Hi! Quick feedback, purely based on the screenshots on the portal page (I'm following this project and planning on trying it out soon)
All the graphics seem top-down if I'm not wrong.
However, Factorio isn't a top-down game, and the current ones seem at odds with the rest of the game.
Would be really cool if you can source WH40k 3D models (there's free options) and use them instead?
What say?

Hi!
First of all, in the tasks list you could see that better, 3D-like graphics is planned to try.

Actually, Factorio is absolutely a 2D top-down game, with solely 2D physics, just with isometric, pseudo-3D graphics, having all of its graphic assets as rendered 3D models from different rotations, which makes it look as 3D, but this is an illusion.

That being said, this situation makes such large and active structures as Titans, very hard to represent. The game engine provides no facilities to deal with 3D models. It’s a technical challenge to develop code that will properly draw many separate 2D pictures animated with correct ordering to prevent overlaps looking nice as a whole 3D object, and apparently, a comprehensive code doing this can lead to serious performance degradation issues, because modding tools are limited to Lua programming language, which is slower than C/C++ and of course than GPU shaders, using which such calculations usually done. In addition, this will require huge amount pictures to render and store in computer memory: possible object’s parts * rotations * animation frames.

Besides of visual problem, this may require reworking the control of titans to make legs animation match movement; however, Factorio provides no access to player’s input, and in contrast to drawing, there are no workarounds here. And making more complicated, 3D-math calculations to perform attacks, which is also unnatural for Factorio game engine.

Therefore, for now all the existing titans for now are top-down rendered 3D models, which doesn't fit Factorio visual style, but fits its physics. Again, as mentioned in my ToDo-list, having good experience with 3D, I plan to experiment trying overcome this problem when at least most of other tasks will be done.

And, by the way, there are few normal 3D models of titans available for downloading and suitable for usage.

Ah, thanks for clarifying.

Honestly, I missed to check the to-do list, that's my bad. As an ex-pro-game dev, I'm aware of the workflow and what it would take. I'm also aware how Factorio is a 2D only game and I was just referring to the 'visual style' of the sprite work than the actual technical method to draw them. Sometime back, I also checked out the character skin mods' code and KingJo's Iron Fist one and remember taking notes on how many sprites they'd need and yeah, agree, it's no short task!

But apologies for missing the to-do's completely and thanks so much for explaining the potential effort for anyone who might stray around here! It's also awesome that you do have 3D experience and I trust this one's gonna be a banger! (I'm keeping an eye remember ;D)

Don't worry, some things, like breaking usual game's visual style, are important enough to be dedicately clarified.

Yeah, graphics amount are huge. And, ideally, we should have even more different rotations for weapons: to rotate not just in X-Y plane, but in fuller 3D space, for different attack distances – otherwise, it would look strange when a tall titan holds cannons straight but shoots down at enemies at its foots. But this would lead to deadly high overload for computer memory and my work... Such a pity to be disallowed to use 3D models!

But I really think that the primary problem here is calculations – in contrast to character skins, Iron Fist Dreadnought and many other vehicle mods, which are basic visual changes/additions with simple drawing layers order, titans are too large, we cannot neglect their scale, complex structure and subsequent positions and depths difference of weapons which can overlay each other and the body, head (and Emperor's tower).

That's nice to meet not just a modder, but a game dev colleague! I'll be glad to see you in the Discord 😊