Tony Hacks Pro Rails: Help planning API consumption

[cdaringe]

Hi all:

I've started my 2nd mod. The source code lives here: https://github.com/cdaringe/tony-hacks-pro-rails . I'm new to lua and factorio modding, so I thought it may be helpful to get a seasoned modder to help me navigate the factorio APIs.

Screen Shot 2018-07-02 at 11.50.33 PM.png (167.24 KiB) Viewed 906 times

I'm looking for advice on what the ideal set of events/APIs would be to wire into to enable this mod.

The tentative workflow is as follows:

• research skateboarding

• buy skateboard weapon?

• when holding SKATE_KEY? or firing "skateboard weapon" if near rail, init grinding

• when holding SKATE_KEY? or firing "skateboard weapon" while grinding continue grinding

• if grinding, pressing ALT_SKATE_KEY? inits a jump, which helps velocity increase

• while grinding, track train rail position, move player along rail. (maybe i secretly init an invisible train somehow??)

if i make it that far, i may want to figure out how to load the board img and play skate effects!

anyway, im not sure what the best strategy. there don't seem to be generic keypress events listed here: https://lua-api.factorio.com/latest/, so any tips would be great! thanks!

[eradicator]

Mmh...

An "invisible" locomotice would also be required to prevent trains from running you over while on rails. (No, your reaction time is not fast enough to manually get off the rail when a train rams you up front.)

So...make the skateboard a not-so-invisible train, automatically accelerate the train, forget about jumping as you don't have an animation for that anyway.

Keys: https://wiki.factorio.com/Prototype/CustomInput
Also factorio has no concept of "holding down" a key. You only get a one-tick event for pressing it down. So maybe consecutive presses? (I don't like click/key spamming :p).

What game stage is that for? It would need to be faster than at least 5 exos to be worth it in endgame.

Also personally i never think about graphics last. If you can't make it look half-way decent, it's gonna end up as Tony Awkwards.

Conclusion:
Interesting idea, but there's lots of technical and conceptual things that need to be worked out.

[cdaringe]

Thanks for the input.

- i'm perfectly ok getting run over by the train i have another mod for prevent train death
- thx for the info on custom input
- "What game stage is that for?" early. however, if i was playing around with the idea of adding a "jump" move whilst grinding that would allow the user to accelerate themselves