Factorio Forums

DedlySpyder wrote:IIRC, having a large range will lag the game because it will need to constantly check every tile in that range.

Marcus Aseth wrote:Noone?
Well my only guess is that my question is just too vague for anyone to answer or too long to answer, so I'll try asking something more specific and split it up.

Marcus Aseth wrote:1) I've read another topic/tutorial here on the forum and if I got it correctly, my artillery item would have to fall under a prototype. If current prototype would prove not suitable for it, it is possible to add prototypes to the game trough mods? Also, if it is, do I have access to the code of current vanilla prototype so that I can see how it is and what it does?

Marcus Aseth wrote:2)I just started watching some Lua tutorials, apparently a Table is a collection of variables, and one of each artillery will eventually be just a variable in the game, right? If so, if I want to group them together it means I need to have some kind of "manager" that can keep adding and removing N tables of N artillery variables in it?

Marcus Aseth wrote:3)About opening a minimap and designating the tager area, can this be easily achieved? Meaning the code that currently convert all the entities in the game into a map can just be copy-pasted to have the same functionality in my minimap? Do I have access to that code? What about clicking on said minimap to translate that in coordinates in the world relative from artillery group? There is any obvious obstacles to such feature? Or even opening a tab for the minimap to go in and to manage the groups, does that present some obvious obstacle?

Marcus Aseth wrote:I played a bit few months ago with C++ out of curiosity

Unfortunately, no. You have to use the prototypes provided by the game. You can use scripts to do something special on top of the existing prototypes, but you can't change their default behaviours, and it is also limited by the APIs.

Theoretically, you can make your own minimap by using the find_entities APIs in LuaSurface, and then represent the minimap using a matrix of tiny buttons.

You said you are not a programmer, but you have learnt C++. hm......

• choose radius (r) value
  x,y,r are connected by the following equation x^2+y^2=r^2
  loop through possible x values, calculate the corresponding y
  do something you want to do with those coordinates

--generate table of circle coordinates
local radius=20
local circle_squares={}
table.insert(circle_squares,{x=radius,y=0})
for x=1,radius-1 do
	local y=math.sqrt(radius^2-x^2)
	table.insert(circle_squares,{x=x,y=y})
	table.insert(circle_squares,{x=x,y=-y})
	table.insert(circle_squares,{x=-x,y=y})
	table.insert(circle_squares,{x=-x,y=-y})
end
table.insert(circle_squares,{x=0,y=radius})

Adil wrote:The "algorithm" for making a rasterized circle is following:

• choose radius (r) value
  x,y,r are connected by the following equation x^2+y^2=r^2
  loop through possible x values, calculate the corresponding y
  do something you want to do with those coordinates

Lua example of code

Code: Select all

--generate table of circle coordinates
local radius=20
local circle_squares={}
table.insert(circle_squares,{x=radius,y=0})
for x=1,radius-1 do
	local y=math.sqrt(radius^2-x^2)
	table.insert(circle_squares,{x=x,y=y})
	table.insert(circle_squares,{x=x,y=-y})
	table.insert(circle_squares,{x=-x,y=y})
	table.insert(circle_squares,{x=-x,y=-y})
end
table.insert(circle_squares,{x=0,y=radius})

The "draw" part really depends on what do you mean. There are commands in api that can be used to spawn entities at these coordinates, as Mooncat said, you can implement your own canvas on which to draw.

There's no just a single book to get good, that circle part is just general knowledge of math and calculus, the drawing part is knowledge of the material you're working with.
I don't think it might be directly applicable here, but the following course does bring some knowledge: https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorith ... de-conquer
Have a look around there, there might be some more basic ones as well.

function printCoord(tbl)
  local i = 1
  
  for k,v in pairs(tbl) do
    local x, y = table.unpack(v)
    
    point = "Point " .. i .. ") " .. tostring(x) .. " | " .. tostring(y)
    print(point)
    
    i = i + 1
  end
end

--generate table of circle coordinates
local radius=20
local circle_squares={}
table.insert(circle_squares,{x=radius,y=0})
for x=1,radius-1 do
  local y=math.sqrt(radius^2-x^2)
  table.insert(circle_squares,{x=x,y=y})
  table.insert(circle_squares,{x=x,y=-y})
  table.insert(circle_squares,{x=-x,y=y})
  table.insert(circle_squares,{x=-x,y=-y})
end
table.insert(circle_squares,{x=0,y=radius})


printCoord(circle_squares)

function printCoord(tbl)
  local i = 1
  
  for k,v in pairs(tbl) do
 
    local x, y = v.x, v.y

    point = "Point " .. i .. ") " .. tostring(x) .. " | " .. tostring(y)
    print(point)
    
    i = i + 1
  end
end

Adil wrote:In my code I've missed

Code: Select all

table.insert(circle_squares,{x=-radius,y=0})

and

Code: Select all

table.insert(circle_squares,{x=0,y=-radius})

image

image2

Mooncat wrote:

Marcus Aseth wrote:1) I've read another topic/tutorial here on the forum and if I got it correctly, my artillery item would have to fall under a prototype. If current prototype would prove not suitable for it, it is possible to add prototypes to the game trough mods?

Unfortunately, no. You have to use the prototypes provided by the game. You can use scripts to do something special on top of the existing prototypes, but you can't change their default behaviours, and it is also limited by the APIs.

Adil wrote:Factorio is done in such a way that it is impossible to "extend" prototypes.
Usually you spawn several different entities together, each being of different type and covering some part of your envisioned mechanic.
Canonic example would be Klonan's "ks power" mod in which there are burner generators provided as a composition of a burner, offshore pump and a steam generator. Usually most of such entities are made invisible.

Depending on how much do you want to imitate the vanilla mechanics, you may have to use something like furnace and some dummy recipe. Quick and dirty way would be just a chest from which the fuel would be pulled. Vehicle is a good way too. You will have to either use scripts to kick players out of it though, or to put a dummy player character in it so it is always full.

Marcus Aseth wrote: 2)the easy one is, what the punctuation used in the doc stands for? I guess the double colon "::" shows a key::value pair, a "→" shows a return value, but what is "[R]"?

3)the more tricky one is, I'm comparing the base/prototypes/entity/entities.lua "car" prototype with what I see in the LuaEntityPrototype page, but for instance the car prototype has a "burner = ...." table entry, and in the doc page I don't find any reference or explanation for that entry, and the same applies to "flags =" table and other stuff, so...I'm clearly doing something wrong, what am I missing here?

Marcus Aseth wrote:1) Fournace actually seems to me the more logic choice layout wise cause there is exactly 1 slot for the fuel and 1 for the cannon shells, though... I still have not a clear picture how the whole sprite system works. Can I just make an artillery turret out of a fournace and then have the whole rotation/shooting spritesheets associated with it? Or the way a spritesheet gets interpreted and how many of them are expected is dependent on the prototype I choose to use?

Adil wrote:

Marcus Aseth wrote:1) Fournace actually seems to me the more logic choice layout wise cause there is exactly 1 slot for the fuel and 1 for the cannon shells, though... I still have not a clear picture how the whole sprite system works. Can I just make an artillery turret out of a fournace and then have the whole rotation/shooting spritesheets associated with it? Or the way a spritesheet gets interpreted and how many of them are expected is dependent on the prototype I choose to use?

No you can't, furnace doesn't support 360 rotation for sure. What I've suggested above, is to spawn whatever entity you want to use for the main logic of the cannon and then add a furnace atop of that. I've suggested furnace because it supports fuel eating mechanic, you could put some dummy recipe into it, which would cause the fuel consumption to happen like it does in vanilla entities. It is by no means capable of providing all the functionality you want to implement. More than 4 directions for sprites are only available in `player`, `vehicle`, `unit` and `turret` prototypes.