Making a 8 bit computer inside factorio

[custume]

Hello to all,

I'm making a computer or a glorify calculator in Factorio and have no idea what to do with it.

it can add and subtract, move stuff around the caches and create some output on the data that is loading, adding or sub.

Also have 128 bit of memory, uuuuu so much memory hehehehhhehehe

Its all modular so if I like I can add more registers or memory or even add a bigger ALU.

Ideas in what to do with it?!?

Here some pictures
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1799168525
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1799168462

Best regards to all

[PleB Hitzgi]

You sir have way to much time in your life.

[custume]

Originally posted by PleB Hitzgi:

You sir have way to much time in your life.

LOL, no comments, but is not that hard, I spend a week after work on it.

[benny]

make a neural network mod, with neurons & neurons layers entities :)

[Huperspace]

someone allready made a 3D color labyrinth game with enemies in factorio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lVAFcDX4eM

[Fel]

I always like seeing these projects that make use of the game's elements to make other things, big or small.
Minecraft, dwarf fortress, factorio (and other games), it is a good way to show just how much people can achieve in those "sandbox" with knowledge and hard work.

As for what to do with it, 8 bits and 128 bits of RAM should be more than enough to turn your factory into a light show but making a genuine program for it might be the hardest part.
Still, congratulation on the result of your week of hard work.

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

Get it to run linux, then run factorio in a wine window.

[custume]

Thx for the comments

Originally posted by benny:

make a neural network mod, with neurons & neurons layers entities :)

That's way heavy, it's interesting, can you do it in vanilla ?

Originally posted by Huperspace:

someone allready made a 3D color labyrinth game with enemies in factorio:

Hmm, he made the game hard coded in the logic and not a standard computer, more like a console, meaning ... that thing will only do that game/operation and nothing more.

For sure he cut some corners, is more hard to make the logic universal.

My idea is to aim for a 286 Arch and load up Doom directly in vanilla with no mods, like its running now.

The problem is making the changes to accomplish that ...

We are talking about adding all the flags for a 16 bit processor (right now only have 3 flags), doubling the BUS, the registers and the ALU, adding a LOT more of memory, reserve memory for basic operations and a bigger instructions reg.

On top of all of that that thing will need a graphics driver or something similar with all the logic needed and more.

Also the best it can do is 3 Hz, I can push it to 4 but thats about it.

I there is no space on the map to do that "thing", is way to big, smaller that on minecraft but still way to big.

Originally posted by Fel:

I always like seeing these projects that make use of the game's elements to make other things, big or small.
Minecraft, dwarf fortress, factorio (and other games), it is a good way to show just how much people can achieve in those "sandbox" with knowledge and hard work.

As for what to do with it, 8 bits and 128 bits of RAM should be more than enough to turn your factory into a light show but making a genuine program for it might be the hardest part.
Still, congratulation on the result of your week of hard work.

Thank you :)

That's an idea, not a light show but a fully automated factory

Originally posted by Shadow Raider:

Get it to run linux, then run factorio in a wine window.

hehehhehe, that is way to much, for that it need x64 Arch, there is no space in one map for 16 bit let alone 64 hehehheheheheh

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

Well, each variable on the circuit network is 32 bits, so a simple D latch can hold over 1K bits of information

[Fel]

8 bits processing might be a bit lacking for aan AI overlord, but with factorio you can cut a lot of "corners" since signals can include a lot more than pure binary so with clever use of that you might be able to go over your current limit of 256 (for an unsigned variable).
That's why I went for the idea of a light show since it should be able to handle a simple set like that just fine.

[custume]

Originally posted by Shadow Raider:

Well, each variable on the circuit network is 32 bits, so a simple D latch can hold over 1K bits of information

Hmm I never thought about that.

Have to change the way the logic thinks

Thx for the idea

[custume]

Originally posted by Fel:

8 bits processing might be a bit lacking for aan AI overlord, but with factorio you can cut a lot of "corners" since signals can include a lot more than pure binary so with clever use of that you might be able to go over your current limit of 256 (for an unsigned variable).
That's why I went for the idea of a light show since it should be able to handle a simple set like that just fine.

True, it opens a lot of ground

[extraMoist]

Make it calculate when stable 1.0 will come out

[custume]

Originally posted by IXBlackWolfXI:

See if you can make some primitive games with it. Start with Pong, which should be the simplest. Look to atari-era games to figure out what you can do. I think you can even find the binary codes for atari games online (I saw a video once of a guy running such a binary code in an emulator he made in minecraft). Just keep in mind that your games will probably run INSANELY slowly. In that one video that guy posted about raycasting, he says that it takes his computer 3 seconds to render 1 frame! Yeah, I wouldn't be attempting something like that. Some 80s arcade games like pac-man would probably be the upper limit of what such a computer could practically handle.

Thank you, not a bad idea, is more in line with the capacity of the computer, and I don't have to convert all the stuff to go for a cisc process, risc process is simpler but needs a lot of memory and right now i'm using static ram.

Originally posted by IXBlackWolfXI:

As for more practical things, you COULD possibly use it to automate your base on a level that the developers never intended. Not sure what you would do with that though, but I did see one guy make a self-expanding base, though he needed to install mods to pull that off.

Hmm not much to automate, well not that it cant do some automation but takes a lot of space to do the same as a couple of combinators.

I don't actually use automation in the game that much, not even to control the oil, with some math and some clever pipe placement you dont need to keep that in check or any other production

Originally posted by FrozenCommunist:

Make it calculate when stable 1.0 will come out

hahhahahahah

While i'm at it I can also make it compute the meaning of life , hehehehehe

[custume]

Originally posted by IXBlackWolfXI:

Just keep in mind that your games will probably run INSANELY slowly. In that one video that guy posted about raycasting, he says that it takes his computer 3 seconds to render 1 frame! Yeah,

Yes, one of the problems is the clock but I have been thinking about it and I can get around that with more steps and another program counter or more.

If I mix some risc and cisc and add more ways to count steps I can get away by not using the clock directly and use a multiplicator to simulate a high clock, but still way to slow to even load anything useful.

We are talking about 0.003 Mhz with the clock and about 20 to 30 Hz with multiplication (0.020 Mhz), but even that is to slowwwwwwww


EDIT:

to make the computer faster I can also go full x86 with multitasking and add a bunch of counters and more cache to move data around, I can split the processes and load half and process it when the other half is been load to another reg, then I multiply that as many time I can.

Will be slow to start but after gets faster and faster.

[benny]

It's not that heavy (less than your 8-bits computer anyway, good job), I talk about that somewhere (maybe at factorio's?) but can't find back where. A neuron has several numericla values as inputs (big integers size is lagre enough), and a row of multiplicators of these inputs, and it compute the sum of each value times its multiplicateur as an output. An layer is kind a row of neurons. That can take place on a 1x1 entity, with several "in" wires ports and one "out". And a way for "outs" to modify multiplicators: wires.

Easy to code, easy to use :) But I play instead of coding.

Found: https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=72356&p=438706&hilit=neural#p438066