Posted by kovarex on 2017-08-04

I decided to write about the results of the item stack optimisations explained in the FFF-198, so I rushed today to finish its implementation, just to find out that the task affects an even bigger part of the code than I expected, Items are related to many things in Factorio :)

After many hours of rewriting and fixing, I can compile it and even start a game, but most of the things are broken. It is quite funny to see some of the basic item interactions to be broken. Now I'm making commits like "Now I can split stacks", "Now I can merge stacks", etc. It reminds me the old days. In conclusion, the details of the optimization will have to wait for next week, and since it is after 10pm, this Friday facts will be somewhat shorter :)

High res and improved circuit connectors

I can at least present you the continued work on the updated high resolution graphics. The update of circuit connectors not only provides them in high resolution, but as it is possible to see it in more detail, the graphics can show more accurately what it represents. Specifically, if the connector is only reading the state of the machine (blue LED), controlling its behaviour (red/green LED) or both.

You can also clearly see how weird it looks when we combine a low res entity (roboport, chests, liquid tank) with a high res connector, but this is just a temporary state and most of these entities should be high-res compatible when the release is ready.

You can also notice (on the chests for example), that the green and red connectors are not vertically aligned, which might look slightly weird, but it is on purpose. In the current version (0.15), when two entities are in one column and they are using both the green and red cable, they overlap perfectly so it is impossible to see both of the cables at the same time as shown below.

Additionally, the green LED in this example doesn't make any sense, as the chest will always have only read mode, which is also addressed in the new graphics.

As always, leave us any feedback or comments over on our forum