Not quite ready for testing

It’s time for another devlog, and the main thing to talk about is Space Exploration. I was hoping that this post would be “it’s ready for testing”, but no. We ran into some blocking issues. The situation is changing quite rapidly and the story might be very different next week… but I’ll get to that.

When Factorio 2.0 was released there was a lot of effort into updating my other mods. Space exploration is much bigger, much more complicated, and much more reliant on specific things in Factorios API. It was a good choice to delay it because we needed some things in the API to be fixed anyway, plus SE relies on a lot of my other mods and having those updated and stable has been really useful. 

Now the focus is fully on getting Space Exploration updated, and I’m putting in a lot more hours myself, so progress has really accelerated. 

Currently the game loads just fine and most (but not all) of the mechanics are working, but the hard parts are left. There are also a lot of known small issues that we will work through, and undoubtedly a lot more problems will be found in closed testing. 

So far we’ve changed 24000 lines of code, of which we’ve deleted about 8500, over 310 files. That’s just from the main Space Exploration mod, not including the graphics mods, postprocess mod, menu simulations, etc. It’s a LOT of work. 

Stringweasel, Xorimuth, Trex, God of HyperDeath, BurninSun did the bulk of the work to get the data stage to load (so the game can run at all with the mod installed).

Wiwiweb also did some work on the data stage but has mainly been working through getting the control (runtime) phase to work with existing game saves. The most painful part for him was changing all the code to use the game’s new rendering system for custom render objects (the things we use for the starmap, text on buildings, special effects, etc). He’s also been helping manage and merge branches. 

Trex did updates for noise expressions and the new collision masks system.

Puke has been helping with updating pipe connections for the new format, graphics directions, circuit connection, and updating space rails for the new collision system. 

God of HyperDeath is also making some new rail graphics for the new curve radius in Factorio 2.0. The original graphics never had 3d models, it was all 2d trickery, so it will be nice to have some 3d graphics for those. 

I’ve been working on some data and control phase things, updating the starmaps, updating noise expressions, tile layering and tile transitions, problems relating to map generation, biter spawning, resource spawning, rocket logistic problems, and general support.

We’ve also been able to remove some hacks that aren’t necessary anymore. 

For example, previously when a meteor fell and destroyed something it would also destroy any colliding ghosts as soon as the stationary meteor rock entity was placed. To avoid the ghosts being destroyed, we had to create them on the map edge (very non-trivial) and then teleport them back to where the meteor landed. In 2.0 that’s not necessary. 

We also had to have a very complicated system to correct spaceship circuitry when ships changed surfaces. Previously the game engine wouldn't keep the circuit state so for 1 tick we had to make a lot of invisible constant combinators to persist the previous state. The game engine handles that correctly now, so that’s another hack that can be removed.

There’s still a long list of things to do but some are more important or severe than others. The casting machine being invisible for example, that’s probably not too hard to fix. An extra gap in the cargo rocket silo GUI, it’s not really going to affect gameplay. We can go into closed testing without those things (actually I think the casting machine is fixed already).

There are some much more important problems though. For example, ruins generation is completely broken, and that includes the starting satellite. It’s something that ends up in the game state in a permanent way (and/or can crash the game) so I really want that fixed. 

The biggest problem is to do with rocket logistics and rocket launch products. That’s the blocking issue right now. As you know, rockets are a core part of Space Exploration, and the changes to how rocket silos function in the game engine at a basic level were quite drastic. I was hoping that it would be possible to restore more of the old functionality, but I keep running into problems. The fact is that the game’s API for mods to interact with these things hasn’t fully caught up to the changes (yet), but I'm optimistic that some of those game engine limitations will be resolved soon. I have figured out some convoluted workarounds… but it’s not worth doing that if the API is going to have some of the needed additions next week.