[HN Gopher] Show HN: Factorio Blueprint Visualizer
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Show HN: Factorio Blueprint Visualizer
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.
Author : piebro
Score : 335 points
Date : 2025-01-09 11:23 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| natebc wrote:
| 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.
| npace12 wrote:
| oh come on guys, i've got real work to do
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| You had real work ahead of you, but now you have a template for
| that.
| npace12 wrote:
| true, i loaded up my save to try the visualizer, but i just
| have to fix my factory energy output first real quick
| stackskipton wrote:
| Nuclear go brrr.
| npace12 wrote:
| yeah but getting from 1 to 10MW is a pain with all these
| pumps
| lucb1e wrote:
| Pumps, plural? I don't think we needed more than the
| default 1200 u/s that a single offshore pump gets (the
| one that you start out with) to scale from 0 until
| nuclear
| dentemple wrote:
| The factory must grow
| DanielHB wrote:
| My partner doesn't understand I put all those extra shifts in
| the factory for the benefit of the family.
| colkassad wrote:
| I downloaded the demo for Factorio last night and suddenly it
| was two in the morning. Amazing game, I'm scared to buy it.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Just wait until you start hearing the birds.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Who needs an alarm clock when there's always the damn birds
| to tell you when it's bedtime
| spieswl wrote:
| No kidding
| grufkork wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Previous:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29381969 - Nov 2021 (15
| comments)
| jvanderbot wrote:
| 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!
| piebro wrote:
| 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.
| pbronez wrote:
| It's cool that you support plotters. I don't have a plotter,
| but I DO have a 3D printer, and those can also do some pretty
| cool 2D visualizations.
|
| There's a good ecosystem for Lithophanes [0][1] and maps
| [2][3]. This would be a cool addition to that.
|
| [0] https://all3dp.com/2/how-to-3d-print-your-own-lithophane/
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU13fzqAu4BTAhOSHJgHRqg
|
| [2] https://blog.prusa3d.com/how-to-print-maps-terrains-and-
| land...
|
| [3] https://map2stl.com/
| piebro wrote:
| Oh nice, I didn't know one could print Lithophanes. If you
| mount a pen in your 3D Printer and the right settings it
| should also work as a pen plotter. But I don't know how
| practical that is.
|
| The map2stl tool is also cool. I created a similar tool [0]
| for pen plotters using OpenStreetMap Data a while ago,
| which is fun to play around with.
|
| [0] https://piebro.github.io/plotting-maps
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Plenty of people have taped a pen to their 3D printer.
| The main problem is the same issue for all plotters: they
| just aren't actually that useful. They're neat as hell
| for sure, they just don't solve a problem that most
| people have.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| "until I ran into roadblocks with the dev team." What kind of
| roadblocks?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| There were a few things that were difficult to render
| properly that made the maps incorrect in ways that would
| really look bad to a veteran player. Like certain cities not
| having the right links via trade routes (which is a huge part
| of the game).
|
| I got radio silence from everyone when I tried to confirm the
| way to correctly determine links. So I moved on to an easier
| problem.
| alexpotato wrote:
| 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...
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Oh it's alarmingly fun.
|
| 1. radio decryption and cyphers
|
| 2. Complete flying fortress customization
|
| 3. ancient tech-obsessed desert culture kinda like homeworld
|
| 4. merchant raiding and resource constrained survival
|
| If you get deep into building customized ships, I have an
| automated optimizer for you to check your stats against :)
| readyplayernull wrote:
| Almost full circle from discrete processing element board to
| diagram, the next step is: circuit design to board diagram to
| factoring.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Nice.
|
| For when Factorio has turned into a Job. And the engineer inside
| cant' help but optimize.
| jokoon wrote:
| 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.
| jprete wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| How many hours did it take you to finish space age?
| lucb1e wrote:
| I'm also surprised they already finished it. Without rushing,
| we're playing for many weeks now, not every evening but then
| during christmas holidays a lot so maybe that evens out, and
| are about to go to Aquilo (4th planet, or place to visit idk,
| out of the 6 new ones)
| jokoon wrote:
| 381:52:32
| kryptn wrote:
| > 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.
| zelias wrote:
| I burnt out mid-Aquilo. RIP
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| 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).
| zelias wrote:
| I actually found the new mechanics on Fulgora and Gleba very
| enjoyable. Fulgora especially, for whatever reason. I enjoyed
| spaghetti-ing my way through all the planets by primarily
| using the resources available on that planet ("starter"
| rocket full of belts and power poles notwithstanding).
|
| Aquilo is just so barren. The new mechanic it introduces
| locks down player choice, as opposed to the other planets
| that are rife with opportunities for exploration and
| creativity.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I think that Nauvis+Vulcanus you can still build gnarly mega
| bases, if the full space age isn't your thing.
|
| I find fulgora and gleba a bit tedious, but I appreciate that
| each of them bring unique new
| restrictions/mechanics/challenges to the game. Vulcanus is
| actually the least inspired, from a mechanics perspective.
| Mining->lava. It's a good lead-in to those wilder planets.
| temp0826 wrote:
| I didn't like fulgora for a long time...I think I started
| having fun with it when I got fusion power there and
| deleted the accumulator farms. Gleba was a thorn in my side
| for a long time but finally got it to a place of stable
| (over)production. It's begging for a rebuild (massively
| abusing robots there currently).
| vessenes wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| 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.
| andix wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Did you press ALT?
|
| It displays icons over all fabrication and storage devices
| showing what they are making/holding.
| andix wrote:
| I don't remember, but probably yes.
| tmvphil wrote:
| 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.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Satisfactory's scale is so massive for building that it was a
| shock coming from Factorio. I started a project over the
| holidays and I'm pretty sure it's going to end up at nearly
| 200x50. I am not sure it'll fit in a screenshot, hah.
| Aeolun wrote:
| When you've built 5KM of train tracks just to get around xD
| mmastrac wrote:
| Guilty as charged.
| andix wrote:
| Satisfactory is on my list, once I replace my ~10 year old
| GPU.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Which one do you have? A friend recommended Satisfactory
| but all I have is a 5970 and an M4 Pro lmao
| andix wrote:
| 1050ti, which satisfies the minimum spec. But it would
| probably mean playing on lowest graphics settings at low
| resolution.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Mine is surprisingly still serviceable at 60fps 2560x1600
| on older games, but I feel like it'd choke hard on this
| one too. The laptop performs much much better but obvs
| can't run it.
| Engineering-MD wrote:
| I like the threat of factory destruction. It adds to the
| flavour, and makes designing the factory not just about pure
| optimisation
| ddoolin wrote:
| Agreed. I started playing Satisfactory a few years ago,
| before I ever picked up Factorio. And I played A LOT of
| Satisfactory. Into the thousands of hours.
|
| I'm currently at a couple hundred hours into Factorio and I
| can safely say I like it better. It is way more polished
| and way more in-depth. It has definitely had much more time
| to mature and respond to user feedback. Also the threat
| level keeps it more interesting. But I do find Satisfactory
| much more beautiful, and I think the idea of having belts
| go directly into/out of buildings, etc, without the need
| for inserters, a much better style than inserters.
| bombcar wrote:
| Factorio has "loaders" but they're not enabled in the
| default game, but easy enough to add with a mod (some do
| as part of the mod, some enable just them, some even try
| to make them balanced).
|
| https://mods.factorio.com/mod/loaders-modernized or
| https://mods.factorio.com/mod/vanilla-loaders-hd or this
| one made by a Wube developer:
| https://mods.factorio.com/mod/aai-loaders
| proc0 wrote:
| Lol, it's funny I played both and like factorio much more for
| precisely those reasons. It's post-apocalyptic and gritty,
| and has enemies. Satisfactory is great but I need a threat to
| stay focused. To each their own :)
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| I always turn off the enemies when I play.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| 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.
| spieswl wrote:
| 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...
| andix wrote:
| Probably yes!
| connicpu wrote:
| 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
| jcalx wrote:
| 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.
| andix wrote:
| Just checked Steam: May 2020. So probably after this change.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| 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
| duskwuff wrote:
| > P.S.: The Industrial Revolution overhaul mod might also be
| to your liking ?
|
| Sadly, it's not compatible with Factorio 2.0, and the
| developer has no intent to update it or allow others to do
| so.
| proc0 wrote:
| 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.
| bloopernova wrote:
| oh wow this is very cool, I can't wait to use it!
|
| Does this work with mods?
| piebro wrote:
| 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...
| spieswl wrote:
| 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.
| naikrovek wrote:
| > Ported everything from Python to Javascript for simplicity and
| performance
|
| ROFL
| piebro wrote:
| 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.
| proc0 wrote:
| This is really cool. Finally the factories can look like chip
| designs.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| 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
| matt3210 wrote:
| Thanks I was meaning to find a reason to spend the next 200 hours
| playing factorio
| joshstrange wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Factorio is so wild because you can sink 3,000 hours into it
| and still discover new tricks.
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