[MOD 0.14] Text Plates

[Earendel]

I'm getting some inconsistent behaviour with Blueprints. I made a bunch of Blueprints in a cheat mode game, and saved them in my general player's library. In these BPs, I sometimes included Text Plate "labels" for input and/or output Belts or Pipes, so that for instance I could know that for this structure, this Belt has to receive Iron Plate, and this Belt Copper Plate, and then out of this Belt comes Electronic Circuits.

But the Text Plates aren't reproduced when I plonk down the Blueprints in a newly started game.

What gives?

Press alt and make sure that combinators are set to show signals in your options to see which letter is which.

Currently each text plate is a different type of entity. Each entity would require a different item to place, so to avoid that they all use the same item (the base plate) so the blueprinted ghost entity looks like the base plate. When a robot provides the item and ghost is 'revived' then it looks at what symbol it should be based on the stored signal and it's swapped with the correct text plate.

Now that 0.15 is released with the new entity type I requested I will be changing the mod to use that. This should fix the weird overlapping problem, and could potentially let me use a different ghost entity system.

[Peter34]

I'm getting some inconsistent behaviour with Blueprints. I made a bunch of Blueprints in a cheat mode game, and saved them in my general player's library. In these BPs, I sometimes included Text Plate "labels" for input and/or output Belts or Pipes, so that for instance I could know that for this structure, this Belt has to receive Iron Plate, and this Belt Copper Plate, and then out of this Belt comes Electronic Circuits.

But the Text Plates aren't reproduced when I plonk down the Blueprints in a newly started game.

What gives?

Press alt and make sure that combinators are set to show signals in your options to see which letter is which.

Sorry... What has Combinators got to do with any of this?

[Earendel]

Sorry... What has Combinators got to do with any of this?

If you need to store information on an entity, modded constant combinators are the best way right now because you can set signals in them, so that's what this mod does. The ghost is actually a constant combinator type entity with a signal telling it what symbol it should be.

Modding in Factorio is weird.

[Peter34]

Press alt and make sure that combinators are set to show signals in your options to see which letter is which.

I've had "Show Combinators settings when detailed info is on" set to ENABLED since 2016. But that's not the issue.

The problem is that Letter Plates included in a Blueprint, which I've made in a previous game and saved in my permanent personal BP archive, do not get included when I plonk it down in a new game.

Everything else in the Blueprint is placed down, as ghosts. Belts, Inserters, Machines. Even Brick paving. Only your Text Plates are missing.

And this is inconsistent. I've had some situations where it worked, where the Text Plates did work, being placed as ghosts along with everything else. But most of the time they don't, and I haven't been able to find out what the distinguishging criterion is.

Now that 0.15 is released with the new entity type I requested I will be changing the mod to use that. This should fix the weird overlapping problem, and could potentially let me use a different ghost entity system.

I hope you do so. Currently, Text Plates are a very nice thing to have within each game, but they cannot be used with stored Blueprints, and that is a huge annoyance.

[Earendel]

The way factorio handles script-created ghost entities seems to have changed. This should be fixed now.

[Peter34]

The way factorio handles script-created ghost entities seems to have changed. This should be fixed now.

It seems to be working now. Thanks!

[hitzu]

Here's an idea - glowing green uranium text plates!

[septemberWaves]

Here's an idea - glowing green uranium text plates!

I concur. This is a great idea, if it's doable.

[gheift]

Hi Earendel,

I played with the new feature of v0.15.24:

Modding

• entity-with-owner now supports variation in blueprints.

I was able to rewrite your mod to remove the constant combinator hack for the blueprint handling. All textplates of one type are now only one entity, where the graphics_variation is changed based on the symbol. This is now saved in the blueprint. On loading this version the old entities will be replaced with the new entity. Blueprint with the old entites do still work. I attached the mod and would be glad if you are willing to release it after a review.

Kind regards,
Gerhard

[SHADOW13]

No longer compatible with 0.16 by the looks of it,
trying to load it under 0.16 gives

Error while loading gui-style prototype "default" (gui-style): Parent style not found: plates-button

[stromhurst]

Hi Everyone,

This Mod had been updated for 0.15 some months back, but now with 0.16 it isnt compatible. Can someone please update the mod again, I love this mod and would like to still keep using it!

[Earendel]

I'll update it in a few days.

[stromhurst]

Thank you very much! Great mod! simple, to the point and functional!

[Earendel]

The mods has been updated for Factorio 0.16.x

gheift's changes are included.

[stromhurst]

THANKS!

Already in game and using them again!

[Deadlock989]

My favourite mod. So simple and yet so much pleasure.

[Deadlock989]

Odd thing when laying ghost letters to be built by bots - the letters are offset by one. So HELLO becomes IFMMP or something.

[Earendel]

Odd thing when laying ghost letters to be built by bots - the letters are offset by one. So HELLO becomes IFMMP or something.

Fixed.

[CageStooge]

I stopped playing to come here and tell you how awesome this mod is. I especially love how I can type a "sequence' and then it will place each letter in that sequence. So much better than picking each character. I'm one of those people who likes to label things (Brother P-Touch is my best friend) so having this mod is so amazing. I've seen people who use concrete to spell things out but that was such a PITA. This just became my favorite mod.

PS -- I do agree that a glowing green option would be awesome, but if it is a lot of work, then no big deal.

[derpumu]

I am getting a crash when placing Textplates with Nanobots. It seems to be something in the interaction between the two mods.

Reproduce: In a game that has only Textplates and Nanobots mods active, place a few text plates. Make a blueprint of them. With Nanobots in the active weapon slot, put down the blueprint somewhere.

The mods then crash, ending the game:

more1.png (228.61 KiB) Viewed 7227 times

Happens as well when you come near a Textplate that has been destroyed (pesky biters) and the Nanobots replace it.

Nanobots 2.0.7
Textplates 0.3.3