Kafkatorio

Kafkatorio is a platform used for creating Factorio mods that require communication with an external server.

Development is ongoing.

At present Kafkatorio is used to create a live-view web map, that shows the current status of a Factorio server, and any connected players.

However, Kafkatorio can be used for more than this. It has the potential to export metrics, and allow for inter-server communication.

Kafkatorio was created to explore the possibilities of using Apache Kafka to process updates from a Factorio server.

Running

Instructions for running a Kafkatorio instance are available in the docs.

Overview

This is a brief overview of how Kafkatorio gathers data, processes it, and uses it to create the live web-map.

Kafkatorio receives updates from a Factorio server, processes them, and exposes them over a REST and WebSocket APIs.

1. The Kafkatorio game mod, events-mod, collects event data, de-bouncing and grouping events, and converts them to JSON packets

2. events-mod prints the packets to the Factorio game server logs

3. The Factorio logs are forwarded to a Kafka cluster, either using

   • syslog (using Docker logging plugin)
   • or Kafka Pipe (a script that reads the server logs and forwards them to a Kafka topic)

4. The packets are consumed by events-server, which processes the packets using Kafka Streams, creating and hosting map tiles.

   events-server serves the map tiles via a REST API, and produces WebSocket messages regarding updates (for example, when a player's location has changed).

5. The web-map uses Leaflet/JS to display the map, using the tiles and WebSocket messages from events-server

sequenceDiagram

Factorio multiplayer server->>events-mod: in-game events
Note over events-mod: converts events to packets
events-mod->>logs processor: packets logged to console
logs processor->>Kafka: publishes packets<br/>(Requires API key!)

Kafka->>events-server: 

Note over events-server: Packets are processed

events-server->>web-map: Web map tiles (REST API)
events-server-)web-map: WebSocket updates<br/>(e.g. player movement)

License

Because I care about sharing improvements, Kafkatorio is licensed under the
GNU General Public License v3.0.