Gypsy Cleaning

Clean out some of the simulations from the main menu.

What it does

The mod disables selected simulations from playing in the background of the main menu. Only simulations built into the game directly are affected.

After several years of playing the game, I have grown a bit tired of some of the simulations. Most notably all the ways a biter base can be attacked.

I used to simply turn off the simulations completely. After the release of 2.0, and the Space Age expansion, I found that several of the new simulations were refreshing and entertaining. I also liked that several more trains were shown. Again, however, the old annoyance with some of them returned. So, I removed them.

Initially I removed the simulations by modifying the distributed game files. Each new release meant making the modifications, again. This got tedious. Especially for a game about automation. My first thought was to make a .patch file and handle it in the shell. Then a spark hit - Lua can't be that difficult and virtually everything in Factorio is up for grabs with mods, why not mod them out?

So I did!

New

The Factorio 2.1 version now includes options for extending the running time of a few simulations. Most of the ones I'd like to extend are limited runs in the way they are built. The one with elevated rails going over the crashed ship being a good example.

Ever wonder if the base was able to stop the wigglers after they escaped from their eggs in the gleba_egg_escape simulation? The Nauvis simulations of big_defense, brutral_defeat and mining_defense are obvious who wins. The egg_escape cuts off too early to be sure. Now you can watch and see.

Want to know if the calmly cruising space platform is going anywhere? Where could it be going? Will it ever make it at such slow speed? Watch and see.

The grotto of Gleba has a wiggler in it. Hard to see unless you're looking for it, but as it crosses the belt of iron it's easier to spot. Guess what? There's another one hiding in plain sight. See if you can find it. If all else fails, watch the extended simulation and you'll spot it when it moves.

I have found that the river crossing and the old train junction from 1.1 are infinite loops. The bridge over the river is not very interesting, for a long watch, as it's just 2 trains that pass in different positions. The train junction, however, can be a little more intereting. It has more trians, of assorted sizes and types, and the loops are such that the sequence is ever-changing. I'm sure that it repeats somewhere in time, but I haven't found it.

The train junction and space platform have 2 options, add some time or add a bunch of time. Neither is infinte time, however, as that sort of ruins the idea of random simulations. Of course someone could turn off all other simulations and achieve nearly the same thing.

Update

The mod now gives complete control over which simulations are removed.

I discovered that there were several mods which add simulations to the main menu. Many of them do a blanket wipe of the WUBE simulations. I found that more annoying than the simulations I wanted removed. I realized that this mod was forcing my choices on anyone who used it, and that I was attempting to reclaim my choices from other mods. What makes me the expert on the selections? Nothing!

So, even though the list ends up rather long, I decided to mostly remove my choices and give back control to the player. Every vanilla simulation is listed, and can be turned on or off at will. Of course any change requires a restart, as does any other startup setting.

In restoring choice to the player I went one extra step. The very first option "Allow changes by other mods" will lock in the choice made for this mod and restore any simulations 'removed' by other mods. That option does not, however, touch any of the other mod's own simulations. If they give options, fine. If they don't, I'm not the one to override their choices. Just as they are not the ones to override the choices made in this mod.

The override prevention does not rely on dependencies or detecting the other mods, so as new mods are created which do the same thing, they will be stopped from changing the selections made here as well.

I started to make better names for the simulations. Then, in testing, I realized that the names were exactly the same, and not localized, in the options simulation selection drop down. Changing the name in my mod would make it harder to know which ones someone wanted to remove or keep. Odd as they are, the WUBE provided names remain.

Usage

Download in-game with the mod manager. Activate it the mod manager and it's working. Deactivate it and all simulations are restored.
The list of simulations is in the startup settings menu
Main menu -> Setting -> Mod settings -> Startup tab
All WUBE standard simulations are listed. The default settings are, of course, set to my preference. Changes here will be remembered and every restart of the game will have your selections set.

Issues

If someone finds a mod which manages to bypass the anti-clobber setup, message me in the Discussions tab, or on Discord, and I'll see if I cam make that mod 'play nice' with this one.

If, however, someone wants to have the same level of choice in another mod which adds simulations, go to that mod. I'm not going to get involved in direct dealings with another mod's setup as long as it doesn't affect my mod.

Kudos to LegitimateTeddy for adding the option to keep other simulations when adding simulations from their mod, Teddy's Menu Simulations.

Side-effects

By removing the simulations they not only do not play, they also are no longer listed in the main menu's drop-down to select an animation.

The drop-down selector can be enabled in the advanced settings (version 2.0 +):
Main menu -> Ctrl+Alt+Click Settings -> The rest -> Interface section: main-menu-simulation-selector
This allows the player to switch the current simulation to one of their choosing. The random selection will continue after it finishes.

Future plans

Going forward, in line with Factorio, I'll be doing changes to the 2.1 branch only. Bugs affecting 2.0 or 1.1, if found, will be updated, however nothing new is going to be added.

The list of keep or toss is written into the mod directly. I have considered making it a selectable list. No drive to do so yet, however.
Completed

AI Usage

None

Contact

Bugs, if any, or ideas and suggestions can be handled on Discord https://discord.gg/Ud2Mg2akcC.