Offering to be a contributor / maintainer

[snouz]

Hi Rudegrass ! I didn't really know the best way to reach you,

I've been working on a number of mods to update graphics, improve compatibility and other stuff, and I see you're not really active on Factorio anymore, so I wanted to offer my contribution as a maintainer / updater !

You can check some of my contributions here: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/MbrTestMod, also my pull requests on github, my other mod projects https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLhDFpAPh_Nf-bpZ8wTLvSQ ... Anyway, if you're interested, you can add me as a contributor on the mod portal, and I'll start working on that ! You'd still have the last word of course, but what I do is mainly polish, I won't break the things : )

[squidy5]

Hi snouz! Well thanks a lot for the offer! You are right, I currently have no time to maintain this project and your more than welcome to pick up the work from here. I added you as a mod collaborator on the forum! I must admit, the mod contains quite a few hacks and dirty solutions, and some probably pretty unreadable code as well. If you have any questions feel free to contact me, I ll try to answer all questions.

[squidy5]

I also invited you as a collaborator to this repository. Feel free to merge pull request, answer and close issues to your liking. No pressure though, if you want to mainly focus on your own additions that's of course perfectly fine!

[snouz]

Hi rudegrass, and thank you for inviting me !

I've copied the repo as a fork and have made some changes. Mainly, I've created proper tech icons and reimagined icons (probably non-final, and of course you can tell me if you don't like something), and cleaned some parts of the code's appearance. You can follow progress here, I'm always uploading my changes bit by bit.

My project now is to make everything in HR resolution, with separate shadows. I see you've got a folder full of original blender files and and even some renders. There's one problem though. I don't have a huge knowledge of blender, and I tried loading some files. UV mapping is broken, I can't figure out how to render with transparency etc. Are you the original designer? Do you know who could help me re-render those ? Or maybe you have some lost files? I would mainly need to re-render the cargo ship, and maybe the tanker. The boat and the bridge are already present as high res sheet/images, so I can find a way with those. Btw, would you object to me lowering the frame count of those a bit? 256 seems overkill, since normal wagons are 128 frames and vehicles are 64 frames.

[snouz]

Something else I found how to do and will do: water reflections !

[squidy5]

First of all those icons are really beautiful, makes me realize how ugly they are currently :D Well, I am the original author of the boat and bridge, somebody else modeled the tankler/and cargo ships for me. I put textures on the latter, but extremely amateurishly, without creating proper UV-maps (which I didn't know how to do at the time). There also is a new version of the cargo ship I never finished texturing, which fits the original factorio-.theme better. But in the end I am not sure what to do about it right now, sounds like I should at some point retexture those ships :D. But I don't know when I will find the time to do so.

Well you definitely can try reducing the frames, just keep in mind that those entities are very large making missing frames more visible. You'd have to check how smooth those turns look in-game.

[snouz]

Thanks for the compliment !

I realized the boats are less high res than I thought, since their scale is 1.7 (which means we'd need 3.4 the resolution for hr, so 1700x1700 pics per orientation) But I found an easier way to implement the images: not doing sheets and making a loop that lists 256 files instead.

Anyway, I'm doing a lot of scale conversions, my goal is to have everything at scale 0.5 + a lr version, but without having a huge graphics folder. I don't like to degrade images, but In this case, it might require going through png compression with a bit of loss, and maybe some frame reduction.

I've opened a working branch for the hr_version work, the icons being on the master in a stable state, so if you wish, I can already push an update with the icon changes. I think the more active the mod is on the mod portal, the more it will generate interest / trend / downloads.

[snouz]

Oh btw, do you by chance still have the gimp / ps file for the oil rig?

[squidy5]

I just checked and sadly I don't have any working files of this project anymore. Feel free to push an update with the icon changes, they are a really nice addition, and getting all those hr-grapics might take some time still...

[snouz]

I thought adding water reflections was going to be much harder than it is !

[snouz]

I did some custom map icons for the boats.

[snouz]

I've finished boats (short of re-rendering, which is my plan but later) And also ports:

I've opened a request on the forum to be able to use the same render as railed boat. https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=556806

[snouz]

So far, the changelog looks like this.

Version: 0.0.60
Date: 2021-11-21
  Updated-by:
    - snouz
  Visuals:
    - New HD technology icons (8).
    - New item icons (11)
    - Unrailed boat: HR version (original render, .5 scale, from 1.2), 256 directions (from 64), improved with filters, water reflection, separate shadow, softer light.
    - Railed boat: HR version (using AI upscaling, .5 scale, from 1.5), improved with filters, water reflection, separate shadow, softer light.
    - Oil Tanker: Twice as detailed (original render, .85 scale from 1.7), water reflection, separate shadow, custom map icon, softer light.
    - Cargo Ship: Twice as detailed (using AI upscaling, .85 scale from 1.7), water reflection, separate shadow, custom map icon, softer light.
    - Port: Reworked in HR, water relection, shadow, improved position.
    - Improved splash effect.
  Optimization:
    - Compressed some animations to save space.
    - Some file sorting
  Sound:
    - Small boat as vehicle makes a noise scaled to speed.
  Locale:
    - Added Polish locale (thanks to RadianOst).
    - Updated Russian locale (thanks to IgorLutiy).
    - Fixed typo.

What would be your opinion on naming this update 0.1.0 after I'm done with all the changes, since there are so many of them?

[squidy5]

Looks great, I think the improved visuals really add to the mod. To be honest, I don't really care to much for the version naming, so go ahead. I guess it's a handy way to see which changes were made after you started working on this mod, so feel free :).

[snouz]

Clean and adjusted rails

[snouz]

[snouz]

I've opened another ticket for another problem with rail signal entities : )

Also, here's a quick rough sketch of a planned update of the oil rig. (I insist that it won't look like that, it'll with the rest nicely)

I wanted the opinion of the structure / global shape of it though. The pump will be animated.

[squidy5]

:D well if you insist it won't look like that, go ahead! Would be nice to have a more 3D-look for the oil rig and my take honestly was pretty low effort. In the end i would have to see the end result and decide if it is an improvement over the old design.

One thing I noticed with the power poles, that the shadows of the power lines dont really fit. But I am not sure if that already has been an issue before.

[snouz]

I updated the shadows since then :)

[snouz]

Probably non-final, but I find it's an improvement over the original. It's lit, pumpjack is animated, 4 pipe directions, smoke adjusted, pump stops when it doesn't work

[snouz]

@rudegrass Hey, so I've completed my initial todo, and robot and I have collaborated to merge our contributions. There's some adjustments yet to do and robot hasn't finished his own list, but there's something I want your opinion on: what would you think about making the graphics part of a separate dependent mod? It's currently ~71 MB, and it'd be a shame to make everyone re-download it every time there's a small locale/script update. It's something that's done on a lot of large mods (SE, Krastorio...), Robot thinks it's a good idea. On the repo, I would simply create the submod in a folder. What do you think?

[squidy5]

I totally agree with the creation of a graphics sub-mod, that's actually something I always wanted to do but never got around to actually doing!

[snouz]

@rudegrass All right ! Well I did that, folder cargo-ships-graphics is the submod, and it's tested/stable. When you have the time, could you create a new mod page with it and add me (and maybe robot256 as well) as contributors? Or do you prefer I do it myself and add you?

[squidy5]

Great, I created the mod and added you both as contributors! https://mods.factorio.com/mod/cargo-ships-graphics

[snouz]

IT IS OUT https://mods.factorio.com/mod/cargo-ships/

Staying available and alert to any bug report that would arise.

[snouz]

BTW if you have some savegames from which I can snatch some screenshots to update the modpage...

[squidy5]

congrats on the big release! and nice job with the fast bugfixes!

[snouz]

Thanks ! Hope you're happy with our result !

Btw do you have a savefile for me, the I could use for updated screenshot, or even, maybe, a short video?

[squidy5]

No i don't, sorry.

[MilanDierick]

@snouz @rudegrass

Hey guys, awesome work you're doing here, but it might be more ideal to move these conversations to either Discord or another chat platform, or move towards using the Projects feature of GitHub to manage these changes and conversations, you'll probably struggle to find previous discussions and the likes if you're dumping conversations like these in a GitHub issue. Just a thought, keep up the splendid work!

[snouz]

@MilanDierick Thanks for the suggestion, I'm using Discord but not everyone is. Robot256 and I are discussing development there, but every modder has their own channels of communications, and this thread was the most direct one in this case. The bulk of the work I wanted to achieve is released, but I'll still be here if there's bugs or some active development.

BTW, conversations on GH are just archived, not deleted

[heinwessels]

Hello @rudegrass !

Not sure how to contact you, so snouz advised me to try and contact you here. I'm the author of this Alft-F4: Modding Behind The Scenes article, and I'm slowly working on a next one. Would you like to share a werid hack or workaround you had to implement for Cargo Ships? Just a short description of how you used a mechanic of the game in an unintended way would be enough, but you're welcome to share anything. We would love to hear from you! If you're interested you can post it here, or find me on Discord (stringweasel 0691).