Player detection for circuit network

[audigex]

TL;DR: I'd like an entity to be able to detect the player, like gates, but without the "activates if the player is 10 tiles away and running towards it" mechanic. Am willing to send doughnuts to the Factorio office as a bribe.

--------

I'm currently playing around with some fun ideas for circuit networks, and I've noticed that there's one major thing that's difficult to detect properly: the player.

Currently, as far as I can tell, the only option is to detect the player using a gate. This works really well for proximity (gates open and stay open if the player is within 3 tiles), but has a major undesirable quirk: the gate will open (and send a signal) if the player runs towards it from, as far as I can tell, up to 16 tiles away. That makes it virtually impossible to have a consistent detection for player proximity.

For example, I'm currently making a timed maze puzzle for multiplayer: you enter the start box and the gates close behind you, while the gates to the maze open. You run through the maze as fast as you can to the end box, at which point your time is recorded and you can exit. This works great with proximity: but causes issues because you can't be sure if the player is actually inside the box, or just near it.

There are some ways to try to work around it (eg starting a timer when the player is detected, to ensure they stay within range for ~5 seconds before starting), but they're a bit messy: a proper mechanic for detecting the player would be far, far better.

Please could we have either a new entity for detecting the player (ideally with an ability to adjust the range), or perhaps even just a toggle on gates to only detect players who are currently within proximity, while not opening for players who are further away?

[Tekky]

I don't like the idea of adding a completely new entity just for this purpose. However, I do like your idea of adding an option to the existing gate entity to change its behavior.

[sparr]

I would love to see the detection part be separated from the gate entity, so you put down a detector plate (and optional combinators) and a gate to make the current gate.

PS: Can you fake the behavior you want with multiple gates that the player needs to stand between? Can't be running toward both of them at the same time, so my guess is that two gates 3 tiles apart would define a 3x4 sensor zone.

PPS: There were mods with pressure plates in previous versions. Not sure if any of them have been updated. As usual, it's relevant to note that if someone makes a mod and a lot of people use it, that's the best way to get the devs to put a new feature into the core game.

[audigex]

Yeah giving the option to modify the gate is more than good enough

I hadn't thought about the using two gates option - it would work as long as you can blank off ~12 tiles to the side of each gate (eg it would work north/south or east/west, as long as you blank off the other pair. That could be a possibility for what I'm trying to do

In fact, using 4 gates and 3x AND gates could just about fudge it, if the gates are locked open. Still, it'd be nice to have a "real" way to do it too Edit: It mostly works, but you can only get a fairly small area of detection (2x2), and it still seems to be breakable if you run at it diagonally. Better than nothing, though. Edit2: No, wait, it still has the issue. It's slightly more reliable, but you can still trigger both/all gates from a range of ~4-12 tiles

[Tekky]

The following two suggestion threads are related to this suggestion:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=41805
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=40784

[ssilk]

Thanks Tekky.

And there are some more:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8011 [Electronics] - Sensors
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13127 Wire sensors
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=43771 Motion sensor

And surely there are more...

And it is questionable, if that is really needed, cause - as already mentioned - the current gate has already this behavior. It can be modded in different ways to have different range etc. Very simple, but not used much till now, no mod AFAIK (?).

[sparr]

the current gate has already this behavior. It can be modded in different ways to have different range etc. Very simple, but not used much till now, no mod AFAIK (?)

The problem is that there's no way to mod the current gate to not respond to a player running towards it from farther away. A gate with a "range" of 3 will detect players up to 16 tiles away running towards it (which makes sense, so it's open by the time a max-run-speed player gets to it).

[audigex]

Yeah the speed detection makes perfect sense when the gates are being used as gates, or even just to detect that the player is nearby... just not when they're being used to detect whether the player is specifically in the area around them.

It's not that I think speed detection is a bad mechanic, I'd just like to be able to turn it off (or to have another entity that detects the player is nearby)

IMO the ability to turn off the movement detection is just the simplest way to acquire this functionality

I suppose that if a mod can't decrease the speed detection below 16 tiles, the mod could potentially increase the proximity detection to 16 tiles, so at least the detection is consistent within that (huge) area. Then we could overlap them and use AND gates to create any size detection zone.

[audigex]

Nearly 2 years on and this doesn't appear to have made it into 0.16 or 0.17

Devs, any chance?