any cargo wagons attached if you want!

Good to know that FARL also works with cheat_mode.
Apparently the wagons are also useful in this discussion.

[kaleb_boren]

Can you post a link to download without the mod portal?
I have serious issues with logging in.
Thank You!!

[Optera]

Can you post a link to download without the mod portal?
I have serious issues with logging in.
Thank You!!

You don't have to log in to download.

[Nexela]

Can you post a link to download without the mod portal?
I have serious issues with logging in.
Thank You!!

You don't have to log in to download.

You do have to be logged in to download.

It uses your factorio.com login as well as requires having bought and linked the game in your factorio.com account.
If you bought the game on steam linking is really easy, if you bought it from humble or from factorio.com you should have received an email with a code to enter to upgrade your account.
If you are having troubles accessing or linking your account email support@factorio.com for help.

[Optera]

I stand corrected. After all this time of downloading without login it stopped working.

[BeaumontTaz]

Some food for the Mooncat:

Code: Select all

Error while running event on_tick (ID 0)
__creative-mode__/scripts/item-providers-util.lua:871: attempt to index field 'last_working_static_container' (a nil value)

Happens when I rotate a Matter void to eat up items on a belt.

Thanks for the food. I somehow triggered it by placing a Matter Void next to and facing a Matter Source.
It will be fixed in the next release.

This is the same error message I get when accidentally placing a matter void to void another matter void. Shouldn't ever be done, but if you misclick the game crashes with that same error. Not sure if they're related.

[kaleb_boren]

Can you post a link to download without the mod portal?
I have serious issues with logging in.
Thank You!!

You don't have to log in to download.

You do have to be logged in to download.

It uses your factorio.com login as well as requires having bought and linked the game in your factorio.com account.
If you bought the game on steam linking is really easy, if you bought it from humble or from factorio.com you should have received an email with a code to enter to upgrade your account.
If you are having troubles accessing or linking your account email support@factorio.com for help.

well i bought the game from a different person
so, i can't update my game...
all i was wondering if someone can post a dropbox link or something please

[Nexela]

feature request #23425625234

Add to the modifier wand entity details


read - unit_number (if exists)
read/write - backer_name (if exists)
read/write - health (if exists) Not needed I see the set to 1 option now


Thanks!!!!

[Mooncat]

well i bought the game from a different person
so, i can't update my game...
all i was wondering if someone can post a dropbox link or something please

Sorry, no.

feature request #23425625234

Add to the modifier wand entity details


read - unit_number (if exists)
read/write - backer_name (if exists)
read/write - health (if exists) Not needed I see the set to 1 option now


Thanks!!!!

Yes, I can do that.


For anyone who is wondering why I am so quiet lately:
Recently I am making a turret mod that introduces turrets to help you defence your factory by debuffing the enemies rather than directly dealing damage to them.
But the development is taking much more time than I expected. Making a fluid turret is very troublesome. Luckily, it is nearly finished. I want to release it ASAP so I can request artwork. Then I will have a one-week vacation (in Japan!) and then go back to CM. Hopefully I can release v0.2.6 before Factorio 0.15 come out.

[Optera]

For anyone who is wondering why I am so quiet lately:
Recently I am making a turret mod that introduces turrets to help you defence your factory by debuffing the enemies rather than directly dealing damage to them.
But the development is taking much more time than I expected. Making a fluid turret is very troublesome. Luckily, it is nearly finished. I want to release it ASAP so I can request artwork. Then I will have a one-week vacation (in Japan!) and then go back to CM. Hopefully I can release v0.2.6 before Factorio 0.15 come out.

I'm getting a tower defense minigame vibe from this.