Changelog

Version: 1.0.1
Date: 2026-10-12
  Bugfixes:
    - The Reset to defaults button in the settings window now works. Before, it kept the old settings.

Version: 1.0.0
Date: 2026-10-11
  Features:
    - Add a plan preview. The second click lists the signals to add, keep and remove, and draws them on the map. Nothing changes until you press Apply. Back keeps the start point and guides. The preview can be turned off in the settings window.
    - Add two plan modes. "Add missing signals" (default) keeps every existing signal and only adds ghosts. "Re-space this route" may move ordinary signals. Switch with the settings check box or Shift+Alt+P.
    - Add a junction check. The block after each junction exit must hold the longest train (or a custom length). The plan warns when it cannot, and when a fixed signal or a level crossing makes a block too short.
    - Report each result as Complete, Incomplete or Rejected. Positions that could not be built get red circles on the map for five minutes. Skipped positions show the reason.
    - Add a Reset to defaults button to the settings window.
  Changes:
    - Selection markers are now drawings only. No real signal exists during the design. Apply creates ghosts, and one Ctrl+Z undoes the whole plan.
    - Chain signals and signals with circuit wires are never removed, in either mode.
    - A plan is checked again when you press Apply. If rails or signals changed after the preview, the new plan is shown first.
    - Changing surface or team now cancels the selection with a message.
    - The mod no longer does work every tick. It runs only while a click waits to be resolved.
    - Old saves are migrated: 0.11.0 settings keep their values and gain the new settings with safe defaults. Locked endpoint signals from older versions are removed.
  Bugfixes:
    - One-way plans now make every signal face the way trains travel. Before, when both endpoints served trains running from the second click to the first, the signals between them faced the other way.
    - A signal that already stands on either rail at a joint is now seen. Before, the plan could miss it and add a signal one joint away, which made a very short block.

Version: 0.11.0
Date: 2026-09-07
  Features:
    - Add Ctrl+Backspace and /rail-planner-remove-guide to remove the newest route guide while keeping the first endpoint and earlier guides. The control can be remapped and does not use native undo.
  Bugfixes:
    - Recognize the signal cursor data returned by Factorio so linked placement controls and cursor cleanup work correctly.
    - Leave other held items and ghosts out of endpoint selection. Preserve signals built with inventory items, including the last item in the cursor.
    - Clear temporary endpoints and guide markers when a player dies, while preserving settings and other players' selections.
    - Reject guides from another surface or team before they enter the saved route.
    - Check cramped signal positions against rails on the same level. Keep ramps in both level checks.
    - Validate all saved numeric settings and reject an empty automatic train configuration at completion without losing the selection.
  Changes:
    - Group settings by purpose, add block-length tooltips, and shorten placement instructions.
    - Scan fixed signal intervals once and reuse candidate checks within one preparation pass. Each new plan checks the world again.
    - Run isolated Lua 5.2 tests and use one release configuration for source selection.
    - Build reproducible ZIP files and reject duplicate names, unsafe paths, Windows separators, and stale source bytes.

Version: 0.10.3
Date: 2026-07-25
  Bugfixes:
    - Read each train-settings field defensively so a window whose individual elements were removed or invalidated by another mod falls back to the stored value instead of raising inside the GUI event handler.
  Changes:
    - Check the built entity's prototype before requesting a LuaPlayer in the deliberately unfiltered built-entity handler, lowering the per-build cost for unrelated entities.

Version: 0.10.2
Date: 2026-07-24
  Changes:
    - Make the first legal endpoint placement succeed whether or not Factorio's Build ghost modifier (Shift+place by default) is held, so Shift can remain held while adding subsequent route guides.
    - Treat a normal final-endpoint click matching the most recent guide as promotion of that guide to the endpoint; earlier ordered guides remain active, while finishing on an older guide is still rejected rather than silently truncating the route.
    - Update placement instructions to explain the hold-Shift guide workflow and how to finish at an accidentally added last guide.
  Bugfixes:
    - Preserve a real item picked up during the one-tick placement arbitration window instead of replacing it with the planner signal cursor.
    - Never destroy another player's locked temporary endpoint when a cross-mod event misattributes it as a temporary guide candidate, including cancellation, disconnect, player removal, and pending-candidate replacement during the deferred tick.
    - Deduplicate repeated sandbox/editor revive and built notifications so one setup placement cannot remove more than its own undo entry.
    - Remove a temporary sandbox marker's native undo item only when its prototype, surface, position, direction, ground/elevated rail layer, and quality match the exact intercepted placement; ambiguous history is preserved instead of risking removal of an older signal action.
    - Perform layer-aware undo correlation only after a normal endpoint ghost has revived into a real rail signal, avoiding rail-only property access on an entity ghost.

Version: 0.10.1
Date: 2026-07-23
  Changes:
    - Use Factorio's Build ghost control for ordered route-guide placement (Shift+place by default), including the player's remapped base-game binding.
    - Resolve the normal placement input, route-guide input, built-entity event, and script-raised revive on the following tick so their delivery order cannot turn an intended guide into the final endpoint.
    - Keep the planner's linked placement, guide, settings, and cancellation inputs enabled while spectating for sandbox and editor-style controller compatibility.
  Bugfixes:
    - Restore direct selection of existing rail and chain signals as endpoints or guides even when Factorio has transiently cleared the planner cursor ghost.
    - Correlate editor and sandbox direct-build revives with the exact event entity, player, surface, force, position, and direction instead of guessing from nearby signals.
    - Convert each newly placed endpoint ghost into a locked temporary signal immediately, preventing construction robots from building setup markers before the completed plan is released.
    - Give a same-tick route-guide or invalid-guide suppression request priority over ordinary endpoint placement regardless of event order.

Version: 0.10.0
Date: 2026-07-23
  Features:
    - After selecting the first endpoint, use Factorio's build-ghost modifier (Shift+place by default) to add up to eight ordered route guide points before placing the final endpoint normally.
    - Guide points constrain the shortest continuous, non-overlapping route through the chosen branches, loops, ramps, and rail layers.
  Changes:
    - Preserve the original two-click workflow when no route guide is used.
    - Store accepted guide points as numbered visual markers rather than construction ghosts or live signals, so the planner creates no robot jobs until the final endpoint completes the plan.
    - Determine one-way or paired two-way output from the two endpoint sides only; route-guide sides do not change the signaling mode.
    - Keep block spacing cumulative across the complete guided route and keep the first endpoint plus valid guides selected when a final endpoint is rejected.
    - Show the first endpoint and numbered guides in both game and map views, including a constant-size map label for long-distance planning.
    - Reject exceptionally dense guided searches at a bounded complexity limit without changing signals, rather than allowing a pathological rail maze to stall the game.
  Bugfixes:
    - Distinguish routes that share the same endpoints in cyclic or reconverging networks instead of always forcing the unconstrained shortest alternative.
    - Track guide progress as part of route-search state so a rail orientation can be revisited after a guide is reached without being discarded as an already visited state.
    - Preserve a longer clean guided route when a cheaper candidate reaches the same state only after consuming a rail it would need to traverse again.
    - Recover temporary endpoints and guides when a sandbox/editor mod raises its signal event before the planner receives the linked placement input, while rejecting wrong-direction or other-player signals.
    - Clear route guides tied to a reused first endpoint if that endpoint is mined before a replacement start is selected.

Version: 0.9.2
Date: 2026-07-23
  Changes:
    - Explain in the completion summary when pre-existing deconstruction orders are outside the generated plan's Ctrl+Z undo item.
    - Keep the common single-player ownership check allocation-free, while using one keyed route scan when relevant same-force multiplayer selections exist.
  Bugfixes:
    - Reject direct endpoint selection and completed routes that overlap another player's live temporary first endpoint, before changing any route signals.
    - Preflight both automatically generated opposite-side endpoint signals before committing a paired two-way plan, preventing a known obstruction from leaving a half-paired result.
    - Distinguish deconstruction orders cancelled by the plan and obsolete signals already scheduled for removal from undoable planner-created work.
    - Recover an exact desired built boundary that Factorio temporarily reports as disconnected while it has a pre-existing deconstruction order, then cancel and report that old order during commit.

Version: 0.9.1
Date: 2026-07-23
  Features:
    - Added a persistent per-player lateral-clearance setting for the optional cramped-position filter; 1.25 tiles remains the default and 0 disables the extra check.
  Changes:
    - Re-probe planner-created ghosts once per plan before reuse; continue treating untagged user, blueprint, and other-mod ghosts as deliberate placements rather than attachment-probing them.
    - Remove stale planner-owned ghosts at protected junction boundaries without changing user, blueprint, or built junction signals.
    - Thread the active player's lateral clearance explicitly through planning and cache attachment results for the synchronous plan.
    - Require ordinary rail signals at generated train-length boundaries; chain signals remain valid as deliberately selected endpoints and at protected junctions, while obsolete internal chain signals are removed without receiving overlapping normal ghosts.
  Bugfixes:
    - Revive endpoint ghosts on their own ground or elevated rail layer before considering an existing-signal fallback.
    - Reject the rare fallback when stacked ground and elevated signals are indistinguishable instead of choosing by entity iteration order.
    - Preserve construction ghosts during attachment probes so validation cannot consume another plan's shared-trunk ghost or transfer its undo ownership.
    - Validate and clamp stored lateral-clearance values and validate planner ghost layer tags before using them.
    - Save lateral-clearance edits immediately, matching the settings window's persistence promise.
    - Treat a temporarily unprobeable planner ghost as an unknown fixed boundary instead of reporting it as both reused and failed; spacing now remains safe even when that boundary would not otherwise have been selected.

Version: 0.8.2
Date: 2026-07-22
  Changes:
    - Rebalance spacing around known illegal or cramped internal boundaries before creating ghosts.
    - Reuse still-legal planner ghosts so a second branch can share an already-planned trunk.
    - Report preflight adjustments separately from unexpected build failures.
  Bugfixes:
    - Toggle Sandbox and editor-style controllers now intercept directly built rail signals as temporary endpoints instead of leaving ordinary signals behind.
    - Existing-endpoint clicks now verify Factorio's immutable selected-prototype snapshot, preventing cross-mod build ordering from misclassifying a newly built sandbox signal as pre-existing.
    - The first-endpoint highlight now remains visible until completion or cancellation instead of expiring after ten minutes.
    - Internal editor-event ownership promotion no longer prints a misleading same-endpoint warning.
    - If ghost revival loses a race with an existing signal, that built signal is reused as the endpoint instead of rejecting the click.

Version: 0.8.1
Date: 2026-07-22
  Changes:
    - Integrated the independently audited 0.8.0 safeguards after comparison with the engine-tested 0.7.3 core.
    - Prefer an already-built matching signal over a construction ghost at an alternative legal position.
    - Clarified that paired-boundary preflight prevents known incomplete new pairs but is not a database-style transaction.
    - Improved failure warnings so removal failures do not incorrectly imply that blocks can only become longer.
  Bugfixes:
    - Player removal now clears the first-endpoint render marker as well as its temporary signal.

Version: 0.8.0
Date: 2026-07-22
  Features:
    - Added an "Avoid cramped signal positions" settings checkbox so the lateral clearance filter can be disabled.
    - The shortcut now acts as a toggle: clicking it while active cancels the selection instead of silently restarting it.
    - The first endpoint is highlighted with a temporary circle marker so it is easy to find when placing the second.
  Changes:
    - Paired two-way boundaries are now placed completely or skipped as a whole, never leaving a one-directional half pair.
    - When an existing signal satisfies a placement, a second signal at the same boundary's alternative position is now removed instead of both being kept.
    - A visible warning is printed after completion whenever planned positions were skipped or removals failed.
  Bugfixes:
    - Rail-signal ghosts stamped from a blueprint while the planner is armed are no longer captured as endpoints.
    - Clicking the first endpoint signal again as the second endpoint is now rejected with a clear message instead of producing a zero-length plan.
    - A player leaving the game no longer strands a locked temporary endpoint signal until rejoin.

Version: 0.7.3
Date: 2026-07-21
  Changes:
    - Avoid legal-but-cramped signal positions beside unrelated rails at merges and crossings.
    - Keep user-selected endpoint positions unchanged while applying clearance to generated signals.

Version: 0.7.2
Date: 2026-07-21
  Bugfixes:
    - Reject final ghost positions unless a momentary real signal attaches to at least one rail.
    - Prevent orphan signals on elevated curves and during junction re-signalling.
    - Do not reuse detached signals or old planner ghosts on repeated runs.

Version: 0.7.1
Date: 2026-07-21
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed valid second endpoints being rejected on the entry end of curves, ramps, and junction rails.
    - Route discovery now genuinely explores both physical directions from the first endpoint.
    - One-way versus paired two-way mode now remains correct whichever route direction reaches the second endpoint.
    - Paired endpoint ghosts now use the actual opposite signal side for every endpoint orientation.

Version: 0.7.0
Date: 2026-07-20
  Features:
    - Route discovery now tries both travel orientations from the first endpoint and chooses the shortest valid route.
    - Endpoint sides still determine one-way versus paired two-way output without requiring the first endpoint to face toward the route.
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed valid retries being rejected after Ctrl+Z or signal removal when Factorio exposed the first endpoint through the opposite rail-end orientation.
    - Route search states now retain endpoint orientation independently, including across branches and merges.
    - Successful and cancelled plans leave no temporary endpoint signals behind.

Version: 0.6.2
Date: 2026-07-20
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed the non-recoverable "Entity is not rail-signal" error when placing the first endpoint.
    - Temporary endpoints now use LuaEntity.silent_revive instead of reading rail-signal-only fields from an entity ghost.
    - Ghost revival preserves Factorio's internal ground or elevated rail attachment without creating a robot construction job.
    - Uses the Factorio 2.1 writable minable_flag property when locking temporary endpoint signals.

Version: 0.6.1
Date: 2026-07-20
  Bugfixes:
    - Endpoint placement no longer depends on the cursor ghost still being present when Factorio delivers the built-entity event.
    - The endpoint cursor is explicitly re-equipped after the first endpoint is accepted.
    - Q cancellation now listens to the real clear-cursor control instead of treating automatic cursor changes as cancellation.
    - Removed the built-event prototype filter and validate endpoint ghosts in the handler for compatibility with altered signal prototypes.

Version: 0.6.0
Date: 2026-07-20
  Features:
    - Consolidated the interface to one native Factorio shortcut-bar button.
    - Added a configurable Shift+P input and /rail-planner-settings command for the train settings window.
    - Endpoint ghosts are now replaced immediately by locked, non-minable temporary vanilla rail signals.
    - Temporary endpoints show actual rail-block behavior without creating construction jobs.
  Bugfixes:
    - Personal construction robots can no longer build an endpoint and invalidate the span before the second endpoint is placed.
    - Final signal ghosts are created only after both endpoints form a valid connected route.
    - Temporary endpoint signals are removed on completion, cancellation, configuration migration, and player removal.

Version: 0.5.0
Date: 2026-07-20
  Features:
    - Renamed the mod to Rail Signal Planner.
    - Replaced the floating screen GUI with two native Factorio shortcut-bar buttons.
    - Added a normal-signal shortcut for endpoint placement and a chain-signal shortcut for persistent train settings.
    - Replaced the cloned endpoint prototype with tagged ghosts of Factorio's real rail-signal prototype.
  Bugfixes:
    - Endpoint placement now uses Factorio's own signal snapping and validation on ground and elevated rails.
    - Removed the custom rail-signal prototype, eliminating collision-mask and rail-attachment conflicts with graphics and rail mods.
    - Migration removes the obsolete floating and top GUI buttons.

Version: 0.4.1
Date: 2026-07-20
  Bugfixes:
    - Restored the base rail-signal ground and elevated collision masks required by Factorio.
    - Fixed startup compatibility with Factorio HD Age: Base Game - Logistics and Factorio HD Age: Elevated Rails.
  Features:
    - Clicking an existing rail or chain signal while the tool is armed now reuses it as an endpoint.
    - Shared branch starting points no longer depend on overlapping rail-signal prototypes.

Version: 0.4.0
Date: 2026-07-20
  Features:
    - Added bounded shortest-path routing through left, straight, and right rail branches.
    - Added automatic one-way mode for same-side endpoints and paired two-way mode for opposite-side endpoints.
    - Protected divergence and merge boundaries from ordinary signal placement and removal.
    - Preserved signals that belong only to unselected branches.
    - Reused existing signals at desired positions and marked obsolete real route signals for robot deconstruction.
    - Kept signal removal orders and newly generated ghosts in one native undo group.
    - Allowed the temporary endpoint ghost to overlap existing signals so shared branch starting points can be reused.

Version: 0.3.0
Date: 2026-07-20
  Features:
    - Replaced the top GUI button with a persistent bottom-right rail-signal tool button.
    - Added right-click configuration with automatically saved per-player train settings.
    - Added left-click activation of a hidden, ghost-only rail-signal endpoint marker.
    - Made endpoint markers use a cloned rail-signal prototype for normal signal snapping and visualization.
    - Generated normal rail-signal ghosts at both endpoints as well as between them.
    - Grouped every generated signal ghost into one native Factorio undo item for single-step Ctrl+Z undo.
    - Added Q-to-cancel behavior and automatic cleanup of temporary markers.

Version: 0.2.0
Date: 2026-07-20
  Changes:
    - Targeted Factorio 2.1 exclusively.
    - Added a Mod Portal thumbnail and an MIT license file.
    - Changed automatic vanilla spacing to seven rail tiles per vehicle with zero default clearance.
    - Balanced generated blocks while guaranteeing that every generated block fits the configured train.
    - Tried both primary and alternate legal signal locations, including their rail layer.
    - Kept the first endpoint selected after a rejected second endpoint so placement mistakes are recoverable.
    - Added GUI selection status, explicit selection cancellation, button toggling, and Escape-to-close behavior.
    - Removed locale keys that could overwrite Factorio's shared gui.close and gui.cancel translations.
    - Added per-player storage cleanup, bounded numeric input, and clearer expert signaling guidance.

Version: 0.1.0
Date: 2026-07-20
  Features:
    - Added per-player GUI for locomotive count, wagon count, clearance, and manual spacing override.
    - Added two-endpoint normal rail signal workflow.
    - Added automatic regular rail-signal ghost placement on unbranched spans.
    - Added ground/elevated rail-layer handling.
    - Added /rail-span-reset command.