[0.11.11+] FARL 0.2.8 (Rail Layer)

[StoneLegion]

If it's that exact spot only, then I would guess it had something to do with the pathfinding, since the direction you're building (south) is against the allowed traffic direction, and one of your engines isn't past that one-way signal yet.

You say against traffic direction. This is a Canadian designed Rail system

So... Trains in Canada are signaled after they pass, instead of before? You lost me there.

Hi, Sorry about that. I thought it was related to sides like left and right. Could you take the time and show me an example of how to do it right. I'm quite new with trains and doing a large high speed train infrastructure without resorting to roundabouts etc. I use double locomotives front to back for more enjoyment.

Here is a better picture of my intersection.

Screenshot:
http://i.imgur.com/JcVQMf7.jpg

I found this to cause the least jams and slowdowns for other directions etc.

[n9103]

Ah, I wasn't making an assumption of left vs right, but looking at the train signal's direction... though, it seems I was mistaken on which way they face for a given light orientation. (I reeeeally can't wait for the devs to pick a stable version so I can get back into this )

As for the layout critique, it's a good bit off-topic, but I'll address it for a post.
Roundabouts are your friend, and are the only way to avoid potential deadlock.
Your rails themselves are a pretty good setup for a non-roundabout junction. (The uneven curves irk me, but that's a personal problem )
With this kind of junction there's not much room for improving the signals and still maintaining reliability.

Due to the current implementation of Factorio's signals, throughput/non-delay is roughly inverse to the avoidance of deadlock. I would attribute most of this to the fact there's no way to signal a path is clear, without also signalling that a train can stop at that signal's location. (e.g. there's no signal that only tells when one side of a block is clear)

Generally speaking, I avoid placing any signals where a train that stops at that signal would be in the way of other trains.
By only having one train in a junction at a time, you strongly avoid any situations that could cause a deadlock. Limiting the junction to one at a time will undoubtedly cause delays for bypassing trains however.
Personally, I'll sacrifice a reasonable level of throughput for never having to look at the junction ever again.

For reference, the "single train in junction" signal setup I refer to is a single signal at each entrance to the junction, and a single signal on each exit at [the maximum train length] away from the junction. Distance from junction depends on how large a train you're ever going to run on that line.

Only real improvement to this would be a roundabout, so it's not a bad layout for what it is.

[ssilk]

This junction can be made nearly deadlock-free, if you remove some signals.

- left track: remove signal between the top and down signal
- Keep signals between the two tracks!
- right track: Remove all between top and down
- Remove the two signals leading into the track into right direction.
- remove the two signals on track coming from right direction

There should be now eight signals left in this crossing area. I use this layout very often, because it has a much higher throughput, than deadlock-free circle. It is no guarantee, that it cannot deadlock, but then it is coming from "outside" of this screen.

To increase throughput, you can eventually carefully keep three signals: on the track coming from right and between them.

Note, that this is not useful design for a 4-way intersection!

There should be minimum two or more trains space between this 3-way intersections to avoid deadlocks.

[SvenDee]

I got an error when trying to build a bridge with the landfill mod:

Error while running the event handler: _ _ FARL _ _/FARL.lua:177: attempt to compare number with nil

but maybe i just made something wrong. i put biglandfills and small landfills into the waggon.

11.18 Factorio
Landfill_2.1.2
FARL_0.2.4

[Choumiko]

Could you post a screenshot before it happens? Not at home right now, so I can't tell what's going wrong. In my tests I drove from land on a big lake, did a few circles, back on land, return to water etc. Without problems. The used versions seem ok

[Cheata]

line 177... thats to do with the number of water tiles converted to land....

Code: Select all

if godmode or self["landfill2by2"] > lfills then

not sure why either of these values would be set to nill

screen shot or upload of save file would defiantly help

FYI SvenDee at the moment FARL only uses the small landfills for the time being but putting the large in the wagon shouldn't cause a problem.

[Cheata]

just did a couple of tests and have confirmed error placing rail only with bridging turned on ... as of 0.2.4 unfortunately i don't have time to look at it myself this morning

[Choumiko]

New version: FARL 0.2.5

Changes

• fixed landfills not being counted

not sure why either of these values would be set to nill

That's because i checked whether landfill is installed after using the variable to add the landfill to the table of used items. I just never noticed because i use godmode, so i don't have to fill wagons with stuff. Guess i won't do that in the future

[waduk]

I've become so dependent on this mod (and landfill), to the point i think they were a default feature on vanilla games
TBH, I think this is the absolute feature that the dev must included in whatever future version.
I think the dev at the very least give us a "plower" (the current tank is too weak for the trees), and come on..it's a tank; it's meant to do battle, not farming.

I'm always worried about mod, even more with the Factorio constant update, will the mod will be updated ?
So Choumiko and Cheata, thank you for bringing the two absolute best mod in Factorio to work together, and keeping it updated.

[StoneLegion]

Choumiko has been amazing. I actually wish Choumiko had more time to make even more rail like mods out there I love rail anything I actually wish and hope the devs push more into rails in the future. Mix this with RSO and I'm in love with factorio.

Hes supported me in almost every rail mod I used so far and always offers great support

Big thanks

[Choumiko]

Thank you both for the praise

I actually wish Choumiko had more time to make even more rail like mods out there

I wish i had more time too, wouldn't force me to decide between modding or playing factorio. I actually have a small mod in development, mainly an interface for the Railroad Fetch Trick Might get a WIP-release out today. Edit: Here it is TrainTaxi

With Factorio 0.11 nearing a stable version i'm starting to think about how FARL should behave in MP (apart from not desyncing how it does right now).
My thoughts for the settings/blueprints so far:
Settings/blueprints are stored per force, meaning in PVP each side can have different settings.
I could also allow per player settings, but i imagine when you're in a team you would want a consistent railnetwork and not one with left-hand traffic and one with right-hand?

[Cheata]

My thoughts for the settings/blueprints so far:
Settings/blueprints are stored per force, meaning in PVP each side can have different settings.
I could also allow per player settings, but i imagine when you're in a team you would want a consistent railnetwork and not one with left-hand traffic and one with right-hand?

been thinking on this since you mentioned it and thought id share my thoughts on the subject


Blueprints per team is a good idea .. not sure how it goes about making sure the other players on the team have the same variables with their current multi-player system (but then i tend to stay away from multi atm ... at least until its stable enough for me.. had some bad experiences with desync

as for the second point and per team variables... the problem with either option is player communication (or lack of) particularly with little things like collect wood or switch signal side.. as an example

team A player 1 starts running a rail track to an outpost, puts signals on the left side.

team A player 2 starts running a track to another outpost and without consulting player 1 sets the signals to the right side.
With the team model player 1 is suddenly placing signals on the wrong side and player 2 is oblivious until player 1 switches it back thinking its a bug........
With the Player settings model player 1 and 2 both have incompatible rail networks running however they can be made compatible by connecting the 2 together in the correct way

personally i prefer the per player approch. it then leaves it up to the players to communicate and use the same settings or not as they decide and any incompatibility can be fixed using round abouts and such. having said that it might be worth having a button to allow a player to copy the settings from another player instead of having to set it all up manually?????????????

[waduk]

Well it's possible that even within team, there will be a different network with different signal layout because they intended to make it that way.
I'd say, leave that problem to the player. It's a matter of team communication

[n9103]

As long as FARL stores a copy of the selected blueprint, then at least there wouldn't be a mid-placement problem in that situation.
I so like the per-team blueprints though. Should be easy enough for people to just use one of the existing blueprints instead of making their own layout that ends up incompatible.

[Choumiko]

New Version: FARL 0.2.6

Changes

• reduced amount of removed trees, less landfill usage
  fixed collecting wood option being reversed
  removed unused railprototypes

Landfill usage still isn't optimal, just a little better. Minimizing usage / making it look nice will have to wait until i find the time.
The railprototypes only showed up when setting filters/amounts on smart inserters/requester chests (only noticed that because vampiricdust got irritated by them in his let's play )

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Per player settings with an copy option sounds like a neat way to cover most cases. I guess in the end it's all just a matter of communication between the players.
If i remember my last tests concerning MP correctly (a lot of versions ago) it worked while there was only 1 FARL active at a time, so there's quite a few things left to do unfortunately.

[SvenDee]

firstable, thank you for the nice work.
there is an error when the farl destroyed by aliens: Error with the event handler: __FARL__/FARL.lua:444 LuaTrainApi call when: LuaTrain was invalid.
Edit: Ok this did not happen in the base mod with only landfills. Will post mod settings soon.

dont know if anyone posted it before. guess its an older error. Will add a scrennshots soon.
( we are testing around some really stupid moves, so i decided to drive directly into a nest, the error did not happen in the base mod, so i have to search i little bit )

Edit: still trying to reconstruate the error.... not that easy

[Choumiko]

firstable, thank you for the nice work.
there is an error when the farl destroyed by aliens: Error with the event handler: __FARL__/FARL.lua:444 LuaTrainApi call when: LuaTrain was invalid.
Edit: Ok this did not happen in the base mod with only landfills. Will post mod settings soon.

dont know if anyone posted it before. guess its an older error. Will add a scrennshots soon.
( we are testing around some really stupid moves, so i decided to drive directly into a nest, the error did not happen in the base mod, so i have to search i little bit )

Edit: still trying to reconstruate the error.... not that easy

I think you can stop trying, should be fixed in the next release. I simply forgot to remove the farl when it was being destroyed. Seems like everyone takes good care of their farl, since this bug has been in it from the first release

[vampiricdust]

Love the mod, one of the must haves!

I've been having problems with using FARL around corners & near areas with corners. It happens when I am sitting on a straight track that has curved rail tracks coming off it and start up FARL to continue the straight portion of the track.

Notice:
Error while running the event handler:
_ _FARL_ _/FARL.lua:241: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value)

Line of code in question:

if not data.curve[lastRail.direction].diag then -- curves connect directly

Thanks for your wonderful work!

[Choumiko]

I've been having problems with using FARL around corners & near areas with corners. It happens when I am sitting on a straight track that has curved rail tracks coming off it and start up FARL to continue the straight portion of the track.

It happens only when pressing start while near curves right? A picture of the "curved rail tracks coming off it" and the position FARL has could help, though i should probably rewrite the portion that detects the rail where FARL continues the track from scratch again, as most reports are of this kind.
Until i get around to that (weekend maybe), the savest way should be to make sure there's no curved rail in front or under the FARL

Thanks for your wonderful work!

Thanks for giving FARL a house and garage

[pyrolytic_tungsten]

FARL causes an exit to main menu under certain conditions when using the FAT controller. To cause this get in a FARL and command it to move to another station. Change control to another train and drive it a bit manually and then hit the player button to try and return to the player still in the FARL. It gives the message below:


Other than this I haven't really had any problems with FARL. Keep up the good work.