[MOD 0.15.29+] Creative Mode 0.3.12 - Infinite resources

[Nexela]

Entity Feature Request ->

A super electric boiler - cold fluid goes in, 100deg fluid comes out Or alternatively a boiler that creates fluid and outputs it at 100deg

[Mooncat]

Entity Feature Request ->

A super electric boiler - cold fluid goes in, 100deg fluid comes out Or alternatively a boiler that creates fluid and outputs it at 100deg

Request accepted. Will also make an entity for cooling fluid.
No electricity is needed.

Edit: or do we need electricity so we can turn it off with power switch? Maybe also make Fluid Source to require electricity?

[Anson]

Here is a blueprint for testing the throughput ...

The blueprint is awesome. I have no idea what the wires are doing but it just works! :lol:

thanks.
here are some details about it, put in a spoiler so that people interested in only the mod itself don't have to read it :-)

details about the blueprint and the basics of counters, clocks and timing

the post "Combinators 101" by GopherAtl is a nice introduction in circuit networks and signals.

the other blueprint might look complicated, but it is really only an optimized layout of a few simple basic elements, then copied 5 times for 5 belts with 5 displays, and optimized a bit again :-)

the following blueprint shows those basic elements

Code: Select all

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using the blueprint gives this :

BPcomponents.PNG (224.48 KiB) Viewed 10867 times

the most difficult to understand (but once understood becomes quite easy :-) is how to store some value. to achieve this, simply connect the output of a decider back to its input and set the condition to be true for the most time. for the output options, you select "input count". the "always true" condition together with the "input count" causes the value to loop around from input to output, then through the wire which connects output to input, and then again through the decider.
in a bit more detail since timing is important: the decider takes the input, does its work during one tick, and outputs the computed value. in the next tick, it takes this new value, computes again, etc.
now that we have a value stored in a decider, we need to change the value: when the condition becomes false, output will be 0, and thus the value is cleared, but on the next tick, the condition will be true again since the value is much lower now. this is useful eg for a clock that resets itself always when counting up to some limit like 60 ticks, 60 seconds (3600 ticks), etc. and how do we make it count up? just add some value, eg by connecting a constant combinator to the input. in the above example, i have used black for the clock value, and grey for the limit so that i can easily change that value without having to edit anything in the setup, but only need to modify the constant combinator.

now again that loop: let's start with any value, and black=1 on the constant. the combinator always adds all inputs, thus computing (during this tick) "old value + 1" and checks the condition. if the clock doesn't overflow yet, we will have the new value (= old+1) at the output (at the end(!) of this tick) and thus also back at the input for the start of the next tick.

this results in having 1 (0+1) on the green wire for the first tick, then 2 (1+1) on the second, etc, until we finally get 59 (58+1) on the 59th, and 60 (59+1) on the 60th. the condition (assuming we compare "black<60" to count a second) is no longer true, and we get an output of 0, thus a value of 1(0+1) on the green wire for the 61st tick.

the last paragraph explains why there is a small but important difference on how you connect something to this counter: the nixie display is connected to the counter with the same color wire that is also used for connecting input and output, and input and constant. thus we will have the added value +1 also on the display. with the above blueprint, the display shows the values 1-300 for counting 5 seconds, or in the above paragraph it would show 1-60. but if you use the other color (in this case red) for the wire (like the connection to the green and purple deciders), the values would only be the output values of the counter without the +1 from the constant, thus 0-59. and on a closer look, you could see this difference since on the same tick, the red wire outputs 0 while the green wire already has the next value of 0+1. you also would get the same effect when using a red wire for connecting the constant to the decider: the +1 would not be on the green wire, but a 0, and only after the tick you would get 1 on the output of the decider.

the two deciders only add color to the nixies. during the first 100 of 300 ticks, the display is uncolored. from 100 to 300, there is a green signal, and from 200 to 300, there is also a purple signal that has precedence before green (the rules which color is shown when there are several color signals, are different for nixies and lamps!). for recoloring the display, setting up >100 and >200 is good enough, but be aware that for exact measurements, this would be uncolored for 101 ticks from 0-100, green for 100 from 101-200, and purple for 99 from 201-299. when connecting the deciders with the green wire, it would be 100 ticks for each color (1-100, 101-200, 201-300).

ok, most difficult part is done ...

the belt transports artifacts and has two connections to circuit networks. the deciders at the bottom right enable them for exactly 100 ticks (watch out for the conditions: >100 and <201).
instead of using other colors and connecting both deciders directly to the clock, i saved a few wires by using black everywhere. thus the black clock signal is forwarded through the first decider when it is >100 and i don't need a direct connection between clock and second decider.

last part of the setup: the first connection on he belt goes to a multiplier that multiplies any signals by 1 and outputs as white signal. thus i can use a blueprint for the setup, no matter what kind of items i count. the other connection on the belt outputs pulses just like the first one (one pulse is a signal for exactly one tick only) and that is multiplied by MINUS 1. those two signals then are combined at the decider at the top which is built exactly like the clock at the bottom, but taking the +1 and -1 pulses instead of a constant +1 from a constant combinator. the condition for looping the output back to the input and thus store the value is set to "(almost) always true" (white < "insanely large") so that in contrast to a clock, the decider never resets its value automatically. the effect of adding those two pulse sources is that the counter counts how many items are on the belt between the two pulse generators. from the display, we can see that there are 14-15 items on a yellow belt of length 5 :-) feel free to replace yellow belts with red and blue to see whether they have the same or another number of items, what their throughput is, etc.

last, a hint on the original blueprint: each belt in that setup has two counters, one with big nixies for the current value, and a second which stores the last number of the previous minute. by using exact timing, the counter is cleared at the end of a minute and one tick later the new value is added, effectively storing the new value. it took me quite some time to get that timing right since the "gate" that i used between the other combinators also caused a delay :-)
to use few wires to connect all those counters, i kept them separate and didn't use the trick of inputting "any" and outputting to another signal (like i did with white here)
and finally, i added the artifact in the constant combinator only to easily start and stop items on all belts at the same time by setting the constant combinator to 0, 1 or 2 artifacts :-) thus you can forget about the red wires that connect that combinator to the belts.

the only value that didn't match was for sideloading MK5 belts with only exactly 1800

Yes, the number for the purple transport belt is weird.
Wild guess: when the 2 lanes are merged into one, a slight offset is applied to each item when it moves to the merged belt, and this offset is causing the belt not compressed if it is in high speed.

my wild guess would be that factorio only handles 1 item every 2 ticks (or 2 every 4 ticks) when sideloading, which would also explain the strangely "round" number of 3600/2 = 1800 items. and while working with blue belts (or even with mk4), that would still be fast enough for fully compressed belts. so why should the developers invest more work than needed for what is available in vanilla ? :-) :-(
in the end, both guesses probably mean the same thing: the implementation is done for vanilla, fast and effective for vanilla, but not for more than MK4.5, and for sideloading at high speeds, we need either a more complicated setup than simply connecting a belt to the side of another belt (something like half of the setup for a load balancer), or a new item that merges belts and/or lanes.

[impetus maximus]

wanted to thank you for this mod. the duplicating chest, and passive energy void made tweaking my steam power layout a breeze.

i had one problem with the instant blueprint building. trying to build something while i was standing on it gave an error, then exited the game.
i'm sticking with bots just as a precaution.

one question... is there a way to enable this just for the admin of a muli-player server?

thanks again.

[Mooncat]

my wild guess would be that factorio only handles 1 item every 2 ticks (or 2 every 4 ticks) when sideloading, which would also explain the strangely "round" number of 3600/2 = 1800 items. and while working with blue belts (or even with mk4), that would still be fast enough for fully compressed belts. so why should the developers invest more work than needed for what is available in vanilla ?
in the end, both guesses probably mean the same thing: the implementation is done for vanilla, fast and effective for vanilla, but not for more than MK4.5, and for sideloading at high speeds, we need either a more complicated setup than simply connecting a belt to the side of another belt (something like half of the setup for a load balancer), or a new item that merges belts and/or lanes.

Your guess makes much more sense. Yes, the developers have said that modders are pushing their engine to the way where it was not designed for. I think these faster belts are one of the examples.
To merge belts correctly, splitter seems to be able to do the job well.

wanted to thank you for this mod. the duplicating chest, and passive energy void made tweaking my steam power layout a breeze.

i had one problem with the instant blueprint building. trying to build something while i was standing on it gave an error, then exited the game.
i'm sticking with bots just as a precaution.

one question... is there a way to enable this just for the admin of a muli-player server?

thanks again.

My pleasure.
Sorry for the error. I have made a silly mistake and will release the fix soon.

About the admin-only feature, I can't guarantee I can do it right because I am not familiar with multiplayer. And there are some cheats that can only be applied to the whole team rather than each particular player, namely the creative recipes, Enable Loaders and Research All Technologies. So, the best I can do is to make the Creative Mode UI only available to admin.
But before that, I will have to finish the UI first.

[Nexela]

About the admin-only feature, I can't guarantee I can do it right because I am not familiar with multiplayer. And there are some cheats that can only be applied to the whole team rather than each particular player, namely the creative recipes, Enable Loaders and Research All Technologies. So, the best I can do is to make the Creative Mode UI only available to admin.
But before that, I will have to finish the UI first.

player.admin
returns true in single player, returns true if admin in multiplayer (assuming on this part)
I have some thoughts on how to do this but I will need to set up a server first


impetus maximus, is the admin in it's own force?

[impetus maximus]

My pleasure.
Sorry for the error. I have made a silly mistake and will release the fix soon.

About the admin-only feature, I can't guarantee I can do it right because I am not familiar with multiplayer. And there are some cheats that can only be applied to the whole team rather than each particular player, namely the creative recipes, Enable Loaders and Research All Technologies. So, the best I can do is to make the Creative Mode UI only available to admin.
But before that, I will have to finish the UI first.

no problem. glad you got a fix for it.

player.admin
returns true in single player, returns true if admin in multiplayer (assuming on this part)
I have some thoughts on how to do this but I will need to set up a server first


impetus maximus, is the admin in it's own force?

force as in team? i haven't created my server yet, so i'm not familiar with multiplayer terms.
i'm just looking for tools for admin. don't want to be a bully/cheat or anything.
i'll use command line for stuff but it would be nice to have a GUI for stuff like kick, ban etc.
seems like creative would be great as an admin only tool for setting up scenarios etc.

thanks folks

[Mooncat]

player.admin
returns true in single player, returns true if admin in multiplayer (assuming on this part)

Thanks for the info! Don't know this property has ever existed!
I was assuming players[1] is always admin, but seems I should correct it.

force as in team? i haven't created my server yet, so i'm not familiar with multiplayer terms.
i'm just looking for tools for admin. don't want to be a bully/cheat or anything.
i'll use command line for stuff but it would be nice to have a GUI for stuff like kick, ban etc.
seems like creative would be great as an admin only tool for setting up scenarios etc.

thanks folks

In Factorio, recipes and technologies are shared across teammates. So, if you enable Creative Mode in a multiplayer game, all other players in your team will also be able to craft the creative items. It makes admin-only not very meaningful in my opinion. But I can still make it so other players will not be able to toggle cheats by themselves.

For the kick and ban features, I think they are out-of-scope for this mod. But have you tried binbinhfr's Spacebook? It seems to be the right thing for that purpose.




By the way, v0.1.4 has been released. The error of instant blueprint failure is fixed. Some additional features are also included, like the ability to change item group for the creative chests.
PS: I will update the OP after sleep.

[impetus maximus]

right on. thanks for the SpaceBook link and update.
get some sleep!

[Mooncat]

Finally updated the OP and provided info about the new chests. Also included info about the possible performance issue of Item Source, Item Void and Duplicator, and alternatives to each of them.
Details about the 2 new commands from v0.1.3 are included.

I will have a 5-day vacation starting from tomorrow and will not be able to check this forum. If there is any problem, any request, or anything you want to say to me, leave a message below and I will check once I return.

Edit: Factorio 0.14 was suddenly released. Unfortunately, it doesn't support mods that are supposed to be compatible to 0.13+, which should also include 0.14. There is discussion about this matter and I sincerely hope the devs can fix this issue.

Currently, if you want to use this mod in 0.14, unzip the mod, open info.json, change the value of "factorio_version" to "0.14". It is optional to whether zip it back or not. Just make sure the unzipped folder and the zip doesn't exist in the same folder when you start the game.

[Nexela]

Another cheat for ya to add when you get back

player.character.destructible=false -- We are cheating in everything else why not biter immunity.


Also creative mode entities should have destructible=false just because

[Qon]

Another cheat for ya to add when you get back

player.character.destructible=false -- We are cheating in everything else why not biter immunity.


Also creative mode entities should have destructible=false just because

Only if it's optional. Not because. There is peaceful mode and you can turn off native spawns completely so adding those cheats to creative mode is not only pointless, but also directly harmful. If I make a world with biters that are hostile it's because I want to be able to test the machanisms of defense and damage dealt.

[Nexela]

Well yeah it would be just like all the other cheats, with a checkbox to enable it

[Nexela]

Current bugs and issues, Will flesh these out some more in a bit and possibly shoot you over the fixes if I get to em

1. No remote to see if creative_mode is enabled
2. (assuming) if config for enable all on load is true then running remote.call("creative-mode", disable) immediately turns CM off and back on again and then the box for disabling cheats shows up.
3. Instant BP doesn't like placing items which are immediately destroyed and replaced by a mods on_built_event
4. enable all on load is too spammy


and P.S. OMG the defines are strong with this one!

[Mooncat]

Hi all, I am back~ \o_o/

Thanks for waiting!
About destructible, yes, I will add GUI for toggling player.character.destructible in runtime, and also some options for changing entity.destructible when one is placed.

1. No remote to see if creative_mode is enabled

Will add soon.

2. (assuming) if config for enable all on load is true then running remote.call("creative-mode", disable) immediately turns CM off and back on again and then the box for disabling cheats shows up.

Confirmed. Thanks!

3. Instant BP doesn't like placing items which are immediately destroyed and replaced by a mods on_built_event

Do you know any specific mod I can test with?

4. enable all on load is too spammy

What does it mean? xD

and P.S. OMG the defines are strong with this one!

By the way, guys,
since 0.13+ mods are not compatible with 0.14, should I move on and make the next version to be 0.14+?

[Nexela]

3. Instant BP doesn't like placing items which are immediately destroyed and replaced by a mods on_built_event

Do you know any specific mod I can test with?

Natural Evolution Enemies, the artifact collector.

4. enable all on load is too spammy

What does it mean? xD

This was more of a gripe but................... The cheat enabled messages that pop up when you enable all the cheats. Just curious if you could add a silent check to them for the first time if enable all on load config option is set
something like
if defines.mooncat.really.likes.defines.cheat.this cheat and not global[defines.you.have.been.warned.name] then ....... bah Here is what I did for a quick fix (left the creative mod on and off but hid the rest)
https://gist.github.com/Nexela/45159cf1 ... 34547126bc

and P.S. OMG the defines are strong with this one!

Do you know how hard it was to find the prototype name I needed!!!!!!!!! I had to backtrack through 3 levels of defines! I think you have defines for defines. In fact it got so bad I wrote a script where if I CTRL-G on any entity in game I get a dump with everything I need!

By the way, guys,
since 0.13+ mods are not compatible with 0.14, should I move on and make the next version to be 0.14+?

might as well

[aklesey1]

Waiting for 0.14 update

[Nexela]

Another bug

Dying in multiplayer does not restore cheats to re-spawned player

Needs to watch for event "on_player_respawned" then loop through and set active cheats

[Mooncat]

Natural Evolution Enemies, the artifact collector.

Confirmed. But the error message makes me feel that it is a Factorio bug. It complains that the entity is invalid even though we have already checked entity.valid.
Adding a 1-tick delay before reviving the entity doesn't work. I will try adding the delay after reviving it, but before raising the event. If that doesn't work either, I will need to submit a bug report.

This was more of a gripe but................... The cheat enabled messages that pop up when you enable all the cheats. Just curious if you could add a silent check to them for the first time if enable all on load config option is set
something like
if defines.mooncat.really.likes.defines.cheat.this cheat and not global[defines.you.have.been.warned.name] then ....... bah Here is what I did for a quick fix (left the creative mod on and off but hid the rest)
https://gist.github.com/Nexela/45159cf1 ... 34547126bc

I see what you meant now. I will make a message like "Someone has turned on all cheats."

Do you know how hard it was to find the prototype name I needed!!!!!!!!! I had to backtrack through 3 levels of defines! I think you have defines for defines. In fact it got so bad I wrote a script where if I CTRL-G on any entity in game I get a dump with everything I need!

Why do you want to find the prototype name. I treat the defines like constants. They are values that will be used more than once. And I think no one, other than me, will need to find their actual values.

Anyway, the entity names are in the locale files. Because defines don't work there.

Another bug

Dying in multiplayer does not restore cheats to re-spawned player

Needs to watch for event "on_player_respawned" then loop through and set active cheats

Thanks for reminding me about this.
About the cheats, I am still thinking whether we need to restore them, because there will be GUI for doing that at anytime manually.
But yes, I will still need to restore the GUI for the respawned player.

Waiting for 0.14 update

I am making some big features, so there will be some time before I can release the update for 0.14. (And to me, 0.14 is not quite playable because of the left GUI bug.)
If you don't mind, you can change the mod yourself to make it works in 0.14:
1) Unzip the mod.
2) In info.json, find "factorio_version": "0.13"
3) Change it to "factorio_version": "0.14"
4) [Optional] Zip the mod back.
5) Make sure the .zip and the unzipped folder doesn't appear in the same place when you start the game.

[Nexela]

Nexela wrote:
Do you know how hard it was to find the prototype name I needed!!!!!!!!! I had to backtrack through 3 levels of defines! I think you have defines for defines. In fact it got so bad I wrote a script where if I CTRL-G on any entity in game I get a dump with everything I need!

Why do you want to find the prototype name. I treat the defines like constants. They are values that will be used more than once. And I think no one, other than me, will need to find their actual values.
Anyway, the entity names are in the locale files. Because defines don't work there.

I may have over dramatified it and I always forget to check the locale file........