A2B: conveyor belts & co. [v0.8.0]
Alpha 8 update & long range teleportation
Is your farm submerged by rotting produces ? Is your base cluttered by enemies' corpses ? Are your colonists repeatedly slacking off ?
If you answered ''Yes !'' to any of these questions, then A2B: conveyor belts & co. is the solution you need ! Our engineers have re-invented the wheel to create *the* 31st century solution to all your goods transport issues. No more endless back-and-forth trips carrying potatoes - let the A2B conveyor belts do it for you !
FeaturesOrder today, and get the full A2B system at no extra charge, including:
- a reliable conveyor belt system that locks items to avoid accidents, but releases them in case of power cuts. No need to starve to death during eclipses !
- a universal curve. No more headaches choosing between left or right turns thanks to our exclusive software design !
- a universal 'Loader', because A2B conveyor belts are sturdy enough to carry anything from berries to rock chunks and rotten corpses !
- a smart 'Unloader' which neatly piles up your material and releases it for your lazy colonists to access - or directly refill your food hoppers with potatoes !
- a 'Splitter' unit, to make two belt lines out of one ...
- a 'Selector' unit. Why sort items by hand if it can be automated ? Thanks to the latest advances in molecular RFID technology, our 'Selector' unit gives YOU the power to sort things out. Equipped with dual inlets and outlets, the 'Selector' unit makes the craziest designs possible !
- a long-range 'Teleporter' and 'Receiver' unit, so that your colonists can cross belt lines, or if you want your belt line to jump a wall !
Wait no more, and enjoy the modularity of the
A2B: conveyor belts & co. system today. Isn't it time to turn this rural farm into a money-making factory ?
PartnershipsConveyor belts are fun and useful as a stand-alone tool, but their true potential is really revealed when they are connected to other 'machines'. And we at A2B are very well aware of that ! Hence, we are always on the lookout for new partnerships to ensure that our belt system can have the widest and most polyvalent applications !
Here are our current partners:
1) 'Vanilla' food hoppers: Yep, that's right, our A2B Unloaders can automatically refill your food hoppers - no more endless trip to the fields for your cooks !
2)
Mining & Co. - Deepdriller Mark II by Rikiki: connect the A2B Loaders to this ultimate mining machine, and make sorting metal and chunks a breeze ! Mining & Co. was sadly discontinued at A8 ... http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=5930.0
3) Electric Generator by bolti1703: connect the A2B unloaders to the generator's fuel tanks, and spare your colonists the trip from the distillery ! http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=5709.0
4) TechTreeMinami by minami26: our A2B belt system is now integrated inside TTM. If you fancy big mod-packs, that's the way to go ! https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=3464.0
5) Mechanical Defense 2 by mipen: place an A2B loader next to the ore extractor to send the precious gems/material on their merry way ! https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=7380.0
Do you own a 'machine' that you wish would connect to our belt system ? Get in touch so we can make this happen. We are always looking for new friends !
(Note: we at A2B are strong believers in the famous interstellar motto "The greatest fun comes from the smallest mod", hence our unique partnership system. YOU choose what you need (nothing else, nothing more) and WE make sure it works fine together.) Notes - this mod was originally created using Haplo's DarkMatter Generator example as a canvas, which was subsequently heavily
frankensteined into the A2B mod. It has since been subject to a complete structural overhaul.
- I'm happy for anyone to use this as they wish,
steal the source code borrow programming ideas, etc ... if you do so, references to this post and credits are welcome but I won't be mad if you don't ;)
- feel free to report any bugs, and I'll do my best to fix them. Or even better, send me your fix directly ;)
- have suggestions ? Send them my way ! But note that this is not going to be a massive mod. It will deal with transport systems only ! But if you have ideas of bell and whistles that could make the A2B mod (even more!) fun, share away ...
- I'm working hard on the look of things, but I'm always happy to get suggestions/contributions about this aspect as well !
Versions0.6.0: Alpha 6 release.
0.6.1: fixed stupid XML bug - your belts will now connect to the power grid ...
0.6.2: Major code overhaul by asarium, no more error messages with rock and slag chunks (but they still don't behave), minor texture updates.
0.6.3: Major update. Added smooth motion for the items on the belt (thank asarium). Added 3 new belt items (splitter, Teleporter and receiver). Code moved to Github, including an image-based tutorial. Bug fixes (including rock chunks!).
0.6.4: Minor update. Rock and slag chunks are now haulable 'by default' when they come out of the belt system via an Unloader. Textures have been slightly modified for uniformity and XML properties of different belt elements re-balanced.
0.7.0: Alpha 7 release.
0.8.0: Alpha 8 release. Also, the teleporters can now beam objects to large distances at the cost of an increased power consumption (thank FredrikLH) !
Known bugsThe list of existing bugs/wished features can be found on Github: https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/issues Any and all contributions & suggestions towards solving and/or implementing any of the features listed there will be warmly welcomed by our engineers, and properly rewarded !
(Note: the reward for helping improve and expand the A2B mod will be strictly limited to the glory and fame possibly but not certainly resulting from being added to the exclusive list of contributors to the mod. Don't expect silver ...) Contributorsnoone, asarium, FredrikLH
DownloadAll the code is on Github:
https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/releases/latest
The image-based tutorial as well:
https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/wiki
Screenshot (https://camo.githubusercontent.com/b70768764521b4cfe4ebbfe79c19d5ac68b566bf/687474703a2f2f692e696d6775722e636f6d2f5933726d4a534f2e706e67)
finally, a new conveyor belt mod while better power is being updated to alpha 6.
Hey nice mod! :D
emm.. I download this mod and used it. But conveyor belt, curve, unloader, selector and loader are hard to work when I try to put them down. I have enough power to turn on it, however, It display "Not connected to power" and some things can't work. What happened?
Quote from: sstareven on August 19, 2014, 03:14:07 AM
I have enough power to turn on it, however, It display "Not connected to power" and some things can't work. What happened?
Well, that's embarrassing ... looks like I stuffed up some power-related thingy in my Alpha 6 update. I'll have a look and report back ...
Problem fixed. We encourage all our valued customers to upgrade to the latest version [v0.6.1] of the mod. Be reassured that our chief engineer was fired on the spot.
another problem... I haul the rock chunk to loader. Then, my error log was fulled.
It look like "Tried to SetForbidden on non-thingWithComponents Thing ChunkRock13311".
:D Can fix it? It make my game so lag.
Oh, that's a nice one. Didn't realize rock chunks are a tad different from other things. Our engineers are working hard on this. I'd suggest steering clear of rock chunks for the time being ...
I never thought I'd say something like this:
Some code is hard to read because it has no comments. Yours is hard to read because it's like 75% comments. Hahaha. Maybe I should have loaded it in VS instead of notepad++. Seriously thought, I've been looking forward to this since I saw it in unfinished, dem curves. Well done on your first release.
Edit: typo
Quote from: Neurotoxin on August 19, 2014, 06:34:41 AM
I never thought I'd say something like this:
Some code is hard to read because it has no comments. Yours is hard to read because it's like 75% comments.
Yeah, I'm using MonoDevelop, and all the comments are in a nice, lush and relaxing green. I wouldn't dare opening it in notepad ;)
To be honest, I too am surprised about the amount of comments in there. I'm not that dedicated usually. But given that I work in Python daily, I'm having a tough time remembering my old C# tips and tricks - hence the commenting spree ... plus, I figured it might help mod-newbies like me. Comments really helped me a lot initially ...
Quote from: Neurotoxin on August 19, 2014, 06:34:41 AM
Seriously thought, I've been looking forward to this since I saw it in unfinished, dem curves. Well done on your first release.
Well, it's gone less smoothly than anticipated, but I'm certainly glad for all the bug reports ... hopefully I'll mend it all for good soon.
Quote from: noone on August 19, 2014, 06:51:44 AM
Yeah, I'm using MonoDevelop, and all the comments are in a nice, lush and relaxing green. I wouldn't dare opening it in notepad ;)
Well, not just notepad but Notepad++, has syntax highlighting and stuff. I usually use it when I'm just browsing code because VS takes a while to start.
example
(http://i.imgur.com/rvw1SSr.png)
and with XML
(http://i.imgur.com/YFuBrAQ.png)
Quote from: noone on August 19, 2014, 06:51:44 AM
But given that I work in Python daily
What do you do with python? I kinda started learning programming with Lua (ComputerCraft) but didn't really start grasping things till I started java, from there I've moved to C#
This is an amazing mod and I really like it.
I looked at the code and noticed some issues so I decided to improve the code a bit. I moved each class into its own file and also extracted most of the redundant code into one common function that handles movement of the items.
I have attached a new package which contains the updated source code and a minor adjustment to the folder naming so translation works.
[attachment deleted by admin: too old]
The future of RimWorld = Factorio?
There's more than one issue with moving chunks around the map, the map drawer doesn't handle them in the same way at all, which is a problem I ran into when making the belts in BP+. I'd be happy to lend a hand if you need when I finally get back to home ground :)
Quote from: Architect on August 19, 2014, 07:31:09 PM
I'd be happy to lend a hand if you need when I finally get back to home ground :)
That'd be very nice! The errors have been fixed, but as you pointed out, the rock and slag chunks still don't move properly because of their inherent structures. Any suggestions regarding where to look would certainly be very welcome !
Quote from: DorgoDorato on August 19, 2014, 05:07:14 PM
The future of RimWorld = Factorio?
We at A2B are committed to share the latest technologies with everyone, including rimworld colonies! At this day and age, why should some be forced to carry potatoes day-in day-out, while others in the Galactic center enjoy fine dining on golden plates ? We at A2B believe in the distribution of knowledge and the freedom of choice for every World!
On a more serious note, there comes a point in my colonies where I can't sustain further growth because of a lack of colonists. I find conveyor belts to be a good (i.e. great) solution to free a lot of their time to do more important things like fixing turrets, mending walls, having fun, etc ... rather than carry stuff back and forth. Which doesn't mean that the game doesn't crush me like a spec of dust anymore: it simply delays this inevitable fate somewhat longer ... ;)
But it raises an important philosophical choice: is getting bigger at all cost (including unhappiness) worth it, or aren't we all better off living simple and less stressful lives where growth isn't the end goal ?
We at A2B have chosen our camp: growth growth growth !
I'm intrigued by this system.
Can someone make a video of the mod working? Sorry for the odd request it's just I'm sitting at the office right now and really interested in seeing this bad boy work! :D
Mod has been updated to v0.6.2. If you load the belts with rock and slag chunks, they won't throw error messages at you anymore. But the rocks still don't move as they are supposed to, so it's half-a-fix, really. The code also went through a major structural overhaul thanks to asarium. It's really quite pretty now, and looks nothing like it used to !
Next up, getting these rocks to move properly ...
Would colonists being able to walk over the conveyor belts (or cross them like with sandbags) interfere with the mods function? Because that would be useful to me. The first thing.
No. But they do transmit power :D
Quote from: IWannaChaos on August 25, 2014, 01:18:58 PM
Would colonists being able to walk over the conveyor belts (or cross them like with sandbags) interfere with the mods function?
Our scientists are working on a possible revolutionary teleportation system which might allow you to setup passage points every now and then. That would require a deep understanding of Quantum Mechanics, and will certainly be costly research-wise to assemble, though. No need to get excited just yet about that, we are some way off this feature, still.
In the meantime, Health & Safety regulations forbid us to allow our customers to wander across a conveyor belt, and this will never be implemented as such in the A2B products. Although we do not officially encourage it, *if* you were to by-pass some of our XML security measures protecting your colonists and send them crossing a working belt, we would certainly be curious to hear about the outcome - most likely a flashy red message on the screen ;)
I love your mod, I love it so much. Also another way is to find a way to code a conveyor, but make it speed you along, like sometimes at launch points for spaceships,, they have it lead to the entrance of the shuttle. Of course they are really cheap, but they would be earlier game, and wouldn't require too much research.
Someone really really should show people how conveyors work (and how to manage stockpiles with them). Been using BP+'s ones and still haven't figured out how in the world to make them useful, though I see the potential there, I can't for the life of me figure out how to make them work as intended.
Quote from: Sakata on August 26, 2014, 09:53:12 AM
Someone really really should show people how conveyors work (and how to manage stockpiles with them). Been using BP+'s ones and still haven't figured out how in the world to make them useful, though I see the potential there, I can't for the life of me figure out how to make them work as intended.
Agreed. Still requesting video tutorial or picture tutorial.
Thank you for contacting our customer service help line. We always value your feedback. ;)
The A2B mod is no different from any other mod out there, in that it is absolutely optional. It may very well be that a player's strategy/gaming style/base design removes the need for conveyor belts altogether. Nevertheless, we at A2B rely on it heavily, and thought others might too.
There is a very simple way to determine whether you *need* conveyor belts in your colony (whether in A2B, BP+, IndustrialRim, etc...). A belt really is nothing more than a system transporting material from point A to point B (the different pieces allow for more complex designs beyond a straight line, but do not alter the basic concept). Let us assume that the material you want to move from A to B is distributed uniformly within a radius R
mat around point A, and define D
AB the distance from A to B. Three scenarios are possible:
1) R
mat > D
AB : if you have your material all over the place, then of course you do not need a conveyor belt. Simply having your colonists carry each item to point B will be much more efficient.
2) R
mat ~ D
AB : in this intermediate case, conveyor belts may or may not be useful. The determining factor will be the amount of material to be transported, and the exact distribution around A (if it is not uniform).
3) R
mat << D
AB : this is when conveyor belts are most useful. You have a set of items very close from point A, and B is located much further away. When your colonists carry the material, they spend 50% of their time carrying nothing, and if D
AB is large, this will be a long time, where they could do something useful instead ! Having a conveyor belts running from A to B in this situation will free that 50% of time for your colonists. They first start at A, and make rapid trips around this location to load the belt, and then go to B only once to deal with the items once they get there via the belt.
Long story short, estimate for your different items what R
mat and D
AB are, and that'll tell you if the A2B system can help.
Quote from: Ramsis on August 26, 2014, 11:05:17 AM
Still requesting video tutorial or picture tutorial.
We at A2B are a motived group of engineers and scientists dedicated to giving our customers the best conveyor belt experience possible. Sadly, we do not (yet) have a dedicated marketing department, but would certainly hope to build one as our system expands ;) In the meantime, here are 3 examples that may help.
A) your fields are producing a lot of food, to the point that your colonists do not have enough time to transport it to the nutrient paste dispenser's hoppers or storage room. This is even worse if your farms are away from the hoppers. In this case, building a small belt from your farms to the storage rooms can help a lot.
B) you have dead bodies all over the place, and are fed up of carrying them to thr burner. Once again, you can use a belt to help in this case.
C) If you use some mods with can automatically generate material (e.g. metals), then you can plug a belt right next to them, and carry the newly produced items directly to your storage room, instead of having colonists doing it ! Hands-off production !
D) Weapons all over ? Why not construct a launch pad outside your base, and ship them all there ! Not only does it free some space, but if it is outside your base, people dropping from the sky might even be lured there instead of your kitchen !
And the list goes on. As I said before, your base design may be so that you won't find the need for the belt. Or maybe you will find a lot of use for them. Up to you !
There's a couple of features I want to add soon: a) ability to connect to 'normal' hoppers, b) ability to 'create' a big pile of items, c) possibility to 'cross' belts & d) possibility to 'split' belt (i.e. send potatoes to the left AND to the right). a), b) & d) should be quick. c) will take more time.
Altogether, this should help make the A2B system even more polyvalent. If you have any more ideas or specific needs, let me know.
The problem with the rock and slag chucks error messages is that the conveyors try to disallow pickup which you cant do for rock/slag chunks.
Edit: Also I forgot to say that I waited too damn long for a mod like this. And its FINNALY here! :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
hmm love the mod but, i have one problem. The colonists always pick the material from the unloader and transport it back to the loader over and over again.
So what am i doing wrong? or would it possible to make the unloader a Stockpile so i can set it to the same priority as the loader, so they would just leave it there?
Quote from: Revealer on August 30, 2014, 04:50:30 AM
The colonists always pick the material from the unloader and transport it back to the loader over and over again.
So what am i doing wrong? or would it possible to make the unloader a Stockpile so i can set it to the same priority as the loader, so they would just leave it there?
We will soon have an update to the mod where the Unloader will drop the items on the floor. You can then design a stockpile at that point (manually), set its priority to that of the loader, and your colonists won't touch the material (unless another stockpile has a higher ranking, of course). And because the spot is occupied, the Unloader will not keep spitting items away, and the belt will fill up slowly. Alternatively, you will also be able to 'turn off' the Unloader, so that all the items get stored on the belt, and you do not need to design a specific stockpile to receive them.
Right now, you can do the same thing, but it is only a temporary fix ... : create a stockpile near the Unloader, set its priority to that of the Loader, and your colonists will fill that one first (they go to the nearest stockpile to fill, apparently). So, they won't go back and forth anymore. Of course, that's only a temporary solution - once the stockpile is full, then they will revert to the Loader.
I'm hopping to submit the next update in the not-so-distant future ... we have some cool improvements in the way things move and new belt item ... and hopefully the 'usability' of the system will better as well.
ah Ok thx, and till then i found an other solution i changed the unloader to passthrueable so i can create a stockpile on the same position as the unloader :)
the selector in this picture stops the whole conveyor when the unloader branch is full.
is it possible to let the selector automatically disable itself and let everything pass when there still an item on its output branch?
(http://s27.postimg.org/9782y652r/conveyor.jpg)
Quote from: pincergames on August 31, 2014, 11:56:36 AM
is it possible to let the selector automatically disable itself and let everything pass when there still an item on its output branch?
Yes, in principle, it certainly would be possible. However, I am reluctant to implement it, because it would be an annoying feature in most cases. For the moment, your best solution is to do this manually by 'unselecting' the item that is clogging the belt. Changing your design could also help in this case: if you were to switch the position of the in-going and out-going belts into your kitchen, you would ensure that even if the belt is full of food, your dinner plates would always move out (branch the out-going belt below the selector). In the long term, this would let the belt unsaturate on its own. In the current design, your colonists will cook 8 meals and stop there, because they won't go anywhere. If you change your design, your colonists will cook 'forever'.
In the next release, we will have a new belt element that will give you more freedom in 'sorting' items. Thinking about it just now, I just realised that you will be able to combine it with a belt selector to achieve exactly the effect that you have in mind - select items and make them by-pass the selector if the branch gets full. I'll describe how to do this when the next version is released (nothing fancy really, it'll just require to place the belt items in the correct order).
Quote from: noone on August 25, 2014, 07:00:55 PMAlthough we do not officially encourage it, *if* you were to by-pass some of our XML security measures protecting your colonists and send them crossing a working belt, we would certainly be curious to hear about the outcome - most likely a flashy red message on the screen ;)
I did a search and replace to make their pass-ability identical to that of the core game's sandbags and I haven't gotten an error message while spending a decent amount of time testing it. (read:Playing the game) The colonists would walk on them like they were floors and when they crossover I imagine them vaulting over 'parkour' style
Quote from: IWannaChaos on August 31, 2014, 11:44:06 PM
Quote from: noone on August 25, 2014, 07:00:55 PMAlthough we do not officially encourage it, *if* you were to by-pass some of our XML security measures protecting your colonists and send them crossing a working belt, we would certainly be curious to hear about the outcome - most likely a flashy red message on the screen ;)
I did a search and replace to make their pass-ability identical to that of the core game's sandbags and I haven't gotten an error message while spending a decent amount of time testing it. (read:Playing the game) The colonists would walk on them like they were floors and when they crossover I imagine them vaulting over 'parkour' style
Ooh nice, thanks for posting that. Was just thinking about doing that. It is super inconvenient to have them impassable.
Quote from: IWannaChaos on August 31, 2014, 11:44:06 PM
I did a search and replace to make their pass-ability identical to that of the core game's sandbags and I haven't gotten an error message [...] I imagine them vaulting over 'parkour' style
Thanks for sharing this. Glad to see that the mod is somewhat resistant to tinkering ;) Our scientists are working on out-of-this-World physics which we hope to incorporate into an official, esthetic and efficient way to cross conveyor belts for your colonists (with some added bonuses compared to simply making belts passable). I agree that this is an important feature to have, you can't just have belts running everywhere without an access way - that's defeating the purpose.
On a side note, your colonists must be really fit, given that the belt is waist-high ... ;)
I have an Idea! have something that automatically picks something up and moves it to a conveyor belt. Because the colonists have to haul the object to the conveyor belt afterwards. Hopefully Tynan will develop a system to make sure colonists do X amount of things before they can go and sleep/eat.
Quote from: Iwillbenicetou on September 05, 2014, 08:56:58 PM
have something that automatically picks something up and moves it to a conveyor belt.
If you're thinking about a droid/small automated cart/etc... this is not the right mod for it. We won't ever deal with automated 'pawn-like' things. On the other hand, if you're thinking about something like a crane or a giant vacuum cleaner with a finite action radius that can 'grab' near-by items and load them automatically on the belt, then maybe ...
I'll keep this idea handy - I can see how useful that would be, if you were to build such a structure in the middle of your potato fields ... ;)
Quote from: noone on September 06, 2014, 01:51:06 AM
Quote from: Iwillbenicetou on September 05, 2014, 08:56:58 PM
have something that automatically picks something up and moves it to a conveyor belt.
If you're thinking about a droid/small automated cart/etc... this is not the right mod for it. We won't ever deal with automated 'pawn-like' things. On the other hand, if you're thinking about something like a crane or a giant vacuum cleaner with a finite action radius that can 'grab' near-by items and load them automatically on the belt, then maybe ...
I'll keep this idea handy - I can see how useful that would be, if you were to build such a structure in the middle of your potato fields ... ;)
Still requesting a tutorial video there Noone. I know it may sound lazy but honestly it's a nice little addition. That or a drawn tutorial would be nice as well.
In regards to the crane/etc idea this mod and it's precursor mod feel heavily based around Factorio and as such it wouldn't be too much trouble seeing you expand on their conveyor system should you want to attempt it.
Yeah, it's just my guys harvest the food, and leave it there for a day. would be nice to bring the food onto the conveyor belt so the chefs can prepare the food.
Quote from: Ramsis on September 06, 2014, 02:37:55 PM
Still requesting a tutorial video there Noone. I know it may sound lazy but honestly it's a nice little addition. That or a drawn tutorial would be nice as well.
I can make a screenshot driven tutorial when the next release is out.
Our team at A2B is proud to bring you A2B:v0.6.3 - smooth motion & teleporters update !
Once again, the code has been subject to a large overhaul. Items on the belt now move seamlessly thanks to a brand new way of drawing them 'in-house'. We offer you 3 more belt items:
- the splitter, that sends item two ways indiscriminately.
- the teleporter and
- the receiver that work together to allow your colonists to cross a belt line, or have a belt line 'jump' a wall, or even another belt line !
The source code has been moved to Github, and we have created there a little image-based tutorial to give you the basic of the A2B conveyor belt units.
A couple of bug fixes as well (rock chunks behave just fine now!) and a bit more logic added, so you can't just connect belts randomly (e.g. you can't connect two straight belt with a rotation offset anymore - use a curve instead, etc...).
We at A2B hope you will enjoy the new possibilities offered by the v0.6.3. Combining the different belt elements and associated logic in smart ways will let you create more complex designs than ever before, and we look forward to hearing from your experience !
noone, there does not seem to be a download other than sourcecode (in two different buttons) in the links, is there an operatable (ie non-source only) download.
edit there is now a non-source download. thank you
My bad - there is one now. Note that both the source AND the entire mod are bundled together in the 'Source' files, but just in case, you can now get the Mod alone without the source.
Also just to be clear, this update is not compatible with the old one - you'll need to start fresh with it.
Hello, love this mod but I have a few requests/questions. First, could you have unloaded rocks and slag automatically designated haulable? The drill mod elsewhere on the forum does this and it is super convenient. Second, is a "reverse-splitter" possible, that will allow me to condense multiple loader belts into one main funnel.
Thanks!
Quote from: nerevar on September 13, 2014, 07:10:59 AM
First, could you have unloaded rocks and slag automatically designated haulable?
I tried that some time ago but I couldn't figure out how to do it but thanks to the driller mod I found a solution. You can follow the pull request here: https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/pull/11
Quote from: nerevar on September 13, 2014, 07:10:59 AM
Second, is a "reverse-splitter" possible, that will allow me to condense multiple loader belts into one main funnel.
The Selector can be used for this. The two small arrows show the locations where you can attach your incoming belts.
Thanks for the pull request asarium. I merged it into the master branch. I just tested it and it works great.
Also, if for any reason you do NOT want your colonists to automatically haul the chunks at the exit of the belt, you can define a 1x1 stockpile with maximum priority there. No colonist will haul anything until you change the stockpile priority, and the other items will nicely pile-up on the belt (same idea for any item, chunks or potatoes). We should add a screenshot of this in the tutorial eventually.
The update will be included de-facto in the next release, but in principle you ought to simply replace A2B.dll in the mod folder if you can't wait until then: https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/blob/master/Assemblies/A2B.dll
Ahh, had no idea the selector could be used like that! Thanks a ton.
We at A2B are happy to announce the release of the v0.6.4 of our conveyor belt systems. This minor update makes chunks haulable by defaults when they come out of Unloaders. XML properties of the different belt elements have been balanced a bit further, and textures have been made more uniform.
This minor release also marks the start of the maintenance phase for the A2B mod. We at A2B do not foresee any major update to the mod in the near future, as we believe it now contains all the basic pieces required to assemble complex belt puzzles and sorting logic. Specifically, from now on we will:
1) maintain the mod through the different RW alpha's, beta's, ... & omega's versions :P,
2) look for possible partnerships with other stand-alone mods that could benefit both mods (stay-tuned for some news on that front in the very near future), and
3) fine-tune the belt properties based on users feedback.
Of course, we might consider adding special pieces of equipment based on specific user requests, and these will be examined on a case-by-case basis. As usual, feel free to share any bugs or issues you encounter, and our engineers will do their best to correct them. Do not hesitate to share your best belt designs to inspire others !
Is there any chance of adding a "arm" that makes farming easier as the colonists usually never haul the food when they're done harvesting.
Quote from: Iwillbenicetou on September 16, 2014, 09:57:14 PM
Is there any chance of adding a "arm" that makes farming easier
Well, I thought about that, and also other 'machines' that could come in handy (e.g. a stockpile constructor - some sort of a crane on wheels that builds a 5x10 stockpile - sort of like these huge container cranes in industrial harbors ...).
But then I realized that these are all outside of the A2B mode scope per say (not far off for sure, but still). I like small mods - I'd rather use 15 small mods individually to load what I like, rather than 1 big mod that gives lots of 'unwanted' features as well.
I like the crane idea a lot - and I think it would make an awesome standalone mod, compatible with the A2B system and more. But as a stand-alone system, it'd be easier to maintain. The crane could have an arm rotating and picking up any item within the arm's radius, and then drop it onto a belt loader or designated area. If you (or anyone) feels like going ahead and modding this, you have my 'go-ahead' ... ;)
Mining & Co. is pleased to annouce that its famous Deepdriller Mark I has been upgraded to Deepdriller Mark II and now supports a connection with the A2B conveyor belts. :D
Go there for more details: http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=5930.0 (http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=5930.0).
Cheers noone! ;D
Quote from: Rikiki on September 19, 2014, 05:52:07 PM
Mining & Co. is pleased to annouce that it famous Deepdriller Mark I has been upgraded to Deepdriller Mark II and now support a connection with the A2B conveyor belts. :D
Great job ! Our partnership is now highlighted in the main post. I have no doubt that this will be the start of a long and fruitful collaboration, as these mods are working great together !
A note to everyone out there - let me know if you'd like to connect your machine to the A2B conveyor belts, as we're always looking for more partners. As the saying goes, "The greatest fun comes from the smallest mod", and I'd love to see many small, stand-alone mods designed to work together, rather than forcing people to install big packs with (often many) unwanted features.
Not that there's anything wrong with big mod packs, but I usually just like one specific aspect of them ... ;)
Finally got around to using the new version and well, I love the changes. Big thumbs up from me. :)
Mod has been updated to work with Alpha 7. Enjoy !
Yay!
EDIT: maybe have a thing where if colonists man the teleporters, it goes faster? Would be cool to see
Quote from: Iwillbenicetou on October 04, 2014, 09:53:22 AM
maybe have a thing where if colonists man the teleporters, it goes faster? Would be cool to see
Hum ... interesting idea. I need to see how easily feasible that would be. The idea that it may be a temporary boost is appealing, although I don't think anyone would be keen to commit colonists to this task with a high priority. Perhaps (given how advanced our teleporters are) this could go under research rather than crafting. And if it does so, perhaps the speed improvement could be permanent, but really (*really*) slow ... that is, your colonists can fine tune the teleporter to reach higher speeds, but experimenting will take time (say maybe 300 research points for 5-10% speed boost ? Or perhaps a simple temporary boost when the colonist man the machine is better, as a task for your scientists to get busy once they "researched it all" ... ;)
Quote from: noone on October 04, 2014, 04:39:52 PM
Quote from: Iwillbenicetou on October 04, 2014, 09:53:22 AM
maybe have a thing where if colonists man the teleporters, it goes faster? Would be cool to see
Hum ... interesting idea. I need to see how easily feasible that would be. The idea that it may be a temporary boost is appealing, although I don't think anyone would be keen to commit colonists to this task with a high priority. Perhaps (given how advanced our teleporters are) this could go under research rather than crafting. And if it does so, perhaps the speed improvement could be permanent, but really (*really*) slow ... that is, your colonists can fine tune the teleporter to reach higher speeds, but experimenting will take time (say maybe 300 research points for 5-10% speed boost ? Or perhaps a simple temporary boost when the colonist man the machine is better, as a task for your scientists to get busy once they "researched it all" ... ;)
I came up with the idea of because on the teleporter, it looked like a console, so maybe someone does the research there because it makes the most sense.
Hello my name is JuliaEllie and I recommend this mod! I love it
Quote from: Iwillbenicetou on October 05, 2014, 09:40:10 AM
I came up with the idea of because on the teleporter, it looked like a console
It's indeed intended to look like a console - glad to see my design is coming through ... ;)
Quote from: JuliaEllie on October 05, 2014, 06:00:41 PM
Hello my name is JuliaEllie and I recommend this mod! I love it
Well, thank you !
And on the partnership front, we at A2B are happy to announce that the A2B belt system is readily compatible with the Electric Generator system by bolti1703 (http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=5709.0). Connect the A2B unloaders the generator fuel tanks, and spare your colonists the trip from the distillery ! No A2B update necessary, the functionality is already present in v0.7.0.
I am having an isue where after powering the belts, the game slows down tremendously, and there seems to be a large number of errors involving sandstone chunks (btw using most mods that are for a7)(the sandstone chunks are from ichyflea's stone crafting), and the slowdown only happens after powering the belts w second research done.
Hum, I will have to look into that. I haven't yet tested the A2B system with sandstone chunks. I'll give it a go and see if I can reproduce the errors.
Regarding the speed, it is the first time this issue is being raised. It may be some issue with another mod installed, and I think it will be hard to tell for sure. How big is your belt system ?
I get a bit of a slowdown when zoomed out while moving lots of items, we're talking 70+ hunks of metal and cloth. It's not too noticeable to me, but I'm running a pretty well-powered PC; I could see it being a problem on a computer with less power.
Wasn't putting chunks of any kind on the belt(s) if that helps any.
the belt length was approx 40 with 5 loaders merging into one belt for approx 15 squares to a selector (set to merge) and had another loader feeding, then a square to another selector that seperates out chunks (all types) and feeds down a 5 square belt to a turn then into selectors seperating the different chunk types out to unloaders, I had indented to expand the belt system to surround theentire underground base and was digging the access tunnels (had planned two way transport ie chunks going one way with other items going the other
Quote from: nerevar on October 07, 2014, 10:02:26 AM
I get a bit of a slowdown when zoomed out while moving lots of items, we're talking 70+ hunks of metal and cloth.
Thanks for the report. This to me sounds similar to what happens when a massive number of raiders start attacking you - can you confirm the lag "feels" similar ? Because it only happens when 'zoomed out', I suspect that it is related to having to re-draw many items/pawns at once - perhaps some Rimworld gurus can confirm/disprove that. In that case, the lag source would be in the source code structure, and I can't do much about that - unless I was to revert back to the initial 'transportation' mode for items on the belt which was a step function (rather than the current much more aesthetic smooth motion). The alternative is that the algorithm to calculate the items position on the belt is not optimized enough, but I fail to see why this would become apparent only when 'zoomed out' ...
Quote from: harpo99999 on October 07, 2014, 02:13:08 PM
the belt length was approx 40 with 5 loaders merging into one belt for approx 15 squares to a selector (set to merge) and had another loader feeding, then a square to another selector that seperates out chunks (all types) and feeds down a 5 square belt to a turn then into selectors seperating the different chunk types out to unloaders
Sounds like a fun design. Did you notice if the sandstone chunks errors were associated with a certain belt element ? Or were all of them spitting errors ? If you get a lot of errors at the same time, it could explain the slowdown. Let's try to fix these and see if that solves your speed issue. I doubt you experience the same problem described by nerevar.
More news soon once I get time to actually run some tests ... ;)
Running with only A2B and stone crafting, I have no problem carrying sandstone chunks around (see the screenshot below), so I'll need more information to reproduce the sandstone bug ...
Can you tell me more about it, harpo99999 ? What is the error message saying ? Does it occur with all sandstone chunks, or only sometimes ? Could you try removing all mods and playing only with A2B+stone crafting to see if the problem persist ? Maybe it all arises because of a 3rd mod. Also, what do you do with the sandstone ? Do you keep piling it up at the end of the belt ? How many sandstone chunks are piled up on one single tile ? What about the other types of rock chunks introduced by the stone cutting mod - are they all problematic ?
Any info you have would be great - screenshots too if you have any. Has anyone else experienced similar issues with sandstone chunks (or any other item) ?
[attachment deleted by admin: too old]
QuoteThanks for the report. This to me sounds similar to what happens when a massive number of raiders start attacking you - can you confirm the lag "feels" similar ? Because it only happens when 'zoomed out', I suspect that it is related to having to re-draw many items/pawns at once - perhaps some Rimworld gurus can confirm/disprove that. In that case, the lag source would be in the source code structure, and I can't do much about that - unless I was to revert back to the initial 'transportation' mode for items on the belt which was a step function (rather than the current much more aesthetic smooth motion). The alternative is that the algorithm to calculate the items position on the belt is not optimized enough, but I fail to see why this would become apparent only when 'zoomed out' ...
Yes it's the same kind of lag I get when dealing with tons of pawns, probably not something you can fix. All I really need is a way to force a hauler to keep working on my unloader so things don't get out of hand. Really hope Tynan adds a burrow like feature from df sometime soon.
I get a XML error: <Beauty>0</Beauty> doesn't correspond to any field in type ThingDef.
I think it's supposed to be enclosed in <statBases> tags.
Quote from: nerevar on October 07, 2014, 09:56:46 PM
Yes it's the same kind of lag I get when dealing with tons of pawns
Thanks for the confirmation. I guess that in a way, conveyor belts with so many moving items are pushing the intended limits of the game ... ;)
Quote from: Neutromancer on October 09, 2014, 12:27:49 PM
I get a XML error: <Beauty>0</Beauty> doesn't correspond to any field in type ThingDef.
I think it's supposed to be enclosed in <statBases> tags.
Interesting. I had this only once, and it then never appeared again. I also thought that <Beauty> ought to be placed inside <statBases>, but looking at some of the source xml files, it wasn't the case ... I will look into this (I may have checked outdated source files). Out of curiosity, 1) does the bug happen all the time, and 2) is the message appearing on the start menu or in-game ?
I confirm the beauty warning, did corrected it myself but forgot to tell you :-[
It appears at game start-up.
Use this kind of code (trying to redeem myself ::)):
<statBases>
<MaxHealth>300</MaxHealth>
<WorkToBuild>7000</WorkToBuild>
<Flammability>1.0</Flammability>
<Beauty>-2</Beauty>
</statBases>
Hi, is there any way I could create a T-intersection of sorts, or merge two belts into one?
Alright, I fixed the Beauty issue on Github - I'll release a fix officially soon (I need to avoid dropping items on the water as well ... ;) )
Quote from: admiralKew on October 10, 2014, 11:04:44 PM
Hi, is there any way I could create a T-intersection of sorts, or merge two belts into one?
Certainly. To split one belt in two, use the splitter. If you want to join two belt streams into one, use the selector (requires level 2 research). Two black arrows tell you where to connect the feeding belts - then simply enable/disable everything if you want all items to go along the 1 or 2 direction, respectively ! Good luck !
To all the mod-pack lovers out there, we at A2B are pleased to announce that our conveyor belt system is now also being shipped inside the TTM conglomerate !
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=3464.0
Hi,
does i see that right?
You only can pickup items when you use loader?
My idea was to create a semi-automated cotton field.
One row of cotton and left and right of that belts that transport the harvest cotton to a central place.
But the harvester allways deploy the cotton on the seed ground, never on the belts.
And a suggestion for the teleport system, maybe a further research you can assign sender and reciever together, so they don't need to be inline anymore.
Hey,
Quote from: Canute on October 15, 2014, 09:40:55 AM
[...]
You only can pickup items when you use loader?
My idea was to create a semi-automated cotton field.
[...]
But the harvester allways deploy the cotton on the seed ground, never on the belts.
Indeed, you must use the Loader to load the belts. I have done some 'semi-automated' cotton fields before, you just need to alter a bit your approach.
In the example below, A2B Conveyor Belts are used to carry freshly harvested potatoes, berries and cotton cloth to a) the kitchen area and b) the tailor bench.
I attach some screen shots from my latest game to illustrate the idea. [EDIT: screen shots don't work ... you'll have to get them from there instead: https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/wiki/Screenshots]
(https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/blob/master/Screenshots/Ex1_overview.png)
Two Loaders feed a single belt line to the South of the field area. Having multiple Loaders for a single belt line can become very useful when you have multiple haulers-colonists. If you have one 1 Loader, it will be booked by the first hauler, and the other haulers will then carry the food/cloth all the way to the far-away stockpile. Having two Loaders (or more) ensures that one will be free at all times.
The belt line goes underground and around the South side of the colony's living quarters. It then delivers cloth next to the tailor bench and food next to the kitchen (via a Selector unit set-up appropriately). Teleporter/Receiver pairs are used to maintain easy colonist passage throughout the colony, and also to 'go underground' without creating an opening in the mountain (i.e. no new possible raiders entry point!).
(https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/blob/master/Screenshots/Ex1_cotton_fields.png)
(https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/blob/master/Screenshots/Ex1_tailor_bench.png)
Some points about stockpile priorities:In this example, both loaders are set with the 'important' priority settings. The tailor bench area and the kitchen area then illustrate two possible implementation of 'long-term storage' stockpiles connected to A2B belts.
For the tailor bench, a cloth stockpile (in pink) was created next to it - but NOT next to the Unloaders that will therefore drop items on the floor OUTSIDE of any stockpile. It is then up to your colonists to haul the cloth to the near-by cloth stockpile. Note that the cloth stockpile MUST be set to the same priority as the belt loader (i.e. 'important' in this case). Otherwise, your colonists will either pick-up cloth at the Unloader and bring it back to the Loaders or by-pass the belt system altogether !
For the kitchen area, a 1x1 stockpile area (yellow) was created right next to the Unloader. It gives the cook an direct access to food, and when all the berries are used (in the screenshot below), the belt will automatically drop and release potatoes. Because the food is stored on the belt system itself, this approach avoids the need to create large food stockpiles near the kitchen. The A2B belt system in fact acts as a 'raw food dispenser' !
The main difference between the 'kitchen stockpile' and the 'tailor bench stockpile' approaches is that for preparing a meal, the cook requires LESS food than is typically carried by the A2B belts (and stored in the 1x1 stockpile). Hence, the cook does NOT require access to the entire raw vegetables existing at any given time - most of which can then be 'stored and locked-up' and the A2B Belts. On the other hand, tailor recipes do require MORE cloth than is usually carried by the A2B belt within one unit - it is therefore important for your tailor-colonists to have access to the entire cloth material existing (hence the need for a larger stockpile which MUST be filled by hand).
Since there has been some questions about stockpile priorities and the like in the past, I thought it would be useful to add this detailed example with real in-game screen shots to the mod wiki - so here it is again: https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/wiki/Screenshots
Quote from: Canute on October 15, 2014, 09:40:55 AM
And a suggestion for the teleport system, maybe a further research you can assign sender and reciever together, so they don't need to be inline anymore.
I hear you on that one. Time is scarce for me these days, but this is certainly on my to-do list. I am not quite sure yet how to access a building based on a' I.D. tag', and I am not quite sure how I would implement this I.D. tag system in the first place, but I am thinking about it ...
Hope that helps !
I have a problem:
My colonists do endlessly carry the transported items back from the Storezone to the loader.
And when I change the preference (of storing) they use the loader notmore.
Between loader and Store is nearly 1/4 Map distance.
If both the loader and final stockpile have the same level priority, the colonists will dump goods off at the closest location. If everything is set up right, this should be your loader. I usually set both to "Important" and it works fine.
Hi Xentor,
Have a look at my post above, and also here (especially the bottom part about stockpile priorities): https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/wiki/Screenshots
The two rules of stockiples that matter here are:
1) colonists always haul items to the highest priorty stockpiles no matter how far away it is
2) for two equal priority stockpiles, the colonists will haul items to the nearest one.
Hence, in this scheme, you must consider your belt Loaders as 'extensions' of your far away stockpiles - they MUST have the same priorities, no matter what ! Else, what you describe happens.
You can then play around how you design your far-away stockpile (1x1 at the base of the Unloader or larger but away from it) to fit your needs - again, see the instructions linked above.
Hope that helps. If you get stuck, go back to the basic 'Rimworld hauling rules' and think about what they imply.
Good luck !
noone, a suggestion for a possible improvement for the selectors ie when an output is blocked they behave like the splitters ie blocked output diverts to unblocked output, this way I ould have a circling stock on the conveyers and when space forms in one of the selected outputs the selected item (when it comes around again is sent out through the selector)
Hay harpo99999,
Thanks for the suggestion. I am somewhat reluctant to implement this because the precise feature of the selector is to be 'absolute', i.e. you can use it to sort items and it will never fail. I can see why it would be useful in some cases, but it would also be very annoying in others, (i.e. sending unwanted items to far-away places).
My proposition in your case (if you want to avoid blocking a belt completely with a single selector) is to place a 'splitter' ahead of the selector, and create a small loop around the selector. That way, 50% of the items will by-pass the selector, even if stuck. It is not 'exactly' what you want, but in practice it should achieve similar results.
Hope that helps - let me know how this works out for you ...
I have tried the suggested method with a loop back to before the initial split off the food selector, but the five selectors in the main select of individual foods to feed the kitchen keep getting filled up and I have to manually turn off the selecting of the food so that the other foods continue the orbit till there is space.
here is ascreenshot of my colony (note only 8 colonistshttps://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8023186/pics/screenshot4.png (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8023186/pics/screenshot4.png)
Here is how I would do it. It takes a bit more space, but it does exactly what you want. You could also compact the design even more, but I kept it 'airy' so that it's easy to see what is happening in the screenshot. Basically, each selector is surrounded by an 'overflow loop' - do it for all selectors, and you're in business.
Also, do you really need to split items in five different belts ? I understand the meat and veggies ought to be different, but you may not need to split berries from potatoes (assuming it is what you do, I can't really tell). That'd save you some space.
Hope that helps !
By the way, that's a nice set of conveyor belts that you built. Very impressive !
[attachment deleted by admin: too old]
the system does split all the vegetables onto their own unloader just to maximise the available food, the first two in the loop do split the meats, then the argive, then berries, and the last uses a splitter to keep the cirulating and filled lines for the potatos/and overflow, and even in this system I have had some times where the kitchen has run out of food and the cooks have had to grab ingredients from the gardens directly(btw I was also using the cooks as researchers so wanted to minimise the cooking time)
One seriouse usability problem with "A2B: conveyor belts & co." is IMHO its unloading mechanism. In quantity (stack sizes) as well as quality(wrong item).
Just one wrong item or if the stack size at the end is full and it gets jammed. Worse even, this builds up along the belt and eventually blocks the hole system.
Even concrete trucks use a better sollution so this makes one big logic gap as your system even has teleporter parts but no allocation parts. Maybe simply make a conveyor version of aka adapt the "temporary stock area" at the back of each Deepdriller in "Mining&Co.: Deepdriller Mark II"-mod?
Hey Marcm,
Thanks for the suggestion. I understand your concern about the unloading system, but I do not think that making a larger receiving area (Deepdriller-style) will solve it. In my case, when I grow potatoes, I grow *a lot* of potatoes. And changing the receiving area from 1x1 to e.g. 2x4 will not change anything but only delay the unavoidable, and the belt still gets filled (which I don't mind, but to each his own).
The quick answer to your request is: "A2B deals with transporting material, not with storing material. And what you want here is a better storage solution, as the Unloader is just designed to unload stuff. So we at A2B can't do anything for you in this case." But that would be rude of me to just say that ;)
Regarding wrong items blocking the output, well, I had a professor of analysis once that said: "Garbage in, garbage out !" The Loaders and Selectors let you carefully tune what you want on your belts, and if set up properly, you should not get any wrong items at the end of the line. Yes, it can get tricky if you have a complex belt system - but that's the fun and beauty of a complex belt system - one wrong step, and it all breaks, and yet isn't it beautiful when it all works smoothly ? ;)
Sadly, I do not have enough free time these days to try implementing a larger receiver area. I am not totally against it as an option to the user to be honest, and will keep it on my to do list. But in the meantime, you can already do 'the same' with the current system. Have a look here: https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/wiki/Screenshots
(especially the last part about stockpile priorities).
You can set up a stockpile near the Unloader as big as you want, and provided there is no stockpile right outside the Unloader itself, your colonists will fill this stockpile with material spitted our from the belt. So in practice it's everything you want, just not fully automated ... ;)
As an aside, not sure to understand your analogy with the concrete trucks: of course they only pour concrete (and not e.g. water) as they are filled with concrete only ... try filling the A2B belts with potatoes, and we at A2B can assure you that only potatoes will come out ... ;) And if you refer to the fact that concrete flows everywhere on the floor while Rimworld potatoes do not, well, I guess fluid dynamics is to blame there ... ;)
Hope that helps. If you feel like coding a larger receiver area or a 'compacting storage unit' to plug at the end of the A2B belt, I'll happily consider adding these to the mod. Alternatively, I'll suggest checking your Loaders' settings and playing with stockpiles at the end of the belt to solve your issues.
Thank you for contacting the A2B helpline ! Hope the above helps. ;)
I have encountered an issue with a build-up within the conveyors. I have my conveyors hooked up to a timer power switch, since I don't need them at night, but I think that might be causing issues with turning the power on and off, causing items to get "stuck" inside one, (now multiple), conveyor units, while spitting out what was stored, resulting in a double inventory. This is an issue, because it refuses to pass a stack of items to the next object, if it's over the normal stack size (such as more than 75 potatoes). This extened stack size seems to be capped at 150 (for potatoes, nothing else tested).
I had shrugged it off, since normally you can just disable power, have a colonist remove the extra stack, and reenable power on the jammed unit, and it'll continue as normal, but now my loaders are jammed, and I have nowhere to put them taters anymore.
Hi Pear,
Not sure I fully understand your problem. Splitters do get jammed from time to time if you have a build-up on the line. Some might call this a bug but I decided it was rather 'fun' and so it has become a feature. It reflects the fact that splitters are low-tech things, unlike Selectors that always work.
Can you confirm that your jamming problem is with a splitter ? I would not expect a jamming issue with another belt item.
I also have had jams on the belts after power outages
Anything that will make food from a farm go on a belt automatically? Even if it is really inefficient and relies on rows upon rows of conveyor belts?
Quote from: noone on November 02, 2014, 08:30:01 PM
Hi Pear,
Not sure I fully understand your problem. Splitters do get jammed from time to time if you have a build-up on the line. Some might call this a bug but I decided it was rather 'fun' and so it has become a feature. It reflects the fact that splitters are low-tech things, unlike Selectors that always work.
Can you confirm that your jamming problem is with a splitter ? I would not expect a jamming issue with another belt item.
When the power goes out, and goes back on, sometimes a conveyor object will have a massive stack inside of it (150 max size, it seems), without visually displaying the item, or moving it to the next conveyor. I've had this happen with conveyors, selectors, and loaders so far.
http://i.imgur.com/m9x7Lct.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/c53W2y2.jpg
I get all kinds of security warnings when I try to download the no source code file.
Both from my browser and from my firewall.
This is what my firewall says about it:
Warning: Unsafe Website Blocked!
s3.amazonaws.com
This website has been blocked temporarily because of the following reason(s):
HTTPS Site: Blocked site uses S-HTTP encryption. You may have received a browser security message before loading this unencrypted warning page.
Blocking aws???? Thats a lot of the internet...
Well, I don't know about the warnings, but I can confirm that s3.amazonaws.com is indeed where the file is being fetched from when I download it myself.
You're the first to report such warnings (doesn't mean you're alone, though), and no one reported anything nasty happening upon download. So I'd say you can happily ignore everything. This being said, I shall not be responsible if anything happens to your computer if you decide to indeed ignore these warnings :) I'm just fairly sure that it will all be fine.
Quote from: noone on November 11, 2014, 03:10:06 PM
Well, I don't know about the warnings, but I can confirm that s3.amazonaws.com is indeed where the file is being fetched from when I download it myself.
You're the first to report such warnings (doesn't mean you're alone, though), and no one reported anything nasty happening upon download. So I'd say you can happily ignore everything. This being said, I shall not be responsible if anything happens to your computer if you decide to indeed ignore these warnings :) I'm just fairly sure that it will all be fine.
Did you get a chance to look into the bug I was having?
Quote from: Pear on November 11, 2014, 05:41:56 PM
Did you get a chance to look into the bug I was having?
Not yet, unfortunately. It's been rather busy for me recently ... have you found more clues about what may be going wrong on your end ?
Is it possible to join two conveyor belts together? Playing in the TTM modpack, trying to shuttle refined oil from refineries without having to lay two entire conveyor belts but I can't get them to join up and move along the same conveyor. I've tried just having a regular belt directed at the original belt, tried a loader and an unloader. A selector almost did the job but it still splits items even without an adjoining second belt leading off from it.
The selector is what you seek. It has two possible entry points (black arrows) - then simply allow 'all' items (to go along direction 1) or forbid 'all' items (to go along direction 2). Hope that helps.
I can't seem to find those options. Unless you mean actually just allow/disallow all items in the storage tab.
EDIT:
Never mind. That is what you meant. Now to reclaim some 300 metal in conveyor belts.
Any chance you can make a tweak to the teleporter, possibly requiring research even, that will allow it to teleport further distances using more power? Say maybe, 4-5 squares? My hall ways tend to be 2 wide, with walls on both sides making it a 4x sized gap that I'd like to teleport materials across and sometimes I just really need to get something across an entire building, geothermal plant and such but I end up having to weave all the way around it and such.
Also, I'd like it so that if something is already in a stock pile or storage, no matter what level of priority it has, no worker will take stuff out of the stock pile to put it in the loader unless otherwise specified. Maybe an option in the loader that you toggle, "take from stockpiles". I've seen such options in the shield mod from ED. Anyway, for setting the distance on the teleportation, on the sending node, probably just need a button you click to toggle what the distance will be till it is the right one, cycling the distance till it loops back around. Saw something like that with the Ore Extractor and Fissure Maker on Mechanical Defense.
Hey Vas,
These are good suggestions. I would definitely give it a go - but I have no time at the moment, and I am unlikely to get much of it anytime soon. If anyone reads this and feels like making a pull request on Github (for either suggestions or both) I'd include these modifications right away ... but I won't be able to implement them myself right away unfortunately.
Just if you're interested, I've added some compatibility between the conveyor loaders and my ore extractor :)
Hey mipen,
Cool droids ! Just added your mod to the main A2B post on the first page. Cheers !
Noone, sorry if this has been mentioned before, but could you have two different conveyor belts with a turn merging them together?
You can use the selector to merge two belt lines in one. Did you have something else in mind ?
Having the rotator merging them instead.
How is this different from the selector (other than not having an un-used exit) ? There's already so many items that I am reluctant to add anything else that is redundant, simply because it'll be a mess otherwise ...
Yeah, don't add any more conveyor parts... I'll just do the old fashioned and safe way to just use the selector.
Hello. I just started playing Rimworld. And of course I install a few mods, including yours, A2B: Conveyor Belts & co. [v0.7.0]. To begin with, I must say that it is a very useful, and easy to use.
However, it had a little detail that did not quite fit my taste. The teleporter. Although I saw why it was desinad the way it was, I could not help wanting to expand its reach. A square was simply not enough for me.
So I start to check out your find source code. Good written code. Classes that were not to big, logical variable and method names. Easy to follow most of the time.
At first I was a little confused as to why Receivers and teleporters were put in the same class, but this ended up in my advantage. And after a couple of hours, I had a working teleporter that can teleport an item over the map.
So in my modification of your code, you can now teleport an item to a receiver that is facing the same direction as the teleport, and which is on the same X or Y (z in code) coordinate.
My question now is, is it ok from your part, that I post my change of your code in this thread?
With regards FredrikLH
Do you handle properly the cases where there are several teleporters/receivers on the same line?
e.g. ('=' is a straight conveyor belt, 'T' a teleporter and 'R' a receiver):
==T...R===T...R==
The Receiver can have multiple Teleporters link to it but a teleporter only links to the closest in direction, correctly facing receiver. In other words.
(= are belts, T are teleporters, R are receivers, ... are convection, [Space] are no connection)
=T...=T...R= R=
So the two teleporters are connected to the first Receiver.
(so yes my code work the way Rikiki describe)
I've experienced a bug after playing for 3 hours last night. There can't be a rotator rotating into another rotator (so many rotates). And is the receiver + teleporter supposed to shortcircuit in the rain?
@ FredrikLH,
That sounds like a very sensible update. If you want, you could submit a pull request on Github, as I'd be happy to include it in the main mod (and of course add you to the contributor list on post #1). But in any case, you're free to share your update with anyone and advertise it here if you like (although if you decide to bridge off the mod, I'd suggest a dedicated post - although I'd certainly hope you'd rather merge than split ;) ).
Also, it would be nice if the teleporter uses more electricity if they have to teleport further. Say, have a base consumption and then an extra amount that scales with distance. Ideally, I'd have the teleporter consume more than a straight belt to make teleporters (and large gaps) valuable devices (rather than simply use them everywhere).
@ Iwillbenicetou
Yes, Teleporters and receivers will short-circuit in the rain. Water doesn't mix well with their lasers. Not sure what you mean by 'rotator', as there's no such thing in the A2B mod. Do you mean "curve" or "selector" ?
Yeah, curve. Sorry. One time it worked, the other time it didn't.
I added power consumption increase, based on distance between the teleporter and the receiver. I also make a pull request, adding my updates to your teleporter code. It's your code now, feel free to do what you want with it.
Updated to Alpha 8 and added the long range teleportation modifications of FredrikLH. It'll increase the power consumption of the teleporter linearly as a function of the teleportation distance, and you still need the receiver to be aligned with the teleporter, but you are now free to teleport items over thick walls, wide paths, etc ...
All credits to FredrikLH for this update !
Yessssssss! Thank you, noone and Fred!
this is what exactly
i looking FOOOR.THHHHHAAAANNKKKSSS
Do conveyor belts count as walls? eg: I could conveyor food from my hydro room into a freezer? Even if there as a special piece that also counted as a wall that cost more/use more power etc etc.
Quote from: Mikhail Reign on December 16, 2014, 10:38:37 PM
Do conveyor belts count as walls?
Well, they support roofs, so, I guess they sort of count as walls ... :) This being said I don't really know their thermal insulation level - no idea whether they would leak heat or not. Haven't had much time to test these things yet ...
Thats what I meant. Walls don't leak. If they count as walls (like benches do - you can make pillboxes you can fire out of that stay heated/cooled - add in the switches mod on detect player and they power down unless someone is in them) then they would block heat transfers.
regarding the thermal insulation, I have used an unloader in a single width gap of a wall to a deepfreezer (-60c) wit hthe belt space being at 10c and no leakage.
noone, I am also getting a large number of errors in the log from chunks on the belts
one of the MANY thousands of similar error messages is (copied directly from the log)
(Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/artifacts/StandalonePlayerGenerated/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 49)
Holder of ChunkGranite710455 has null owner.
these errors only started showing up after starting to use the conveyerbelts
Quote from: harpo99999 on December 23, 2014, 05:31:55 AM
noone, I am also getting a large number of errors in the log from chunks on the belts
one of the MANY thousands of similar error messages is (copied directly from the log)
(Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/artifacts/StandalonePlayerGenerated/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 49)
Holder of ChunkGranite710455 has null owner.
Hum, thanks for the bug report, much appreciated. I'll add this to my to-do list. Not sure when I'll get time to look at it in detail, but I added it to the Github issues so as to not forget it. Can you confirm that this is a 'silent' error, i.e. the error log does not pop open on its own ?
EDIT: added the direct link to the issue tracker on Github to the main post: https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/issues
Offered the glory and fame (possibly but not certainly) resulting from being added to the mod contributors' list to anyone helping implement/solve any bug listed there :)
I can not confirm that it is a silent error as I had turned off the open on error, but from reading the many errors my wild guess is that it is related to the new variations of rock chunks for the different rock types
i'm having an issue with the bends in the conveyors. nothing wants to move past a bend. am i doing something majorly wrong by rotating them so they look like the curve is going the right way or something ?
Quote from: PapaDookie on December 27, 2014, 04:46:02 AM
i'm having an issue with the bends in the conveyors. nothing wants to move past a bend. am i doing something majorly wrong by rotating them so they look like the curve is going the right way or something ?
I am having a similar issue and I can't figure it out. I have one conveyer that is supposed to run into my freezer, but it just won't carry things into it... Other conveyers that I build seem to work fine (I had issues earlier, but now they work), but this one will not. All it is is a loader, one straight (through a wall), and an unloader, but items just sit on the loader and don't move...
does the non working conveyer have power?
mine had plenty of power and things would move off the loader onto the couple of straight pieces. got to a corner and just stopped
Quote from: harpo99999 on December 27, 2014, 04:27:32 AM
my wild guess is that it is related to the new variations of rock chunks for the different rock types
Yes, that would make sense. Rock chunks and slags always were a bit different than the rest, so this is most likely the cause of the error message. I suspect that the 'haulable' property has been altered somehow ...
Quote from: PapaDookie on December 27, 2014, 04:46:02 AM
i'm having an issue with the bends in the conveyors. nothing wants to move past a bend. am i doing something majorly wrong by rotating them so they look like the curve is going the right way or something ?
Curves do not 'initialize' themselves - they get the direction to which to send items from the previous element feeding it. Provided that the curve is in the good orientation, and that the feeding belt is correctly connected, it should all work fine. If the items stop half-way on the curve, then your problem lies with the connection after the curve (either wrong alignment or something alike). A screenshot could help diagnose the issue better.
Quote from: Katamari on December 27, 2014, 01:24:08 PM
All it is is a loader, one straight (through a wall), and an unloader, but items just sit on the loader and don't move...
I had this happening once, but was unable to diagnose/reproduce since then. Not sure what the problem is, so I call this a 'feature' of the mod, rather than a proper bug. Your loader got stuck (probably some dust on the sensors). Turn it off - that will free the stuck item. Get a colonist to take it away, then turn the loader on, and see if it works. If not, then "your colonists must have messed up the wire polarization when assembling the loader", and it is now faulty. Deconstruct it, rebuild another one, and see if it works better.
Hope that helps ! Let me know how things work out ....
any chance we can get a 'grabber' type input?
Can't put 100 conveyors on a drop location, game don't like it lol.
Some kind of ranged input beacon thing to auto grab anything around it.
:D
Either that or possibly a 'range' option for loaders, so my guys don't grab stuff at the end of the line and bring it all the way back to the loader.
Quote from: Zilch on December 28, 2014, 06:25:40 AM
Either that or possibly a 'range' option for loaders, so my guys don't grab stuff at the end of the line and bring it all the way back to the loader.
If you look at his tutorials (check the first post), he explains how to avoid this: essentially just make sure that the Loader has the same Priority level as the final stockpile zone. Then your colonists will put it on the loader end if it is closer than the stockpile, and will just carry it to the stockpile if it is closer than the loader (just make sure that the unloader is closer to the stockpile, else you might have an issue...)
I don't know if it's already been answered, I couldn't find it, but can the transporter be used through doors or walls? Thank you!
Great mod, by the way.
Quote from: nuschler22 on December 28, 2014, 03:18:58 PM
I don't know if it's already been answered, I couldn't find it, but can the transporter be used through doors or walls? Thank you!
Great mod, by the way.
the teleport is able to be used with a wall or walkway between
I've tried and can't get it to teleport through a wall.
What I'm trying to do is have it teleport through a wall into my freezer section.
I have it orientated the way it's shown, but the food just sits on the transporter and doesn't get to the receiver.
Edit: I removed the wall. I can't get it to teleport at all. Everything has power (and there is plenty excess power, 4000+w).
I have it set up exactly as shown.
Teleporter
V
00
0 (Red)
Receiver
0 (Green)
00
Link
V
Unloader
Ideas?
Quote from: nuschler22 on December 28, 2014, 05:20:00 PM
I have it set up exactly as shown.
Teleporter
V
00
0 (Red)
Receiver
0 (Green)
00
Link
V
Unloader
Ideas?
Are the '0' marking the physical sizes of the elements ? Then it looks like your receiver is in the wrong direction ... The 'green' zone must be located towards the receiver, with the belt going out away from it (i.e. rotate by 90 deg. from the current set-up). Attaching a screenshot to the post would help clarifying the setup ...
Here's a screenshot.
[attachment deleted due to age]
Alright, this is indeed the correct setup. So the fact that it doesn't work is puzzling. Without any error message, it is somewhat hard to diagnose this just like that. Can you confirm that you are using v0.8.0 of the mod ? Which version did you get (with or without source) ? Which element did you build first : the receiver or the teleporter (i.e. which one was actually constructed first) ?
If you are willing to do some more tests, it would be interesting:
1) to check what power requirement is listed in the teleporter panel
2) to unbuild the receiver and rebuild it at the exact same location
3) to unbuild the receiver and rebuild it one step further
Also, do you happen to have another receiver with the correct orientation further down the line ?
Quote from: noone on December 28, 2014, 07:00:50 PM
Alright, this is indeed the correct setup. So the fact that it doesn't work is puzzling. Without any error message, it is somewhat hard to diagnose this just like that. Can you confirm that you are using v0.8.0 of the mod ? Which version did you get (with or without source) ? Which element did you build first : the receiver or the teleporter (i.e. which one was actually constructed first) ?
If you are willing to do some more tests, it would be interesting:
1) to check what power requirement is listed in the teleporter panel
2) to unbuild the receiver and rebuild it at the exact same location
3) to unbuild the receiver and rebuild it one step further
Also, do you happen to have another receiver with the correct orientation further down the line ?
I'll do some more checking today, but.....
The latest version from download without source code (confirmed v 0.8.0), I've built both multiple times (at least twice for both). I built the transporter than receiver, than the receiver than transporter in that order at least once each time.
This is the only receiver I have.
Power needed, 45, transporter and 20, receiver.
Rebuilt same spot, one spot further with no effect.
I'll re-download and perhaps start a new colony to see if there is any positive effect later.
love the distance update for the teleporters helps when i have my farms deeper in the mountains.
question can a single receiver hook up with multiple teleporters think i saw a yes but just want to confirm.
theres an issue with the angle blocks only sending items in one direction no matter how i feed items into it.
theres also an issue with the selector block only going in one direction feed bottom left output up right. i also need on some builds feed bottom right output top left. it something i can work around but it takes up a bit of space.
Quote from: nuschler22 on December 29, 2014, 08:27:10 AM
Power needed, 45, transporter and 20, receiver.
This is the correct amount of power required by the teleporter (it varies with distance) which means it has found the receiver (i.e. the receiver was detected to be in the correct orientation at the correct distance). I tried re-building your setup, and it works fine for me. I really have no clue what is going on here. Another suggestion could be to build a teleporter+receiver pair rotated by 90deg or 180deg and see if these work better. Restarting a world is also a good idea. Do you have any other mod turned on ?
Quote from: millenium on December 29, 2014, 11:05:15 AM
question can a single receiver hook up with multiple teleporters think i saw a yes but just want to confirm.
Yes, it 'should' work fine. Only limited testing was done in this direction, but it will work. Note that you may get overlapping transport beam so that items will look weird on the receiver pad, but will behave again afterwards. Our engineers are working on making these behave nicer.
Quote from: millenium on December 29, 2014, 11:05:15 AM
theres an issue with the angle blocks only sending items in one direction no matter how i feed items into it.
Again, that isn't much of a bug report to debug ... screenshots and more details would help a lot. But a wild guess for now: have you tried rotating them in the correct orientation ?
Quote from: millenium on December 29, 2014, 11:05:15 AM
theres also an issue with the selector block only going in one direction feed bottom left output up right. i also need on some builds feed bottom right output top left. it something i can work around but it takes up a bit of space.
Again, what about a) rotating the selector and b) changing the output line from 2 to 1 (via the selection menu) ?
I have too many mods running. Probably 15, so there could definitely be some sort of conflict.
I'll be starting a new world tonight and I'll let you know if things improve.
I didn't start a new colony, but I did notice this shortly before leaving the game.
The purpose of the transporter was to jump into a room used as a freezer. Two things I noticed:
1) Going from a warm room to a cold room with the standard conveyor yields two different temperatures. The freezer part stayed cold, the exterior room without control stayed similar to the outside. It was handy for me, but I don't know if that's your intended action.
2) The reason I might not have been able to teleport was that there was a power conduit running under it. When I switched to the regular conveyor it stopped in the exact same place. I had power conduit running under the conveyor (the original setup I showed you as well). When I removed the power conduit, the conveyor worked well.
If I think about it later, I'll rebuild the power conduit and the teleporter. Then remove the power conduit and see if there is an effect.
Quote from: nuschler22 on December 30, 2014, 07:39:26 PM
1) Going from a warm room to a cold room with the standard conveyor yields two different temperatures. The freezer part stayed cold, the exterior room without control stayed similar to the outside. It was handy for me, but I don't know if that's your intended action.
Hum ... this is because I did not have time to properly include any 'temperature' effect to the belts yet. They pretty much behave like walls, and as such have no thermal conductivity. I'll add this to my to-do list (getting longer...). Thanks for spotting this.
Quote from: nuschler22 on December 30, 2014, 07:39:26 PM
2) The reason I might not have been able to teleport was that there was a power conduit running under it. When I switched to the regular conveyor it stopped in the exact same place. I had power conduit running under the conveyor (the original setup I showed you as well). When I removed the power conduit, the conveyor worked well.
Good catch, that's your problem right there (and I could reproduce it). Building a power conduit under the receiver will make it look 'busy' (this is linked to how the code checks for availability at that spot). Removing the undelrying power conduit will fix it. I'll fix this eventually, but for now, simply avoid building power conduits under the receiver. Thanks for your dedication in troubleshooting this !
Quote from: noone on December 30, 2014, 08:28:59 PM
Quote from: nuschler22 on December 30, 2014, 07:39:26 PM
1) Going from a warm room to a cold room with the standard conveyor yields two different temperatures. The freezer part stayed cold, the exterior room without control stayed similar to the outside. It was handy for me, but I don't know if that's your intended action.
Hum ... this is because I did not have time to properly include any 'temperature' effect to the belts yet. They pretty much behave like walls, and as such have no thermal conductivity. I'll add this to my to-do list (getting longer...). Thanks for spotting this.
Quote from: nuschler22 on December 30, 2014, 07:39:26 PM
2) The reason I might not have been able to teleport was that there was a power conduit running under it. When I switched to the regular conveyor it stopped in the exact same place. I had power conduit running under the conveyor (the original setup I showed you as well). When I removed the power conduit, the conveyor worked well.
Good catch, that's your problem right there (and I could reproduce it). Building a power conduit under the receiver will make it look 'busy' (this is linked to how the code checks for availability at that spot). Removing the undelrying power conduit will fix it. I'll fix this eventually, but for now, simply avoid building power conduits under the receiver. Thanks for your dedication in troubleshooting this !
No problem! It's a great mod!
Hey there,
I would like to ask if theres a reaon why all loaders have priority important. For me ppl tend to carry everything there then. And since I tend to build more than 1 loader at a time it often happens I miss when its ready. So, I changed priority in xml files. But I just have the feeling I may havent understood something.
And, wouldnt it be awesome to have some kind of "vacuum-loader" that aspirates anything droped on the field before it? ... or maybe u could define a "vaccum-zone" that will be aspirated onto the conveyer then.
With those, it wouldnt be needed to check compatibility for new mods so much since it should be possible to define a zone almost everywhere another mod can throw something.
heres a picture of the angled conveyor issue. its an intermittent bug once in awhile it seems an angled conveyor doesn't pick up on the direction of items correctly and it stops them from transferring items to the next conveyor.
in the second image the items are refusing to take the turn. i dont know why it just happens.
[attachment deleted due to age]
I suspect that there is a power line UNDER the turn that the items are refusing to go onto.
I have had this issue since the a8 version of the mod came out, but as most items can now be put on top of the power lines it tends to be beneficial
Quote from: harpo99999 on January 16, 2015, 03:28:25 PM
I suspect that there is a power line UNDER the turn that the items are refusing to go onto.
I have had this issue since the a8 version of the mod came out, but as most items can now be put on top of the power lines it tends to be beneficial
now that i think about it this has been the case so ill try and delete the different cables i have running under the conveyors.
It would be nice if the unloader could just dump the items on the floor around it. Or maybe fill up a zone set up around it.
Anyway, what I wanted to ask is do perishables such as meals waste on the conveyor belt? Because I noticed that it says "Outside" and shows the outside temperature when pointing at them even though they are inside a freezer.
Quote from: Rock5 on January 19, 2015, 01:32:19 AM
It would be nice if the unloader could just dump the items on the floor around it. Or maybe fill up a zone set up around it.
And you're not alone, this has been requested for a while. I might eventually make Unloaders drop items in a larger zone. But I'm flat out these days, so not anytime soon (and there's also a few things on my to-do list ahead of this). But if you want to contribute some code that does this, I'll happily merge it in ;)
Quote from: Rock5 on January 19, 2015, 01:32:19 AM
What I wanted to ask is do perishables such as meals waste on the conveyor belt? Because I noticed that it says "Outside" and shows the outside temperature when pointing at them even though they are inside a freezer.
No idea if meals perish or not o belts. Haven't actually tested this ... ;) Right now, the belts are like walls. There's some changes coming in A.9 regarding the heat conductivity of walls, so I'll delay looking into this issue until A.9.
FYI here is my to-do list: https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/issues
Just in case anyone is bored and looking for something to do, that is ... :D
Quote from: noone on January 23, 2015, 10:03:03 PM
Quote from: Rock5 on January 19, 2015, 01:32:19 AM
It would be nice if the unloader could just dump the items on the floor around it. Or maybe fill up a zone set up around it.
Yh, like me :). And I still vote for a vaccum thing to auto load stuff from some tiles :).
Quote from: noone on January 23, 2015, 10:03:03 PM
FYI here is my to-do list: https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/issues
Just in case anyone is bored and looking for something to do, that is ... :D
Its not only reciever stucking on power cable, also belts. And its not only power cable but anything. Had it stuck on steel, meal and other stuff (ofc that only happen with godmode... still its maybe a useful info)
how do i install this mod? i've extracted the file into mods folder, activate all the mods but nothing happened, no research etc. btw i activate the mod last. sorry for my english
Quote from: wikusaurus on January 28, 2015, 08:25:14 AM
how do i install this mod? i've extracted the file into mods folder, activate all the mods but nothing happened, no research etc. btw i activate the mod last. sorry for my english
Hi! :)
1. Confirm that you are running the newest version of Rimworld Alpha8f (671).
1b. Make sure the contents of the zip file (aka the A2B-0.8.0 folder) is in your mods folder, so the folder structure should look something like RimWorld657Win\Mods\A2B-0.8.0.
2. After that confirm that you have indeed activated A2B in the mods menu.
2b. You need to restart the game whenever you go into the mods menu, it causes glitches in the game if you start or load a game after being in there.
3. When you restart the game and start a new world+colony, or load your existing game, you should see the "A2B Conveyor Belts (300)" research in your research window.
3b. Alternatively you can enable the Developement Tools from the Game Options menu, activate GodMode from the new white buttons that popped up on your screen on the top-right. This allows you to build any of the structures your game has loaded in from the core game and mods.
If you still cannot find the conveyor belts, then I'm completely lost onto why it's not working, these steps are about 440% too much of what's necessary to make a mod work. ;D
Quote from: SilverDragon on January 28, 2015, 11:31:09 AM
Hi! :)
1. Confirm that you are running the newest version of Rimworld Alpha8f (671).
1b. Make sure the contents of the zip file (aka the A2B-0.8.0 folder) is in your mods folder, so the folder structure should look something like RimWorld657Win\Mods\A2B-0.8.0.
2. After that confirm that you have indeed activated A2B in the mods menu.
2b. You need to restart the game whenever you go into the mods menu, it causes glitches in the game if you start or load a game after being in there.
3. When you restart the game and start a new world+colony, or load your existing game, you should see the "A2B Conveyor Belts (300)" research in your research window.
3b. Alternatively you can enable the Developement Tools from the Game Options menu, activate GodMode from the new white buttons that popped up on your screen on the top-right. This allows you to build any of the structures your game has loaded in from the core game and mods.
If you still cannot find the conveyor belts, then I'm completely lost onto why it's not working, these steps are about 440% too much of what's necessary to make a mod work. ;D
i think i know where the problem is, first i use rimworld alpha 8e, and the last one is the rar file has some folders on it and i just extract it all among my other mods, thanks for your answer :D
I did that too. While adding a few new mods (drag and dropping with right mouse button and selecting "Extract Here") I noticed that A2B scattered it's folders among my mods instead of having a root folder. It seems to be common practice to have a root folder in the zip folder so I suggest NoOne package future versions like this.
Quote from: noone on January 23, 2015, 10:03:03 PM
Quote from: Rock5 on January 19, 2015, 01:32:19 AM
It would be nice if the unloader could just dump the items on the floor around it. Or maybe fill up a zone set up around it.
And you're not alone, this has been requested for a while. I might eventually make Unloaders drop items in a larger zone. But I'm flat out these days, so not anytime soon (and there's also a few things on my to-do list ahead of this). But if you want to contribute some code that does this, I'll happily merge it in ;)
The thing about this is that it would be good in some situations but there are also situations where the current behavior is preferable. I have a conveyor belt supplying Potatoes to my cook who doesn't ever need to move while cooking except to recharge (hm... I should add a recharge pad under his cooking spot so he never needs to move).
I still have a problem though. While there are potatoes on the conveyor belt he can access them but if there is a gap in the potatoes and the drop point becomes empty he will usually drop a meal on the potato drop point. Then he wont be able to get at the potatoes anymore. I then have to unlock the door and send in a hauler to move the meal.
It would be really useful if it could be made so that you can take items right of the unloader. So if it gets clogged around the unloader you can still always take some of whatever the conveyor belt is supplying.
Quote from: Rock5 on January 28, 2015, 11:47:07 PM
I still have a problem though. While there are potatoes on the conveyor belt he can access them but if there is a gap in the potatoes and the drop point becomes empty he will usually drop a meal on the potato drop point. Then he wont be able to get at the potatoes anymore. I then have to unlock the door and send in a hauler to move the meal.
I usually have a container of some type blocking the cooking droids way out, One container allowed for meats, one for vegetables, and one for meals. ;D So haulers bring raw foods for the cook, cook makes meals and slaps it back around to the containers, and haulers take them away. :) Works beautifully
I don't use any hauler, usually, except for the haulers that put the potatoes from the farm on the conveyor belts. The end of the potato belt is right next to the cook cooking. The cooking bill is set up do drop the meals on the floor. The cook table is in the middle of a room with a trade beacon right next to it. As the meals are dropped on the floor they spread out in a circle filling up the trade beacon area.
Actually I made a door between the cook room and the main beacon room where I locked in a hauler that unloads the conveyor belts. So if a meal drops on the potato unloading spot I can send in the hauler to move it without having to unlock any doors. Also when I open the cook room roof to trade meals with a bulk buyer and they drop stuff in the cook room, the hauler has easy access to move the stuff into the main beacon room.
That sounds like a lot of meals ... :) I can see why you would be having issues spots o the floor getting busy and stopping your delivery chain. I have been thinking about making colonist able to pick-up items from the unloaders, but ended up making them drop things on the floor instead for a variety of reasons. I am not a big fan of having both systems enabled at the same time. While I can see why it would be useful in your case, I also know many more other examples where this would not be a good thing.
That's the beauty of these conveyor belts. They are polyvalent, and often you would wish for one or more tweaks, but often such tweaks would instead reduce how polyvalent the system is. Note that I am all up for upgrades in general, but I have doubts on that one ...
One suggestions that I could offer is to make the square in front of the Unloader a stockpile with no meals allowed. Or even better, make the area around the beacon a stockpile for your meals (minus the square in front of the Unloader) and set the recipe to bring the meals to the best stockpile. But I suspect you have already considered this option ...
That's the beauty of STUFF. :D You need to figure out how to work around things instead of trying to make things fold around your work! ;D
Quote from: noone on January 29, 2015, 04:24:40 PMI have been thinking about making colonist able to pick-up items from the unloaders, but ended up making them drop things on the floor instead for a variety of reasons. I am not a big fan of having both systems enabled at the same time. While I can see why it would be useful in your case, I also know many more other examples where this would not be a good thing.
I sort of suspected as much. Maybe you could have a switch that allows you to choose if it should drop the item or not. I understand you have been considering making the dropped items spread out on the floor. Maybe you could make the switch choose if you want the item to stay on the unloader and so stop the flow of items on the belts or drop the items in a circle around the unloader. As I've said, and you have too, different situations have different needs. So it would be good if it could do both. For example you could have the unloader dump stuff all over the floor near your beacon for trading or you could leave it on the unloader if it's supplied for a specific task. I'm thinking though that if it remains on the unloader then it should pass items over to compatible devices that uses the item. So if you have a machine that uses a resource the unloader should pass the items over. Similar to how if a loader is near an Ore Extractor (from MD2) the Ore extractor puts items on it.
Quote from: noone on January 29, 2015, 04:24:40 PMOne suggestions that I could offer is to make the square in front of the Unloader a stockpile with no meals allowed. Or even better, make the area around the beacon a stockpile for your meals (minus the square in front of the Unloader) and set the recipe to bring the meals to the best stockpile. But I suspect you have already considered this option ...
I already have a beacon stockpile set for meals surrounding the cook table mainly so that if I need to unlock the door a bunch of haulers wont rush in to move the meals. I already have a clear spot in front of the unloader so the hauler that shares the space with the cook will come in and move the meal if 1 gets dropped there. I don't use "move to best stockpile" because the cook can probably make a couple of meals in the time he would take to go to the edge of the meal pile and drop of the meal, especially considering he is a slow MD2 droid.
You have to understand, in previous colonies I used to have to have a cook for every 15-20 people cooking continuously. If I set things up so the cook doesn't need to move and cook only simple meals he can easily cook for 50 or more people. It's amazing how fast he can cook. Before using the conveyor belts (same colony) I had the cook table in the potato freezer in the corner closest to the potato farm. So haulers would continuously surround the cook with potatoes. So the cook rarely had to move to reach potatoes. He was going so fast that he had time to top up the meals to 50 after the morning rush and still have time to go do some sculpting. To me that's amazing.
Great job with this mod, Evul! But I've found something you could perhaps look into. Whilst I have this mod enabled alongside Mechanical Defence 2, crafting droids goes a bit nutty & fails to give the droids their appropriate textures, also after crafting a droid, there's' an unselectable lump of, what looks like Coal from MD2. If I scroll over this objet it comes up with 'Logistics Droid' or whatever type the droid is, I was just wondering if this somehow changed the crafting process, or how the item '*Insert Type of Droid Here* Droid' is handled.
I just remembered that it's also possible to spawn droids with EbD's Prep Carefully mod, and the droids have the same icon in the interface(a single Coal item)
Just wondering if you'd look into this and maybe post a compatibility patch, Thanks!
is it impossible to make two or more line of conveyor to merge and become one line?
Quote from: wikusaurus on January 31, 2015, 11:39:11 AM
is it impossible to make two or more line of conveyor to merge and become one line?
Use a selector, it has two inputs and two outputs. Select everything for output one and clear everything for output two.
Just thought I'd share some observations.
- The textures need to be clearer;
- Curved Belt - the dots make it look like there are lines opposite to the ones that are there, sort of like an optical illusion. Needs to be clearer. Maybe take the outer corner off altogether. A real conveyor belt corner wouldn't have a pointed corner like that.
- Selector - The numbers could be bigger. Maybe have different colors for the numbers and arrows to help differentiate them.
- Splitter - Again, the arrows could be larger to make them easier to see and maybe color coded as well.
- Does the teleporter have to be so large? It takes up too much space especially when following a wall and you want to turn into and across the wall.
(https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5593.0;attach=6264;image)
- The splitter gets stuck sometimes. I understand you consider this bug a feature now, and I agree it's fitting as a feature, but that means all splitters need to be accessible. When an inaccessible Splitters get stuck in my set up I have to save then reload to get it moving. If I have to do that, instead of sending someone over to clear it, then it's no longer a quaint feature but an annoyance. So I'd rather it just be fixed.
- Sometimes the belts can get stuck. This only happened twice to me so far. This is not so easy to clear. I had to power down the belt. send someone over to clear it, save the game, reload, clear the belt again (as there was more items there), then it would go. So I agree, as was previously reported, that it is due to too many items on the belt. How it happens I'm not sure.
- I know you should be able to make any set up with the components currently available but catering to the limited orientations of the parts takes up a lot of space. We really need more orientations of the parts. I know you can't have a button for every orientation of every part but maybe you could have a control on the placed parts that allow you to change the orientation. Consider it a manual control. I assume real conveyor belts have ways to manually control the flow to deal with emergencies and such. By orientation I mean different patterns of input and output for the Splitter and selector.
I hope this is helpful and doesn't make me seem like a know-it-all. ;D
[attachment deleted due to age]
Hey Rock5,
Thanks for the feedback, always appreciated. I fear I have no time available for any major upgrade these days - at least not until March anyway. But this being said, here are a couple of points:
Quote from: Rock5 on February 01, 2015, 04:01:37 AM
- The textures need to be clearer;
- Curved Belt - the dots make it look like there are lines opposite to the ones that are there, sort of like an optical illusion. Needs to be clearer. Maybe take the outer corner off altogether. A real conveyor belt corner wouldn't have a pointed corner like that.
- Selector - The numbers could be bigger. Maybe have different colors for the numbers and arrows to help differentiate them.
- Splitter - Again, the arrows could be larger to make them easier to see and maybe color coded as well.
Agreed, some textures could be upgraded. I'll happily consider any suggestions - I will also happily share the existing textures as SVGs if anyone feels like improving on them. Just PM me. A quick note on the Curve: I tried 'chopping off' the corner before, but then the shadows would not look really good, hence my full square current design. I could not live with myself knowing that there was a square shadow for a round corner ... :)
Quote from: Rock5 on February 01, 2015, 04:01:37 AM
- Does the teleporter have to be so large? It takes up too much space especially when following a wall and you want to turn into and across the wall.
Well, teleporters are awesome because they allow you not to break walls. And given how the raiders tends not to attack walls if they're complete, that's a huge strategic advantage. So, the size is my way of balancing this a bit by forcing you think about your belt design :)
Quote from: Rock5 on February 01, 2015, 04:01:37 AM
- The splitter gets stuck sometimes. I understand you consider this bug a feature now, and I agree it's fitting as a feature, but that means all splitters need to be accessible. When an inaccessible Splitters get stuck in my set up I have to save then reload to get it moving. If I have to do that, instead of sending someone over to clear it, then it's no longer a quaint feature but an annoyance. So I'd rather it just be fixed.
- Sometimes the belts can get stuck. This only happened twice to me so far. This is not so easy to clear. I had to power down the belt. send someone over to clear it, save the game, reload, clear the belt again (as there was more items there), then it would go. So I agree, as was previously reported, that it is due to too many items on the belt. How it happens I'm not sure.
Features, features, they're all features :) Again, conveyor belts are awesome, but can be a pain if they get stuck, and these 'features' are good balance to me. Also, again, it forces you to think about your design to allow for 'repairs', making it soooo much more rewarding when it finally works the way you intended ...
Quote from: Rock5 on February 01, 2015, 04:01:37 AM
- I know you should be able to make any set up with the components currently available but catering to the limited orientations of the parts takes up a lot of space. We really need more orientations of the parts. I know you can't have a button for every orientation of every part but maybe you could have a control on the placed parts that allow you to change the orientation. Consider it a manual control. I assume real conveyor belts have ways to manually control the flow to deal with emergencies and such. By orientation I mean different patterns of input and output for the Splitter and selector.
That sounds overly complicated to me. Especially if one would need to set each belt component individually. Plus, that's beyond my current programming skills. I don't see this becoming reality anytime soon. Frankly, I like better the idea of forcing the user to think and cope with the limitations of the existing system, rather than give him full freedom to do what he wants. Sounds much more fun to me :)
would it be possible to make the belts be able to output onto a belt like in factorio, also, i find it hard to use the belts because they make walls and block off rooms, is there any chance in the future that that could change?
QuoteA quick note on the Curve: I tried 'chopping off' the corner before, but then the shadows would not look really good, hence my full square current design. I could not live with myself knowing that there was a square shadow for a round corner ... (https://ludeon.com/forums/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
:) You could make it a square table with a curve on it. So no empty corner but it would be a different color.
QuoteWell, teleporters are awesome because they allow you not to break walls. And given how the raiders tends not to attack walls if they're complete, that's a huge strategic advantage. So, the size is my way of balancing this a bit by forcing you think about your belt design (https://ludeon.com/forums/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
Except belts are walls so I don't use the teleporters to go through walls. I just punch through the walls with the belts. I try to only use the teleporters to create a path for colonists to go through. So why did I bring up the point about using the teleporters to go through walls, you say? Good question. :D
QuoteFeatures, features, they're all features (https://ludeon.com/forums/Smileys/default/smiley.gif) Again, conveyor belts are awesome, but can be a pain if they get stuck, and these 'features' are good balance to me. Also, again, it forces you to think about your design to allow for 'repairs', making it soooo much more rewarding when it finally works the way you intended ...
You are sort of forcing people to only be able to use belts if they plan on using them from the beginning. If someone already has a base or they want to extend the belt to a section they weren't initially intending to put belts, it will be practically impossible to do so if they haven't got the room for these huge complex belt structures. If they could be more simple in their design they could use them in more places.
QuoteThat sounds overly complicated to me. Especially if one would need to set each belt component individually. Plus, that's beyond my current programming skills. I don't see this becoming reality anytime soon. Frankly, I like better the idea of forcing the user to think and cope with the limitations of the existing system, rather than give him full freedom to do what he wants. Sounds much more fun to me (https://ludeon.com/forums/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
Here is a simple example to show you what I mean.
To have 4 loaders is fairly straight forward and uncomplicated.
(https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5593.0;attach=6270;image)
It would be great if having 4 unloaders could be just as simple and space saving but it's not.
(https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5593.0;attach=6272;image)
Image #1 is tight but ugly and access to a splitter is blocked.
Image #2 is neat and all splitters are accessible. Hm... not as bad as I thought but still takes up too much room. And 2 unloaders share an unload spot.
Image #3 I tried to design 1 that is only 2 wide. Managed it but it was so long that I could only fix 3 unloaders in the example because I ran out of room.
What I'd want to do is something like this.
(https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5593.0;attach=6274;image)
I actually had a think about how many extra button would be needed and I only came up with 3. I thought it would be a huge number. The only extra buttons you would need are;
(https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5593.0;attach=6278;image)
But I suspect you are not going to be convinced. :(
Edit: Just had a great idea. Why not have just 1 splitter that splits 3 ways? Any belt connected to one of the 3 ways will be included in the splitting. Then if you want to only use 2, you connect to the 2 you want to use. With the added bonus that you can split 3 ways which will reduce the number of belt parts needed. You already have code in the splitter that checks for blocked belts right? So it shouldn't be too much work to check 3 paths instead of 2. :) You could even use it instead of a corner. Hell, you could even make the belts modular like Modular tables and Modular Hydroponics and have wherever there is a join, it either turns or splits. I don't know if that's beyond your skill or if it's even feasible, probably not. I'm full of ideas today. :D
Edit 2: It's probably been mentioned before but there needs to be a Merger part. 2 reasons why selectors are not good as mergers; 1. a selector is a complex specialized piece of machinery that, in theory, should be expensive and use more power. A Merger would be a simple component that shouldn't cost more than a splitter. 2. A selector can only merge 2 lines. So a general purpose Merger could be made that merges upto 3 lines.
[attachment deleted due to age]
Interesting ideas ... I sort of like the concept of separating the splitter and the merger into their respective functions, and turn them into "3 sides + 1 side" items. I combined them initially to limit the number of components to a minimum ... but I see why it could be nice and elegant to separate them ... I shall ponder over this choice ...
But as a counterpart, I would then restrict the Selector to a single entry, and perhaps make it 2x1 in size for the fun of it. That would add one belt item (the "merger"), but I suppose it would indeed allow for more efficient designs ...
Quote from: Rock5 on February 01, 2015, 11:41:53 PM
If someone already has a base or they want to extend the belt to a section they weren't initially intending to put belts, it will be practically impossible to do so if they haven't got the room for these huge complex belt structures. If they could be more simple in their design they could use them in more places.
I think you are mistaken on the intentions of the A2B company: we don't try to make your life easier, we're trying to make money. Forcing you to expand your base means more digging means more colonists means more stuff to carry means more A2B Belt systems required. You call them "huge complex belt structures", we at A2B think they are beautiful work of art generating money :)
Quote from: dareddevil7 on February 01, 2015, 05:17:30 PM
would it be possible to make the belts be able to output onto a belt like in factorio
Nope. That's why we have the "Selector" with two entries.
Quote from: dareddevil7 on February 01, 2015, 05:17:30 PM
i find it hard to use the belts because they make walls and block off rooms, is there any chance in the future that that could change?
Yes, this hopefully will change in the future. I'm waiting for A9 right now to see how temperatures will fluctuate through walls and so on.
QuoteInteresting ideas ... I sort of like the concept of separating the splitter and the merger into their respective functions, and turn them into "3 sides + 1 side" items. I combined them initially to limit the number of components to a minimum ... but I see why it could be nice and elegant to separate them ... I shall ponder over this choice ...
The way I see it we currently have the splitter and selector. To be truly versatile I think what we need is a 3 way Splitter, the 2 possible selectors and a 3 way Merger. That's 4 components where there was 2.
QuoteBut as a counterpart, I would then restrict the Selector to a single entry
Not a good idea. The current Selector is in effect 2 Selectors (who uses both inputs of the selector?). You can use it as a left turning selector or a right turning selector. If you make it 1 input then you would need to make it 2 components, 1 that turns left and 1 that turns right. It's fine the way it is. If you make the other Selector I suggested then you could make that 1 input because it would be the same either side (assuming no one has a use for both inputs).
You could theoretically make a universal selector that has 1 input and 3 outputs of which only 2 can be connected. Then depending of which is connected, the left would be path 1 and the right would be path 2. But I think it would just confuse people.
QuoteI think you are mistaken on the intentions of the A2B company: we don't try to make your life easier, we're trying to make money.
:)
Which reminds me, I never payed for these belts. How much do I owe you? Where do I send the check?
Hi, I'm updating my mods for my next colony and I notice you don't include the version in the about info. Can you add the version in future versions please.
Just a single question: what is the length of teleportation and where can I change it?
What do you guys use the belts for? could i get a screen shot i am just confused at what you use em for?
Quote from: Rock5 on February 07, 2015, 12:56:09 AM
Hi, I'm updating my mods for my next colony and I notice you don't include the version in the about info. Can you add the version in future versions please.
Will do.
Quote from: xDahaka2012x on February 07, 2015, 03:43:19 AM
Just a single question: what is the length of teleportation and where can I change it?
The distance is set automatically based on the location of the receiver. Just built the teleporter and the receiver where you need/want them, and voilà . Note that both must be aligned and with the same rotation. If multiple receivers are on the same 'line', the items will be teleported to the first one.
Quote from: Mechanoid HiveMind on February 07, 2015, 02:31:01 PM
What do you guys use the belts for? could i get a screen shot i am just confused at what you use em for?
Here's what I usually use them for (cleaning up my farms):
https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/wiki/Screenshots
The idea basically to reduce the amount of repetitive hauling for your colonists. They still need to load the belts, but the hauling distance is greatly reduced, which speeds up the process. long story short, my fields were always field with zillions of potatoes in the past - they are now clean and tidy, as the belt reduced the hauling time by a lot.
In am sure others will be happy to oblige and share varied screenshots.
Hello there.
I just recently started playing Rimworld and i used to play Space Engineers for many months, since release even. So automated systems and especially conveyor belts are quite important to me.
So thanks for making that nice mod aswell as giving some good examples.
I also had 2 suggestions for new belt types:
> A merge/join-belt which has three inputs and one output.
(http://i.imgur.com/rt03Xnk.png)
> A "congestion detector" that always forwards materials if the belt at the normal output is empty. If the output however is occupied due to a congested belt (no movement as seen in your kitchen belt example https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/wiki/Screenshots) it acts as selector where your defined storage gets redirected to output 1 and the rest to output 2.
(http://i.imgur.com/5Vb3CdN.png)
Edit:
I am well aware that the "merge/join-belt" could be done otherwise, but only at the cost of 2 tiles instead of one. Hence why i suggested that smaller item.
Thanks for the great and enjoy :-)
I suggested the 3 way merger here (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=5593.msg98675#msg98675), as well as some other changes. Have a read if you're interested.
Yes i have seen that post, though i have to admit that i did not read about your second edit when i posted it, must have skipped it. Probalby because you explained everyting else so well with images but not that one, so take my first suggestion as addition to complete your previous suggestion. That said, the demand for it is there :-)
We at A2B are pleased to announce our latest release (v0.8.1), in which 'ye old Splitter was replaced by a) a 3-ways Splitter and b) a 3-ways Merger.
You requested them, here they are at last, and with an improved (?) design for even more clarity ! These new components will allow for smarter and less convoluted designs, especially in tight places. All credit goes to TehJoe for this update, available on the Github page of the mod: https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/releases
Disclaimer 1: this is an A8 update. A9 is right around the corner, but there's no knowing when A2B will be updated.
Disclaimer 2: there are still other issues I need to look at (https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/issues)
Disclaimer 3: should not say this, but I did not test the update myself. I fell victim to the 2011 MBP GPU issue, and can't run Rimworld anymore. I am forced to non-GPU demanding tasks for now, but can fix the mod "if you can tell me where the bug is" ... Run the mod at your own risk ! (this is why it is not yet announced on the main post, btw...)
Those 2 component are going to make all the difference. Thank you. I see you didn't add the other splitter I suggested. That's a good call as it's easy enough to simulate a left/right splitter and it would only take up 1 extra square.
The color codes are an improvement too but why didn't you color code the splitter too? You could have made the arrows red and the numbers green. Like this.
(https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5593.0;attach=6574)
That would have been helpful to me.
And even though you rounded out the corner a bit it's still not round so I imagine items will still getting stuck in the corner. :) It needs a nice even curve so items get pushed around the corners smoothly, like this.
(https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5593.0;attach=6573)
Although at least now it'seasier to see which way it's facing.
[attachment deleted due to age]
Quote from: noone on February 15, 2015, 12:48:45 AM
Disclaimer 2: there are still other issues I need to look at (https://github.com/noone57/RW_A2B/issues)
Disclaimer 3: should not say this, but I did not test the update myself. I fell victim to the 2011 MBP GPU issue, and can't run Rimworld anymore. I am forced to non-GPU demanding tasks for now, but can fix the mod "if you can tell me where the bug is" ... Run the mod at your own risk ! (this is why it is not yet announced on the main post, btw...)
To anyone who runs the mod at their own risk, please do post issues here or preferably on the GitHub page if any are encountered, and I'll see what I can do. It's not like there's a team of beta testers checking this for bugs.
Quote from: Rock5 on February 15, 2015, 04:00:10 AM
The color codes are an improvement too but why didn't you color code the splitter too?
Actually, I did ... I just forgot to post it on Github ... :)
Also, I like your suggestion on the curve. Are you ok for me to swap mines for yours ?
[attachment deleted due to age]
Ah, your selector looks much nicer.
Quote from: noone on February 15, 2015, 04:47:03 PMAlso, I like your suggestion on the curve.
That's what I meant all along. Are you saying you never understood what I meant? And I
tried to be as clear as possible. Grrr.
Quote from: noone on February 15, 2015, 04:47:03 PMAre you ok for me to swap mines for yours ?
Sure, if the work is good enough for you.
Quote from: Rock5 on February 15, 2015, 11:41:10 PM
That's what I meant all along. Are you saying you never understood what I meant? And I tried to be as clear as possible. Grrr.
Oh, I understood perfectly ... I was just waiting a) to be convinced about it, and b) for the proper opportunity to implement the change ;) I will update my own SVG vectorial copy along what you did ... I like to work with vectorial graphics - it makes updating the textures a lot easier.
A quick example of what the 3-way mergers/splitters are capable of:
(http://puu.sh/fZtA9/905adc03ef.jpg)
It might look like the belt structure is wasting a lot of space in that stockpile, but keep in mind the unloaders will push their items out into the stockpile once the chunks in front of them are removed, so each unloader is effectively a stockpile slot in that regard. If all the unloaders are full, the chunks will get backed up into the splitters which will still push them into the stockpile eventually, so in reality this stockpile is as big as it would've been without the belt structure!
Nice.
Which reminds me, I had an issue with the Splitters I wanted to bring up. This is with the old 2 way splitter. I don't know if it was changed in the 3 way splitter. I haven't tested it.
Currently the way a Splitter works, I believe, is to alternate sending items to each output. If an output is blocked it sends the item to the unblocked output. This is good but... if both outputs are blocked I think it assigns the item to one of the blocked outputs anyway. Then if an output becomes free and it's not the one the splitter chose to send the item then the splitter becomes stuck until the other output clears.
Hm... That might be hard to follow. Let me go through a scenario.
- Splitter receives an item and sends it left.
- It receives another and sends it right. Right becomes blocked.
- It receives another and sends it left.
- It receives another. Right is blocked so it sends it left. Left becomes blocked.
- It receives another. Both are blocked. Right was to be next so it waits to send it right.
- Left becomes clear but the splitter is still waiting for right to become clear.
It would be better if the splitter didn't pre decide which way it is going to send the item but instead waited to see which way becomes free first then send it that way.
What do you think?
Quote from: Rock5 on February 16, 2015, 09:46:41 AM
Currently the way a Splitter works, I believe, is to alternate sending items to each output. If an output is blocked it sends the item to the unblocked output. This is good but... if both outputs are blocked I think it assigns the item to one of the blocked outputs anyway. Then if an output becomes free and it's not the one the splitter chose to send the item then the splitter becomes stuck until the other output clears.
I didn't write the original splitter code, but I did alter the routing code of the splitter significantly in the 0.8.1 version. The bolded is certainly the way the splitter is meant to work. I haven't personally experienced them clogging in the way you describe in 0.8.0 or 0.8.1 (I didn't actually use the 2-way splitter much), but I wouldn't be surprised if that issue was inadvertently addressed by the changes I made. If you run into the same issue in 0.8.1, let me know and I'll see if I can find what causes it.
I don't have time to test it right now. I'll try to test it tomorrow.
I don't really know C# but I had a quick look at the code (). It looks like the Splitter GetDestinationForThing function always returns a destination regardless of whether all the outputs are full or not. So I think it would still have the same problem. For it to work properly it would have to skip trying to move the item if all the outputs are full and keep checking GetDestinationForThing until it returns a destination which should happen when an output is finally clear. But, like I said, I don't know C#, so I could be wrong.
Quote from: Rock5 on February 16, 2015, 12:26:28 PM
For it to work properly it would have to skip trying to move the item if all the outputs are full and keep checking GetDestinationForThing until it returns a destination which should happen when an output is finally clear.
As far as I know, that's what it does:
public void Tick()
{
(...)
foreach (var thing in Contents.Where(ShouldIncreaseCounter))
{
_thingCounter[thing]++;
}
}
private bool ShouldIncreaseCounter([NotNull] Thing thing)
{
(...)
var destination = _parentComponent.GetDestinationForThing(thing);
var belt = destination.GetBeltComponent();
// If no belt items, then move things only if this is an unloader
if (belt == null)
{
if (_parentComponent.IsUnloader())
{
// If this is an unloader always increment the counter
return destination.CanPlaceThing(thing);
}
return false;
}
// If there is a belt, only move things if it can accept them from us
if (!belt.CanAcceptFrom(_parentComponent))
return false;
return belt.Empty;
}
But then, I've made some changes to routing code since the 0.8.1 version so this may not represent what's actually released. (I'm still tweaking a few things here and there so the version I have running on my machine is a little different from the one currently released) I'll make a note to test the splitter for the clogging issue when I test other changes.
EDIT: Just tested for and fixed the clogging issue. It turns out the splitter was being re-checked for a good destination, but the splitter wouldn't consider any others until its item changed.
Just to add my two cents on the splitter clogging issue: I delayed fixing it because I saw it as a fun unintentional feature - it's a less advanced equipment than the selector, and so sometime it's not quite perfect. Also, I liked the idea of the users pesting against malfunctioning A2B software, having to draft a colonist to un-clog the belt ... :)
This being said, I won't complain the issue is gone. Thanks for all your input TehJoE ! It is genuinely much appreciated.
Another one of your features Grrr. LoL.
Except in this case I don't "draft a colonist to un-clog the belt" but have to manually prioritize hauling from the clogged side of the splitter. The belts are supposed to automate things, not make us do thing manually.
TehJoe, glad to hear you fixed it.
A2B has evolved into a fully fledged corporation. The new thread is here:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=10644.0
With this change, we at A2B hope to secure a bright future for the mod while allowing easy contributions from the community.
This thread is now closed.