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Show HN: Factorio Blueprint Visualizer
Hey there, I'm a big fan of the game Factorio and the beauty of factories in the game. That's why I created a website to artfully visualize Factorio blueprints a few years ago. With the new 2.0 update, a few things broke. I took the opportunity to rewrite everything from Python to JavaScript and support Factorio 2.0 and the Space Age DLC. It's now also possible to easily modify the style of the drawings. Let me know if you find any bugs or if you have ideas for features.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- natebc 2y agothank you for the artistic contribution to the factorio community! So much stuff around this game is ruthless efficiency it's very nice to have something with some style.
- npace12 2y agooh come on guys, i've got real work to do
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoYou had real work ahead of you, but now you have a template for that.
- npace12 2y agotrue, i loaded up my save to try the visualizer, but i just have to fix my factory energy output first real quick
- stackskipton 2y agoNuclear go brrr.
- npace12 2y agoyeah but getting from 1 to 10MW is a pain with all these pumps
- lucb1e 2y agoPumps, plural? I don't think we needed more than the default 1200 u/s that a single offshore pump gets (the one that you start out with) to scale from 0 until nuclear
- stackskipton 2y agoWith water changes, single water pump can now power 100+ heat exchangers.
- dentemple 2y agoThe factory must grow
- DanielHB 2y agoMy partner doesn't understand I put all those extra shifts in the factory for the benefit of the family.
- colkassad 2y agoI downloaded the demo for Factorio last night and suddenly it was two in the morning. Amazing game, I'm scared to buy it.
- spieswl 2y agoNo kidding
- grufkork 2y agoNice! I might actually try drawing our factory with a shoddy pen plotter I built, could give some cool results. Well-built factories are really pretty, looks like small ecosystems growths when zoomed out. All the draw settings should make it easy to generate some good outlines
- piebro 2y agoThanks, pen plotting was my motivation for doing this as an SVG and not on a canvas. I never got around plotting an actual factory though, but I might do it this time.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoPrevious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29381969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29381969 - Nov 2021 (15 comments)
- jvanderbot 2y agoThis is amazing. I did a similar thing for the game Highfleet, until I ran into roadblocks with the dev team. My ultimate goal was to have a "print poster" button that would generate the image and ship it off to one of those poster drop-shippers for a small fee. In that game, you can annotate the maps, and the world map with battle annotations is really special with lots of memories of victories and defeats. Alas, no dice. I suggest you do this for blueprints! The first thing I'm going to do is take my favorite space platforms and outposts and make posters - the colored block imagery is really artful. And, if you want a real challenge, you could parse the end-game uploads (galaxy) if available, or save files themselves. Or, slightly less ambitious - a game mod that generates links to this site directly. Very nicely done!
- piebro 2y agoI actually printed a few designs and hung them up in frames in my home. Maybe I'll add the idea and some links to the readme. Can you recommend a printing service? I think it's not possible to access the actual file upload using the galaxy hall of fame (https://www.factorio.com/galaxy https://www.factorio.com/galaxy) or I just can't find them. Otherwise it would be pretty cool. Oh yeah, I like the mod idea. That should also be quite doable, thanks.
- pbronez 2y agoIt's cool that you support plotters. I don't have a plotter, but I DO have a 3D printer, and those can also do some pretty cool 2D visualizations. There's a good ecosystem for Lithophanes [0][1] and maps [2][3]. This would be a cool addition to that. [0] https://all3dp.com/2/how-to-3d-print-your-own-lithophane/ https://all3dp.com/2/how-to-3d-print-your-own-lithophane/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU13fzqAu4BTAhOSHJgHRqg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU13fzqAu4BTAhOSHJgHRqg [2] https://blog.prusa3d.com/how-to-print-maps-terrains-and-landscapes-on-a-3d-printer_29117/ https://blog.prusa3d.com/how-to-print-maps-terrains-and-land... [3] https://map2stl.com/ https://map2stl.com/
- piebro 2y agoOh nice, I didn't know one could print Lithophanes. If you mount a pen in your 3D Printer and the right settings it should also work as a pen plotter. But I don't know how practical that is. The map2stl tool is also cool. I created a similar tool [0] for pen plotters using OpenStreetMap Data a while ago, which is fun to play around with. [0] https://piebro.github.io/plotting-maps https://piebro.github.io/plotting-maps
- readyplayernull 2y agoAlmost full circle from discrete processing element board to diagram, the next step is: circuit design to board diagram to factoring.
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoNice. For when Factorio has turned into a Job. And the engineer inside cant' help but optimize.
- jokoon 2y agoI am a bit sad I finished factorio space age, it was such an amazing game, I wish I could have spent more time on it. All good things have an end. I really hope Wube could make it more interesting to play in multiplayer, in games of 50 or 100 players, unfortunately there are no incentives for it. I suggested to add some resources trading and currency, coupled with a land ownership system, to prevent trolls and scale the game so that any player can join, but it would probably require some balancing. This game is already 10 years old and still going strong. Unfortunately mods are not very good quality, or too difficult to enjoy. Space age is interesting because new planets are being added by fans, but I don't think they're going to be as well designed and really bring anything interesting.
- jprete 2y agoI love Factorio, although I haven't gone far in the expansion. I don't expect any more from them. They've done a lot for this game and they've done it for a very long time. I assume they're now interested in doing something new and I hope they find success at that.
- EraYaN 2y agoFor multiplayer it's really about the people you play with, with is the incentive. Basically doing that stuff with friends is a ton of fun. And you can also include some people new to the game which multiplayer makes much easier for them.
- xeornet 2y agoHow many hours did it take you to finish space age?
- zelias 2y agoI burnt out mid-Aquilo. RIP
- bigstrat2003 2y agoSame. I didn't like Fulgora, then I didn't like Gleba, but pushed through to get to Aquilo so I could see all the content. But then Aquilo wasn't fun either thanks to the massive amount of ice platform I needed to build and how slow it is to build. I just stopped playing. Overall I was pretty unhappy with Space Age, as it doesn't really feel like Factorio any more (except for Vulcanus which is excellent).
- zelias 2y agoI actually found the new mechanics on Fulgora and Gleba very enjoyable. Fulgora especially, for whatever reason. I enjoyed spaghetti-ing my way through all the planets by primarily using the resources available on that planet ("starter" rocket full of belts and power poles notwithstanding). Aquilo is just so barren. The new mechanic it introduces locks down player choice, as opposed to the other planets that are rife with opportunities for exploration and creativity.
- unethical_ban 2y agoI think that Nauvis+Vulcanus you can still build gnarly mega bases, if the full space age isn't your thing. I find fulgora and gleba a bit tedious, but I appreciate that each of them bring unique new restrictions/mechanics/challenges to the game. Vulcanus is actually the least inspired, from a mechanics perspective. Mining->lava. It's a good lead-in to those wilder planets.
- temp0826 2y agoI didn't like fulgora for a long time...I think I started having fun with it when I got fusion power there and deleted the accumulator farms. Gleba was a thorn in my side for a long time but finally got it to a place of stable (over)production. It's begging for a rebuild (massively abusing robots there currently).
- NelsonMinar 2y agoI like the emphasis on this being beautiful and the pen plotter experiments. There's plenty of productivity tools for Factorio, including several blueprint renderers. This one's special for having some aesthetics.
- andix 2y agoI really liked the concept of Factorio, but stopped playing after a few hours. I think one of the main reasons was, that it's really hard to visually grok the factories from the in game visuals. All the shades of brown and gray made it not really enjoyable either (I like pretty and colourful virtual environments, there is enough gray and brown in the real life). If the game would look more like those visualizations, I might have enjoyed it more.
- rocqua 2y agoDid you press ALT? It displays icons over all fabrication and storage devices showing what they are making/holding.
- andix 2y agoI don't remember, but probably yes.
- tmvphil 2y agoI agree that the visual style was not for me. I had a much better time with satisfactory, which is quite pretty. It also spares you the threat of factory destruction.
- mmastrac 2y agoSatisfactory's scale is so massive for building that it was a shock coming from Factorio. I started a project over the holidays and I'm pretty sure it's going to end up at nearly 200x50. I am not sure it'll fit in a screenshot, hah.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bloopernova 2y agooh wow this is very cool, I can't wait to use it! Does this work with mods?
- piebro 2y agoNot out of the box. The easiest way to add mod support is to fork the project and add the buildings from mods: https://github.com/piebro/factorio-blueprint-visualizer/blob/master/website/entityProperties.js https://github.com/piebro/factorio-blueprint-visualizer/blob... The file is normally generated automatically with the get_items.py script and this data dump: https://gist.github.com/Bilka2/6b8a6a9e4a4ec779573ad703d03c1ae7 https://gist.github.com/Bilka2/6b8a6a9e4a4ec779573ad703d03c1...
- spieswl 2y agoThanks for refreshing and sharing this again! The visualizations are so similar to integrated circuit layouts; they immediately reminded me of some of the coasters that GamersNexus sell which represent simplified computer subsystems.
- naikrovek 2y ago> Ported everything from Python to Javascript for simplicity and performance ROFL
- piebro 2y agoThe python code was running in the browser using pyodide before. It took a while to load and was kind of messy to use. But it worked well once loaded which was pretty cool.
- proc0 2y agoThis is really cool. Finally the factories can look like chip designs.
- polishdude20 2y agoI wonder if you could add in the production / consumption rates of various machines into this and have the visualizer show bottlenecks and other data
- rollcat 2y agoRemember that factorio simulates every inserter swing, the exact position of each item on a sushi belt, every dip in the power grid, every biter egg about to hatch. Some designs in 100% runs use sushi (e.g. red circuits, as they take a lot of space/time but few resources, and must initially be built by hand). You can estimate the rates, but you won't be able to find a bottleneck. Inserter timing often comes up in plastic builds - on paper it's easy to build the exact amount of chem plants to saturate a blue belt, but if you ignore inserter timing you'll be leaving tiny gaps. Also remember spoilage is now a thing (,: as well as loops, probabilistic recipes, thruster efficiency, probably some more. Only Factorio can simulate Factorio. The best way to automatically find bottlenecks is probably with a mod.
- caspar 2y agoA mod such as Bottleneck Lite[0], plus your eyeballs :) [0]: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BottleneckLite https://mods.factorio.com/mod/BottleneckLite
- matt3210 2y agoThanks I was meaning to find a reason to spend the next 200 hours playing factorio
- joshstrange 2y agoTIL you can pull ammo from a turret to put in another like you can with research packs/labs. I love all the mods/tools around Factorio, I don't think I've put more hours in any other video game, maybe Skyrim, maybe not. It tickles all right parts of my brain especially now that I write less code in my current position.
- mystified5016 2y agoFactorio is so wild because you can sink 3,000 hours into it and still discover new tricks.
- imoreno 2y agoThese would be more useful if assemblers had an icon showing which recipe is selected.
- swyx 2y agowhy did you rewrite from python to js? just curious
- matt3210 2y agonow make a program that lays out factorio components similar to how pcb auto routers work. Then we can all automate factorio instead of having to spend 200 hours a month on it.
- as2572 2y agoVery cool!
- alexpadula 2y agoReally cool!!
- maxglute 2y agoIncredible work.
- jharohit 2y agoI wonder if Factorio multiplayer could be used to play with an AI companion? Here is what I am thinking: Computer 1 - Human Computer 2 - Claude Computer Use or other controlling the other A chat interface or voice interface (Whisper Speech to Text) for Human to feed instructions to Computer 2? Amazing benefits of doing this: - infinitely scalable - could let agents continue to implement strategy and unblock themselves without needing constant intervention