Show HN: Factorio Blueprint Visualizer

[piebro]

Hey there, I'm a big fan of the game Factorio and the beauty of factories in the game. That's why I created a website to artfully visualize Factorio blueprints a few years ago. With the new 2.0 update, a few things broke. I took the opportunity to rewrite everything from Python to JavaScript and support Factorio 2.0 and the Space Age DLC. It's now also possible to easily modify the style of the drawings. Let me know if you find any bugs or if you have ideas for features.

[jvanderbot]

This is amazing.

I did a similar thing for the game Highfleet, until I ran into roadblocks with the dev team.

My ultimate goal was to have a "print poster" button that would generate the image and ship it off to one of those poster drop-shippers for a small fee. In that game, you can annotate the maps, and the world map with battle annotations is really special with lots of memories of victories and defeats. Alas, no dice.

I suggest you do this for blueprints! The first thing I'm going to do is take my favorite space platforms and outposts and make posters - the colored block imagery is really artful.

And, if you want a real challenge, you could parse the end-game uploads (galaxy) if available, or save files themselves.

Or, slightly less ambitious - a game mod that generates links to this site directly.

Very nicely done!

[alexpotato]

Had never heard of Highfleet but it looks pretty awesome!

Plus, I grew up playing MicroProse games in the early to mid 1990s so wild to see that they are still around and making great content.

I also loved this quote from the reviews:

"A typical Microprose game in that you need to a) immerse yourself in it and b) READ THE GOSH DANG MANUAL in order to have any hope of enjoying it." [0]

0 - https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197989787811/recomm...

[Pannoniae]

"until I ran into roadblocks with the dev team." What kind of roadblocks?

[piebro]

I actually printed a few designs and hung them up in frames in my home. Maybe I'll add the idea and some links to the readme. Can you recommend a printing service?

I think it's not possible to access the actual file upload using the galaxy hall of fame (https://www.factorio.com/galaxy) or I just can't find them. Otherwise it would be pretty cool.

Oh yeah, I like the mod idea. That should also be quite doable, thanks.

[polishdude20]

I wonder if you could add in the production / consumption rates of various machines into this and have the visualizer show bottlenecks and other data

[rollcat]

Remember that factorio simulates every inserter swing, the exact position of each item on a sushi belt, every dip in the power grid, every biter egg about to hatch.

Some designs in 100% runs use sushi (e.g. red circuits, as they take a lot of space/time but few resources, and must initially be built by hand). You can estimate the rates, but you won't be able to find a bottleneck.

Inserter timing often comes up in plastic builds - on paper it's easy to build the exact amount of chem plants to saturate a blue belt, but if you ignore inserter timing you'll be leaving tiny gaps.

Also remember spoilage is now a thing (,: as well as loops, probabilistic recipes, thruster efficiency, probably some more.

Only Factorio can simulate Factorio. The best way to automatically find bottlenecks is probably with a mod.

[natebc]

thank you for the artistic contribution to the factorio community! So much stuff around this game is ruthless efficiency it's very nice to have something with some style.

[grufkork]

Nice! I might actually try drawing our factory with a shoddy pen plotter I built, could give some cool results. Well-built factories are really pretty, looks like small ecosystems growths when zoomed out. All the draw settings should make it easy to generate some good outlines

[piebro]

Thanks, pen plotting was my motivation for doing this as an SVG and not on a canvas. I never got around plotting an actual factory though, but I might do it this time.

[readyplayernull]

Almost full circle from discrete processing element board to diagram, the next step is: circuit design to board diagram to factoring.

[spieswl]

Thanks for refreshing and sharing this again!

The visualizations are so similar to integrated circuit layouts; they immediately reminded me of some of the coasters that GamersNexus sell which represent simplified computer subsystems.

[toomuchtodo]

Previous:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29381969 - Nov 2021 (15 comments)

[jharohit]

I wonder if Factorio multiplayer could be used to play with an AI companion? Here is what I am thinking:

Computer 1 - Human

Computer 2 - Claude Computer Use or other controlling the other

A chat interface or voice interface (Whisper Speech to Text) for Human to feed instructions to Computer 2?

Amazing benefits of doing this:

- infinitely scalable

- could let agents continue to implement strategy and unblock themselves without needing constant intervention

[jokoon]

I am a bit sad I finished factorio space age, it was such an amazing game, I wish I could have spent more time on it.

All good things have an end.

I really hope Wube could make it more interesting to play in multiplayer, in games of 50 or 100 players, unfortunately there are no incentives for it.

I suggested to add some resources trading and currency, coupled with a land ownership system, to prevent trolls and scale the game so that any player can join, but it would probably require some balancing.

This game is already 10 years old and still going strong.

Unfortunately mods are not very good quality, or too difficult to enjoy.

Space age is interesting because new planets are being added by fans, but I don't think they're going to be as well designed and really bring anything interesting.

[kryptn]

> Unfortunately mods are not very good quality, or too difficult to enjoy.

Most of my playtime in Factorio is with overhaul mods, there's a lot of quality content there. I'm not sure how many of them have been brought to 2.0 or even will be. I'm curious where you think quality lacks.

Space Exploration has been my favorite, but Ultracube, Krastorio2, and Nullius were all quite fun. I'll admit I haven't finished Ultracube and Nullius, but I have restarted my Ultracube run in 2.0.

> Space age is interesting because new planets are being added by fans, but I don't think they're going to be as well designed and really bring anything interesting.

Check out Maraxsis and/or Cerys, these were the kinds of planet mods I was hoping for in Space Age. Maraxsis is an ocean planet and you build underwater and in deep trenches, and the planet's building has a base 50% quality. Cerys is a moon of Fulgora that's really quite small and it's more of a puzzle than anything.

[jprete]

I love Factorio, although I haven't gone far in the expansion. I don't expect any more from them. They've done a lot for this game and they've done it for a very long time. I assume they're now interested in doing something new and I hope they find success at that.

[EraYaN]

For multiplayer it's really about the people you play with, with is the incentive. Basically doing that stuff with friends is a ton of fun. And you can also include some people new to the game which multiplayer makes much easier for them.

[xeornet]

How many hours did it take you to finish space age?

[matt3210]

Thanks I was meaning to find a reason to spend the next 200 hours playing factorio

[FrustratedMonky]

Nice.

For when Factorio has turned into a Job. And the engineer inside cant' help but optimize.

[andix]

I really liked the concept of Factorio, but stopped playing after a few hours. I think one of the main reasons was, that it's really hard to visually grok the factories from the in game visuals. All the shades of brown and gray made it not really enjoyable either (I like pretty and colourful virtual environments, there is enough gray and brown in the real life).

If the game would look more like those visualizations, I might have enjoyed it more.

[rocqua]

Did you press ALT?

It displays icons over all fabrication and storage devices showing what they are making/holding.

[BlueTemplar]

When was that ? Factorio has increased its colourfuness several times to make it more appealing :

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-320

(There's also now a saturation slider in the graphics settings.)

And maybe again with 2.0, including some more colorful new planets in the Space Age expansion.

P.S.: The Industrial Revolution overhaul mod might also be to your liking ?

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/IndustrialRevolution3

[jcalx]

The Factorio development blog has occasional samples of concept art [0] which are more stylized and saturated than the final, "realistic" assets. I honestly prefer the concept art style, even though the more realistic sprites complement the brutalism and grittiness of the game.

[0] https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/blog-sync/fff-422-concept-v3..., might be a minor spoiler for a late-game turret.

[Sohcahtoa82]

Look into Dyson Sphere Program.

It's a lot more bright and colorful, though I think it lacks some depth relative to Factorio, but I think that just makes it more approachable.

[duck]

Have you played Shapez? It is a simpler version of a factory game, but I really enjoy it and love the complexities of the shape stacking. It is on Steam or you can play for free here: https://dimava.github.io/shapez/modZ/

[tmvphil]

I agree that the visual style was not for me. I had a much better time with satisfactory, which is quite pretty. It also spares you the threat of factory destruction.

[spieswl]

I wonder if a mod that changes the graphics to a visual style shown in the link (I'm thinking the Carbot graphics [0] swap for StarCraft 2 in terms of scope) would make it feel more to your liking.

[0] https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/article/23053098/starcraft-c...

[m463]

I recently played The Planet Crafter. Some similar concepts to factorio, but not quite as deep. But it becomes wonderfully colorful.

Some observations - get off a planet, but in first person perspective. No guns/fighting. Less of a time suck than factorio. Upgrades seem to be less tightly tied to exactly what you do. It's somewhat unclear how to even know how to progress, but maybe it doesn't matter. When automation becomes available, it is easier. There's a struggle for food, water, air at the beginning I didn't like at first (even in menus it doesn't pause). I learned to accept and enjoy it though, and things you do make it less of an issue.

[mrgoldenbrown]

I don't picture Factorio's base pallette to be drab, but if you do, you should check out the color blind mod that amps up the colors and adds distinct visuals for things that would otherwise need color to distinguish . ETA: did you play 2.0 or an older version? They've spruced up the color a few times over the years.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/colorblind_ultimate

[proc0]

I'd be surprised if there wasn't a mod for this already. Personally I like the art style and direction, I just want more details and maybe even in 3D to rotate the camera. Hopefully they're working on the sequel with some of this.

[connicpu]

This also affects gameplay, but your map will have a lot more green if you turn up the moisture setting on world gen :) and you can have fresh green trees all the time in the space age DLC once you unlock tree farming

[zelias]

I burnt out mid-Aquilo. RIP

[vessenes]

For better or worse, Aquilo is designed to be a limiter against end-game tech. All the other planets you can drop in and get everything going from scratch; Aquilo is there to gate legendary items and railguns and fusion power, essentially, and it’s the first time that the quality of your shipping logistics really matters to the player, esp. through high danger areas.

That said, I loved the redesign work needed on Aquilo, it took me quite a while to get the hang of cascading temperature brownouts, heat fluid dynamics, and adding piping to layouts. I found that fun.

Eventually, Aquilo can work like any other base, with rare - legendary bots, it can be remotely laid out and expanded as needed; in reality, very very little needs to be built on Aquilo to support even relatively large economies. I’m on my second playthrough, I have legendary-only production lines up for everything but railguns and fusion power and I’m just thinking about adding my second pump jack for fluorine.

Anyway, come back to it in a year - you might find it’s fun after all. :)

[bombcar]

I usually hit a burnout point in Factorio, and either I start throwing down blueprints obtained online (turn it into a resource discovery / train game) or I wander off.

[bigstrat2003]

Same. I didn't like Fulgora, then I didn't like Gleba, but pushed through to get to Aquilo so I could see all the content. But then Aquilo wasn't fun either thanks to the massive amount of ice platform I needed to build and how slow it is to build. I just stopped playing. Overall I was pretty unhappy with Space Age, as it doesn't really feel like Factorio any more (except for Vulcanus which is excellent).

[joshstrange]

TIL you can pull ammo from a turret to put in another like you can with research packs/labs.

I love all the mods/tools around Factorio, I don't think I've put more hours in any other video game, maybe Skyrim, maybe not. It tickles all right parts of my brain especially now that I write less code in my current position.

[mystified5016]

Factorio is so wild because you can sink 3,000 hours into it and still discover new tricks.

[NelsonMinar]

I like the emphasis on this being beautiful and the pen plotter experiments. There's plenty of productivity tools for Factorio, including several blueprint renderers. This one's special for having some aesthetics.

[imoreno]

These would be more useful if assemblers had an icon showing which recipe is selected.

[proc0]

This is really cool. Finally the factories can look like chip designs.

[maxglute]

Incredible work.

[npace12]

oh come on guys, i've got real work to do

[colkassad]

I downloaded the demo for Factorio last night and suddenly it was two in the morning. Amazing game, I'm scared to buy it.

[DanielHB]

My partner doesn't understand I put all those extra shifts in the factory for the benefit of the family.

[dentemple]

The factory must grow

[InDubioProRubio]

You had real work ahead of you, but now you have a template for that.

[spieswl]

No kidding

[bloopernova]

oh wow this is very cool, I can't wait to use it!

Does this work with mods?

[piebro]

Not out of the box. The easiest way to add mod support is to fork the project and add the buildings from mods: https://github.com/piebro/factorio-blueprint-visualizer/blob...

The file is normally generated automatically with the get_items.py script and this data dump: https://gist.github.com/Bilka2/6b8a6a9e4a4ec779573ad703d03c1...

[swyx]

why did you rewrite from python to js? just curious

[alexpadula]

Really cool!!

[as2572]

Very cool!

[matt3210]

now make a program that lays out factorio components similar to how pcb auto routers work. Then we can all automate factorio instead of having to spend 200 hours a month on it.

[naikrovek]

> Ported everything from Python to Javascript for simplicity and performance

ROFL

[piebro]

The python code was running in the browser using pyodide before. It took a while to load and was kind of messy to use. But it worked well once loaded which was pretty cool.