[A13] A2B: conveyor belts & co. [v0.13.2]

[1000101]

Well, it's good to know that at least some of my ideas will be implemented. Is there any specific individuals who might be able to make specified production machine a reality? It's kind-of hard to tell if the "addons" are only made by you and your team, or if anyone is able to make an addon for your mod. Should I just ask anyone willing to do it on the mod request forum, or should I ask someone specific (such as yourself) via private message(if that's even a thing here)?

Well, it's actually noone's mod and his team.  I only joined the team after creating the first add-on mod A2B Selectors.  So, anyone can create anything and that is the beauty of modding.  Of course we won't stop anyone who want to extend the mod or has ideas for it.  noone wants to maintain the scope of the mod and I although I have done the mod maintenance for the last couple alpha releases, I try to keep his original vision.

By all means though, if you want to create something to work with A2B be it an add-on like the selectors or another mod which can take advantage of A2B (such as Mechanical Defence 2's Ore Extractor), go for it!  Credit will of course be given (see list of contributors who have in some way added something be it a translation or code updates) and contributions will always be welcomed.

[noone]

** Post-holiday long post warning **

Is there any specific individuals who might be able to make specified production machine a reality? It's kind-of hard to tell if the "addons" are only made by you and your team, or if anyone is able to make an addon for your mod. Should I just ask anyone willing to do it on the mod request forum, or should I ask someone specific (such as yourself) via private message(if that's even a thing here)?

Anyone is welcome to join us at the A2B corporation. The more we are the merrier, and the higher the chances for the mod to last longer. For example, I just came back from 3 weeks offline, but things kept moving on this thread!

As 1000101 pointed out, we had different kind of external contributions in the past, ranging from one-off improvements to extended pushes to Github over several alphas. Usually, large contributors join the team (for one alpha or longer), and get to influence/contribute more directly the future of the mod if they want to.

Regarding the crafting plant idea - this is something that I have personally wished for for a while. Mostly because it would be the perfect complement to the belt system. As was said many times before, the A2B: conveyor belts "core" mod itself will only ever deal with transport issues. And I want to keep it that way (i.e. small and specific), because I think mods should be small and adaptable. Users should be able to use only features they want/like. I, for one, hate to play with large mods just because they have 1 element I have but otherwise useless features (to me), or graphics I dislike. Which is exactly why I very much dislike mod-packs, and always cherry pick mods I really enjoy. Not that I don't see the point of mod-packs, but they cater to the masses as a whole, while I try to cater to the masses as a collection of individuals. I am sure you will have seen the strong push from mod-authors making their respective mods customizable using the add-ons approach. A2B is no different to these.

The way I see things, I would create a parallel mod to "A2B: conveyor belts", called "A2B: Machines" (or something alike). Both would be very closely linked and hosted together on our Github account, but yet fully separated, and could be played independently (i.e. machines should be fed by simple hoppers). People maintaining either mod would also not need to be the same either. So, not an add-on to A2B:conveyor belts, but rather a "co-mod" ...

Regarding finding people to do it, well, good luck In the past, I found that very few/no people are willing to code everything from scratch for someone else, unless they LOVE the idea. Most of us within A2B are already flat-out or busy otherwise ... and an old "help fishing expedition" (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=6638.msg65517#msg65517) of mine encountered little success ... Requests for help for specific issues are much (MUCH) more likely to get support from the community, so your best bet would be to try coding things yourself, see how far you can get, and ask for specific help as required.

For example: a simple machine would not be too different from a nutrient paste dispenser - only with different ingredient requirements. I was thinking, as a test case, to adapt the nutrient paste dispenser into a rock crusher machine. Takes rock chunks in, and returns some sand on the floor around it. Or as a start, rock chunks -> stone blocks. Or you could start with creating killer graphics, which might help motivate others to join your endeavour ... I thought a 3-tiles x 3-tiles structure (à-la geothermal generator) would be appropriate and nicely symmetric (I attach an old first-attempt design).

Well, that was a long post ... but I hope it shines some light on the structure and functioning of the A2B corporation !

[attachment deleted due to age]

[donoya]

Well then, I was actually pondering on if I should do modding for rimworld, and so long as it's not too big of a hassle (like if there's a big list of restrictions/ required skills (as I'm not the best with digital graphics and if there's something I really don't want to do, I tend to rebel when not given another alternative)), I would like to join your team of coders (I have had some experience with java and have at least understood some of the lua and C++ that I came across. I know how to convert binary, hexadecimal and decimal numbering systems (although I don't think that matters). Also, if I do, do I need to give any personal information or am I allowed to remain anonymous?

[noone]

Well, as described in the OP, it's all on Github: https://github.com/A2Bcorp/RW_A2B

You can fork what you'd like to improve, and then push your work, so we can have a look at it and merge it. But for the A2B: machines, you're probably better off writing the mod from scratch, since you don't need all the Belt-specific mechanisms, and it really should be stand-alone.

Just to be clear: we're all very independent within the A2B corporation. We code and develop things on our own, and only merge them when they are ready/near-ready. The "team" aspect comes in at these very late stages to iron-out bugs and things. In particular, we don't code extensive elements together. I can't speak for other members in the coporation, but we're all very busy and with plans on our own. This is why "joining the A2B corporation" has always "followed" a large contribution from an individual, rather than "preceded" it. In other words, if you code an add-on/co-mod for the A2B system, then you're in the corporation. But you should NOT expect that "joining the corporation" implies that the corporation will massively help you write a co-mod like A2B: machines. For that, you're still on your own - at least until you have some working code to share and that we can look at. Hopefully that makes sense ?

As per anonymity, none of us actually know each others other than via our RM forum and Github user names, so no issues there. We won't ask for your credit card number

[The13thRonin]

This mod is in a mod-pack I use but I literally have no idea how it works.

Lets say I set up a belt leading from my kitchen to my food storage stockpile (freezer). Will it only unload onto one square? What happens when that square becomes filled? Will it start spreading out to all the spaces in the food stockpile zone?

If not why would I use belts instead of hauling the items?

Any videos of this mod at work?

[1000101]

This mod is in a mod-pack I use but I literally have no idea how it works.

It's pretty simple, it's a conveyor belt, it moves items through the belt system from input (loader) to destination (unloader) and be routed (selectors) with a minimal of components built.

Lets say I set up a belt leading from my kitchen to my food storage stockpile (freezer). Will it only unload onto one square? What happens when that square becomes filled? Will it start spreading out to all the spaces in the food stockpile zone?

Yes, the unloader only onloads to the one square.  There is no "spreading" of items around it.  When the square is full the remaining items will simply wait on the belt until they can be unloaded.  I generally route items in such a way that only one item of a given type is unloaded at any given square.

If not why would I use belts instead of hauling the items?

(a) Because your pawns have more important things to do than haul items across the map, and it is far for efficient for your farmer to load all those potatoes onto a conveyor belt and get back to farming than to have all your colonists run around hauling potatoes, additionally;
(b) If setup properly, your pawns working at tables don't need to go anywhere (litterally) to continue working on bills.  The unloaders can drop the resources right beside the work table to do the bills for that table and with a loader in close proximity to take the finished items away.  This drastically improves your efficiency (by large factors, not just small percents).

If you use the selector to split your goods up to individual items (ie, potatoes only, berries only, etc), you can insure that if you have potatoes (or whatever), they will be in immediate proximity to your work table without having a pawn run to fetch it.

Any videos of this mod at work?

Unfortunately not at this time that I am aware of.  Make a dummy colony and play around with the system until you are familiar with it.  It's very powerful and enables you to run colonies with pawns actually working instead of running around.

[rsof69]

alpha 12 update pls

[686d7066]

I´ve sent a Pull-Request on GitHub for a fixed version for Alpha 12. Hope I used the correct branch (development) for those changes.

[1000101]

That's cool, thanks

tbh, I've got A2B updated I'm just doing final tests before I push and release it.    I want to make sure I don't miss subtle bugs like I did in CCL.

[A2Bcorp]

I´ve sent a Pull-Request on GitHub for a fixed version for Alpha 12. Hope I used the correct branch (development) for those changes.

Indeed that is the correct channel to submit changes, patches or updates.  We appreciate you doing this but our team was already hard at work. 

That being said...

Alpha 12 Update!

All parts of the mod (core and add-ons) are updated to Alpha 12c!  This update adds the features described in the v0.11.3 Testing Release.

[blub01]

Is it intended that the undertaker in pulling mode uses like 6kW? also, a nice thing would be a system that could pick up items in a certain range(maybe a robotic arm on a frame system you have to set up, for example around your field, which automatically picks up the products.

EDIT:
oh, and I've had some issues with the conveyors being powered(maybe because i have conduits stuffed, and thus use non-vanilla conduits? anyway, when I build underground conveyors on power cables, they don't get power sometimes.
EDIT2: i think. i have absolutely no idea if that is true, power has been pretty wonky anyway because i when i installed a few mods i just used my vanilla save.

[1000101]

Hopefully this will answer some questions...

Underground belts and unpowered slides do not draw power directly.

Powered Lifts draw 50 watts + 10 watts (same as a surface belt) for every underground section it's pulling.  This means that you could have one powered lift drawing 100 watts and another drawing 1kW or more.  In my tests I've had lifts drawing over 2000 watts.

The reason?  So you can segment your power grid.  People were still using teleporter/receiver pairs to segment their grids and this resolves that, the underground belts used to draw power directly but you couldn't segment your grid.  This way you can segment the grid but the powered lifts need lots of juice to run.  It doesn't use any more power than it would if the underground belts drew power directly though and about the same amount of power for distance as a teleporter/receiver depending on your configuration.

As to robotic arms, etc.  No.  This is not Factorio.  A2B is about conveyor belts, not robots.  Plus, there are plenty of droid mods you can use as dumb haulers to the loaders.

[blub01]

well, something is broken then, that particular undertaker had 6 belts attached.

[1000101]

Could you post a screenshot with the offending component selected?  It's hard to do anything with nothing to go on.

[blub01]

Could you post a screenshot with the offending component selected?  It's hard to do anything with nothing to go on.

sadly, no, as this morning my game just suddenly broke when i had A2B(or any mod at all, not quite sure), and I had deconstructed it before that, anyway.