Power Monitor


This mod adds an UI to monitor power in entities.

Utilities
5 years ago
0.16
8

b PowerMon reacts badly to another mod's area selection

5 years ago
(updated 5 years ago)

the idea behind this mod sounds nice, but i can't use it ...

i have researched oil industry and blue science but didn't start my oil production yet and thus i have no red circuits yet. nonetheless i have researched everything that needs only red/green science including the power monitor. that doesn't require oil industry until you try to make the monitor tool :-(
then i wanted to use the "max rate calculator selection tool" from the mod https://mods.factorio.com/mod/MaxRateCalculator which probably acts very similar to your mod in letting me select some machines and then giving details on them (about their max production). as soon as i had selected an area and released the mouse button, i got the following crash:

Error while running event
PowerMon::on_player_selected_area (ID 49)
LuaItemStack API call when LuaItemStack was invalid.
stack traceback:
PowerMon/pmon/pmon.lua:230: in function 'on_player_selected_area'
PowerMon/control.lua:28: in function <PowerMon/control.lua:27>

my guess is that instead of the other mod your mod reacted to my selection of an area and got bad input by using a different tool than you expect. it would be nice if your mod only reacts to your tool and i can use both mods ...

ps: even though i can't yet create vanilla batteries and vanilla accus, i can already craft solar panels, and also some accus from another mod. can you please make the monitor easier to craft (not requiring red circuits) so that the mod can already be used a long time before i can make vanilla accus. or in case you intend to make the monitor unusable until i can produce plastic please add blue science to the research so that people won't try to research something that is still useless for them for some time.
(this last wish is not very important and probably will be obsolete when 0.17 is released with changes to science and the tech tree)

5 years ago

Hi,
thanks for the bug report.
It was my first attempt at using itemstacks and apparently I did it wrong :)

I'll fix the problem asap.

Also thanks for the feedback on pricing. Actually we want to have it usable relatively early as power becomes less and less of an issue.
I'll reduce the price and include it in the fix :)

5 years ago

Hi,
I added a new version. Can you please verify it if fixes your problem?

Also the price changed drastically. It's not cheaper but built from early game components now :)

5 years ago
(updated 5 years ago)

tried the new version 16.1.1, but still exactly the same problem (except for the line number 231 instead of 230)

about the price: the amount is not as important as the currency :-)
(meaning: yes, costly by the amount of resources is ok when it is already available in early game)
of course, i couldn't look at the price and test it :-(

5 years ago

Hmm.. that is really strange. Thank you. I'll take a deeper look into this.

5 years ago

There is a new version now. Hopefully I got the itemstacks right now :)

5 years ago

YES, now it works !

at least it no longer crashes, but you'll have quite some work to do to make it really nice and useful ... as you wrote yourself "This is the very first release! There will be problems and the mod is far from complete."

most of all, the GUI only shows the names and a green bar, but no details on what the bar represents (J, kJ, MJ, ...). without any numbers, i can only see how much filled some setup is, but if i have several groups i can't compare them to each other. and most of all, the GUI takes away lots of space, always increasing in size when new groups are added but never decreasing when items and groups are deleted. at least bars are reused when i use the same name a second time, and also the GUI is removed when i have removed the mod (until the mod provides more functionality)

from the description on the info "monitor energy production/storage in your solar panels and accumulators." i had hoped to see more details like number of panels and accus, a computation of the current ratio and advise on how many to add for optimal ratio, etc. but currently it provides barely the same info (if at all) that i already can see on the third line "Accumulator charge" on the vanilla power tab by clicking any powerpole in my network. your mod will be really useful if i have several power subnetworks which can be shown at the same time and/or if i get help on ratios or similar.

fun fact: sometimes mods create new items based on items from other mods. and sometimes mods create new items based on new items based on items from other mods, etc :-) when i removed this mod, i had expected to see in the migration list that the recipe for pmon-power-monitor was removed, but i found a second recipe that was removed: item-logicarts-item-pmon-power-monitor-incineration LOL, what a beast of a name :-) and probably a nightmare to debug if yet some other mod messes up any parameter like icon size of such an indirect item

5 years ago

Awesome,
thanks for the feedback.

The mod was created because my gf didn't want to search for a power pole to click on while she is in the wilderness fighting biters (she takes charge of power supply and defenses in our games). So it really just provides the bare minimum :)

Your ideas are awesome. I'll add them to the list of things to build.

And yes . What a name.. I hope they have some sane testing methods in place :D

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