Direct circuit output and imput

[thelordodin]

Hi

Output:
I'm trying to implement a radio-transmission mod.
I've checked about 20 different mods (including skan-radio which is one i fork mine from) and all they use constant combinator for output.

But constant combinator have limit of 20 signals and, for this reason, is limited for transferring info.
Example: it cant transfer some computation done via big complex of combinators based on logistic network data - it's far more than 20 signals.

I thought about making 100 internal combinators for my receiver, but it seems a bit too much if i have say 1000 receivers.

Is there a way to write signals directly to circuit?
And if no - can this be implemented?


Input:
Most mods use lamps to implement circuit input. This is ok, but allowing to make pins on entity and ability to read this pins would be great.
Example: i want to implement a complex combinator (computer/server), with 8 inputs. For now, again, i have to make 8 disabled lamps to connect it...

[Rseding91]

Is there a way to write signals directly to circuit?

No. The core of the circuit network works by having something own the signals being sent. There's no way to send a signal without something existing doing the sending and stopping sending later.

That something is always an entity.

[thelordodin]

Then maybe create another entity, say "circuit-output" which will allow to put unlimited number of parameters?

I've seen your post about inserters and 5 filter slots and I don't propose to change this 20 to unlimited, but, you manage circuit having unlimited signals somehow so I don't think that dynamic input for it will hurt any perfomance.

[NiftyManiac]

Constant combinators have an item_slot_count parameter that defines the number of slots, so you can make your own entity with hundreds of slots. In StickyNotes I use this to store lots of data.

[thelordodin]

Wow, thanks a lot!

[ukezi]

you could expose the pointer to the circuit state of an entity. if you than copy that pointer to a different entity those would have the same state and would connect two circuit networks. I don't know if that would work with the way the evaluation of circuit networks is done, but that would be a way.

[justarandomgeek]

Constant combinators have an item_slot_count parameter that defines the number of slots, so you can make your own entity with hundreds of slots. In StickyNotes I use this to store lots of data.

It would be kind of nice to have a "dynamic" sized combinator, instead of just picking arbitrarily large numbers (i've been using 500 lately) to make sure any possible data fits...