[MOD 0.14] Alien Biomes

[Earendel]

This is a bit of a problem.

The map generation controls will never be able to affect the frequency and size of biomes because they are placed using the noise expressions.
You can use those controls to remove a biome, but then I have little to no control over what get put there instead.

I can remove those controls and add mod settings so you can switch off biomes, I can then have control over what goes there instead...

Any mod settings that affect the placement have to be on-startup settings, meaning that they affect newly generated chunks in all games. So if you have a game with only grass, then start a new game where you want only desert, if you then go back the the first game and load new chunks they will also desert in the grass world.

That also probably means that the biome scale multiplier that I already put in would have the same problem, and having different values for different saves could mean hard edges on new chucks if you switch between them.

[Yehn]

This might be something better reported to Factorio devs but... this makes the new game settings window awkwardly huge. I guess from the number of biomes.

Also the collision on these trees seems a little wonky:




(not using any collision mods)

[FuryoftheStars]

I've had the time to only do a couple quick tests with it. Used the Helicopters and Creative Mode Fix mods to allow me to quickly reach out super long distances on the map. I haven't gone so far as to try playing with any of the biome frequency or enabled/disabled settings (though I suppose having the options as you described would probably be nice) so can't comment on that.

So far in what I've done, I've noticed only the game's default biomes (grass, desert, etc) seem to appear and spawn. As of yet I have not encountered any snow/lava or anything else that looks new. Not sure if that's expected at this point or not.

[Earendel]

This might be something better reported to Factorio devs but... this makes the new game settings window awkwardly huge. I guess from the number of biomes.

Also the collision on these trees seems a little wonky:




(not using any collision mods)

Those are vanilla trees. I did set all of the tree collision to the smallest possible because I hate getting stuck on trees but the alignment shouldn't have changed.

I've had the time to only do a couple quick tests with it. Used the Helicopters and Creative Mode Fix mods to allow me to quickly reach out super long distances on the map. I haven't gone so far as to try playing with any of the biome frequency or enabled/disabled settings (though I suppose having the options as you described would probably be nice) so can't comment on that.

So far in what I've done, I've noticed only the game's default biomes (grass, desert, etc) seem to appear and spawn. As of yet I have not encountered any snow/lava or anything else that looks new. Not sure if that's expected at this point or not.

When you create a new game you can preview the terrain, if there's no alien stuff then try regenerate. If you don't get anything alien after about 10 tries then are you sure the mod is installed?

[FuryoftheStars]

Derp. I installed it, but didn't enable it. Duh. First map generated was snow after that.

That said, I'm definitely hitting that 255 hard cap limit on custom tile sets with the mods I have.
Mods I have that load custom tiles:
Dectorio
Asphalt Roads
Sparky's Smog
Scorched Earth
Shallow Water

Alien Biomes and Sparky's Smog cannot be loaded at the same time even if all others are disabled.
Otherwise the other combinations I can make are:
Alien Biomes + Dectorio, Scorched Earth, & Shallow Water
or
Alien Biomes + Asphalt Roads, Scorched Earth, & Shallow Water
Asphalt Roads cannot be loaded if I have (even only) Alien Biomes and Dectorio enabled.

*sigh* lol Guess I'm gonna have to make some decisions, and maybe try contacting other mod authors as well to see if there's anything that can done. :/ Either that or is there an active thread somewhere to the Devs to increase that 255 limit that I can chime in on?

EDIT: Sorry, should probably mention that having Alien Biomes disabled does allow me to enable all of the others.

[heavy_messing]

That 255 number is about 8 bits of information. For that to be be raised it would increase the total amount of data in that memory structure. Increasing that memory footprint might impact performance in other areas.

[FuryoftheStars]

That 255 number is about 8 bits of information. For that to be be raised it would increase the total amount of data in that memory structure. Increasing that memory footprint might impact performance in other areas.

Yeah, I'm aware of what all of that means.

[Earendel]

Right now I'm not removing any of the many vanilla tiles, they're just left there but not placed. I could remove them to free up more tile slots but that might cause other issues, like breaking mods that allow you to place those tiles decoratively.

I've been doing testing with the autoplace settings and I've managed to make it less messy in areas where a control has removed a biome (like if you set red desert to 'none') ... so it's not a completely random dense mass. The down side is it makes everything else slightly more messy but I think within an acceptable margin.

Also ignore the 'abn' terrain control, that wasn't supposed to be there anymore.

[Earendel]

The file has been updated;
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eGNWf ... mIUZWUwiSR

There are now additional mod settings and a warning if the mod settings don't match a loaded map.
Let me know if the planet controls are too confusing (they're in the mod options menu).

[FuryoftheStars]

Right now I'm not removing any of the many vanilla tiles, they're just left there but not placed. I could remove them to free up more tile slots but that might cause other issues, like breaking mods that allow you to place those tiles decoratively.

Nope, understood.

As a thought, perhaps an option to disable them, like how Dectorio has options for disabling its landscaping tiles? That might help for some of us.

By the way, does your mod essentially replace all of the vanilla stuff (ie, nothing vanilla will spawn)?

[Earendel]

It replaces almost everything. The vanilla water spawns, but green water is disabled. The autoplace settings for other tiles are removed so they won't spawn but they're still in the game so it won't break existing maps, just cause the hard edges.

I've been working on the migrations file. Alien Biomes v3 is essentially a complete rebuild of alien biomes so there is a lot of stuff to convert. I've added in some conversions for vanilla tiles too, so maybe I can remove them.

Actually best option might be to keep the vanilla tile names but overwrite them with the new versions, that would break my naming convention but it would save around 24 tile slots so it is probably worth it...

[FuryoftheStars]

Actually best option might be to keep the vanilla tile names but overwrite them with the new versions, that would break my naming convention but it would save around 24 tile slots so it is probably worth it...

That's exactly what was going through my mind as to why I asked the question.

[Earendel]

V3 has been released.

Even with the changes I made the smog mod won't load, but since it degrades vanilla terrain it won't work with alien biomes properly anyway.

[Tron842]

Posted this on the mod page but since there are no notifications there, I figured I would post it here as well.

"Failed to load mod "NauvisDay": NauvisDay/data.lua:19: NauvisDay/prototypes/rubberfloor.lua:110: attempt to index field 'grass-1' (a nil value)"

Full report: https://pastebin.com/WtiSXs57
Mod list:
- Alien Biomes
- NauvisDay

[nastyslave]

Hello dear modder! Love your mod!

Today I done repack of your graphics. (Used some tweaked pngquant and Pinga) 99% lossless. Believe me, i was very careful and checked quality visually many times at 500% zoom.
Here you are:

https://ufile.io/pp9vc
Here is gfx from main mod. Compression is improved by 19% to 106,05MB

https://ufile.io/49bke
Here is gfx from HD-mod. Compression is improved by 16% to 123,68MB

Further reduction of filesize will bring some/huge visible quality loss. Imho result is nice.

Keep develop this great mod! Cheers!

[Earendel]

Posted this on the mod page but since there are no notifications there, I figured I would post it here as well.

"Failed to load mod "NauvisDay": NauvisDay/data.lua:19: NauvisDay/prototypes/rubberfloor.lua:110: attempt to index field 'grass-1' (a nil value)"

Full report: https://pastebin.com/WtiSXs57
Mod list:
- Alien Biomes
- NauvisDay

Obsolete tile removal is now optional and disabled by deafult.

[FuryoftheStars]

Just noticed the issue seen in the linked SS between this and Dectorio. I have the additional concrete styles in Dectorio disabled to save on the 255 tile limit, so not sure how this affects the layering.

https://imgur.com/a/VXiDC

I posted over at Dectorio as well as I'm not sure where the corrections should be made.

EDIT: Just tested with Asphalt roads as well and can see the same issue there.

[Earendel]

That's a layering problem. I think the normal natural terrain range in layers is 0-70, but since I have around 190 I've distributed them over that range. The other tiles need to be above that but they're probably in the 70-90 range. I'll make an update that shifts all non alien biomes tiles above 190. If they add tiles in data-final-fixes and it gets processed after alien biomes then that won't work but it should fix most cases.

[evildogbot100]

I don't know if it is intended but I think those trees don't belong there. Disabled all terrain except frozen, then this thing happened.

[Earendel]

Yeah that's a bug. I'll fix it later today.