First Simple Machine

Creating a simple machine is fairly straightforward. First of all, you’ll need to create another buildable with descriptor and recipe, but this time use this (TODO make this mesh) as the mesh and this (TODO make this icon) as icon so that it looks a bit more like a machine.

Now we simply want to add the factory-connectors (conveyor input and outputs). For that add two new components of type FGFactoryConnectionComponent to the actor and place them in the lower center of the input/output connection points of the mesh, don’t forget to rotate them.

Set the output’s direction to output and the type to Item. The inputs type also needs to get set to Item but the direction needs to be input.

We also want to make our machine depend on electricity. For that we need to add a FGPowerConnectionComponent at the position of the power connection point of the mesh. Set M Max Num Connections to something like 1 (to allow only one cable to get connected).

The init logic happens in the BeginPlay event and initializes the base state of the factory (also based on the save information). There is not that much we need to do here. The only thing we need to do is to set the PowerInfo of the power connector to your added FGPowerInfoComponent and we need to set the target consumption of the power-info to something like 1.0.

The FactoryGrabOutput function of the FGBuildable gets executed by the output connector when a new item gets requested. To add logic to it, we simply need to override it.

Because we want to store the count of items transferred and the count of different item-types, we will need to add a new global integer variable, let’s call it "itemAmount" and a array of FGItem-Classes, call it "itemTypes".

Now, in the grab logic, first we check if the machine has power. We do this by using the "HasPower"-node of the FGPowerInfoComponent. If it returns false, we return nothing and the boolean is false.

But if it’s true, we use the grab function of the input connector to request a new item.

If the boolean is true, we increase the "itemAmount" integer by one and add the item unique to the "itemTypes". Now we simply log "itemAmount" and the size of the "itemTypes"-array. After that we return the item we got from the grab and true.

If the boolean is false, we just return nothing (the boolean needs to be false).

This basically checks if we have power, if we do, it trys to get a item from the input, if that is not the case, we do nothing. But if we get a item, we count it and then return it to the output.

That’s it, try out your newly created machine!