the-square

Contact: https://discord.gg/HytACasPxY

Local development commands:

make build
make install
make test

make build creates a versioned Factorio mod zip in ./build/ using the name and version from info.json.

make test runs every Lua spec in tests/*_spec.lua and stops on the first failure. It requires either luajit or lua to be available on PATH; the target prefers luajit when both are installed.

If you need to force a specific runtime, override LUA directly:

make test LUA=lua

The Nauvis starting square size is a startup setting. Set it before creating a run. Changing it after the world is created does not resize the current save.

Tiles per research pack is also a startup setting. It defaults to 7, which means each required science pack in square-expansion research pays for about seven newly unlocked tiles.

Because square-expansion technologies are generated in the data stage, their precomputed finite costs and infinite count formula use the default Nauvis starting square size of 7 even if a save overrides the startup setting. That mismatch is acceptable in practice because the ring costs quickly converge toward the same values as the square grows.

Enable logistic network automation is also a per-save map setting. It is off by default, which blocks active provider, buffer, requester, and storage chests while still allowing passive providers, roboports, and logistic/construction bots.

Background tile is a per-save map setting under Mod settings -> Map. It repaints the square floor uniformly, with curated dry tiles plus lab tiles and a special checkerboard option. Water, concrete, and stone-brick style tiles are intentionally excluded.

Square growth is now driven directly by research. Each completed level of Square expansion immediately expands the map by one ring.

Research now includes custom expanding-square technologies:

• Square expansion is a repeatable research line that uses science bands in blocks: levels 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, and 31-40 step through broader pack sets, then level 41+ continues infinitely with all science through space.
• Dual-lane ingress, Red ingress, and Blue ingress are one-time researches unlocked after Logistics, Logistics 2, and Logistics 3. Each copies the science cost of the logistics technology that gates it.

With Space Age enabled, Nauvis biter eggs are no longer available through Managed Lines. Researching Captivity unlocks a character-only recipe that hand-grows five fresh biter eggs from one bioflux in ten seconds. The recipe has Nauvis's exact pressure as a surface condition, so it cannot be crafted on the other supported planets. Crafting the first five eggs completes the visible Biter egg handling trigger. The vanilla captive-spawner recipe and capture progression remain unchanged.

Tips and tricks are currently text-first and use base-game icons as placeholders. Proper custom instructional art is deferred for later work.

For manual testing, enable the per-player Developer mode runtime setting. That adds an Expand square button to the top-left UI plus a debug panel showing the current square-expansion progression state.

Issue #18 was resolved by PR #52, which fixed the border/background rendering regressions that prompted the earlier experiments here.

make install builds the zip and copies it into your Windows Factorio mods directory from WSL. By default the Makefile asks Windows for %APPDATA% and installs to:

/mnt/c/Users/<windows-user>/AppData/Roaming/Factorio/mods

If Windows detection is unavailable, it falls back to ~/.factorio/mods.

Override the destination with FACTORIO_MODS_DIR:

FACTORIO_MODS_DIR="/mnt/c/Users/<windows-user>/AppData/Roaming/Factorio/mods" make install

The install step removes previously installed copies of this mod before copying the new zip, so the game sees a single current version. If Factorio is running, Windows may keep the old zip locked; close Factorio and run make install again to remove stale versions.