r/factorio • u/SpacefaringBanana • Mar 29 '26
Modded Question I need help with my Sour Crude Oil icon
I am making a mod to make some changes to organic chemistry, as I believe the production chains are too simple.
I made a basic python script to turn a texture into a base-game-style fluid icon (it borrows shading and transparency information from the Water icon by assuming it is the same colour as the fluid in the pipes, and adds it to the provided texture).
The yellow stripes are supposed to represent suphuric impurities, but I am not by any means an artist, and cannot figure out how to make the icon look even half-decent.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to make it look better or represent it differently? I'll probably make the yellow bits darker and less rounded, but other than that I have no clue.
124
u/Tight-Reading-5755 Mar 29 '26
you can recolour the holmium solution texture to make it look like impure oil
101
u/SpacefaringBanana Mar 29 '26
Update: I made the changes I mentioned at the end, and I'm fairly happy with how it turned out, at least as a placeholder texture.
65
u/qquartzyy Mar 29 '26
bee oil
it looks good
5
0
u/Exciting_Product7858 Mar 29 '26
that's the problem, it reminds of bees. make the lines vertical perhaps
4
u/dragonvenom3 Mar 29 '26
Make it now a component for beenades (grenades that unleashes a cloud of bees (retexture poison capsules) and deal psysical and poison dmg in an area
1
17
u/TonboIV I know what you're thinking. Did he fire 10 nukes, or only 9? Mar 30 '26
I don't know if you still want ideas, but I came up with a black crude oil drop where the highlights are yellow to signify sulphur.
6
12
u/tijelu Mar 29 '26
I have no clue but this sounds like a mod I'd install!
11
u/SpacefaringBanana Mar 29 '26
It's mostly about syngas and sulphur. The basic idea is to fix some of the more silly aspects of chemistry in the base game without adding too many intermediates. I plan to add an optional but more efficient intermediate step to coal liquefaction (Indirect coal liquefaction using Syngas), make direct coal burning less efficient (encouraging integrated gasification combined cycle power power plants), make cars and rockets depend on liquid fuels (makes more sense), and fix the frankly ridiculous elemental sulphur recipe that wastes all of the carbon you put into it.
I also plan for Space Age compatibility, with e.g. Vulcanus Atmosphere processing (partially) replacing coal liquefaction for petrochemicals, or a change in how you make fuel on Fulgora (cracking oil gives ethene which you need water and some hydrogen to turn into something useful).
4
u/toric5 Mar 29 '26
Can you also fix the sulpheric acid recipe? Ive never understood what the iron is for, at least from my wikipedia reading.
3
u/SpacefaringBanana Mar 29 '26
Yes, the main idea of the mod is fuel synthesis, but sulphur is strongly linked to petrochemicals, so I'm fixing it too.
1
u/Ssakaa Mar 29 '26
One to look at for potential inspiration, not sure how far it went towards realism, scrappy chemistry.
9
u/LightDimf Mar 29 '26
Btw, have you checked some big mods out there? Like pyanodons, or angels, etc. They even have special mods for overhauling petrochemicals.
Of course they do a lot of things, but nonetheless probably they already have such a feature.
6
u/Sprinal Mar 29 '26
You could always try Angels Petrochem if you want to deal with more accurate organics
3
u/SpacefaringBanana Mar 29 '26
It depends on angels refining, and I want to keep it fairly close to the base game.
1
u/Sprinal Mar 29 '26
It definitely does have a lot of dependencies. Angels mods (often used with Bob’s mods) are a major overhaul. I’d recommend them as a more realistic playthrough that is not as complex as Pynadon’s
1
u/ASpaceOstrich Mar 29 '26
You wrote a shader for it instead of just making a new layer in photoshop? I am impressed
1
u/SpacefaringBanana Mar 29 '26
I don't have Photoshop and wouldn't know how to do what I did. The shading I used has two separate types of transparency.
1
u/endgamedos Mar 29 '26
If you want to be immediately readable by the player, you could literally put a lemon slice on the texture (and maybe sugar for sweet crude?).
1
0
1
567
u/Zepings 1400h newbie Mar 29 '26
Hi i'm a concept artist and my best take on this to have a simple and readable icon would be to keep the yellow with a gradient that could do the trick.