Recursive Blueprints / explosion icons

[Hasturspex]

Factorio base ver 1.1.91 (build 61680, win64), IR ver 3.1.7, Recursive Blueprints ver 1.2.7

As stated, IR 3 seems incompatible with Recursive Blueprints. I have a bunch of other mods, most of them QoL, but the crash only occurs when trying to launch the game with both IR3 and RB enabled. With RB disabled, the game launches fine.

This is the error: Error while loading entity prototype "IR-blueprint-deployer-explosion" (explosion): Key "icon_size" not found in property tree at ROOT.explosion.IR-blueprint-deployer-explosion

I've read some of the other issues and read that you don't like marking every single mod that doesn't work with IR as incompatible, but this sounds like an issue that would be at least somewhat easy to fix. Also, I searched the closed issues and haven't found anything about Recursive Blueprints, which is why I created this one.

Have a nice day! :)

[Deadlock989]

I can't reproduce this error with just IR3 and RB installed - it loads up just fine, although in-game there doesn't seem to be any way to unlock either of the entities that RB adds.

Please supply a full mod list, or a saved game with the mods activated that produce this error.

[Deadlock989]

Without a way to reproduce this error, I'm limited in what I can do, but I have just made a couple of changes for a future version, which may or may not address the issues.

• The quoted error is from an IR3 explosion prototype. Given that this doesn't happen with just RB and IR3 installed, my guess is that some other unknown mod is doing something less than ideal (but not technically illegal) to the RB blueprint deployer entity's icon definition and IR3 is making an incorrect assumption about how to handle it. I have worked around this by simply removing any attempt to give custom explosions any kind of specific icon - they are not seen in regular play and are only visible within the editor; even the base mod doesn't always bother with assigning unique icons to things like explosions (e.g. biter explosions are left with the "unknown" question mark icon).

• On the more general issue of third party mods inserting recipe unlocks into vanilla technologies that IR3 does not use and has disabled. RB actually handles this kind of thing better than the majority of mods out there by at least checking to see if the vanilla tech exists before it tries to index it (and simply unlocking the recipes from game start if it doesn't), but it doesn't handle the case where the tech still exists but has been disabled. IR3 already maintains a list of vanilla techs (there is no other way to distinguish a base mod tech from a third party mod tech) so it will now check disabled vanilla techs to see if there are any unexpected recipe unlocks added to them, and where there is a known IR3 equivalent, transfer the unlocks to that tech instead. It is possible (and is the case with RB) that the ingredients of those recipes may not have been unlocked yet at that stage of the tech tree, which is something that IR3 generally avoids, but it is better than the recipe simply being unlockable. This has been tested with RB and the blueprint deployer and scanner unlocks end up in the Roboport Equipment tech.

[Deadlock989]

Made one further improvement to explosions here. Historically IR has been generating scrap-based "dying explosions" for entities since (I think) IR1, i.e. before Factorio left early access with 1.0, putting an IR- prefix on the explosion name. At some point (maybe for 1.0, I don't know) Factorio gained a great deal many more customised explosions for individual entities. This means that with IR3 there are currently a large number of unused vanilla explosions occupying the raw prototype table and using some RAM. In the next version IR will overwrite the majority of them with its own explosions instead - there are some exceptions where the explosion names don't fit the general scheme that applies to 95%+ of them.

Recursive Blueprints continues to load successfully with these changes but then I couldn't ever reproduce the reported error in the first place. If I get a mod list I can check further but without that I'm going to assume this issue is resolved for now.

[Hasturspex]

Sorry for not replying, I had a busy couple days.

I have reproduced this issue and isolated it - it only occurs when trying to launch the game with IR3, Recursive Blueprints (versions of all mods and Factorio as stated in the original post), and AAI Containers & Warehouses, ver. 0.2.11, and all the other mods I had don't seem to change anything about the error message (when trying to load with only these three mods, the error message is the same as with the full suite I had before, which is in the original message).

It's super weird, since the game loads fine with any two of the mods enabled, but with all three it breaks and blames IR3. If you resolve this issue, could you please update this thread with what was the problem? I'm quite interested in what went wrong.

Have a nice day :)

[Deadlock989]

Aha. This is one of those situations where three mods all are doing something which works out fine most of the time but produces an illegal result when they all wrestle over the same thing at once.

As background, you need to know that there are two ways of defining icons for items, recipes and entities, summarised by IconSpecification. Either you supply an icons array, which is intended for layered icons, or you must supply both an icon property and an icon_size property to represent a single layer icon. The crucial part here is that if icons is present then icon is ignored, _even if icon_size is missing_. If icons is not present but icon is present and icon_size is missing, the game halts with the kind of error you got.

The three mods were conspiring to produce an illegal result as follows:

• AAIC&W changes the vanilla steel chest's icon by adding a layered icons definition. The icon and icon_size properties are apparently removed.
• RB bases its blueprint deployer prototype on the vanilla steel chest. It wrongly assumes that the steel chest always has a single layer icon definition, and it overwrites the icon property to reflect a new sprite path, but it does not attempt to update icon_size and does not check for the presence of icons. This new icon is therefore ignored by the game engine if AAIC&W is installed, because AAIC&W added icons. You can see that for the blueprint deployer entity, if AAIC&W and RB are installed without IR3, the entity's icon looks like an AAI steel chest in entity selection menus (e.g. the upgrade planner or deconstruction planner).
• IR3 meanwhile creates a large set of custom explosions for craftable entity deaths, and it was previously trying to give every explosion an icon based on the exploding entity. It wrongly assumed that if icon was defined then icon_size would also be defined, because the game can't load otherwise - except it can, if icons is present. It didn't handle the situation where icons was present, overriding anything else, and icon was also present but icon_size was missing - exactly the weird state that the RB blueprint deployer ends up in when RB and AAIC&W are both installed.

This is fixed on IR3's end for the next version (3.1.8) and all three mods will load together. RB would need to address the remaining issue with its entity icons itself.

[Hasturspex]

Thanks a lot for the explanation! That's pretty interesting.