[MOD] Deadlock's Stacking Beltboxes & Compact Loaders

[cvkurt]

I still think it should be 4 really but too late now.

Would be sensible given that splitters (by default) divide belts in halve... and many players like to double or quadruple production when they expand. But having the stacking size evenly divide the ore stack size is also quite sensible.

On the consumption side, I've mostly gone to one belt feeding all my production columns... and then when it running dry, merge in another belt... repeat and rinse as necessary. Since my blue prints are generally designed to met an output requirement, not an input requirement, I typically have to adjust the feed stacking or not.

On the production side, I just now need to go from 1 directly to 5 columns of production and then double from there.

Btw, one unexpected (to me) bonus of stacking before rail transport is faster loading/unloading. Nice.

Having fun redesigning my blueprints for stacking... as well as a few other extensions (namely miniloaders). And works fine with FactorioExtended... actually allowed me to reduce my usage of faster than express belts significantly while maintaining the same level of production (3.2K/sec science packs / 3RPM).

Again, thanks for the mod!

[Deadlock989]

Btw, one unexpected (to me) bonus of stacking before rail transport is faster loading/unloading. Nice.

Must admit I hadn't even twigged that myself. Assumed there was little point in stacking ores before rail.

Still working on new graphics, fairly pleased with it so far, shadows are a pain in the neck, and I realised that left-facing loaders and underneathies make no sense

[Deadlock989]

Version 1.4.0 (beltbox) & 1.2.0 (loaders) - graphics updated with original 3D models, not pixel art hacked together from bits of vanilla sprites.

[steinio]

Version 1.4.0 (beltbox) & 1.2.0 (loaders) - graphics updated with original 3D models, not pixel art hacked together from bits of vanilla sprites.

Looks great.

[Deadlock989]

Looks great.

Cheers.

Now with Spaceballs easter egg

[cvkurt]

Btw, one unexpected (to me) bonus of stacking before rail transport is faster loading/unloading. Nice.

Must admit I hadn't even twigged that myself. Assumed there was little point in stacking ores before rail.

JFYI, I noticed it with circuits. As I stack early (on output of production column), everything stackable is rail transported stacked.

I would think the point of stacking ore early (immediately after mining) would be to reduce UPS via entity count reduction.

[Deadlock989]

Btw, one unexpected (to me) bonus of stacking before rail transport is faster loading/unloading. Nice.

Must admit I hadn't even twigged that myself. Assumed there was little point in stacking ores before rail.

JFYI, I noticed it with circuits. As I stack early (on output of production column), everything stackable is rail transported stacked.

I would think the point of stacking ore early (immediately after mining) would be to reduce UPS via entity count reduction.

I suppose, though the UPS saving is pretty minimal, given that items inside inventories don't have any real impact on runtime and you're generally trying to minimise the distance between miners and your outpost's loading station anyway. It was huge multi-lane buses that I was targeting. I suppose the more outposts you have, the bigger the saving would be, so it might have a noticeable impact on genuine megabases. I hadn't even thought that this would boost train unloading, though, but yeah, essentially inserters are getting a 5x boost as well. Again, not a massive saving if you're already using 12 stack inserters per wagon, but again, it would add up with scale.

Here's hoping 0.17 or 0.18 makes this mod obsolete.

[y.petremann]

Version 1.4.0 (beltbox) & 1.2.0 (loaders) - graphics updated with original 3D models, not pixel art hacked together from bits of vanilla sprites.

Comparison of the change :

Screenshot_4.png (1.14 MiB) Viewed 8292 times

Screenshot_2.png (991.46 KiB) Viewed 8292 times

Actually your models are gorgeous, but :

• you should add some sort of grain or rust to have the kind of detail factorio have.
• Also I think that the size of loaders should be exactly equivalent to their transport belt to ground siblings.
• Coloring of thoses machines should be precisely ajusted to fit their transport belt to ground siblings.
• I don't think the gears really fit the design for the beltboxes, I thinks that something pneumatic like those littles things on assembler 3

  

  Screenshot_3.png (6.59 KiB) Viewed 8292 times

• Also I don't really like the little gear on loaders, and I would have prefered a design for these that feel connected to the machine like pumps does for wagons

Sorry, but for me, I keep the old version ...

[Deadlock989]

[*]you should add some sort of grain or rust to have the kind of detail factorio have.

They do have a little, but remember I only started learning Blender this week.

[*]Also I think that the size of loaders should be exactly equivalent to their transport belt to ground siblings.

Then they wouldn't match the beltboxes.

[*]Coloring of thoses machines should be precisely ajusted to fit their transport belt to ground siblings.

I actually wasted a few hours going back and forth. For most of the time, I had the chevron texture "faded" like cracked paint, which had the result of making it look more weathered, but it also fades the colour. Every little change had a knock on effect somewhere else. Eventually I grew tired of scrutinising individual pixel colour levels and decided that I preferred it sharp and clean, so I got rid of the weathering but left the colour levels where they are. I suppose I can take it down a notch for the next one, but it'll never match precisely.

[*]I don't think the gears really fit the design for the beltboxes, I thinks that something pneumatic like those littles things on assembler 3

Screenshot_3.png

Beyond my skill level.

[*]Also I don't really like the little gear on loaders, and I would have prefered a design for these that feel connected to the machine like pumps does for wagons[/list]

Not possible due to engine limitations, I did ask for changes that would help us do that but it was declined. viewtopic.php?f=28&t=57463

Sorry, but for me, I keep the old version ...

NP, your choice.

[Deadlock989]

That's as close as I can get it (translation: that is good enough).

[y.petremann]

[*]you should add some sort of grain or rust to have the kind of detail factorio have.

They do have a little, but remember I only started learning Blender this week.

Sorry didn't know

[*]Also I think that the size of loaders should be exactly equivalent to their transport belt to ground siblings.

Then they wouldn't match the beltboxes.

What about resizing the beltboxes then ?

[*]I don't think the gears really fit the design for the beltboxes, I thinks that something pneumatic like those littles things on assembler 3

The attachment Screenshot_3.png is no longer available

Beyond my skill level.

Like before, didn't know

[*]Also I don't really like the little gear on loaders, and I would have prefered a design for these that feel connected to the machine like pumps does for wagons[/list]

Not possible due to engine limitations, I did ask for changes that would help us do that but it was declined. viewtopic.php?f=28&t=57463

since the loader texture goes under machines, what about making the connection at floor level going under the machine like on this image :
(sorry for my very rudimentary modeling capacity, those are a loader and an assembler ... )

Screenshot_5.png (164.03 KiB) Viewed 8278 times

Also this type of connections is something I think is interesting with loaders, not only yours, but also classic loaders or those from Arch666Angel

[Deadlock989]

What about resizing the beltboxes then ?

They already fill a tile. If they go outside the 1x1 tile boundary then the overlapping issue with loaders will happen. Underneathies are taller than a tile but only the devs have control over what overlaps with what.

since the loader texture goes under machines, what about making the connection at floor level going under the machine like on this image :

I did wonder about that but then it would look essentially the same as an underneathie.

I think essentially I've put as many hours into this as I ever will.

[Deadlock989]

Added an option in Compact Loaders 1.2.3 to restyle underground belts with the Deadlock Technologies aesthetic. By default, this is turned off - you have to go into Mod Settings and enable it.

As a side effect, if you are using Bob's Logistics in high resolution mode, the tier 4 and 5 underneathies will be upgraded to high res (but not the belts). FactorioExtended is also supported but untested in low-res mode because it's broken in that mode.

Deadlock Technologies: solving problems the bloody-minded way since 2418.

[Chaos234]

Hey,

have a small question:

If I want to have items/fluids stacked but they are not already stackable would it be easier to extract the affected mod and add the requ. lines or over an helper mod like stated in you PDF?
If it would be better over a helper mod (and asking then the modauther for official implementation), how has it to look? I know that it needs the info.json and data-final-fixes.lua but anything
else? Would be nice to see a dummy for this

[Deadlock989]

Hey,

have a small question:

If I want to have items/fluids stacked but they are not already stackable would it be easier to extract the affected mod and add the requ. lines or over an helper mod like stated in you PDF?
If it would be better over a helper mod (and asking then the modauther for official implementation), how has it to look? I know that it needs the info.json and data-final-fixes.lua but anything
else? Would be nice to see a dummy for this

Have a look at the attached, it is an example helper mod that I made for AAI Industry. I can't remember if I finished it properly or not but fairly sure it works.

What you need depends on how thorough you want to be. You can probably get away with just the code in data-final-fixes.lua but you might also want to make icons for the stacks, or you might have to if the source mod uses layered icons (i.e. it specifies "icons" and not "icon"). In the case of the AAI example, the two kinds of motor use layered icons so those can't be "auto-stacked". You can see that I didn't do it with the stone tablets because those use a flat icon. But it is much better for performance if you make icons for everything.

I'd recommend the "helper" mod route because then when your other mods update, you won't lose the changes. If you then want to persuade the other mod author to incorporate it, they can just merge in your data-final-fixes.lua.

It's really this simple:

Code: Select all

if deadlock_stacking then
	deadlock_stacking.create("stone-tablet", nil, "deadlock-stacking-1")
	deadlock_stacking.create("motor", "__AAI2DSB__/graphics/stacked-motor.png", "deadlock-stacking-2")
	deadlock_stacking.create("electric-motor", "__AAI2DSB__/graphics/stacked-electric-motor.png", "deadlock-stacking-2")
end

[Chaos234]

Thanks for the fast replay

Well, this is then easy. Would it be possible only to require lua files in the data-final-fixes.lua and then define everything per mod? Because I think that there will be a few mods with which I play
and putting in all of them in one file could then be realy long and if it should be later included in any official version it maybe better, if it's a single file per mod but not a single helper mod per mos.
Means doing a DSB/DCM Collection as per mod (in my case).

data-final-fixes.lua:

Code: Select all

require("mods/MODNAME.lua")

MODNAME.lua:

Code: Select all

if deadlock_stacking then
	deadlock_stacking.create()
end

if deadlock_crating then
	deadlock_crating.create()
end

Should work, shouldn't it?

[y.petremann]

Added an option in Compact Loaders 1.2.3 to restyle underground belts with the Deadlock Technologies aesthetic. By default, this is turned off - you have to go into Mod Settings and enable it.

As a side effect, if you are using Bob's Logistics in high resolution mode, the tier 4 and 5 underneathies will be upgraded to high res (but not the belts). FactorioExtended is also supported but untested in low-res mode because it's broken in that mode.

Deadlock Technologies: solving problems the bloody-minded way since 2418.

Wow that kind of solve the problem ...

[Deadlock989]

Well, this is then easy. Would it be possible only to require lua files in the data-final-fixes.lua and then define everything per mod?

Yeah, seems sensible.

Edited to add: you can do a conditional stacking only if the mod is installed like this:

Code: Select all

if deadlockstacking and mods["bob-logistics"] then ...

[Chaos234]

Well, this is then easy. Would it be possible only to require lua files in the data-final-fixes.lua and then define everything per mod?

Yeah, seems sensible.

Edited to add: you can do a conditional stacking only if the mod is installed like this:

Code: Select all

if deadlockstacking and mods["bob-logistics"] then ...

Hmmm, this will work to but I think then in one file ^^ - I am doing it like this for now:

Code: Select all

if mods["angelsrefining"] then
	require("mods.angelsrefining")
	if mods["angelsbioprocessing"] then
		require("mods.angelsbioprocessing")
	end
end

if mods["fpp"] then
	require("mods.fpp")
end

And currently I must not use/make any new graphicsbeacuse your mod is doing it well without any problems (for now).

Here are some results:







I like how easy it could be done

Only thing what is strange, is the following:



can you solve this? It has no problem to show which items are stacked/unstacked/crated but uncrating them results in the missing (un)localized name (or what ever is used in factorio ^^).
Ok, found it. You must do in your Crate Mod the following change:

Code: Select all

deadlock-packed-item=Crate: __2__ x __1__ to deadlock-crate-item=Crate: __2__ x __1__

Not sure why but this is the solution to it.

[Deadlock989]

And currently I must not use/make any new graphicsbeacuse your mod is doing it well without any problems (for now).

Bear in mind that with the generated icons, every sprite on the belt is effectively 4 sprites, blowing away the FPS benefit of belt compression. Although you still have less belts which will be good for UPS, you have nearly as many sprites being drawn. If it's going to be on a lot of belts, I thoroughly recommend making an icon. It's not hard, I am using an ancient version of Photoshop (from 2002!) and set up a macro to do most of them, only hand-drawing a couple. I know those mods have like a billion items so it's a pain - that's why I'm not touching them with a barge pole.

missing (un)localized name

Thanks, that's a derp from the last set of changes I made to DCM, must have forgotten to update the locale file.

It's interesting to me that the crating mod is massively less popular than the beltbox, because it's so much easier and arguably a bit OP.