Adding A New Ore?

[Emmote]

I've been trying to make a mod that adds a new ore type by reverse engineering other mods that do the same thing, but they all seem to do it in different ways and they're always doing other things as well so I can barely make heads or tails of anything.

Is there a tutorial that anyone has made that covers adding a new ore and nothing else?

[SirRichie]

I do not think that there is a tutorial specifically targeted at creating new ores.

Differences that I have seen so far are mostly between using autoplace controls or not. In any case, you will have to define your ore as a new entity prototype.
Autoplace controls are used by Factorio to place resource patches (among other things) and you can add your ore to this. The advantages are that your code remains compatible with the game even if the devs decide to change the way resources are generated (which they seem to have planned).

The disadvantage is, that you do not have as tight control as you'd like to (size, richness, density, distances between patches), etc.

[Arch666Angel]

If you want to add a new ore into the game you need to define 4 things:
1. Noise layer -Determents the distribution on the map
2. Autoplace control -Adds the controls in the game menu and how to use the noise layer
3. Entity -Is the actual thing that you see on the ground
-If you want you can define an extra ore-particle -that's the animation shown when mining the ore, I would run with the default iron one for the start.
4. Item -The item that you get when the entity is mined

Here is an example for you from my mod

Code: Select all

data:extend(
{
	{
	type = "autoplace-control",
	name = "angels-ore1",
	richness = true,
	order = "b-e"
	},
	{
	type = "noise-layer",
	name = "angels-ore1"
	},
	{
	type = "resource",
	name = "angels-ore1",
	icon = "__angelsinfiniteores__/graphics/icons/angels-ore1.png",
	flags = {"placeable-neutral"},
	order="a-b-a",
	map_color = {r=0.26, g=0.30, b=0.39},
	minable =
	{
	  hardness = 1,
	  mining_particle = "angels-ore1-particle",
	  mining_time = 1.5,
	  result = "angels-ore1"
	},
	collision_box = {{ -0.1, -0.1}, {0.1, 0.1}},
	selection_box = {{ -0.5, -0.5}, {0.5, 0.5}},
	autoplace =
	{
	  control = "angels-ore1",
	  sharpness = 1,
	  richness_multiplier = 13000,
	  richness_base = 350,
	  size_control_multiplier = 0.06,
	  peaks = {
		{
		  influence = 0.3,
		  starting_area_weight_optimal = 0,
		  starting_area_weight_range = 0,
		  starting_area_weight_max_range = 2,
		},
		{
		  influence = 0.55,
		  noise_layer = "angels-ore1",
		  noise_octaves_difference = -2.3,
		  noise_persistence = 0.4,
		  starting_area_weight_optimal = 0,
		  starting_area_weight_range = 0,
		  starting_area_weight_max_range = 2,
		},
	  },
	},
    stage_counts = {1000, 600, 400, 200, 100, 50, 20, 1},
	stages =
	{
	  sheet =
	  {
		filename = "__angelsinfiniteores__/graphics/entity/ores/ore-6.png",
		priority = "extra-high",
        width = 38,
        height = 38,
        frame_count = 4,
        variation_count = 8
	  }
	},
  },
{
    type = "item",
    name = "angels-ore1",
    icon = "__angelsrefining__/graphics/icons/angels-ore1.png",
    flags = {"goes-to-main-inventory"},
	subgroup = "angels-ores",
    order = "a[angels-ore1]",
    stack_size = 200
},
}
)

[Emmote]

Thank you, both of you. I've managed to get the new ore into the game (and the new-game menu), and it'll produce an item when mined.

The problem is that I can only get it working if I turn off RSO. If I turn on RSO, when I get in game it says the resource is not configured in RSO and won't be spawned. I'm not going to have to edit RSO am I?

[Arch666Angel]

Thank you, both of you. I've managed to get the new ore into the game (and the new-game menu), and it'll produce an item when mined.

The problem is that I can only get it working if I turn off RSO. If I turn on RSO, when I get in game it says the resource is not configured in RSO and won't be spawned. I'm not going to have to edit RSO am I?

If you want a new ore to work with RSO, you need to create a config file for RSO (you can find them in rsomod/resourceconfigs) and contact orzelek of RSO mod to have him integrate it into the mod.

[Emmote]

Ahh I see.

I was confused a little bit since I have another mod which adds an ore (Crafted Artifacts), but there isn't an RSO config for it, only I've just been looking and it seems that CA has accidentally/purposefully hijacked "rare-earth" from the replicators mod and because of that, RSO is fine with CA. I'm guessing that could cause problems for people with both mods?

[Arch666Angel]

Always depends on what you want to achieve and how far your understanding of the data structure of factorio has grown, it took myself some time to figure things out from looking at other mods and talking to mod developers.

Bobbingabout of bob mods for example has his own scripts for generating his ores, which is more elegant but harder to understand if you have no knowledge in programming. With my ores mod, I used the brute force method and created everything by hand.

[Emmote]

My intention is to make a peace mode mod for bobs mods basically. I like Crafted Artifacts, but it doesn't deal with the extra colour artifacts. So I'm trying to make an ore that works like bobingabout's gems do. Mine it, get unsorted, put it into machine to sort it, and then refine all the products and get small artifacts out the other side.

But I can do most of that with recipes I think and that seems to be a more well documented thing that I should be able to find a tutorial on.

[Arch666Angel]

I dealt with it just by doing a processing chain. Cause I feel that adding even more ores to bobs is overkill, since your are ending up with 15 or 16 different ores on the map with bob ores alone, not counting other if you use Uranium Power or other mods that add ores. What you could consider is to have your pre-artefact items as an byproduct of mining regular bob ores, downside to that would be that you add the need to sort them out in the process. Again depends on what you have in mind and what kind of game mechanics you want to enforce.

[YoloJoe]

I'm sorry..

I don't get this.. Can anybody try to explain this a bit easier?
All I want is to add a new ore with a custom texture and when mined, drops a custom item.

[Arch666Angel]

Ok which part is it that you need help with or don't understand? Adding a new item? Changing the resource entity? Changing the texture?

[YoloJoe]

Ok which part is it that you need help with or don't understand? Adding a new item? Changing the resource entity? Changing the texture?

Well, I copied the code you posted earlier here, but nothing happened. It did not give me any errors either. But I can't find my ore anywhere.

[Arch666Angel]

Well if you just copied the code unchanged it should throw you some errors at least, so I guess you haven't got around to setup your mod correctly. There are tutorials in this Modding help section of the forum to help you with that, basically you need to create your own folder, info.json, data.lua and all the other files and folders you need and fill them with code. For basics you could for example copy the item/entity definitions into a data.lua and put that into your own setup. But like I said there are tutorials and videos out there that are able to explain this better than I could here.

[YoloJoe]

Well, I have already made a working mod. Its a bigger chest And I'm just expanding on that. I have all the "basic" files like entity, item, recipe, technology, locale, info.json and data.lua.
Here is what I did with your sample code in this tread:

Code: Select all

data:extend(
{
   {
   type = "autoplace-control",
   name = "angels-ore1",
   richness = true,
   order = "b-e"
   },
   {
   type = "noise-layer",
   name = "angels-ore1"
   },
   {
   type = "resource",
   name = "angels-ore1",
   icon = "__angelsinfiniteores__/graphics/icons/angels-ore1.png",
   flags = {"placeable-neutral"},
   order="a-b-a",
   map_color = {r=0.26, g=0.30, b=0.39},
   minable =
   {
     hardness = 1,
     mining_particle = "angels-ore1-particle",
     mining_time = 1.5,
     result = "angels-ore1"
   },
   collision_box = {{ -0.1, -0.1}, {0.1, 0.1}},
   selection_box = {{ -0.5, -0.5}, {0.5, 0.5}},
   autoplace =
   {
     control = "angels-ore1",
     sharpness = 1,
     richness_multiplier = 13000,
     richness_base = 350,
     size_control_multiplier = 0.06,
     peaks = {
      {
        influence = 0.3,
        starting_area_weight_optimal = 0,
        starting_area_weight_range = 0,
        starting_area_weight_max_range = 2,
      },
      {
        influence = 0.55,
        noise_layer = "angels-ore1",
        noise_octaves_difference = -2.3,
        noise_persistence = 0.4,
        starting_area_weight_optimal = 0,
        starting_area_weight_range = 0,
        starting_area_weight_max_range = 2,
      },
     },
   },
    stage_counts = {1000, 600, 400, 200, 100, 50, 20, 1},
   stages =
   {
     sheet =
     {
      filename = "__angelsinfiniteores__/graphics/entity/ores/ore-6.png",
      priority = "extra-high",
        width = 38,
        height = 38,
        frame_count = 4,
        variation_count = 8
     }
   },
  },
}
) 

and then I added this to "item.lua"

Code: Select all

{
    type = "item",
    name = "angels-ore1",
    icon = "__angelsrefining__/graphics/icons/angels-ore1.png",
    flags = {"goes-to-main-inventory"},
   subgroup = "angels-ores",
    order = "a[angels-ore1]",
    stack_size = 200
},

[YoloJoe]

And of course I replaced all your names and locations with mine

[Arch666Angel]

ok then the first indicator that you did it right would be that you can see the new resource in the menu when you generate a map. One possible thing could be that you have RSO mod active? It needs a config file to spawn any new ore.

There is everything you need in the code you posted, if you just changed the names, the noise layer which determinates possible spawn locations on the map, the autoplace control which tells the game that it has to place this entity and adds the entry to the generation menu, the resource entity itself and the item you will get from it.

[YoloJoe]

No, I'm not using the RSO mod. But I saved the code as customOre.lua and put it in the prototypes folder. Is there anything else I need to do?

[YoloJoe]

I found the error, I forgot to require it in data.lua. Its working now, but the name in the main menu is not showing correctly. It says "Unknown key: "autoplace-control-names.Zofg-Ore"". Is this anothing thing that needs to be added to locale?

[Emmote]

Yeah, you need to add localisation to be able to give it a name.

[Arch666Angel]

you basically need to add the names of every item/entity and recipes if they have special names and/or more then one result.
Something like:

Code: Select all

entity-name=Ingame Name

should be in your locale file.