[MOD 0.13] Smart Display - circuit informations display

[binbinhfr]

Hi, thx for your return.
- for power requirement, I cannot suppress it, because my modded object is a derivative of a factorio lamp, in order to access circuits conditions. And I have no control on factorio lamp basics : they need a little power. If I put 0KW on the consumption, factorio will emit a flashing red electric sign. No way to avoid this, it's built in the game. Modders must play inside the rules...
- but if you explain to me what is this "note" feature that you want, I can imagine another mod doing this without power. You want to let text on the map for yourself or players who will connect later ? I can imagine some kind of a panel or "postit" for this. EDIT : have a look at that : https://mods.factorio.com/mods/icedevml/Signposts
- "Ability to show item name based on for example belt or chest content." It is also outside of my mod's scope, which deals with circuits values. You want the text to automatically detect the items in the chest or on a belt and print them on the map ? Not easy if the chest or belt contains a lot of different objects. But it could also be another mod.
- concerning blueprints, They cannot copy the internals of my modded objects. Blueprints are builtin factorio tools, and they don't know about my modded objects... They just create them, using the new-creation process I gave them, but there is no "copy" process.

[phi1010]

Very useful mod, but ít (v1.0.7) did behave a bit unexpected when connecting both red an greeen wire, only showing the data from the red (or the newer?) wire; i'd expect it to add both values, as the other combinators do.

[binbinhfr]

Very useful mod, but ít (v1.0.7) did behave a bit unexpected when connecting both red an greeen wire, only showing the data from the red (or the newer?) wire; i'd expect it to add both values, as the other combinators do.

Thx for your return.
It now shows the sum of red and green values if available.
Please update.

[doxsroxs]

Hi

Currently using this mod in a multiplayer game where the map is around 70MB large.
After some testing we found that this mod is causing a lot of latency and lag.
When disabled we have no issues.

Its so bad my friend cannot even connect to the game without me pausing it, and he will get no more than 8FPS/UPS.
We are both on fast machines and gigabit connections through the same supplier.
When pinging between us we get no more than a few milliseconds of ping.

[binbinhfr]

Hi

Currently using this mod in a multiplayer game where the map is around 70MB large.
After some testing we found that this mod is causing a lot of latency and lag.
When disabled we have no issues.

Its so bad my friend cannot even connect to the game without me pausing it, and he will get no more than 8FPS/UPS.
We are both on fast machines and gigabit connections through the same supplier.
When pinging between us we get no more than a few milliseconds of ping.

Hi,

please explain how do you use it.
What kind of data from the circuit network do you print ?
approxim how many smartdisplays did you have on your map ?

EDIT : this mod uses tricks to display numbers on the screen : each letter is an entity that is refreshed 4 times per seconds. So if you use too many of these objects, it can be a problem.
You could try to edit control.lua and increase number of line 187 "global.ticks = 16" to 91 for example, and tell me if it's better.
I will think about another type of display, using flyingtext, that will be lighter in CPU but not so nice graphically. I will also add an option on the smartdisplay to relax refresh time (some people needs short refresh time, some don't, it depends on the value you are printing)

[doxsroxs]

Hi

Currently using this mod in a multiplayer game where the map is around 70MB large.
After some testing we found that this mod is causing a lot of latency and lag.
When disabled we have no issues.

Its so bad my friend cannot even connect to the game without me pausing it, and he will get no more than 8FPS/UPS.
We are both on fast machines and gigabit connections through the same supplier.
When pinging between us we get no more than a few milliseconds of ping.

Hi,

please explain how do you use it.
What kind of data from the circuit network do you print ?
approxim how many smartdisplays did you have on your map ?

EDIT : this mod uses tricks to display numbers on the screen : each letter is an entity that is refreshed 4 times per seconds. So if you use too many of these objects, it can be a problem.
You could try to edit control.lua and increase number of line 187 "global.ticks = 16" to 91 for example, and tell me if it's better.
I will think about another type of display, using flyingtext, that will be lighter in CPU but not so nice graphically. I will also add an option on the smartdisplay to relax refresh time (some people needs short refresh time, some don't, it depends on the value you are printing)

We are using it to display values on the map for amount of ore and other numbers we need to keep track of.
Id say we had about 100 signs active, where about 20 of them would be dynamic and changing based on input signals from chests etc.
The rest where just static text, for example marking good ore spots with a lot of ore in them.

One thing that is notable is that even with a few signs it is hard to type text in the textbox, often it would try to update the sign in real time and would miss characters.

If you are indeed spawning a separate entity with each letter then I can definetly see how this could get out of hand with the amount of updates required for each entity. Not to mention displaying them on the map, I have a feeling Factorios routines for that are not very optimized either.
Is there no way around that design? Maybe you can optimize it so the static text objects are not updated at all?
Though to be honest, that might be something Factorio iterates anyway and you might get performance hits just by having a lot of objects, even if they are inert.

[binbinhfr]

Well yes, 100 signs is more than what I tested
As I told you, Factorio is not ready to print text, that's why I use these tricks that are CPU consuming at the end if you print 100 values, meaning my mod refresh 1000 letter entities 4 times per second !
So, I'll try to improve it tonight and limit refresh, but for the moment, try to increase the "16" value I told you in the previous post, it will probably relax cpu in a first approach.

[doxsroxs]

Well yes, 100 signs is more than what I tested
As I told you, Factorio is not ready to print text, that's why I use these tricks that are CPU consuming at the end if you print 100 values, meaning my mod refresh 1000 letter entities 4 times per second !
So, I'll try to improve it tonight and limit refresh, but for the moment, try to increase the "16" value I told you in the previous post, it will probably relax cpu in a first approach.

Ill try that, but just want to point out that this is not a CPU issue, I have a pretty fast machine and even with a rather large map, none of my CPU cores are over 45%, even though I am hosting.
I assume you are somehow limited in the amount of updates that are allowed for a given time slot, since the lag never increased CPU usage or network traffic.
We both monitored this to ensure the limitation was not in our hardware or our network.

[binbinhfr]

Ill try that, but just want to point out that this is not a CPU issue, I have a pretty fast machine and even with a rather large map, none of my CPU cores are over 45%, even though I am hosting.
I assume you are somehow limited in the amount of updates that are allowed for a given time slot, since the lag never increased CPU usage or network traffic.
We both monitored this to ensure the limitation was not in our hardware or our network.

Oh yes, I did not mean that your CPU was not strong enough. I just mean that my mod is demanding a LOT of work to factorio to refresh all that stuff. LUA code of mods is probably not as efficient as compiled factorio code...
You can type F5 to see how much my mod is demanding comparing to other mods.

[binbinhfr]

> The rest where just static text, for example marking good ore spots with a lot of ore in them.

just a notice : for static texts and "stickers" and "reminders" on the map, I developped a lighter mod : https://mods.factorio.com/mods/binbinhfr/StickyNotes

-----------------

For SD : infact I checked and I already optimized the refresh of smartdisplays : letters entities are refreshed only when needed.

I modified the mod anyway, with a little more optimization, and so that you can modify variables inline :

To relax the refresh time, you can type
/c remote.call( "smartdisplay", "refresh", 6 )
or
/c remote.call( "smartdisplay", "refresh", 1 ) to revert to minimal settings

(now base refresh is set at 3)

You can also try disable the little radar on every SD (if you are often using mark "on map") by
/c remote.call( "smartdisplay", "radar", false )
100 radars on the map are maybe hard to handle for factorio.

you can also try disable all mapmarks by using
/c remote.call( "smartdisplay", "mapmark", false )
(in reality they are faked train-stop, and maybe too many of them are a problem for factorio)

By the way, do you have the same problem if you play the map alone on the server ? Or if you open it in Single Player mod ?

Note that now, you can use shift-RMB and shift-LMB to copy/paste settings between SD.

Please try new version and tell me if it is better asis, and with relaxed settings.

[doxsroxs]

Thanks for the fast reply! Ill have a look at the other lighter mod.
When it comes to testing we have unfortunately been plauged by other issues and did not want to add this test on top of that.

Ill get back as soon as I have something to report

[blitz_skull]

Hey BinBin, I'm really loving your mod, and I'd really like to use it as a testing mod to help me learn more about factorio modding since I have a real interest in it but the modding API is a little limited on examples.

So I was curious if we might help each other, you can help me understand a little more about how your mod works and I can help by improving and submitting design enhancements to you for you to review and implement if you like them. (If not, I can just keep them for my own personal copy)

First of all, I'd really like to design a different display for the text (just to test my skills with ye olde photoshop a bit) and I cannot find where and how you're manipulating the .png to stretch when the text is longer or shorter. Can you point me in that direction?

[blitz_skull]

I'm not really sure if this thread is even looked at anymore, but I made some cool enhancements to this mod if BinBin is interested in taking a look. I added a solar panel/accumulator setup that is invisible so that the display can run with "no electricity" and I also modified the gui-updating mechanics to make them a bit more responsive so when you type something it instantly shows up and adjusting alignment takes place instantly. I'd really like feedback if this thread isn't dead.

[AndrewIRL]

This mod is great but doesn't get saved into blueprints. When I blueprint my complex circuit setups I like the displays to come along too.

If this thread is dead (and won't be updated for 0.15) can someone suggest an alternate mod which can display numbers like this?

Edited based on comments in next post.

[blitz_skull]

Hey Andrew,

I recently took over this mod because the previous author was no longer playing factorio or updating a few of his mods. So with that being said, this mod is not dead! However, I am in the midst of simultaneously job-hunting and doing client work and as such I cannot guarantee a quick update, but I will do my best to fix this issue! If you have any other questions or suggestions feel free to share!

[AndrewIRL]

If you have any other questions or suggestions feel free to share!

Fantastic. Here's my list of suggestions:
1) Add blueprint support
2) Update to support 0.15 (when available)
3) Petition forum administrator to update thread title to "[MOD 0.15] Smart Display - circuit information display" so that people know it supports the latest version.
3) Create new thread for 0.15 with link to old thread.

Good to have the old thread around for archive and reference but most of the information is irrelevant and thus confusing to the new user of the mod.

[Sunnova]

I miss using this mod, will it be updated for .15?

[blitz_skull]

I miss using this mod, will it be updated for .15?

Yes! However, it may not be for a couple of weeks. I recently started a job as a software engineer and I had a pre-existing client project that I really need to finish. So it may be a bit, however, I will definitely try to get it updated as soon as possible!

[Sunnova]

I miss using this mod, will it be updated for .15?

Yes! However, it may not be for a couple of weeks. I recently started a job as a software engineer and I had a pre-existing client project that I really need to finish. So it may be a bit, however, I will definitely try to get it updated as soon as possible!

Super, thank you! And grats on the new job!

If it helps any, this is the error.

194.032 Error MainLoop.cpp:850: Exception at tick 54477236: Error while running event SmartDisplay::on_tick (ID 0)
The type decorative has been obsoleted and cannot be created.
stack traceback:
__SmartDisplay__/control.lua:201: in function 'update_display'
__SmartDisplay__/control.lua:542: in function <__SmartDisplay__/control.lua:533>

[Sunnova]

Got this to work in .15

In the local files, change all " = " to "=", remove spaces before and after =


In the info.json file, change

"factorio_version":"0.14"

to

"factorio_version":"0.15"


in the prototypes folder, file numbers.lua, change all

type = "decorative",

to

type = "simple-entity",

so far in my testing seems to work just fine.