Daniel Perelman
The problem# Last week, I talked about the modifications I and others wanted to make to the Supply Challenge scenario that comes with Factorio. This week I'll talk about actually making those modifications. The solution# If you just want to play the modified version, you can install my mod Supply...
Daniel Perelman
The problem# Factorio comes with a scenario called Supply Challenge which is a shorter, more directed experience than the standard "Freeplay" game mode. It replaces the pressure from enemies attacking your base with a series of timed requests where you have to provided a pre-defined set of items...
Daniel Perelman
The problem# Using my Factorio reflection library discussed previously involves interacting with Lua values that are a combination of the actual value and some metadata, so you have to know about those values to use them. Worse, the interactions I defined are quite verbose. The main thing you're...
Daniel Perelman
The problem# Last week, I got all of the Factorio saves I had been keeping around into a single directory in order by the time they were created. But what should we do with that data? We could load arbitrary saves to see what our base looked like in the past, but loading the saves individually...
Daniel Perelman
The problem# Last week, I shared a script which continuously backed up game saves whenever the game saved. The result is a series of directories that contain snapshots of the game saves from every autosave. But to view this data, we really want a list of unique files in order marked with the time...
Daniel Perelman
The problem# I was running a Factorio multiplayer server and was being paranoid about making sure I didn't lose any save data. But I also didn't want to put the saves directory on my ZFS file system as it's on a hard drive, not an SSD, and saves taking too long can cause lag for the players...
Daniel Perelman
The problem# When developing the "garbage collector" for the Pacifist mod, I noted that I couldn't actually know which strings should be treated as references. As a workaround, I just assumed all strings were references, which worked well enough, but I wondered if there was a way to get more...
Daniel Perelman
The problem# The Factorio documentation includes a machine-readable version of the prototype API documentation. I wanted to be able to access that information from within a mod, which required somehow giving Lua access to a JSON object. The solution# Install my branch of json2lua and run it on...
Daniel Perelman
The problem# Continuing from the past two weeks, in my work on the Pacifist Factorio mod, I noticed there were rich text icons for military-related entities that I thought the mod had removed from the game. By "rich text icons", I'm referring to the dialog that some text boxes in the game (e.g....
Daniel Perelman
The problem# Continuing from last week, in my work on the Pacifist Factorio mod, I wanted to remove the character's gun slots. They are always visible in the bottom-left of the screen with gun and ammo icons, making it clear there's an expectation of weapons. The solution# This PR, which is...
Daniel Perelman
The problem# I wanted to introduce Factorio to some younger cousins but didn't think the military aspects of the game would be appropriate for them, both because their parents would rather they not be playing violent video games and it's simply an additional distraction and added complexity in a...
Daniel Perelman
Introduction# Factorio is a sandbox automation and logistics game notable for, among other things, very good support for mods. The developers often go out of their way to support features and fix bugs that only affect mods. I've only just started to dip my toes in the world of Factorio modding, so...