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Typewriter (Keyboard; Text display; Cursor)

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Typewriter (Keyboard; Text display; Cursor)

Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2019 8:19 pm
by Ecconia
I just finished the first prototype of my current typewriter project.
- Should contain a blinking cursor (not yet done).
- Arrow left/right for cursor control
- Backspace/Delete

Sneak peak:
Screenshot from 2019-11-06 21-14-22.png
Screenshot from 2019-11-06 21-14-22.png (3.54 MiB) Viewed 3245 times
No blueprint yet, since this is a WIP version, I will however post it along with details and a YT video as soon as done :)

Blueprint is there! I compressed the CU and other components a bit, so that the overall design is compact.
-> See my next post for Youtube and Blueprint entry.

If you already have a typewriter, feel free to link it in this thread. Or link your post here too. Then we can compare and merge ideas~

Re: Typewriter (Keyboard; Text display; Cursor)

Posted: Wed Nov 13, 2019 1:13 am
by cid0rz
Hello,

i adapted my text printer to get some typewriter functionality, i may try to upgrade it to be able to record messages for the text printer in-game through the keyboard. I used Pushbutton mod since making 1tick system for all the letters is tedious. The only issue is when you delete and the last line is not blank, when you press space, last character distorts new characters but well is an adaptation of an existent circuit so I hope this is ok. Here a pic with some explanation and then the BP:
Screenshot from 2019-11-13 01-58-11.jpg
Screenshot from 2019-11-13 01-58-11.jpg (388.49 KiB) Viewed 3133 times
Cheers!


Re: Typewriter (Keyboard; Text display; Cursor)

Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2019 3:19 pm
by Ecconia
My final version is done!

It took me some time to finish this version, simply because I forgot my project... And yesterday I noticed it again.
But I had to move around constant combinators to compress the whole build, without breaking combinator wires, so I "quickly" wrote a mod for that. ("quickly" -> I now hate the Factorio API documentation and grew gray hair).

This version has following features:
- A blinking cursor
- Arrows to move it left and right
- A delete and backspace key
- A clear key to reset the typewriter
- Many letters for actual typing :P

Explanation:
-> Since the whole explanation is kind of long and details, I recommend you to watch the Youtube Video (30mins) to understand it.
- Basically there are tile able displays which have constants***, so the display can be expanded as you please.
-> The displays can shift up or down any value above the cursor.
-> Each display's letter can be overwritten
- The Control Unit make all the functions work... (see video ... sry)
- Letter dictionary
- Cursor position memory cell
- Special key handling...
- The keyboard is made out of constant combinators. If one is destroyed the total value of all of them is reduced by a specific value, thus a key press can be detected. (I believe that is a common way to do a keyboard).

Control Unit, Digits:
Screenshot from 2019-11-20 16-12-45.png
Screenshot from 2019-11-20 16-12-45.png (1.57 MiB) Viewed 3021 times

Keyboard:
Screenshot from 2019-11-20 16-13-05.png
Screenshot from 2019-11-20 16-13-05.png (1.29 MiB) Viewed 3021 times

Tools:
I wrote a Java libaray which parses and generates Factorio Blueprints. Two tools are using it for this project:
- *** The first changes the constant numbers in the constant combinators of the digits, based on the relative location of the "wall". For that one has to export the blueprint containing all displays, run the program, import the clipboard again, paste it.
- The second one generates the letter dictionary. Export a single digit (no cursor), run the program, get a Blueprint for the constant combinators.
The last tool is a Factorio Mod I wrote yesterday/today which allows me to move combinators without breaking their wire connections, very handy for compressing/exploding circuits. However it is still very buggy and just works for minimal functionality.

Blueprint:



Youtube Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csfAN7zFh5M

Link to the mod I created for this project (Don't break my wires!):
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BuildMoveKeepWires

~Ecconia

Re: Typewriter (Keyboard; Text display; Cursor)

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 5:58 pm
by cid0rz
Hi, very nice and interesting work!

Regarding your mods and libraries I had seen creating blueprints programmaticallybefore but i dont know what language was it implemented in. For sure in the Tools forum you can find people interested/willing to collaborate, there are github repos with tools to decode and manipulate blueprints. For the wires i use PickerDollies wich has similar fucntionality to yours so maybe is useful to have a look to it.

I finally did a keylogger for the typewriter so now i can write sentences for the display inside the game. Here a video of the thing :). Im willing to do a final nice version of the typewriter/display with memories and diverse options but it depends on how much motivation I can gather.

Cheers!
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