Separate signals to/from red and green wires

[FuryoftheStars]

Afaik (which isn't much with circuits), signals coming into combinators are combined regardless of wire color and will transmit the same signal out on any connected wire, regardless if the input was originally red and the output is green or vice versa. So, if I'm understanding this request correctly, it would have no use?

If I'm not understanding correctly, I need more details. Maybe pic mockups.

[ssilk]

merged with existing topic

[SakretonTheSecond]

Afaik (which isn't much with circuits), signals coming into combinators are combined regardless of wire color and will transmit the same signal out on any connected wire, regardless if the input was originally red and the output is green or vice versa. So, if I'm understanding this request correctly, it would have no use?

If I'm not understanding correctly, I need more details. Maybe pic mockups.

From the pure technical side it has no use that is correct, but if you have many signals from both wires connected to a combinator its hard to separate which signals comes from which wire. It would just be easier to look at them and not have to connect a powerpole to know which signal comes from which wire.

powerpole.png (112.04 KiB) Viewed 1674 times

Those are the signals connected to a combinator,

combold.png (144.03 KiB) Viewed 1674 times

This is how it looks right now,

combnew.png (132.14 KiB) Viewed 1674 times

This is my suggestion. Not very good editing but you get the point.

EDIT:
Of course i should work exactly the same as before just highlight the wire color in the UI

[Pi-C]

From the pure technical side it has no use that is correct, but if you have many signals from both wires connected to a combinator its hard to separate which signals comes from which wire. It would just be easier to look at them and not have to connect a powerpole to know which signal comes from which wire.

Could be useful, but also makes things more complicated. In all the images you've shown, red and green wires carry different signals. Your idea works well in this case. But imagine there were signals of the same kind on both wires (e.g. "iron-ore" = 1 on red and "iron-ore" = 2 on green). On entering the combinator, this would currently be combined to "iron-ore" = 3. That's easy to read, and only one icon needs to be displayed -- while you would not show the total amount, and must display two icons for the same signal.

Adding the amounts of signals from red and green may be quite a chore if you have, say, 10 or 20 signals on each wire. I'd prefer to get the summed values in most cases. However, seeing what exactly is on each wire can be extremely helpful for debugging circuits. I think it would be better to add an optional debugging mode (perhaps it could even be toggled per combinator?) where the incoming signals are shown as you've suggested, but leave the default display as it is.

[SakretonTheSecond]

From the pure technical side it has no use that is correct, but if you have many signals from both wires connected to a combinator its hard to separate which signals comes from which wire. It would just be easier to look at them and not have to connect a powerpole to know which signal comes from which wire.

Could be useful, but also makes things more complicated. In all the images you've shown, red and green wires carry different signals. Your idea works well in this case. But imagine there were signals of the same kind on both wires (e.g. "iron-ore" = 1 on red and "iron-ore" = 2 on green). On entering the combinator, this would currently be combined to "iron-ore" = 3. That's easy to read, and only one icon needs to be displayed -- while you would not show the total amount, and must display two icons for the same signal.

Adding the amounts of signals from red and green may be quite a chore if you have, say, 10 or 20 signals on each wire. I'd prefer to get the summed values in most cases. However, seeing what exactly is on each wire can be extremely helpful for debugging circuits. I think it would be better to add an optional debugging mode (perhaps it could even be toggled per combinator?) where the incoming signals are shown as you've suggested, but leave the default display as it is.

If that is possible that would be nice, toggled off by default to avoid conflicts. If signals "overlap" remove its background colour, or add another one.

[FuryoftheStars]

Afaik (which isn't much with circuits), signals coming into combinators are combined regardless of wire color and will transmit the same signal out on any connected wire, regardless if the input was originally red and the output is green or vice versa. So, if I'm understanding this request correctly, it would have no use?

If I'm not understanding correctly, I need more details. Maybe pic mockups.

From the pure technical side it has no use that is correct, but if you have many signals from both wires connected to a combinator its hard to separate which signals comes from which wire. It would just be easier to look at them and not have to connect a powerpole to know which signal comes from which wire.

powerpole.png
Those are the signals connected to a combinator,

combold.png
This is how it looks right now,

combnew.png
This is my suggestion. Not very good editing but you get the point.

EDIT:
Of course i should work exactly the same as before just highlight the wire color in the UI

Yeah, ok, so I did understand you correctly. Pi-C summed up my thoughts on this exactly and proposed a nice solution.

From the pure technical side it has no use that is correct, but if you have many signals from both wires connected to a combinator its hard to separate which signals comes from which wire. It would just be easier to look at them and not have to connect a powerpole to know which signal comes from which wire.

Could be useful, but also makes things more complicated. In all the images you've shown, red and green wires carry different signals. Your idea works well in this case. But imagine there were signals of the same kind on both wires (e.g. "iron-ore" = 1 on red and "iron-ore" = 2 on green). On entering the combinator, this would currently be combined to "iron-ore" = 3. That's easy to read, and only one icon needs to be displayed -- while you would not show the total amount, and must display two icons for the same signal.

Adding the amounts of signals from red and green may be quite a chore if you have, say, 10 or 20 signals on each wire. I'd prefer to get the summed values in most cases. However, seeing what exactly is on each wire can be extremely helpful for debugging circuits. I think it would be better to add an optional debugging mode (perhaps it could even be toggled per combinator?) where the incoming signals are shown as you've suggested, but leave the default display as it is.

[ssilk]

I would appreciate seeing the signals separately. And at the same time I think this isn’t the right method to see that.

The problem is on a more global level, you want to see, what’s going on. That’s not only inside of the combinators, but also in the inserters, lamps etc.
It wouldn’t make much sense to change this only for combinators, but I have also no clever idea how to make this suggestion better.

[mrvn]

From the pure technical side it has no use that is correct, but if you have many signals from both wires connected to a combinator its hard to separate which signals comes from which wire. It would just be easier to look at them and not have to connect a powerpole to know which signal comes from which wire.

Could be useful, but also makes things more complicated. In all the images you've shown, red and green wires carry different signals. Your idea works well in this case. But imagine there were signals of the same kind on both wires (e.g. "iron-ore" = 1 on red and "iron-ore" = 2 on green). On entering the combinator, this would currently be combined to "iron-ore" = 3. That's easy to read, and only one icon needs to be displayed -- while you would not show the total amount, and must display two icons for the same signal.

Adding the amounts of signals from red and green may be quite a chore if you have, say, 10 or 20 signals on each wire. I'd prefer to get the summed values in most cases. However, seeing what exactly is on each wire can be extremely helpful for debugging circuits. I think it would be better to add an optional debugging mode (perhaps it could even be toggled per combinator?) where the incoming signals are shown as you've suggested, but leave the default display as it is.

Each tile could be back filled red/green in amounts proportional to the signal. Although that poses a problem if they have different signs. So maybe proportional to their absolute values. And you would have to show "0" signals, like -5 coal green + 5 coal red = 0 coal (half green / half red).

[ssilk]

WTF.

-10 green coal + 5 red coal is then -5 coal (75% green, 25% red). Mathematicaly interesting to calculate with this.

[mrvn]

I would have calculated that as 66% / 33% because it's a 10:5 ratio.

[ssilk]

Still interesting… it could be seen as 3-dimensional vector (value, red part, green part). But I have no idea what to do with this…