Hi, this mod is really cool and I love all the variety and thought you've put into the different types!

As of Factorio 2.0.61, it is possible for SpiderVehiclePrototypes to behave like Pentapods do where the orientation of the legs is determined by the orientation of the head, as opposed to being fixed relative to the gameworld (https://forums.factorio.com/128638, https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=130110). Would it be possible to see an implementation of this method on a dynamically-generated spider?

Not that I have much programming experience, but perhaps providing the existing torso sprite 63 more times, so as to convince the game that the rotation frames exist (while eliminating the need to actually create art for the torso in 63 new orientations), would work?

As for use-cases, I've got in mind a "rapid transport" sort of vehicle, with four long legs, two at front and two at rear. It The angular mobility of the legs could be limited, to provide a wide turning radius when at speed, while step length could be high - essentially a Horseotron xD

Hello, and thanks for the kind words!

I wasn't aware of this change and it sounds very interesting. After reading the docs, I swapped around the animation and base_animation layers and I can confirm that the legs do rotate with the body if the base_animation has rotations defined. This will be very interesting for asymmetrical spiders.

First I'll find a way to make it look good, and then I'll put a toggle in the spider template indicating whether the legs should rotate with the body or not. Thanks for the idea!

Just look at him go! I've immediately implemented it for the Prime 3 spider.

I've added a boolean to the variants template, called "rotate_legs_with_torso". Just set it to true if you want the legs to rotate with the torso, or false if you don't want it.

I'll review some other minor things and then push this as an update. Thanks again for the idea and letting me know that this was possible!

By the way, I don't fully understand the angles in this game. I think 0 degrees is north, 90 is east, 180 is south, and 270 is west, just to let you know when you're designing your spider horse. I'd love to see it if it works out!

Update is live

Thank you so much! Adding the feature as a boolean for individual spiders is the best outcome IMO. The behavior interfaces very well with the rest of the configurable attributes.

I saw the changelog and thought it would make the spidertron's movement look much more authentic and bug-like.