Making new fluid storage tanks... Showcasing, ideas, feedback?

[Cadde]

Here's my graphics, very much work in progress.



Will add pumps on the sides and connections as well as a window just like the vanilla tank.
This particular one is meant to be a 1x1 tank. Yes, a single "pipe" but with the ability to connect to the circuit network. The whole idea here is to allow splitting/merging fluids (before 0.17 hits with possible fluid mechanics rework) without necessarily needing a lot more space to do so.

Also intending on adding 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, 5x5 and 6x6 versions.
All but the 6x6 version will have 2 pipe connections per side. Again, for splitting purposes.
And the 6x6 version will have 3 connections per side. Yes, this will be a train loaders dream. I am sick and tired of messing about with stupid fluid mechanics just to ensure trains are loaded and unloaded equally to all storage tanks. So yes, you can have 3 pumps right there and then and slurp up a fluid wagon in a second. But it also means you can output to three pipelines right away to ensure maximum fluid flow when using alternating underground pipes and pumps.

In other words, the whole point is to add more fluid connections to storage tanks because there are none in mods as far as i can see.

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Feedback, suggestions?
How do you like the graphics?
Tips and tricks are welcome too!

EDIT: Depending on how interesting it is, i can also take graphics work requests. In PM.

[theDirector]

One of my biggest gripes about the base game is the nightmare of distributing a fluid across multiple outputs in large bases. The base fluid tank intuitively hints at 2 inputs and 2 outputs, but the reality is that it's very cumbersome to setup combinators to take averages and set start/stop on pumps based on that. The base tank in no way balances either input or output. A balancer like a belt splitter, but for fluids, would do great things even for the base game.

[Cadde]

One of my biggest gripes about the base game is the nightmare of distributing a fluid across multiple outputs in large bases. The base fluid tank intuitively hints at 2 inputs and 2 outputs, but the reality is that it's very cumbersome to setup combinators to take averages and set start/stop on pumps based on that. The base tank in no way balances either input or output. A balancer like a belt splitter, but for fluids, would do great things even for the base game.

I considered making a combined balancer and fluid storage entity. But just so you know, a balanced input/output is easy. The problem arises when you have more inputs/outputs than you have ports per storage tank and you thusly have to balance several tanks. It quickly grows in space requirements.

Hence why i want to make tanks of various sizes with many ports on them. Especially more ports going in the same direction.

Now for your balancing issue...
1) To balance a tank you simply connect the pumps as inputs/outputs directly to the tank.
2) Connect circuit wires between the pumps and the tank directly. No combinators required.
3a) For input balancing you set the condition to "EVERYTHING < [storage volume] - 1000"
3b) For output balancing you set the condition to "EACH > 1000"

[storage volume] = 25,000 for the vanila storage tank. So the condition is 24,000 on step 3a.

Now the pumps will each push exactly as much as they can each tick until their conditions are hit. Since pumps push/pull exactly 200 units of fluid per tick currently, with those conditions you have some buffer to ensure each pump can push/pull equally every tick.

The "EVERYTHING" condition is true when the tank is empty, thus allowing input to the tank even if there's no signal.
The "EACH" condition is false when the tank is empty so you won't have to fill the tank over the threshold for the condition to work.

Still, as you say, it would be neat to have the balancer/pumps logic as part of the tank structure directly. If i did that i would halve the storage volume in favor of having the pumps under the tank structure.

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I haven't dropped this project, i am merely getting sidetracked because the pipes connecting to tanks needed to be aligned with the pipes in the game and i ran into many problems doing so.

- The vanilla pipes are "sunk into the ground" from what i can tell, i can't live with that alignment nightmare.
- The vanilla pipes are not even centered on the X axis.
- The vanilla pipes doesn't seem to align on the Y axis either, there's no uniformity whatsoever from what i can tell.
- The vanilla pipes are ugly and low resolution anyways.

So i made a mod to replace vanilla pipes instead of intentionally working around those issues for every piping related mod i make.

[Cadde]

Well, now that i've finished my new HD pipes so i don't have to work around the games badly positioned pipes. I can continue with this project.

Here's my finished for release 1x1 storage tank. It's basically a balloon on top of a cross pipe section. Only purpose it to allow circuit network connections for even fluid splits/merges.



Am i happy with the dome on top? NO! The rust and scratches all look weird but i got fed up with trying to refine it. I might just put a pipe cover up there instead, just like i have on the 2x2 tank below.
The 1x1 tank uses iron, hence all the rust.


And here's my work in progress 2x2 storage tank.



The 2x2 tank is all stainless (food grade) steel. It's basically a milk tank. I will add some decorations to it and a window for viewing the fluids within.
But i wanted to show off what i have so far so you people can inspire me on how to finalize it.

And yes, it does look a bit colorless. I can easily add color bands around it to break the sterile look. As well as a ladder, some vents and perhaps some electrics on the sides.

EDIT: I also see now i have an alignment issue on the vertical axis. The pipes on the side are in the wrong locations.

Here's the one with the correct vertical dimensions.

[Cadde]

Dabble dabble.

[bobingabout]

One of the reasons why I haven't modded this myself is the lack of graphics.

[Cadde]

Well, if you want bob specific (looks) variants then tell me what shape and colors you are after and i can make you some.

I know my pipes really mess with the looks of the game so i can even make then vanilla compatible.
I just make my own looks because i wanted to.

[bobingabout]

I'd say what you have there would work for a bob's mods 2x2 tank. though I must point out that in factorio, Light comes from the absolute left, casting a shadow to the absolute right. (Wasn't always the case, there used to be a slight angle to it. in fact I've seen shadows go both to the upper, and to the lower of casting to the right)
Basically, I'd want 4 varients with yellow, red, blue, purple and green "Paint", with the metalic parts being different shades to match the different metals, Iron, Steel (higher contrast(lighter lights and darker darks)), Aluminium/Brass/Cobalt steel/Invar(I think I went invar for fluid tanks, and I don't think I've defined a shade for it, probably just less contrast to make it look dull. but Brass has that yellow tint, and cobalt steel that blue tint. Aluminium is lighter), Titanium (just lighter, like Aluminium), Nitinol (just darker).

I don't think I've ever used material variation and tier painting together yet.


Yeah, that T3 is a bit of a mess, because there's so many different options.

[Cadde]

though I must point out that in factorio, Light comes from the absolute left, casting a shadow to the absolute right. (Wasn't always the case, there used to be a slight angle to it. in fact I've seen shadows go both to the upper, and to the lower of casting to the right)

Locomotives cast down right.


Amd vanilla pipes.

Initially i tried replicating everything about vanilla pipes but realized that would cause a shift nightmare in all shadow sprites. So all my work has the sun at absolute left already at a 45 degree angle as per some FF friday somewhere.



If for whatever reason you see shadows that look like they aren't going straight to the right it's because of soft shadows or because of angled geometry.

Basically, I'd want 4 varients with yellow, red, blue, purple and green "Paint",

So, masks for colors on all materials? I wonder if one can have more than one mask?

Steel (higher contrast(lighter lights and darker darks))

Is that a lighting request or should i make the actual surface have higher contrasts? If it's lighting that's easy, just change the ambient color and increase material brightness to counteract. This would give stronger shadows without actually changing the look of the material.

Here's a test with ambience at absolute zero (no ambient light added)


As you can see, the shaded parts that aren't being hit by indirect light (bouncing off other surfaces in the scene) are completely black. Is that what you meant?

Aluminium/Brass/Cobalt steel/Invar(I think I went invar for fluid tanks, and I don't think I've defined a shade for it, probably just less contrast to make it look dull. but Brass has that yellow tint, and cobalt steel that blue tint. Aluminium is lighter), Titanium (just lighter, like Aluminium), Nitinol (just darker).

So i could just go with what i've done so far on my pipes then? Any changes i make to the materials would warrant a re-render of the accompanying pipe with the same material. Any lighting changes warrant a complete re-render of all pipes of all materials.

[bobingabout]

Basically, I'd want 4 varients with yellow, red, blue, purple and green "Paint",

So, masks for colors on all materials? I wonder if one can have more than one mask?

In theory you can have as many masks as you want, as long as they all have their own tint. Those that take tint from special sources (Like the locomotive being able to change it's colour with a slider, or the player's colour, etc) can only have one.
So, yeah, it would work as a mask layer.

Steel (higher contrast(lighter lights and darker darks))

Is that a lighting request or should i make the actual surface have higher contrasts? If it's lighting that's easy, just change the ambient color and increase material brightness to counteract. This would give stronger shadows without actually changing the look of the material.

Aluminium/Brass/Cobalt steel/Invar(I think I went invar for fluid tanks, and I don't think I've defined a shade for it, probably just less contrast to make it look dull. but Brass has that yellow tint, and cobalt steel that blue tint. Aluminium is lighter), Titanium (just lighter, like Aluminium), Nitinol (just darker).

So i could just go with what i've done so far on my pipes then? Any changes i make to the materials would warrant a re-render of the accompanying pipe with the same material. Any lighting changes warrant a complete re-render of all pipes of all materials.

Don't worry about doing any special contrasting or lighting effects, just do whatever you did for pipes, and that should be fine. The key point is that they would be made of 4 or 5 different materials, iron, steel, invar or brass, titanium and Nitinol. I simply described what I had done in the past using recolours to try and make them all look unique, and tried to keep that style uniform on all my recoloured entites. (A lot just didn't get recoloured. those entities that did either had the colour added, or the material changed, nothing so far officially in bob's mods has done both).


Something else I was thinking... instead of having the pipe connections rendered on, would it be possible to instead have a separate pipe connection overlay, similar to what the assembling machine does? Look up assembler2pipepictures().
if you have pipes on all sides like that, it would make rotation pointless, and could also make it awkward to try and route pipes around it (with the 3x3, it only connects if you have a pipe next to a corner, which can be a good thing sometimes if you're trying to route pipes), but it does support rotation (options are none (1), 2(which is done with a flag) and 4). Looking at other entity's pipe connection definitions (pumpjack) it is possible for each rotation to specify the location of the pipe connection, rather than it just rotating with the entity. Unfortunately the number of connections must remain the same and it will probably fuck up if you try to rotate blueprints, but it should be possible to have rotations such as... 2 on the left and 2 on the right... 2 on the top and 2 on the bottom... and then 1 on each side similar to what the existing tank does.


unrelated
Capacity of a 2x2 tank? simple maths of 25000/9(tiles) *4(tiles) = 11111. though the 3x3 tank is round, and the 4x4 tank is "square". instead lets do 25000/pi *2 =15915. It's nor perfectly square though, so I'd round down to 15000.
So personally, I'd recomend a capacity somewhere between 12000 and 15000 for a 2x2 fluid storage tank... which actually kind of makes a 3x3 a downgrade.

[Cadde]

In theory you can have as many masks as you want, as long as they all have their own tint. Those that take tint from special sources (Like the locomotive being able to change it's colour with a slider, or the player's colour, etc) can only have one.
So, yeah, it would work as a mask layer.

Obviously only one for user defined masks. But the rest is good to hear, i will make separate masked surfaces for you to play with.

Don't worry about doing any special contrasting or lighting effects, just do whatever you did for pipes, and that should be fine. The key point is that they would be made of 4 or 5 different materials, iron, steel, invar or brass, titanium and Nitinol.

Cool beans. The only one that's going to be difficult to make unique is nitinol as it looks like chrome/silver/steel combined in that order. But so do many different metals. Iron, steel, titanium and brass you already have examples of in the pipes i made. Never posted a titanium image so you have to DL the mod.

Something else I was thinking... instead of having the pipe connections rendered on, would it be possible to instead have a separate pipe connection overlay, similar to what the assembling machine does? Look up assembler2pipepictures().

Yeah i noticed the assembling machine has that special connection. I will have to try it but (without checking references) i'm not sure storage tanks have nor inherit the proper fields for that? It's only an assembler thing isn't it?
Of course there's workarounds for everything but i can simply supply the graphics and you can do the LUA digging. Adding/removing pipes is as simple as duplicating and hiding them from render.

if you have pipes on all sides like that, it would make rotation pointless, and could also make it awkward to try and route pipes around it (with the 3x3, it only connects if you have a pipe next to a corner, which can be a good thing sometimes if you're trying to route pipes), but it does support rotation (options are none (1), 2(which is done with a flag) and 4). Looking at other entity's pipe connection definitions (pumpjack) it is possible for each rotation to specify the location of the pipe connection, rather than it just rotating with the entity. Unfortunately the number of connections must remain the same and it will probably fuck up if you try to rotate blueprints, but it should be possible to have rotations such as... 2 on the left and 2 on the right... 2 on the top and 2 on the bottom... and then 1 on each side similar to what the existing tank does.

That's the point with my storage tanks, there's no rotations. Hence no need to produce extra sprites. My tanks are a solution to the problem of splitting and merging fluids, they are not a mass storage solution. Though they could be.
So far for mass storage i've always used Angels pressure tanks with 350 k capacity. Why use anything else? Apart from them being an awkward 5x5 tiles and only having one connection per side.

I hear you on the pipe routing around them though. I don't build that compact myself but i can see how a min/maxer would find them annoying when they connect to everything.
Pipes on the other hand are really annoying in factorio, i wish i could just disable connections per side of a pipe so i can run different fluids in parallel without having to leave a one tile gap.
Of course that's solvable by making 1x1 storage tanks that are of different shapes. But in essence, the problem is pipes, not storage tanks.
Either way, making different variants graphically is easy. Unless the whole tanks shape follows the piping.

unrelated
Capacity of a 2x2 tank? simple maths of 25000/9(tiles) *4(tiles) = 11111. though the 3x3 tank is round, and the 4x4 tank is "square". instead lets do 25000/pi *2 =15915. It's nor perfectly square though, so I'd round down to 15000.
So personally, I'd recomend a capacity somewhere between 12000 and 15000 for a 2x2 fluid storage tank... which actually kind of makes a 3x3 a downgrade.

The 1x1 tank i have carries 3000 liters because if you connect four mk4 pumps to one, you need at least 2000 (500/t * 4) EDIT: 1500 (500/t * 3) to be able to feed them, yes there's 1500 more in there but... BUFFER... And yes, as i said in your thread, i need that kind of throughput sometimes because machines only have one port per fluid type.
In reality, it's .35 x .35 x 1 cylinder so it's capacity should be 380 liters. But there's a reason for 3000 liters and it stays that way. The same reason i've made your copper and brass (the two pipes i use currently) carry 1000 liters each. Otherwise there's not enough throughput to feed speed moduled and beaconed machines going full tilt.

The 2x2 tank is made up of two shapes. Bottom is 1.7 x 2.5 x 0.7, it's oblong because sqrt(2) madness in factorio.
That would be 2975 liters on the bottom.
The top part is 0.7 high so that would add another ~990 liters. A total of 3965 liters.
And if we disregard "oblongness" it would be 1.7 x 1.7 x 0.7 = ~3000 liters.

The vanilla 3x3 tank is about 2.8 x 2.8 x 2.5 so it should have 19,600 liters.

However, i take a different approach to all this. Gameplay over realism.
If i were to re-balance the whole game and all yours and angels recipes then yes, i would care a lot more about just how much storage there is in each tank per tile.

But in this case, i care more about how useful it is. a 2x2 tank at 20 k may have a higher "per tile" value than the 3x3 storage tank BUT it's still smaller in capacity. If i am looking for storage, i go for the biggest capacity PER ENTITY, not per tile. When i go for utility all i really care about is that the tank is big enough to split liquids equally and provide a bit of a buffer.

I have contemplated making my own realistic approach tech mod. Where liters count. Less flow, higher complexity. Because let's face it... 200 liters/t in vanilla pumps is 12,000 liters per second passing through a 0.4 m radius, 2 m long cylinder. That's a volume of 1000 liters traveling 24 meters/s or 86 km/h! And that liquid is stopping and starting in 1/60th of a second.
Ever heard of water hammer? Crash a car into a wall at 86 km/h and you will know how the machine that just stopped such a flow feels.

Recipes should work with less liquid or higher production times. But this is factorio.
If i made a realism mod it would start small with something like 10 liters of fluid for one item. And ending up on 1 million liters of fluid for 500,000 items (bulk processing) and of course there would be HUGE fluid storages to accompany these kinds of recipes. Sunk into the ground because making tall entities in factorio is BAAAAD because orthographic projection, or rather non rotating camera.

[bobingabout]

In theory you can have as many masks as you want, as long as they all have their own tint. Those that take tint from special sources (Like the locomotive being able to change it's colour with a slider, or the player's colour, etc) can only have one.
So, yeah, it would work as a mask layer.

Obviously only one for user defined masks. But the rest is good to hear, i will make separate masked surfaces for you to play with.

Don't worry about doing any special contrasting or lighting effects, just do whatever you did for pipes, and that should be fine. The key point is that they would be made of 4 or 5 different materials, iron, steel, invar or brass, titanium and Nitinol.

Cool beans. The only one that's going to be difficult to make unique is nitinol as it looks like chrome/silver/steel combined in that order. But so do many different metals. Iron, steel, titanium and brass you already have examples of in the pipes i made. Never posted a titanium image so you have to DL the mod.

sounds good so far

Something else I was thinking... instead of having the pipe connections rendered on, would it be possible to instead have a separate pipe connection overlay, similar to what the assembling machine does? Look up assembler2pipepictures().

Yeah i noticed the assembling machine has that special connection. I will have to try it but (without checking references) i'm not sure storage tanks have nor inherit the proper fields for that? It's only an assembler thing isn't it?
Of course there's workarounds for everything but i can simply supply the graphics and you can do the LUA digging. Adding/removing pipes is as simple as duplicating and hiding them from render.

It's part of the fluidbox definition, not the entity, so any entity with a fluidbox can have them. See my 0.17 fluid energy source experiment screenshot.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/btwniwjxz4hkc ... 2.png?dl=0
note: this works in 0.16 too, you just don't have the abillity to put the fluidbox on all those machines.
also note: for testing purposes, and it's easy accessibility, I have water a fluid value, so the second input on the boiler, and the input to the reactor, think of it as oil.

if you have pipes on all sides like that, it would make rotation pointless, and could also make it awkward to try and route pipes around it (with the 3x3, it only connects if you have a pipe next to a corner, which can be a good thing sometimes if you're trying to route pipes), but it does support rotation (options are none (1), 2(which is done with a flag) and 4). Looking at other entity's pipe connection definitions (pumpjack) it is possible for each rotation to specify the location of the pipe connection, rather than it just rotating with the entity. Unfortunately the number of connections must remain the same and it will probably fuck up if you try to rotate blueprints, but it should be possible to have rotations such as... 2 on the left and 2 on the right... 2 on the top and 2 on the bottom... and then 1 on each side similar to what the existing tank does.

That's the point with my storage tanks, there's no rotations. Hence no need to produce extra sprites. My tanks are a solution to the problem of splitting and merging fluids, they are not a mass storage solution. Though they could be.
So far for mass storage i've always used Angels pressure tanks with 350 k capacity. Why use anything else? Apart from them being an awkward 5x5 tiles and only having one connection per side.

I hear you on the pipe routing around them though. I don't build that compact myself but i can see how a min/maxer would find them annoying when they connect to everything.
Pipes on the other hand are really annoying in factorio, i wish i could just disable connections per side of a pipe so i can run different fluids in parallel without having to leave a one tile gap.
Of course that's solvable by making 1x1 storage tanks that are of different shapes. But in essence, the problem is pipes, not storage tanks.
Either way, making different variants graphically is easy. Unless the whole tanks shape follows the piping.

This goes hand in hand with the pipe connection picture I mentioned previously. just keep the "square" non-rotating base tank, and "Rotating" just adds pips connections to different places on the same non-rotating tank. The fact that you've made it "Square" to allow 2 connections on all sides means the shape and base image works for all rotations already. Again, see assembling machine, the base entity and it's image doesn't rotate, but when it has pipes you can rotate it, and they just connect to different points on that same image.

[Cadde]

So bob, here's the tank without any pipes.



And here's a pipe from the south side.



That can be loaded into "pipe_picture = storage-tank-2x2-pipepictures(),"

I left the tank there in the background because reflections. If i didn't, it would look really weird wouldn't it?
Either way, this is what you are after, right? As well as masks of course for colors and stuff. Masks are going to be difficult though because of ladders. I will have to figure something out there.

Maybe i should have included the full length pipe... Duh...



And then i would need to either manually remove the window bits as it would interfere with the window on the tank, or define render borders in such a way that windows fall outside the view.

[Cadde]

Played around a bit with world lighting as well. It would seem i had ambient occlusion on and stuck at 1. :/



That explains why i had such whitewashing... I thought it was something else completely.
Mind you, one can play with colors and world settings all day and never get it perfect.

[bobingabout]

It's looking pretty good.

the only problem I see is that you can only have 1 pipe connection picture per direction per entity. So the front one you've rendered would have to be the same on the right as it is on the left. The reflection would therefore be the issue.

Yeah, it does require a little bit of sacrifice to make this work.

[Cadde]

Damn, well it's your sacrifice really, my storage tanks will always have at least 2 connections per side regardless. Good thing you answered or i would have made the pipe connections that way and then pulled my hair as it came to realization afterwards.

At least we can have shadows on top of the tank from pipes?
I am starting to grow really tired of the roadblocks one faces playing and modding this game. So many limitations that shouldn't really be there.

As for round tanks, can't one just make the whole "pump" bit a part of the "pipe_picture"?
Just making sure that the part works just as well regardless of which side the connection is on.
Question, can an entity have more than 4 rotations? So your configurable connections can have the tank "rotated" twice, sort of like a mirror per cardinal direction. This so any pipes coming from the top of the tank down could still be there depending on where the connections are on the storage tank.

My thinking is that one could configure it to have connections only on one side, or diagonally, or straight through but not crossing.

Anyways, i will add masks and the pipe pictures whenever i manage to unstick my face from the monitor playing the game.

[bobingabout]

the number of rotations an entity can have depends on what type of entity it is, for the case of storage tanks, there's 3 options. 1, 2 and 4, so you can't have exactly 3 rotations, and you can't have more than 4.