Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

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Twinsen
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Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by Twinsen »

A look at the fancy new combinators: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-88

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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by vedrit »

OMG! This is going to be AWESOME! I hope this allows for checking power levels as well, like demand/production.

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Cordylus
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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by Cordylus »

OMG!
It will be EPIC!

:D :D :D

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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by jerrycheng »

Awesome!!!

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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by jeroon »

this is easily the best Friday Facts this week!

also.. want.. right.. now!

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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by Original »

I wish there was a world download for the factorio sign that you made so that we can understand how it was done.

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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by infogulch »

So in a pure combinator network (i.e. no smart inserters/chests etc), items are basically symbols that represent processor registers, except they can be local instead of global registers.

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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by Havoc_mayhem »

Any chance of getting a set of dummy items we can use for signals? I think it would be cleaner than using actual items.

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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by daniel34 »

Havoc_mayhem wrote:Any chance of getting a set of dummy items we can use for signals? I think it would be cleaner than using actual items.
I second that. It would be very confusing for the player, especially in multiplayer games, whether the item used is an actual item or just a dummy variable.
Right now you can choose between items and numbers. You could add a third option that allows to choose letters (a, b, c, d, ...) or enter a variable name yourself that can then be used as variables.
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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by MeduSalem »

Well that will result in quite a lot of funny contraptions... :D

But I would suggest the following for the deciders:

The output should be either the input OR a static number of your choice and not restricted to simply "1".

Because I might want to output for example exactly 10 or 100 or whatever static number I want... so I'd need additional deciders or arithmetic combinators and constant combinators to achieve something that could be done by just being able to enter a simple number for the output value of a single decider.
Last edited by MeduSalem on Fri May 29, 2015 7:25 pm, edited 4 times in total.

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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by lancar »

Today's friday facts gave me a headache :/

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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by Zeblote »

Why can't there be graphics of this quality

Image

For everything in the game :cry:

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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by Narnach »

Zeblote wrote:Why can't there be graphics of this quality

Image

For everything in the game :cry:
Patience. They'll get to it eventually.

On the original topic: this looks really neat. Makes me look forward to the 0.12 update even more :-D
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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by Cordylus »

Zeblote wrote:Why can't there be graphics of this quality

Image

For everything in the game :cry:
Because probably you don't have enough VRAM.

Although there's planned official mod with the HD graphics. It was in FF some time ego.

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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by SWSe »

Havoc_mayhem wrote:Any chance of getting a set of dummy items we can use for signals? I think it would be cleaner than using actual items.
+1
This implementation probably works good, but also seems a bit cheap as to just "reclycling" usual items.
I imagine it could easily get unnecessarily complicated wheter items in a network are actual items or just signals.

On the other hand, this is good to see exactly what kinds of items this network is about. You can more easily assotiate something to an image of it instead of just some kind of strange pattern, letters or numbers.

I could imagine having signals with a tinted backgound. So for example, there could be placeholders like A, B, C but also just like now usual items, but all with a let's say green background.

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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by n9103 »

Robert OP, nerf pls. :P
Looking damn cool.
Any bets on how long until turning-complete?
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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by kovarex »

Havoc_mayhem wrote:Any chance of getting a set of dummy items we can use for signals? I think it would be cleaner than using actual items.
There will be something like that. But these won't be dummy items, but special kind of signal set.

MeduSalem wrote:Well that will result in quite a lot of funny contraptions... :D

But I would suggest the following for the deciders:

The output should be either the input OR a static number of your choice and not restricted to simply "1".
Well, yes you need another multiplier for that, but the gui is complicated already and we wanted to keep things understandable.

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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by Marconos »

Very nice and powerful ... we can make some awesomely complex items.

Now if they game just allowed us to have a blueprint set that we could pass between games and an in game binder with pages to store them all in ...... ;)

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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by keyboardhack »

How often does combinators update?

Can you change the timers update rate?

Does smart inserters still work the same way?

Is the system turing complete?
Waste of bytes : P

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Re: Friday Facts #88 - Combinators

Post by Twinsen »

Havoc_mayhem wrote:Any chance of getting a set of dummy items we can use for signals? I think it would be cleaner than using actual items.
Yes, this is planned. I should have mentioned this. You will be able to have special signals like "Signal 1", "Signal 2", "Signal 3" ... "Signal Blue", "Signal Green"... "Signal A", "Signal B", "Signal C" ...

Also, in the filter you will be able to select a special "everything" signal which will have special meanings in the combinator. For example "output all the signals that are bigger than 100".

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