Factorio Forums

Seems the old bug where generators weren't producing smoke if there's no animation is back.

Grab yourself a copy of bobpower and build a fuel burning generator (fluid-generator entity)
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/bobpower (If you want to test this issue, you'll need version 0.18.4 or older, as I changed 0.18.5 to use a dummy animation on the first layer to force it to make smoke)
(actually, I've been trying it with hydrazine-generator, but that requires bobplates and bobrevamp too, and specifically the Hydrazine fluid as fuel... in code they're all the same with different stats though, if you get fluid-generator working, they'll all work)

Fuel it by connecting it to a fluid source that has a fuel value. By default, the mod adds one to all the oils. (Crude, heavy, light and PG)
Don't forget to draw power from it too.
when running, the generator should be producing a cloud of smoke from both chimneys (Yes, two smoke sources, it worked fine in 0.17)
Currently (in 0.18.17) there is no smoke.


With further testing:
If you give THE FIRST LAYER (having an multi-layer animated generator where the first layer is a single frame doesn't work either) multiple frames, it works. (smoke from both chimneys in my case)

however, I've noticed that with a small number of frames (lets say 8, like the steam turbine) but a frequency below 1/frames (lets say 0.1), then it'll want to produce the first puff of smoke on frame 10 (of 8) but produces nothing. It seems that the counter resets when the animation rolls over to the first frame, so if the smoke production is less often than the number of frames, you get no smoke.
(And yes, under the assumption that you did make it produce smoke as often as the frame count, such as a frequency of 1/8 in an 8 frame animation, running anything less than 100% power also produces no smoke)

Even with base game entities, smoke only seems to show up when the entity is operating above about 1/3 of it's potential load.

This is likely due to the minimum apparent speed thing, if it's 25%, and the smoke generation would make it generate smoke on frame 8 of 8 frames total, like the turbine, then if you drop to the 25% mark, it pushes the "Frame to create smoke" past frame 8, and it never generates any.

Thanks for the report.
I finally got around to look into this.
Since the previous bugfix already added state for keeping track of smoke if animation had only 1 frame, I don't see any reason to not use it always. So that's the change I did for 0.18.41.

For the record, I believe min_perceived_performance should not affect smoke generation, so updating smoke cycle state still does not take that value into account.

posila wrote: Sun Aug 02, 2020 6:48 am Thanks for the report.
I finally got around to look into this.
Since the previous bugfix already added state for keeping track of smoke if animation had only 1 frame, I don't see any reason to not use it always. So that's the change I did for 0.18.41.

For the record, I believe min_perceived_performance should not affect smoke generation, so updating smoke cycle state still does not take that value into account.

Sounds good to me!