Friday Facts #271 - Fluid optimisations & GUI Style inspector

[Jap2.0]

I fully expect to use oil refineries to produce liquid uranium

No, he is burning lube in the heat exchanger

I'm quite sure that the heat exchanger is performing the new Glex Uranium Enrichment Process, the newer, better replacement version of Kovarex Enrichment. I wouldn't be surprised if it needed lube as a second catalyst.

Come on Glex, don't let us down now...

[guzwaatensen]

...

The producers and consumers don't produce and consume at steady pace. The machines are consuming and producing when recipes is starting and ending. So the pipes can't be full all the time, they have to buffer. The fluid boxes in the machines is also working as pipes, an solution could maybe be that the fluid boxes in the machines works different than the pipes and is the only buffers?

Ah I kinda get the issue now, i hadn't considered the non continuous nature of fluids in Factorio. As most pipe systems don't have buffer, they would switch between systems constantly, which can't be very efficient in the end. Might still be worth it for buffered systems, but then it is again large investment for little return...

[psihius]

So, is multi-threading being used for fluids now? Was the hint's we gave on the last fluid FFF were helpful?

[Optera]

I love how the game of finding mistakes in the poster distracts us so much we hardly talk about the massive performance boost the parallelization of fluid system will bring.

You should note that and when you include some changes a lot of players dislike just include an error riddled image to distract.

[dog80]

the robots "working" on the assembler reminds me on starcraft svc's when they work at building sth - pretty cool

thats a furnace

hmm right^^

[dog80]

I love how the game of finding mistakes in the poster distracts us so much we hardly talk about the massive performance boost the parallelization of fluid system will bring.

You should note that and when you include some changes a lot of players dislike just include an error riddled image to distract.

lmao

[dog80]

I know its been some time already to introduce the new ug-belts but now as i see it i want the old ones back and dont like the curved ones

[GrumpyJoe]

the fact that noone is talking about you guys showing (and enabling) the GUI tooltip tool, which is clearly for development only, just shows that almost everyone here knows it already: you are the Developers or the decade and should receive a gaming Oscar for it. Ive stopped playing games i enjoyed, for having asshole devs or a toxic community, but i´d play anything you guys make. Its the little things that matter to me, and whatever unlikeable content or bugs you create in the future, you are handling it perfectly!
I´ll probably never use this tool, but what other company would even talk about it?
After 2k+ hours in this game its about time for a Thank you!
And i´d totally buy that 3Dprinted Rocket silo people are talking about. Ive never before bought merch stuff of any game

[eradicator]

That GUI tool looks very nice, and i greatly appreciate you not withholding it from us modders. What does it show btw, if part of a style is manually overwritten? I.e. Element.style='style-name' Element.style.top_padding=5.
Also the GUI layout overlay (ctrl+f5) would be even better if it used different colored boxes instead of all red. Per-type colors might be good, or a simple red/blue/red/blue scheme.

___________

You find the cut off inserter hand and gear, but but don't think the long handed inserter is totally wrong?
It removes from the furnace and places into the arithmetic combinator.

And the refinery input is connected to the input side of a pump, which is filled with lubricant, and that is fed into a heat exchanger.
And the output of the heat exchanger is linked to one of the refinery outputs, and nothing else.

The yellow underground belts are out-of-range too btw ;). This is a great "find the mistake" picture.

[Cadde]

On the whole fluid system improvements. I get that you want to have "flow" still but why are you complicating everything?

For each line of pipes, build a "super entity" that is one single storage tank.
You can easily check to see what pipes and fluid boxes are touching. Cache this, add together all the volumes. Machines will pull and push directly to this one entity/tank. No flow calculations necessary, no pathing necessary.

Ok, so you still want flow? Well ok, calculate, cache and use distances between "ports" (fluid boxes?) to delay the arrival of fluids being pushed into the system.
The fluid is there already, it's reserved to appear at fluid boxes A, B and C in X ticks. Between inputs and outputs you can do animations to show fluid flowing and how much of it in a completely linear fashion. There's no simulation happening, it's all graphics. On tick N show fluid at location X, Y.

So, the destination is no longer valid? Push the fluid back from the last valid pipe in the chain. Nothing fancy.

[Muppet9010]

I was a little miffed about the lack of a working factory within the picture, so decided to have some attempts of my own. Not the easiest to work within the size and with the need for logos being kept clear of wires and obstructions.

my attempt to have a working production line with logos photoshoped in.

factorio graphics.png (962.94 KiB) Viewed 6569 times

box you have to build within with markers for Factorio Logo and lube logo cut away: https://pastebin.com/FZ3vXVGF
the top line of boxes will have their lower parts partially visible on the image (top wall)

[Zool]

With this picture, the game should be sold in a box!

And yes, concerning the picture I was thinking in the box of a physical copy of the game. Something that maybe never happens, but I would love so much to do.

I‘d at once buy the box, even if its being shipped without the game !!! (Collectors Box?? )

[pleegwat]

We could easily design our own wraparound covers for DVD cases

[fishycat]

With this picture, the game should be sold in a box!

And yes, concerning the picture I was thinking in the box of a physical copy of the game. Something that maybe never happens, but I would love so much to do.

I‘d at once buy the box, even if its being shipped without the game !!! (Collectors Box?? )

And also a little booklet in the box with Factoriocheatsheet.

Maybe collector's edition with small 3d objects!?
Please?

[eradicator]

With this picture, the game should be sold in a box!

And yes, concerning the picture I was thinking in the box of a physical copy of the game. Something that maybe never happens, but I would love so much to do.

I‘d at once buy the box, even if its being shipped without the game !!! (Collectors Box?? 😍)

A simple poster of the PAX rollup - maybe with some kind of picture-frame border - would be far easier to add to the merchandise shop.

[Oktokolo]

Good news about fluids and the new GUI inspector. I somehow miss the bots vs. belts trolling FFFs though.

[SHiRKiT]

4 years later and I still come back every week to read you. I never miss an update!

[Trebor]

The arithmetic combiner is a 1x1 tile shifted 1/2 a tile. The yellow light doesn’t have any wires connected.

[eradicator]

The arithmetic combiner is a 1x1 tile shifted 1/2 a tile. The yellow light doesn’t have any wires connected.

Right next to the until now not shown...HD gate+walls. I also see a HD big-pole. The half-brokenness of the big pole fits very nicely. Maybe the substation should be a bit more rusty too. Judging from the looks i'd guess that two different artists made the pole and substation. Oh, HD medium(?) pole too!

Edit 5:
The more i look at this picture the more i find.
There's an unknown bit of rail in the lower left corner. Maybe a HD rail gate?

railbit.png (22.93 KiB) Viewed 6478 times

For reference this is how rails currently look like:

currentrail.png (73.84 KiB) Viewed 6475 times

[Avezo]

How many fluid systems there are when you mix two different fluids in one pipe by misplacement?