[MOD 0.13.0+] Wireless Signals 0.1.2

[equitime77]

Hey really interesting mod, looks like its going to be good for my rso bob mod game. Thing is that Telemetry 2 (with the repeater) wasnt researching tho it was showing as available. No research button. To get around it I temporarily got rid of the line in your code that resets the research. Saying that after I tried it out, it wouldnt connect even tho it was in distance.

[vlan0]

T1 can use color and number signals, T2 can also use letter signals

Suggestions:

1. Transmitter any signal (icons).
2. Display coverage area when installing a transmitter/receiver/repeater. And/or showing the connection line, as an example - showing the connection of the drones stations.
3. Option "Ignore repeater" for receirver. Otherwise, a bug appears and the receiver sums up the signals. Tested on 1 transmitter + 1 reicerver + 1 repeater in small area.
4. Option "Enable / Disable", for setting with signals combinators. Optionally turn on a certain signal.
5. Reading and issuing id transmitter, for example - option "Read ID train" railway station.

[iliketanks1998]

T1 can use color and number signals, T2 can also use letter signals

Suggestions:

1. Transmitter any signal (icons).
2. Display coverage area when installing a transmitter/receiver/repeater. And/or showing the connection line, as an example - showing the connection of the drones stations.
3. Option "Ignore repeater" for receirver. Otherwise, a bug appears and the receiver sums up the signals. Tested on 1 transmitter + 1 reicerver + 1 repeater in small area.
4. Option "Enable / Disable", for setting with signals combinators. Optionally turn on a certain signal.
5. Reading and issuing id transmitter, for example - option "Read ID train" railway station.

Red and Green transmitters/receivers would also be nice, to match the red/green wires (or just add a bunch of numerical frequencies, so you could transmit 3 red on channel 1 and 5 red on channel 2, but they would remain separate)

[Deadlock989]

Very nice mod, but can I ask, what is the reason for the alphanumeric/colours only? It really limits what I'd like to be doing. Also, other mods which add new colours (e.g. Dectorio) aren't picked up because there's no way for your mod to know that new signal "violet" is a colour.

One other quirk - when you have combinator input/output displayed in the alt-view, receivers show that they're receiving ALL the alphanumeric signals even when they are 0, as long as they're receiving any one non-zero signal.

[iliketanks1998]

Very nice mod, but can I ask, what is the reason for the alphanumeric/colours only? It really limits what I'd like to be doing. Also, other mods which add new colours (e.g. Dectorio) aren't picked up because there's no way for your mod to know that new signal "violet" is a colour.

One other quirk - when you have combinator input/output displayed in the alt-view, receivers show that they're receiving ALL the alphanumeric signals even when they are 0, as long as they're receiving any one non-zero signal.

Performance and balancing (not his exact words, but that's the idea).

[Deadlock989]

In my case it's balanced the mod right out the window.

Say I have a coal outpost and a copper outpost. I want them to signal that they have ore to collect. But I can't use the coal or copper signals. So I use, uh, C for coal, and, uh, K for copper. So I need to remember that K is copper. At every receiver I then need to "translate" signals with a bunch of deciders and constant combinators. And when I look at a signal wire, it says CKQLGB when it used to say coal/copper/iron/oil/stone. Yes, I can still achieve what I want, and the concept is neat, it's something that should be in the base game. But if the point was to remove clutter and miles of wire, it's doing that at a steep cost of unreadability and tons of combinators clustered around every receiver and transmitter.

[iliketanks1998]

Yeah same here, I've already multiplexed my network but the sheer amount of data I need to transmit can't be fit through the transmitter's limited signals.

(Although in his defense he said the limitation was also based on performance, and adding support for more signals would incur more processing overhead)

[pleauser]

Quesstion.. can we have a user defined (optional is fine) transmitter id? and can the transmitter also transmit that, perhaps as a new signal that your mod adds? lol. i know i'm asking a lot.. but i have some half fleshed out ideas 5 minutes after reading your mods synopsis and i think i'm in love purely platonicly, of course.

[Aeternus]

Yeah same here, I've already multiplexed my network but the sheer amount of data I need to transmit can't be fit through the transmitter's limited signals.

What are you trying to transmit then? Complete all-type cargo inventories of any number of chests in realtime?
A system like this is for binary flagging, not for full inventory. IE "Train Needed TRUE/FALSE" instead of "8471 Copper Ore in storage".

[iliketanks1998]

Yeah same here, I've already multiplexed my network but the sheer amount of data I need to transmit can't be fit through the transmitter's limited signals.

What are you trying to transmit then? Complete all-type cargo inventories of any number of chests in realtime?
A system like this is for binary flagging, not for full inventory. IE "Train Needed TRUE/FALSE" instead of "8471 Copper Ore in storage".

I've divided my base up into big sectors, each with their own logistics network and storage depo. Each depo has a pile of combinators that track the items stored there as well as the level of bots, and compare that to a signal specifying the amount of items the depo should have, on an item-by-item basis. The depo will request items to be sent to it to match the target, and will send items back if it exceeds the target amount. The request signal is sent to a multiplexer which hooks into the main logistics network the entire factory operates on, which transmits it to mass storage, which will send the items to the depo via train. The hard part about this is that by base is so large it takes ~7 minutes to travel from one end to the other by train (at top speed), so my current solution is miles and miles of cables running across my base.

So yeah, not binary.

[Omnifarious]

I'm getting a weird bug in which I now have a permanent 1 signal for a few things I've transmitted previously. I suspect that this is related to having put in a repeater at one point. But removing the repeater has no effect now.

I have a suggestion for the code. I haven't looked at it, but what I would recommend as an architecture is to create a set of receivers for each transmitter. Whenever a transmitter, receiver, or repeater is placed, update the set of receivers for each transmitter and then update the output signals for all receivers based in what their transmitters are transmitting.

If a repeater shows up in the list of things reachable from a particular transmitter when the set is being updated, add a list of everything that is reachable from that repeater to the set for that transmitter and then remove the repeater from the list. Keep doing this until no repeaters show in the list.

This whole update process is expensive, but it should only have to be done whenever something is placed.

The process of sending a signal should then be really easy. Just update all the receiver's an a particular transmitter's list when the transmitter's input circuit signals change. Receiver's should sum all transmitters that can reach them. So, when a transmitter is updating, compute the difference between the old and new signals and add that difference to all receivers.

I should look at your LUA and see what you're currently doing and maybe fix it to work that way myself.

I like the limitations of your system, and so I'm not sure I would want to transition to FLAN.

[rokot108]

Looks like Radio transmitter 1 doesnt work in 0.16.39 version of the game.
Radio transmitter 2 works fine instead of that one.

[Adamo]

Hey, did you mean to say s ~= 0 instead of s > 0 when you check for if the signal exists? Negative signals wouldn't show up, otherwise. Also, Radio Transmitter 1 isn't working. Cheers!