Inventory Templates

About

Inventory Templates allows players to quickly and easily import and export inventory slot filters as blueprints. Such blueprints can be easily shared, stored, and managed using the blueprint library. It is particularly useful for quickly setting-up filters on entities that do not support native blueprinting - such as cars and spidertrons.

Features

NOTE: Keep in mind that all of the listed operations are carried-out on opened inventory only, not on player's own inventory - with the exception of character screen (default vanilla game binding E).

Create templates

Hold an empty blueprint while any inventory with filtering support is opened, and an export button will be shown at bottom-left of the window. Clicking on the button while holding an empty blueprint will read information about currently configured inventory filters, and export them to blueprint in the form of constant combinators (see below section on format). The export button is visible only when an empty, non-library blueprint is held. In addition to filters, the exported template will also include information about inventory limits (if supported/set).

Set filters from templates

Hold an inventory template (blueprint) when a filter-capable inventory is open, and an import button will be shown at bottom-left of the window. Click on the button with the held blueprint to set the filters and the inventory limit (if supported). Button is shown only when a valid inventory template blueprint is held, and when the inventory size is at least as big as the template itself. For example, it is possible to import (vanilla game) car template into tank, but not vice-versa.

If an item stack occupies a non-matching filter slot after the template import, it be moved into (compatible) empty inventory slot, or, should that fail, spilled over the ground. The logic behind this is fairly simply, and it does not take care of merging matching item stacks.

Clear all filters

Hold an empty deconstruction planner when a filter-capable inventory is open, and a clear all filters button will be shown at bottom-left of the window. Click on the button with the held deconstruction planner to clear all inventory filters. Inventory limits are not cleared, however.

Template format

Valid inventory blueprints contain only constant combinators, with signals specifying what item filter is applied to a slot, and eventually where the chest limits have been set (red bar).

Each constant combinator represents a single slot in the inventory filter configuration. Constant combinators are read from top to bottom and from left to right. Normally they will be laid-out in aligned rows, with each row consisting out of (up to) 10 combinators (mapping directly to the layout in inventory window).

First filter slot of a combinator is used to specify the inventory slot filter. Second filter slot of a combinator can optionally be set to red signal, indicating that the inventory slot belongs to chest limits area. Chest limits are applied only on inventories that support them.

Known issues

• Button tooltips have extra spacing on the top. The extra spacing is added on purpose in order to make the tooltip text readable when holding a blueprint with a name. Otherwise the blueprint name is drawn on top of the tooltip, rendering it unreadable due to overlap. Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done for this on the mod side - see this post for more details.
• Inventory templates cannot be applied against ghost entities. This is limitation of the game modding API - the ghost entity "inventories" are not accessible for any kind of (direct) modification. For more details please see the following forum post.
• Blueprint books cannot be used directly to neither export nor import inventory templates. This is limitation of the game modding API, and a functionality regression compared to mod versions for Factorio 1.1. For more details please see the following forum post.

Contributions

Bugs and feature requests can be reported through discussion threads or through project's issue tracker. For general questions, please use discussion threads.

Pull requests for implementing new features and fixing encountered issues are always welcome.

Credits

Creation of this mod has been inspired by Quickbar Templates, mod which implements import and export of quickbar filters as blueprint templates.

License

All code, documentation, and assets implemented as part of this mod are released under the terms of MIT license (see the accompanying LICENSE file), with the following exceptions:

• assets/backpack.svg, by Delapouite, under CC BY 3.0, used in creation of modpack thumbnail.
• build.sh (factorio_development.sh), by Branko Majic, under GPLv3.
• graphics/icons/clear-filters-button.png, which is a derivative based on Factorio game assets as provided by Wube Software Ltd. For details, see Factorio Terms of Service.
• graphics/icons/export-template-button.png, which is a derivative based on Factorio game assets as provided by Wube Software Ltd. For details, see Factorio Terms of Service.
• graphics/icons/import-template-button.png, which is a derivative based on Factorio game assets as provided by Wube Software Ltd. For details, see Factorio Terms of Service.