[2.0.34] "virtual-signal=signal-ghost" is gone without migration

[Hares]

Steps to Reproduce

1. Make a circuit containing [virtual-signal=signal-ghost] in 2.0.33
2. Update to 2.0.34
3. Load that save

Expected:

• Migration dialog pops up
• Everything works as before
• Recycling recipes removed

Actual:

• Migration dialog pops up
• Recycling recipes removed
• Virtual signal: ghost not mentioned yet removed

02-09-2025, 18-34-40.png (66.51 KiB) Viewed 5990 times

See Also

• Discussion in release notes topic

Attaching a savefile with mentioned problem.
Where to find the problematic circutis:

• Gleba, jellynut plantation (8 hours from the spawn), train stop "[item=jellynut] Cargo / Load"
• Gleba, yumako plantation (3 hours from the spawn), train stop "[item=yumako] Cargo / Load"

Workaround

This section is copied from my post below, just to be on top. Link to the original post.

This JSON migration placed within your game folder works fine (keeps achievements ON). Should be placed in data/base/migrations/ with .json extension.

Code: Select all

{
    "virtual-signal":
    [
        [ "signal-ghost", "signal-hourglass" ]
    ]
}

This will replace all removed signals with the new hourglass signal, so no conflicts should be there.
Automatic migration to entity-ghost, unfortunately, is not possible. Any other new may also be selected instead of hourglass.

Also note that this would only work if the savefile didn't run on 2.0.34, so you must rollback to earlier save. Didn't test if this would "restore" signals if played on 2.0.34 and not on 2.0.35, it may do so only for blueprints, or may do nothing at all - entities will be probably kept broken.

Also also note suggestion from Boskid on Discord

Remember to delete that file before joining any MP game, you may get issues trying to connect with this migration because game will be trying to apply this migration as it is unlikely MP server had this file as well

[Hares]

Attaching minimalistic non-SA savefile with the mentioned problem (created on 2.0.32 - latest stable):

• Load on 2.0.32 - Works fine, no alerts
• Load on 2.0.34 - Signal is gone w/o any migration popup, alert is fired

[Rseding91]

Thanks for the report. Virtual signals do not get a popup migration message (not everything does). The "signal-ghost" was removed because the signal entity-ghost is identical.

[Hares]

Thanks for the report. Virtual signals do not get a popup migration message (not everything does). The "signal-ghost" was removed because the signal entity-ghost is identical.

However, this causes signals to disappear. Migration is required when making a breaking changes. Removal of the mentioned signal caused my Gleba base to blackout.

[Rseding91]

I’ve forwarded this to the person who merged the PR. The PR said to specifically remove this signal because the icon was the same as the entity ghost one - and so the people working on it did.

But of course this did what you’ve served and it no longer exists in saves because the icon isn’t actually used anywhere except rendering - internally it’s all different between the signals.

[Hares]

For those who wonder: this JSON migration placed within your game folder works fine (keeps achievements ON)

Should be placed in data/base/migrations/

Code: Select all

{
    "virtual-signal":
    [
        [ "signal-ghost", "signal-hourglass" ]
    ]
}

This will replace all removed signals with the new hourglass signal, so no conflicts should be there.
Automatic migration to entity-ghost, unfortunately, is not possible.

Also note that this would only work if the savefile didn't run on 2.0.34, so you must rollback to earlier save.

Edit #1:
As Boskid suggested on Discord,

Remember to delete that file before joining any MP game, you may get issues trying to connect with this migration because game will be trying to apply this migration as it is unlikely MP server had this file as well

Edit #2:
This post unchanged. The OP post edited to also include this workaround with minor wording changes.

[Muche]

As a consequence of the removed virtual ghost signal, an imported blueprint containing it will skip entities referencing it.

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

Copy blueprint
(Just noting for SEO / reference.)

[binaryDiv]

Is this going to be fixed? The bug report has been moved to "Not a bug" and sadly I didn't see anything about virtual signals in the 2.0.35 changelog.

The reported bug is a breaking change that causes circuit conditions in existing save files that use the removed signal to break, without any (automated) possibility to fix it afterwards. You'll have to manually find and fix every circuit condition that used the signal, as well as fixing every blueprint that used it. (Unless you already knew about the bug and manually created a migration file that you've copied from this thread to the game, before loading your save game.)

[Rseding91]

Is this going to be fixed? The bug report has been moved to "Not a bug" and sadly I didn't see anything about virtual signals in the 2.0.35 changelog.

The reported bug is a breaking change that causes circuit conditions in existing save files that use the removed signal to break, without any (automated) possibility to fix it afterwards. You'll have to manually find and fix every circuit condition that used the signal, as well as fixing every blueprint that used it. (Unless you already knew about the bug and manually created a migration file that you've copied from this thread to the game, before loading your save game.)

I was told:

I didn't expect this and I'm sorry for it but it's probably like 2 people who have this problem

Also we don't have any supported system for migrating signal types to other types so it's simply gone.

[Hares]

Also we don't have any supported system for migrating signal types to other types so it's simply gone.

It is possible to migrate to any signal that was added in 2.0.34. It is still not marked as "stable" so it won't affect the main category of players.

P.S.
This topic is literally: https://xkcd.com/1172/

[binaryDiv]

I was told:

I didn't expect this and I'm sorry for it but it's probably like 2 people who have this problem

I'm sorry, but "it's probably like 2 people" who are using this virtual signal which has probably existed for years now? That's a bit hard to believe.

It's not some random "Unsorted" item that is misused for signals, it's a virtual signal that is intended to be used for this. If no one is using these virtual signals, why bother redesigning them at all, even adding some new icons? Unless you have actual statistics of how often which virtual signals are used by players, it's just a really odd assumption that specifically this one virtual signal is almost never used by anybody.

Please don't get me wrong, I really like the redesign of the virtual signals and appreciate a lot that even some new icon signals were added. And I don't blame anyone for accidentally removing one of the existing signals in the process - accidents happen. But isn't that why you have experimental releases? So that game-breaking bugs can be fixed before they get into a stable release?

Also we don't have any supported system for migrating signal types to other types so it's simply gone.

But that's the thing: You don't even need any migration. If you just add the same virtual-signal back (i.e. a virtual-signal with the same name) in the next stable release, then nobody who is playing on stable versions will notice any difference (apart from the redesign).

To be clear, I'm not talking about somehow fixing the save files that have already been affected by this, because that's not possible. When you're playing on experimental versions, you have to expect issues like that. But what's the big issue of just undoing the removal of the signal before the next stable release?

[Pluranium_Alloy]

It's worth noting that this change breaks external blueprint creation tools that work with circuits such as miditorio and giftor.io. Anything created with those tools before will simply break so this may end up affecting more people than expected.

[Hares]

It's worth noting that this change breaks external blueprint creation tools that work with circuits such as miditorio and giftor.io. Anything created with those tools before will simply break so this may end up affecting more people than expected.

I don't get it. Can you explain why is this a case?

[Pluranium_Alloy]

Tools like miditorio and giftor.io often store their data by bit-packing a bunch of different signals, one of which being signal-ghost. These tools can be updated to stop using this signal (giftor.io already has been) but any such creations already in the world before it was removed will subsequently stop working when the world is updated past 2.0.34. Interestingly enough, a similar thing occurred between 1.0 and 2.0 with the removal of filter inserters and filter stack inserters however such breaking changes are to be expected between 1.0 and 2.0.

[sgtyork89]

I'd like to put hat in the ring here as well, I used that signal for a platform design because I like the way it looks. I'm disappointed that the Factorio staff responses seem more focused on the behind-the-scenes implementation and software process.

As the end user, my main concern is that I expect my saves and blueprints to be compatible with future updates. I don't care (nor do I know about) the backend implementation. Based on this thread so far, my trust in that belief is slightly shaken! This is pretty shocking given that, for me, the Factorio user experience has always been stellar.

[Hares]

I was told:

I didn't expect this and I'm sorry for it but it's probably like 2 people who have this problem

At least 6 people using experimental branch are affected. Some even have "+1" as their first post. Given that only a couple percent people report their problems this might be pretty breaking change if this is to be merged to stable with no migration.

[thegroundbelowme]

I was told:

I didn't expect this and I'm sorry for it but it's probably like 2 people who have this problem

Also we don't have any supported system for migrating signal types to other types so it's simply gone.

Ah, I love completely unsubstantiated claims about software use cases. I'm using this signal on at least a dozen space platforms and many other places as well. It's my go-to for representing a low-power state. It's likely going to take me quite a while to hunt down and fix every setup using this.

I have to say, I feel like this is an extremely out-of-character response for this company. I expect better from Wube than basically a shrug and a "sorry."

[porksmash]

I use the ghost signal in circuits for my train station blueprints. Losing it will completely break my factory and the blueprints too.

[alkarian]

I use virtual ghost signal is several ships. It wouldn't be hard to fix the wiring, *if I knew that the signal is getting removed*. From the game, not from reading reddit/forums.

I didn't expect this and I'm sorry for it but it's probably like 2 people who have this problem

This is such a baffling response to a breaking change.

[folk]

All my ships used this signal in the interrupts.