Hello, I have recently stumbled upon your mod as one would stumble upon a perfectly preserved ceramic vase in an excavation of a Corinthian trash pit. Is this for real? I was rather disappointed with "the ruins mod" as it had no destroyed remnants and the patterns seem to repeat rather quickly. I would like to ask the limits of your mod; How large are the blueprints you can accommodate; can you create "destroyed remnants" as seen in level 5 of the factorio tutorial? How many blueprints can you store in your mod? Can you create trees? Can you make chests full of items? Have you replicated the behavior of hostile defences? Did you really make this from scratch? Unfortunately I cannot really help with your mod since I do not know lua, however I would be thrilled to create ruin blueprints for your approval should you require more. Godspeed!

Thanks for checking out the mod!

How large are the blueprints you can accommodate?

Currently the mod works with blueprints up to 32x32 tiles. It could be expanded to be larger but we'd risk overlapping ruins.

Can you create "destroyed remnants" as seen in level 5 of the factorio tutorial?

The mod creates blueprints by code that works out how much of the blueprint to place down between 0% and 100%. There is also some logic to make it that not every chunk will have a ruin and distance from spawn also has an influence. In the future we will investigate placing down remnants, but it's not a feature that's currently implemented.

How many blueprints can you store in your mod?

In theory infinite, or as many as you can store in a factorio blueprint book. In truth it will be limited by the download size as the bigger the mod is the longer everything will take to load/download.

Can you create trees?

Not currently possible that we're aware of via the blueprint system this mod uses. You'll need to clarify further what it is you want to achieve.

Can you make chests full of items?

Yes, but currently not implemented in any way within the mod.

Have you replicated the behavior of hostile defences?

Yes this has been done and will appear in an upcoming release so your new easy to find equipment might come with a little more 'bite'.

Did you really make this from scratch?

Yes, not long after "The ruins mod" came out we discovered it when we started a play through. We liked the concept but it's scope was unfortunately a little lacking. We wanted to work on remaking it and only now recently found the time to do so.

Unfortunately I cannot really help with your mod since I do not know lua...

I'm not keen on Lua, so this mod is written in typescript and transpiled down to Lua at build time. The mod is open source and the code is avaliable on GitHub.

I would be thrilled to create ruin blueprints for your approval should you require more.

We are happy to welcome blueprint ideas, please do so using the link at the mods github page - https://github.com/TGNThump/AbandonedRuins - it's right at the bottom. You'll need a GitHub account to do that.

Thank you for your thorough response! That is cooler than I imagined- that the blueprint can be portioned using code. What you have accomplished so far is amazing! What I meant with my trees question- "the ruins mod" contains a few "orchards" that place trees in rows, a clearly artificial pattern. And the tutorial level 5 contains an area in which an aged base is surrounded by tree stumps, and their chests contain piles of wood. Just a cool but non-essential feature you could think about. Similarly with my question about chests, I noticed many of your blueprints contain empty chests, as a mechanic it offers a lot when a player stumbles upon a chest, they think, "what could be in here?". And to reward them sometimes is a wonderful thing. Even if it's usually just a few useless items, it helps build the story of the ruin. This is also why I feel building remnants are an extremely valuable feature, you can see their use in level 5 of the factorio tutorial, and it really sells.

Thank you for your link, I shall use your Github to submit some ruins, and I shall follow the development of your mod with great anticipation and interest!

For placing down destroyed remnants, would it be possible to put down a few extra remnants and then destroy them?

Yeah, we're planning to add loot chests to the mod, but haven't get figured out exactly how to implement it using the blueprint system. I imagine we will end up using logistics chests in the blueprint that we can then turn into normal chests in code, with the filters representing the items to end up in the chests.

Trees are more complicated because you can't copy them with blueprints. Where the ruins mod places the entities directly, we use the blueprint system to place down ruins, so anything that can be copied with a blueprint is easy, other things... not so much.

Remnants is something I need to look into more from a code perspective. It might be there is an easy way to convert a normal entity to a remnant, or we might end up needing to maintain a map of entity types to remnant types.