Dev Diary PMC Undefined Farms 20km PMC Farming Simulator 22

Dev Diary PMC Undefined Farms 20km FS22

This is developer diary for Farming Simulator 22 terrain called PMC Undefined Farms 20km.

Special note: this terrain project name was "PMC Test Farm 20km" which was just prior to first release renamed to final "PMC Undefined Farms 20km" name, this dev diary has been edited to list the final name to avoid confusion.

2022-01-13

Terrain size: 20.48 kilometers x 20.48 kilometers
Heightmap grid size 4096
Cell size 5 meters
heightScale="78.45"

2022-01-13T15:54:08Z Got powergrep4 mass replaced config entries for XML and I3D files, then used L3DT to generate 4096 x 4096 resolution heightmap image, heightscale is quite large (relatively for american farming) of 78m, wonder if I have to remake the heightmap to be more american looking.

Brought the terrain source files into Giants Editor (GE) v9.0.2 the first time, aligned careerStart to the ground and saved, this was another long saving, I really don't get it what the hell is wrong with FS22 GE as it saves forever, those dreaded 17min saves on 32.7km terrain still haunt my dreams.

Its absolutely clear that whatever happens in the future, if GE newer versions keep saving large terrains this long, that it is not some faulty GDM/GRLE file I'm using... I won't be editing FS22 terrains that is for sure, I mean come on use your head, 17min to save one time... you usually save dozens of times per day, hundreds of times in the life time of a terrain, 17min each and yeah haha not going to happen.

Funnily I already started to GIMP paint design doc for this terrain while GE was saving on the background

2022-01-13T16:11:46Z GIMP painted roads asphalt, roads dirt and railroad tracks.

Copied graphicsmagick design doc bat files from hmm PMC_Test_Farm_8km source dir into PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km source dir. These bat files are way outdated, I already did much more improved ones on PMC DevSurf computer, heh what a mess editing setup

Anyways these bat files do just fine for now, this is a test of 20km size with some objects, nothing more.

GIMP painted farm yards and forest layers. Very quick sketches. Then had to paint some more roads because this is a large terrain and simple design doc just wont create anything useful in-game, fields would be just gigantic if there was just few roads.

2022-01-13T16:46:33Z Basic rough sketch design doc painting was done (I have to emphasize basic and rough).

2022-01-13T17:28:37Z Had a little lunch break, just finished. Now back to getting the graphicsmagick bat files to work nicely.

2022-01-13T17:46:09Z Finally GE files were in the state that terrain detail textures and fields show up like they are supposed to. Now just one more save in GE and then its first in-game test.

2022-01-13T17:53:17Z First in-game test, but of course I forgot to increase infoLayer size and it crashed, okay one more round of GE saving ugh.

In GIMP when I press CTRL-SHIFT-E to export as, it brings up some stupid file open dialog. I searched and found out that this is some win10 bullshit keyboard shortcut:

CTRL-SHIFT-E, Expands all directories from the tree in the navigation panel.

In GE I tried to create new transformgroup and type in "PMC_Helpers" but before I managed to type all the characters, GE, or win10, I have no idea which one, erased the typing input dialog to default. What the fuck is going on.

Can you fucking believe I had to COPY PASTE this string into the attributes name field, sigh

In furious anger I formatted C: windows 10 garbage install, of course I took full backups of my personal files first. Then I proceeded to re-install win10 pro 64bit edition just to fix that stupid CTRL-SHIFT-E crap. I love microsoft..

2022-01-14 Buildings And Trees

2022-01-14T14:18:16Z New editing day has started after spending so much time yesterday reinstalling win10 + fs22 + gimp + graphicsmagic + misc tools.

Todays agenda is to add buildings and trees into PMC Undefined Farms 20km and see how the FPS are in-game. Most likely I also need to make a better design doc as the current is really stupid looking and I assume plays like crap in-game.

I re-read yesterdays dev diary text and was great to have a recap of what happened, now I know exactly where I left off before crap win10 reinstall mess took over. I was editing objects in GE, I believe created first three grain bins to placeables.xml config file.

Checked in GE and everything loads OK, PMC_Helpers is not there, placeables and storeItems XML config files look OK, okay lets copy current build to fs22 mods dir and try it in-game to see what game engine thinks of it.

In-game test looking good, vehicle shop spawns items into correct position facing away from the building, nice.

Seems like cultivator_density was 8192 pixel resolution for 20.4km terrain which results in very inaccurate field work in-game. Hmm need to reconsider switching it up a notch to 16384 pixel resolution.

2022-01-14T14:44:52Z Days first lunch break, haven't eaten anything since waking up...

2022-01-14T15:41:56Z Feeding time is over, back to terrain editing.

Design doc painting, making dirt/gravel roads.

2022-01-14T17:01:58Z Still painting, this feels like its taken a very long time. This is just me filling up the dirt roads now, making terrain detailed and not some fantasy land with oversize features like it was before.

2022-01-14T17:42:53Z Dirt roads finished for now. Now need to add fields back in and then its in-game test again.

2022-01-14T18:06:54Z Created backup bat file for PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km and used it, good to have working base terrain files just in case I mess things up and have to revert back to what was working.

Converted GDM/GRLE to PNG in preparations for a new cultivator_density and fruit_density images.

In order to find which infoLayer image does NOT need to be 16384 for irregular size terrains, I'm going to resize farmland into 4096 now. Lateron once everything works well I'll try some other to smaller size.

But to my surprise farmland image was already 2048 x 2048 resolution, hum I have no recollection about that, I must have discovered this fact some while back and just moved on, wonder if I even documented it anywhere, well I have now.

2022-01-14T18:28:13Z New density and weight images loaded in GE and they are looking OK, saving and then going to take a look at in-game how it feels.

PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km.i3d saved in 252749.591000 ms

2022-01-14 18:35 Error: Blocked area map is wrong size for terrain (16384 x 16384) vs (4096 x 4096)

Well blocked area map ... okay that was hmm what the heck was it, infoLayer_placementCollisionGenerated maybe?

Also I forgot to create PDA/overview.dds mapview image into DDS format.

2022-01-14T18:54:07Z Resized infoLayer_placementCollisionGenerated.png down to 4096 x 4096 resolution. Created new 8192 x 8192 resolution overview.png and converted it to DDS using imagemagick. Then it was in-game testing time again.

In-game test looked pretty good.

Then needed to add few mods like GPS, courseplay and proper plow before I could do further testing, as I just cant drive manually using some crappy plows. I'm not overly enthusiastic about the rock picking, but want to confirm it works.

Tested courseplay plowing a field with two tractors, FPS was not max but it was in the 50s range and felt very smooth. There was no stuttering (especially because its using 8192 res density images).

Rocks are working too, nice.

Guess its time to start adding some buildings and trees.

2022-01-14T21:11:12Z Finished playing around with GE mesh painting mode placing some trees down. Overall impression is that it sucks. You have to paint one tree type at one time, its best feature is to not stack objects which splinePlacement script does. But yeah splinePlacement script is still overall better look, especially the more object types you got.

PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km.i3d saved in 10230.395600 ms

Trees look okay.

The only problem is, we would need thousands more of them for them to actually make any difference in the whole terrain

In GE adjusted Sun range from 10km to 25.6km.

2022-01-14T21:53:02Z GE v9.0.2 crashed when using mesh paint mode

2022-01-14T22:12:42Z GE v9.0.2 crashed when using mesh paint mode

Sigh. So guess I wont be using that feature anymore.

Tested splinePlacement v1.3 script from FS19 and it didn't work with the settings I've been using on FS19, the script in general works but just not my settings, as I tried one other very simple configuration of the script with everything disabled and that placed objects just fine. But yeah if I cant place trees then "its not working" heh.

2022-01-14T23:01:31Z Added bunch of field definitions, just like 15min work, enough to make my pinky finger hurt and just barely enough fields to simulate Start From Zero savegame.

2022-01-15T02:07:23Z Finished game-play testing session and eating some lunch, now I'm starting another set of edits to improve next gaming session. Edits I need to make is to increase density image resolution to massive 16384 resolution, increase field sizes, grow them at least 10 pixels, will have to see how it looks in GIMP. Then add few more trees with the mesh painting mode which crashes all the time, lets hope I could manage to do only few trees before it crashes.

Edited design doc in GIMP by reworking the vehicle shop area farm yard texture, added roads in and out of that area. Then increased field sizes a bit, not sure how much larger than roads they are now, I think it was first 20 pixel grow, then 10 pixel shrink, hmm heh should have written that down, okay I'll do it the next time, promise

Now I realized that increasing density image size to 16384 is ... not exactly possible, my design doc resolution is 10240 x 10240 which is already a very large, if I were to increase it to 16k then I honestly cant even count how many meters per pixel it would make and that alone would be really confusing from design point of view. Ideally it should be 20480 resolution meaning 1m/px but that is damn hardcore for GIMP using several layers, this 10240 image already starts to lag bad when I have every layers features selected (marching ants).

So hmm I might increase the size just technically in graphicsmagick, it would not add more details but maybe it would work smoother in-game once you start to cut crops.

2022-01-15T02:48:05Z Brought the new images into GE, noticed / realized that trees are now in fields because fields got bigger, also forgot to export farm yards image. So have to go back and export farm yards and re-create all the trees, there is no way to move them its just easier to delete and place them all over again.

I tried placing some trees with mesh painting mode but it crashed twice, then had to place few trees with the interactive mode...

What an horrible experience was it to use plain and simple GE interactive placement mode, put down one tree at the time, oh my. I need to sort out the splinePlacement script why it doesn't work in GE v9.0.2 at all with my settings.

2022-01-15T03:21:53Z Saved project and its time to do another in-game test, most likely (hopefully) it will be todays last and I get to play these last hours of the day with some nice farming.

Was game-play testing, trees and new farm yard textures looked OK. Did cultivating mission with kuhn prolander 7500 which was 7.6m wide and it generated incredibly bad looking crop accuracy, it cultivated like 1 almost 2 meters off.

I absolutely have to increase density image resolution to 16384, there is no way around it.

2022-01-15T05:32:15Z Shut down FS22, time to call it a night at least with PMC Gaming computer, this game-play testing was going nicely but dunno what else could I learn from it at this point. Need to get some computer chores done before bed time, so time to shut it all down.

2022-01-15 Placing With Splines

2022-01-15T17:19:33Z New editing day has started... sorry, already started like half an hour ago when I was studying splinePlacement v1.3 script by TracMax, why didn't it work yesterday for placing trees.

Got splinePlacement script to work in deleteme 2km sandbox testing terrain, now I just took backups from PMC Undefined Farms 20km and plan is to place some trees, assuming the edited script still works in huge terrain.

Six tree lines / forest patches added, looking pretty thick already

2022-01-15T19:23:41Z Pretty much the sandbox playground area around vehicle shop and field definitions now has nice sparse tree lines. Going to try it in-game and see how it runs

In-game test shows everything working fine. We got a nice sandbox area around vehicle shop now where we can do contracts and have some quick fun.

Resized _density images to 16384 resolution so we can have a bit nicer crop/fruit accuracy in-game.

2022-01-15T19:43:39Z Lunch break...

2022-01-15T20:04:49Z Feeding time is over, back to editing.

PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km.i3d saved in 419125.273700 ms, uuh.

Decided to try that german field definitions script as I don't actually want to create hundreds of field definitions right now. It actually isn't even much faster way of doing it because you still have to paint cultivator_density with unique RGBs which is painful to do for hundreds of selections.

Took backups, never forget backups.

Edited PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km.i3d and added new line there under infolayer farmland line:

<InfoLayer name="fieldDimensions" fileId="10000" numChannels="8"/>

Then in section files added:

<File fileId="10000" filename="Exclude.For.Release/Field.Definitions.Script.2022-01-15/field_definitions.png"/>

But can of worms opened up... this terrains cultivator_density is 16384 res as just mentioned above, also the far edge had a buggy field connection where all edge fields were connected together, that must be fixed in design doc level first, uuh.

In GIMP cutting that fields layer excess fat from the edge is done with rectangle selection, use position 10, 10 and size 10220, 10220 values and rectangle selection tool snaps into correct position and size, then just hit enter to "do it" and then CTRL-I to invert and finally DELete to cut off the excess fat.

2022-01-15T20:45:39Z Got the GIMP editing done and PNG exported, now need to run everything else through the graphicsmagick bat files, uuh. Hmm or maybe not, I'll try doing just fruit_density, it should work.

Actually for that german field definitions script to work I need to first test it on tiny 2km terrain as I have never done it for FS22 before. So this task will take some of my editing time again heh.

2022-01-15T21:42:25Z Alright did some work on the german field definitions script using deleteme 2km terrain and got it working, however new issue came up which I was kind of expecting...

So when I loaded cultivator_density layer in design doc and saw this following image:

Each of those fields would have to be unique RGB 1,1,1 and RGB 2,2,2 and RGB 3,3,3 etc etc...

I went like yeah eff that man, I ain't gonna do stupid shizzle like that

The amount of time I would be painting those field selections to unique RGB colors would be way WAY more work than actually copy pasting field definitions in GE

So no, I wont be doing jawohl field definitions script

I might try to do fields in GE today, not sure, my pinky finger is already hurting just by thinking about it, but besides penalty_box tonights possible live stream where he does Start From Zero contracts, dunno if there is need for more fields, tonight. Obviously for eventual release it should have full field coverage.

For now I'm going to remove the german script crap lines from TERRAIN.i3d file and then proceed to make few more field definitions, just quickly.

2022-01-15T22:09:44Z Latest in-game test started. First noticed that overview.dds image is still not updated for the new vehicle shop area.

While testing contracts was talking with penalty_box in PMC chat and he wanted me to send internal testing version now so I saved, exited and started to make one.

I added two more field definitions and updated overview.dds image. Then on last final in-game test i discovered that infolayer _level images like plow, lime etc were too small, they were 8192 when they should have been 16384, so fixed that quickly.

2022-01-15T23:15:35Z Internal testing version 0.1 has been sent to penalty_box, he will be twitch live streaming it soon tonight, looking forward to seeing it. Also I'm starting to play now, doing some contracts, just having some farming fun.

2022-01-16T00:00:53Z Started to work on v0.1.1 as penalty_box pointed out there are no selling points so cant do harvesting contracts.

2022-01-16T01:02:07Z Did v0.1.1 where selling points got added.

2022-01-16T01:33:10Z Finally v0.1.1 with selling points was loaded in-game and I was ready for some relaxing farming

2022-01-20 Painting Farmlands Image

2022-01-20T04:15:10Z New editing day has started, todays goal is to add some farmland ID channels so penalty_box can have more enjoyable game-play.

Right here I had copy pasted selling point XML filleTypes list but that is just way too long text/xml to be put here, just imagine all the FS22 v1.2.0.2 maps_fillTypes (or whatever it was) XML lines. Just didn't want to spam it here with all the html characters etc.

2022-01-20T04:28:33Z Added all those fillTypes to selling points, everything is there except diesel, dunno why its missing, will try to add it there too to be complete sell shizzle.

2022-01-20T04:37:48Z Diesel is in, now every single thing product type is sell-able in this terrain and all upcoming PMC terrain updates.

Then added 8 more selling points for total 20, just in placeables.xml to test how the GUI looks, I did not edit actual world coordinates to them. No need to do that work until I see how many selling points fit into the GUI before it starts to scroll.

In-game test shows that 13 selling points is the max without scrolling.

2022-01-20T04:50:23Z Edited "Objects.for.terrains" dir's sellingpoints xml files so that they can be copied over to every terrain dir and then just hook up in placeables.xml config file, they have generic names now so that they sort alphabetically.

Then it was time to add selling point 13 into PMC_Helpers which meant a very long GE import. I still don't get what the hell is GE processing this long just for importing a very small i3d file.

In GE changed sun -> attributes -> light -> fixed bbox min/max values to 8192. Humm I think it should be 10240, hmm, yeah I changed it to that.

Next on my list was to paint farmland image, more ID channels buyable lands there.

2022-01-20T05:13:23Z Started to create farmland image, 2048 x 2048 res as thats what the graphicsmagick bat file resizes it to, hmm. Saved it to design-doc-farmland.xcf file name.

2022-01-20T06:48:24Z Lunch break over, back to GIMP painting farmland image.

2022-01-20T08:02:04Z Still adding farmland areas, heh this job is no joke, takes forever to add all the 255 ID channel colors to areas

Also learned lesson while doing that, there are no shortcuts when it comes to farmland image painting, you just have to do it one ID/color/area at the time properly, if you start to do blind rectangle selections "just quickly" it leads nowhere other than bad results. Its not worth trying to do it quickly, farmland like that is not fun to play on.

2022-01-20T09:01:38Z Uuh finished painting farmland image.

Man... never do farmland image painting again for these throw away "test-farm" terrains, its way too much work I mean look at how many hours I spent painting this, wow.

Created farmland TERRAIN.i3d entry, took some copy pasting.

Again right here was the huge long list of 255 farmland ID channel XML config lines, I did not want to spam it here same as maps_fillTypes.xml above. Just imagine 255 lines of XML hehe.

2022-01-20T09:45:09Z Farmland image painting in GIMP failed, it came out as grayscale image all pixelated.

It was complete nightmare to track down the bad RGB, I believe it happened as I used pick color to a layer that had opacity 50% so the color was off, it did not pick the real color underneath but the one that was shown with the opacity. My bad.

I can see the spot where the error happened as it is odd-off number RGB, but I cant pinpoint which part of the graphicsmagick bat it is, meaning what RGB is should be.

Stupid mistake cost me a lot of time debugging and hunting a bug.

Pisses me off as this is throw away test terrain also that why am I putting so much effort making it nice.

2022-01-20T10:17:28Z Got it fixed, not sure what I did exactly heh, super tired. At least it looks like its fixed, I believe I deleted the offending RGB color so it automatically by GIMP layers reverts to RGB 255,255,255 which is the background or fall back color so to speak.

And once more, here we had farmlands.xml config file, all 255 lines of XML text. Did not spam it here.

Updated farmlands.xml beginning from 64:

(255 line long XML config text removed from here)

Man my copy paste finger is hurting!

Changed farmland numChannel to 9, dunno if its correct heh, I'm so tired I might as well be sending smoke signals haha.

In-game test resulted error:

2022-01-20 11:11 Error: Farmland-Id 82 not defined in farmland ownage file 'C:/FS22.Mods/Dev/PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km/maps/PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km/data/PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km_farmland.grle'. Skipping farmland definition!

Newbie in action

2022-01-20T11:14:13Z I blame it on the late night, I am completely dead tired in zombi mode, still 24min left in this day until my 17hrs been awake alarm goes off. I slept only five or so hours last night so now its taking its toll.

But I want to get this farmland image finished before going to bed tonight.

2022-01-20T11:38:50Z And now the alarm went off to signal bed time, but farmland image is still not working, just finished in-game test and got some odd errors, says 510 farmland IDs are not used, err was the numchannels 9 wrong number then, hmm.

Checked in-game and farmland image works! Whohoo!

There was issue of the outline not showing, but either its my video preset LOW or just large terrain issue I don't know.

2022-01-20T11:56:03Z Dead tired, have to call it a night.

2022-01-21 Utility Pole Forest

2022-01-21T01:35:43Z New editing day has started, as usual it begins by taking a backup. Then copied another 7-zip project dir archive to PMC DevSurf because I need to compile new version for penalty_box on his saturdays stream.

Was looking at bugs list, got couple of them resolved right away after discussing in penalty_box's stream when he was playing PMC Texas Rowena 8km pre-alpha version.

Created new preview.xcf image, just copy pasted overview.xcf into it.

Made a new imagemagick bat which generated icon.dds from preview.png image.

2022-01-21T02:46:42Z Added four meridian flatbottom grain bins into one of the farm yard locations. Now its in-game testing time.

In-game test complete, 4 new grain bin silos in-game, no errors in the log. And the grain bin daily upkeep is removed, that was a great fix, it was so annoying to bleed off money for no reason.

Next I'm going to add fieldGrassMission to couple of the fields, I want to have some grass contracts available.

Added one big and two small narrow field definitions all with fieldGrassMission attribute boolean true.

2022-01-21T03:36:11Z Sorry forgot to write play-by-play updates... uuh what did I do, added three big forest areas or lets call them tree lines. Now started to add utility poles but those I need to grab from mapUS first.

2022-01-21T04:11:05Z First utility pole line objects created, no wires though (snif).

2022-01-21T04:35:34Z In-game check completed, utility poles look great, even without wires, they add so much "life" to the otherwise barren terrain

Then went and added enercon EP4 biggest wind turbines as placeables.xml config file entries.

2022-01-21T05:08:36Z In-game test show unfortunately that enercon EP4 wind turbines give error in the log.

2022-01-21 05:00 C:/FS22.Mods/Dev/FS22_Enercon_EP4/E141_159m/Enercon_EP4.i3d (24.32 ms)
2022-01-21 05:00 Warning (script): 'setWorldRotation': Argument 2 has wrong type. Expected: Float. Actual: Nil
2022-01-21 05:00   D:\auto_builder\cache\svn\bc39c0c6d611016d38088dfeb30cadc8\src\base\scripting\lua\LuaScriptSystem.cpp (890): expectedType == Value::VoidType || expectedType == Value::ClassType

It would be fine to use that through GE directly, I would actually prefer that, but if I do that then animations wont work.

I am really bummed out with that error, the wind turbine looks so majestic as it revolves slowly, but yeah zero tolerance policy for errors so they are out.

2022-01-21T05:39:26Z Decided to do a little bit game-play testing next, was so bummed out about wind turbines not working wanted to relax with some nice farming, maybe trying grass contracts on the new fields, dunno.

Saw that selling point 13 has a name bug, it says 12 heh, fixed.

2022-01-21T08:37:27Z Finished game-play testing, I mowed grass field, windrowed it, baled and wrapped it, collected bales and hauled them to PMC Sell 11 selling point, but nothing happened. I could not sell wrapped silage round bales.

Started new farmer game mode again, this time I'll only do fertilizing, harvest and maybe cultivating contracts.

Was dead tired when shut down PMC Gaming computer and called it a night, didn't write down the UTC time stamp, but it was pretty close to a full 17hrs editing day.

2022-01-21T19:19:02Z New editing day has started, win10 booted up and ready to try fix two issues before shipping new PMC Undefined Farms 20km version to testing.

In PMC chat guys helped me out with silage bale trigger and enercon EP4 giving errors. I tried the enercon EP 4 fix first, unfortunately it did not work.

placeables.xml:

<placeable filename="$moddir$FS22_Enercon_EP4/E141_159m/Enercon_EP4.xml" position="2892 66.8744812 620.44042969" rotation="0 0 0" />

And in-game log gets errors:

2022-01-21 19:26 C:/FS22.Mods/Dev/FS22_Enercon_EP4/E141_159m/Enercon_EP4.i3d (22.72 ms)
2022-01-21 19:26 Warning (script): 'setWorldRotation': Argument 2 has wrong type. Expected: Float. Actual: Nil
2022-01-21 19:26   D:\auto_builder\cache\svn\bc39c0c6d611016d38088dfeb30cadc8\src\base\scripting\lua\LuaScriptSystem.cpp (890): expectedType == Value::VoidType || expectedType == Value::ClassType
2022-01-21 19:26 LUA call stack:
dataS/scripts/placeables/specializations/PlaceableWindTurbine.lua (173) : setWorldRotation
dataS/scripts/placeables/specializations/PlaceableWindTurbine.lua (155) : updateHeadRotation
dataS/scripts/placeables/Placeable.lua (372) : loadFromXMLFile
dataS/scripts/placeables/Placeable.lua (352) : onFinishedLoading
dataS/scripts/i3d/I3DManager.lua (134) : asyncCallbackFunction

Next up, figuring out the bale sell triggers.

Giants mapUS:

<placeable mapBoundId="sellingStationBales" filename="data/placeables/mapUS/sellingStationBales/sellingStationBales.xml" position="-647.75 82 -354.5" rotation="0 0 0" />

Well that was fairly easy fix heh, but maybe I'll move that sellingStationBales.xml into PMC terrain dir.

Did just that, also took bale selling warning stripes from mapUS into my Objects.for.terrains/ dir.

Now becomes the problem of where do I place this trigger, if its in middle of nowhere it wont look very good, it actually wont look like anything if trigger warning stripes are hidden in a grass hehe. So would need some kind of logical building, hmm. Maybe I'll just put in somewhere in dealership area for now, even though it would require SOME sort of structure there as well. Hmph.

Placed them behind dealership without a building now, hey this is a test-farm to begin with

Had to go in-game to test it right away.

2022-01-21T20:06:01Z Bale selling trigger works, can dump raw silage from a trailer, straw and silage square bales (used dev console to create them from thin air), wrapped silage round bales should work the same.

In GE added giants water tower object, it unfortunately says in the text label elmcreek but well, dunno how to change the texture and not interested of spending time figuring out for such vanity item, big deal it says elmcreek, its almost funny for such beast of 20.4km terrain

Put enercon EP4 into elmcreek fresh new savegame, checked out placeables.xml in the savegame and it read like this:

<placeable modName="FS22_Enercon_EP4" filename="$moddir$FS22_Enercon_EP4/E141_159m/Enercon_EP4.xml" id="48" position="186.32775878906 85.591430664063 159.88862609863" rotation="0 0 0" age="0.000000" price="500000.000000" farmId="1">
<windTurbine headRotation="-113.000000"/>
</placeable>

Going to try that headRotation property to my placeables.xml config file.

Did not work, if I add that headrotation property line there it gives XML error. So yeah I'm out of ideas for this one, I need to leave wind turbines out for now.

Yep I cant think of anything else to do for now so I'm going to ship out testing version, lets call it v0.1.2 for testers (penalty_box basically).

PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km_v0.1.2.7z

2022-01-21T21:04:31Z After uploading v0.1.2 to google drive I realized the grass contracts might still be bugged because selling point are now advertising they accept silage even though they don't. Or at least silage BALES are not accepted, maybe they accept silage/grass/straw in raw form.

Hmm I need to test and document that.

Okay so placeables\sellingStationBales\sellingStationBales.xml lists these:

<unloadTrigger exactFillRootNode="unloadTrigger" fillTypes="STRAW DRYGRASS_WINDROW GRASS_WINDROW SILAGE SUGARBEET_CUT" aiNode="aiNode" >
<baleTrigger triggerNode="baleTrigger" deleteLitersPerSecond="10000"/>
</unloadTrigger>
<fillType name="STRAW"            priceScale="1" supportsGreatDemand="true" disablePriceDrop="false" />
<fillType name="DRYGRASS_WINDROW" priceScale="1" supportsGreatDemand="true" disablePriceDrop="false" />
<fillType name="GRASS_WINDROW"    priceScale="1" supportsGreatDemand="true" disablePriceDrop="false" />
<fillType name="SILAGE"           priceScale="1" supportsGreatDemand="true" disablePriceDrop="false" />
<fillType name="SUGARBEET_CUT"    priceScale="1" supportsGreatDemand="true" disablePriceDrop="false" />

That is the raw form of fill types, like straw can be forage wagon collected or in round/square bales. Important thing is the "baleTrigger" property, I don't think regular selling point has this. Not sure why they are separated, I mean you sell shit to fantasy oblivion black hole basically, why do these different fillTypes be separated like that.

Then placeables\sellingpoints\sellingpoint01.xml lists fillTypes of: SEEDS SILAGE SILAGE_ADDITIVE SORGHUM etc etc, so hmm not sure how all that plays out. I have no issue using forage wagon or regular trailer to dump raw form straw/grass/silage into those selling points.

I need to test in-game if the contracts can now pickup the BALE selling point specifically or will they still offer deliveries for regular selling points.

2022-01-21T21:31:21Z Ported over my previous new farmer game mode unofficial Start From Zero savegame. It was basically just testing savegame where I played in old traditional zero style. Brought over career, farms and vehicles XML files, those could be copied straight over a new fresh savegame files.

In fact this should be documented in PMC Farming web site that you should only start a career savegame once per terrain, then just copy over those above mentioned XMLs and you are good to continue your farming business in that particular terrain.

After loading the savegame up I remembered that in the latest savegame with most money, I owned rubicon, semi truck and liquid tanker trailer, I deleted that savegame at some point so those are now gone. No big deal like I said this is just testing, its not end of the world heh, but it kind of reflects on the savegame continuation, if you work hard in Start From Zero mode, why would you lose the time played, money and vehicles... makes no sense.

Always save your careerSavegame.xml, Courseplay.xml, farms.xml, guidanceSteering.xml and vehicles.xml across terrain upgrades.

2022-01-21T21:43:32Z So I bought rubicon 9000, semi truck and liquid tanker trailer. Budget now 359.3k so lets start doing some contracts

2022-01-22T02:21:39Z Still doing contracts, I now have second liquid tanker trailer and placeable product buy point, budget is 819.8k so pretty nice. Been thinking about buying my first own land and start to harvest it. Dunno if I have enough money for land and all the vehicles required.

2022-01-22T05:59:32Z Bought the land north side around dealership, this is all field, it has no field number so its great, right next to the dealership, center of the action heh.

2022-01-22T06:32:45Z Bought fendt 942 vario and john deere 2623 disc. Budget now 276.8k, heh not enough money to buy harvester or even a seeder, oh well gonna have to do some more contracts.

2022-01-22T09:00:36Z Time to call it a night, still want to do few computer chores before going to bed. Also feel almost guilty for just playing instead of editing heh.

2022-01-30 Farm Yard Mess

2022-01-30T13:04:51Z New editing day has started, todays goal is to check and verify this terrain is good to go for release. My issues list have note about farm yards being on fields without a road access, that is indeed troublesome, its ... unacceptable, makes no sense whatsoever to have them designed like this. However I believe the farmland image was quite detailed so if I change the farm yards in design doc, then I need to edit that pesky farmland image as well, I am really not looking forward of such re-design.

Lets start by syncing project dir to fs22 mods dir and go look in-game, how is everything.

In-game check shows error free log and very few of those farm yards and pretty much all of them without a road access, damn dude what a mess

It is a lot of work to do fix those farm yards and add more, because I have to add more, but... I just have to do it, I cant release it like this as it looks like a child painted the yards with crayons. So off to take backups and then fire up design doc in GIMP and start painting.

2022-01-30T13:26:56Z Going to need some motivational energy to get through this farm yard re-design because I know I'm such a fuckup that I'll go wild and add bunch of other stuff in there as well, so what better time to take a lunch break ...

2022-01-30T13:57:47Z Feeding time is over, back to GIMP doing some farming designs.

Loaded project on GE just to coordinate a bit with GIMP design doc and there I see that hmm weight images are all broken up, I must have accidentally copied some other terrains weight images here before, might have been either 40km or 45km dunno. Oh well copied 20km ones here to restore order.

Imported PMC_Helpers.i3d which again took forever. Saddest part is that how I did it now, the order of things, is that this is only the first GE save for 20km terrain today, I need to make one save to exit and once design doc new images are in then need to do another. GE does have the reload textures feature, but I never used it and I simply do not trust it.

2022-01-30T15:12:18Z Finally got somewhat OK looking design with new farm yards into GE, it has been a mess with the graphicsmagick bat files etc. Some field definitions are slightly leaking above cultivator_density on the corners but its nothing game breaking.

New farm yards with short driveways look great though.

Some of the fields turned out really goofy as I used the grow 30, invert, shrink 5, grow 25 method, there was even whole fields that disappeared in SE region, odd. Hmm might need to pay more attention to them on the whole grow/shink/grow hustle.

Painted the fields back in GIMP manually. I could have done new grow/shrink loop but just wanted to quickly paint them in and be done with it. I have no recollection which grow/shrink setup I used with this terrain initially, it must have been very crude and hasty back then.

2022-01-30T15:46:07Z Started to lose concentration, not tired yet but just mental focus is completely off, I'm slouching back in office chair head leaning to the headrest and just cant get anything productive going, cant get the mental energy together to push in further edits.

I need to call it here but write latest updates from fresh memory here so that tomorrow I don't have to scratch my head that "what the hell did I do last night!?" heh.

Personal summary message for tomorrow hah: So GIMP design doc got new farm yards and they look cool, but in the fields grow/shrink selection operation went slightly sideways, fields are now extremely rounded corners and feel smaller, also many small fields were discarded by the grow/shrink selection process. Tomorrow... it would be nice to re-try this with fresh energetic head, to get the fields right. Oh and also new farm yards have no forest tree line patch paintings on them, that should be added as well.

2022-01-31 Grow Invert Shrink Repeat

2022-01-31T01:48:37Z Tomorrow is here! Yeah new editing day and was excellent to get started after reading the above paragraph, no need to wonder and try to figure out what I did or did not do last night, it was all written there. Now I can just jump in and continue editing.

Honestly I don't feel like re-doing the field selection, yeah they look slightly different after these new farm yards but overall they are fine. But decided to give it a try anyways, I don't need to save GIMP XCF if the selection grow/shrink shuffle goes bad.

Got the fields much bigger and less smooth corners but still so that they are comfortable to field work on. I bet there will be now many trees on fields, will have to check in GE to see if I can just fix those fields or is it too much work.

Oh right yeah I didn't take backups this morning because yesterday I did not make any progress, I was just fooling around with the design in GIMP, there has been no terrain project dir files (GE files) which were edited. Of course I could have taken backups from the design doc, but as said before pressing CTRL-S to save in GIMP we are good, and luckily the new field selections turned out alright.

There was many trees right at the field edge which would have been difficult to farm as a player and hired courseplay for sure would have collided with the trees. Luckily there arent that many trees in this terrain so I could manually custom fix those, or I could use maybe 2 pixel less selection growth, hmm.

Now I used grow 15 pixels, invert, shrink 5 and grow ... umm no that doesn't sound right; 15, invert, shrink 2, grow 13, uuh I cant remember why on earth didn't I write the list down, so stupid.

Lets try this formula again: grow 15, invert, shrink 5, grow 15. That results into eeextremely tight selection for fields, but it still looks like it could work, without existing tree lines or utility poles between field and a road.

This below GIMP design doc screenshot is from PMC Super Six 6km terrain XCF image because it was more light weight 6144x6144 resolution to test on than the bigger 20km terrains one, so nevermind that, just look at the selection heh.

Looks pretty tight which is good, but not good for existing trees and utility poles for sure.

g 15 -> i -> s 5 -> g 15, got it? Good...

Going back to PMC Undefined Farms 20km design doc and paint new farm yard forest tree lines, they need them. Also, why not paint forest areas to the existing GE placed trees, yes its not ideal solution to paint them after trees are already in place, but maybe it would fit close enough.

I told you, this design doc would get out of hand and turn into a hot mess

2022-01-31T02:47:23Z Finished painting more forest tree lines, including all new farm yards. Oh man this will create so much more GE object placing work heh.

Actually those detailed narrow forest tree lines and g15-i-s5-g15 shuffle resulted into really nice overall design, check this out.

I like the tightness

2022-01-31T03:09:00Z PMC Undefined Farms 20km design doc is finalized, I just have to call it at some point otherwise its one tweak after another until the end of days. Unless there is some blatant game breaking bug in this design, this is the final design. Exported images and ready to run graphicsmagick conversion bat before GE check.

Then fixed the new farm yards on design-doc-farmland.xcf image. This was an easy task as there was only three farm yards which fell into the split farmland ID channel colors. However I did not get to paint individual colors for them, I have no idea how many colors I've used in this image so far, I think it was all, so hmm I would have to shuffle some RGBs around to make room for these farm yards and to tell you the truth, I'm too lazy to start such task right now. There are plenty of small farmlands to buy that any new farmer or Start From Zero savegames are easily doable.

Checked out farmland image graphicsmagick generated temporary PNGs and sure enough, all 255 colors are used, so yeah no individual colors for these new farm yards, sorry.

2022-01-31T03:31:51Z Its time to load final images into GE and do a first save there.

Utility poles were on a field in one location so I had to bring in PMC_Helpers which was another long "Loading..." time, sigh. OK only one for today, after I've hit CTRL-S save here today there won't be any more no matter what issues came up.

Surprisingly the loading time was rather quick this time, okay cool.

2022-01-31T04:03:21Z Had a great trouble re-creating one of the utility pole lines, it went belly up real quick as I tried to adjust the existing spline control vertexes, in the end got frustrated and had to delete and remake the whole spline heh.

During this process I also discovered why GE started to lag in the RMB-WASD camera movement mode, its apparently because if you press W when object is selected it turn into some odd mode dunno what it is, that causes the gizmo handles disappear and camera control subsequently becomes sluggish.

Another lesson learned, nice.

Removed selling point 13.

2022-01-31T04:20:35Z Hmm now the existing objects are looking OK, utility poles arent on fields, well the other line is just on the field edge, but I'm thinking of leaving it like that for now, the poles arent on the field physically but right on the edge.

2022-01-31T04:25:22Z Created first farm yard tree line and decided to do CTRL-S save. This time though, save was really fast, meaning normal speed, odd.

Exited GE and changed PNG back to GDM/GRLE in I3D file, then removed PNGs and loaded terrain project back to GE. Then just adding more trees to farm yards.

2022-01-31T04:50:42Z Getting really tired again, almost zombi mode alike feeling. Only slept a bit over 5hrs last night so this is the result. Really annoying if you have to stop a good editing day for a nap. Hmm I need to put alarm on phone when sleeping that I wont be allowed to get up from the bed until 6hrs has passed or something.

When you are tired the chances of making mistakes increases a lot. Also the zombi mode is often bad that when you return to editing after a nap you are looking that huh what the heck was I doing in these last edits heh.

Would be wonderful if you could just "decide" to sleep 7hrs every night and be super refreshed for a full 17hrs editing day then.

2022-01-31T05:02:05Z Unfortunately I had to call it, just way too zombi mode on I'm going on with pure muscle memory here heh, nap time...

2022-01-31T08:01:03Z Back, editing day continues.

2022-01-31T08:12:02Z Two forest tree lines done for farm yards. I started to use my lua script called "Live" where I can edit the settings I want and discard it later, as GE cannot add new scripts on the fly so its good to have such live script which can be edited without any regard to saving it or erasing earlier nice variables.

2022-01-31T08:19:28Z Lunch break ...

2022-01-31T08:42:33Z Feeding time is over, back to placing farm yard forest tree lines.

Several farm yard tree lines got done.

In that image you have a slightly bad terrain design doc drawing for a field, can you spot it (without looking below)?

So here is the below image which explains what I mean. This farm yard is located too close to the field corner which created this kind of narrow field spot, its otherwise a big field but now this long narrow spot causes issues with courseplay multiple tools operations, try to imagine harvesting that field with four combines or cultivating it with two wide implements, there will be bad overlap.

This design level issue should have been solved by having better overall "vision" not to place the farm yard so close to the west side road. This could have been achieved in various ways, either creating this location more center of the field in general, or simply making the farm yard less wide and more "deep" instead. Just overall you have to be careful not go create those narrow spots on otherwise a big field.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong in a big terrain to have small fields, but you have to decide if you are generating a large field or a small field, you just cant do large field with such narrow spots, it just frustrates players/farmers and especially courseplay.

Top down, baby!

And another angle.

Cute little farm yard for those small scale hobby farms, where you tend your garden... hmm no wait, that must have been some other terrain

Joking aside, that is truly a small farm yard, when you look at the sizes of trees and then imagine putting a grain bin(s) and vehicle shed(s) there, yeah it wont leave much room. Heh need to make a note about that too small farm yards are all but useless, bare minimum yard size should be maybe like two grain bins and two vehicle sheds so that there are still room to maneuvre your vehicles around them.

In these huge terrains, what is the point of making a small farm yard, I mean even if you design it for the new farmer or Start From Zero savegames, lets be honest... all you want to achieve if "variation" for the sizes, it has nothing to do with proper game-play. So be careful with these small farm yards...

2022-01-31T10:14:27Z Forest tree lines done for farm yards, well unless I missed some yard out there, its so hard without having them all marked on a huge terrain.

I do have empty transformgroups to mark the locations, but I cant tell if I missed some. I need to come up with a better easier way to marking them for navigation, quick bookmarks if you will. Actually GE would require bookmark feature for camera position

2022-01-31T10:27:17Z Started to create farm yard grain bins, fertilizer bins and fuel tanks. This is going to take a while, placing them in GE and typing all those coordinates into placeables.xml uh my copy-paste finger is already hurting even though I try to use SHIFT-DEL/INSERT as much as possible.

These objects in farm yards really bring this terrain to life.

2022-01-31T10:41:03Z Created placeables.xml Location-01 which already had four meridian flat bottom 3608 grain bins, now added fuel tank and liquid/solid fertilizer bins three each.

Then created transformgroup with empty transformgroups for all farm yards which need placeables done. This way I can just systematically go through them one by one and make sure all get done, no need to fly around aimlessly with the camera view trying to see if there are any yards missing placeables.

Unfortunately looking at the list, I'm pretty sure rest of the day will be spent doing those and most likely beginning of tomorrow. Oh well lets get started.

Farm yar placables Location-02 done.

And now I need to take a shower, about 20min break to refreshen myself a bit...

2022-01-31T11:31:16Z Cleaning time over, all refreshen and ready to continue until I snooze off to sleep tonight.

Was talking with Octanen on PMC chat channel about using blender to place roads, railroad tracks and utility poles. That is exciting if he manages to get it to work so I could actually use it to populate PMC terrains with objects.

Alright back to creating farm yard placeables.

Location-03 farm yard done, this had a bad slope but I managed to plug in objects into somewhat OK less sloped locations.

And Location-04 created with big boy stuff.

When doing these farm yards in placeables.xml config file I was thinking how this could be easier, well would be great to have LUA script to read for example "Location-04" transformgroup and transform (pun inteded) all of it into placeables.xml clipboard copy-paste text or if possible directly into a txt file on HDD.

Farm yard Location-05 done, a slight slope there, these dang nice rolling hills elevation heightmaps

Farm yard Location-06 created, another sloped and slightly smaller yard.

Work in progress farm yard, uuh copy paste fingers are hurtin' so bad...

Farm yard Location-07 done, uuh this copy pasting is killing me hehe.

2022-01-31T14:06:23Z Lunch break finished, uh oh forgot to write it down, was hectic in chat and then got hungry heh, anyways Location-07 is done. And now I'm going to study LUA scripting, if I could come up with a LUA script that reads transformgroup and outputs placeables.xml format farm yard object info.

Smeby in PMC chat gave me a link to german forum (ugh) with rudimentary lua script to get transformgroup name and position/rotation coordinates. I did a quick modification of that lua script and now I can select all objects for the farm yard, run the script and have the names/coords in almost ready to go placeables.xml config file line.

Only thing missing is the actual placebale XML file name for the transformgroup like "flatBottomBin3608" which XML is "$mapdir$/maps/placeables/meridian/flatBottomBin3608/flatBottomBin3608.xml" string. But this is already saving so SO MUCH copy-paste finger pain it is incredible. May sound silly but this is one of the nicest additions for my editing work flow in a long time (as blender roads/railroads/utility-poles are still pending heh).

2022-01-31T14:33:27Z Now work continues and it sped up a great deal with this script

Next created Location-08, it was another smaller farm yard. But man what a joy it was to just run a script to get those placeable config lines done

And Location-09 farm yard placeables done, boom.

And then Location-10 done heh.

It is so nice to do these farm yards now using this LUA script which removes all copy-pasting, man it was so tedious and painful task to do. I cant believe it took me this long to get around to search such script and with a little edit got it fixed to really nice placeables.xml generating one.

Just enjoying myself when creating another one, Location-11, heh dishing out these yards left and right

Farm yard Location-12 done, nice yard. Hmm although dunno if I'm cramming these bins too close together that there are no free space for players to put down vehicle sheds and such buildings they want. It kind of defeats the purpose if farm yards are spoon fed forced crap, obviously players can sell these and put down what they want, but yeah optimum solution would be to have basic functionality grain bins etc in place and players could then customize it by placing their own buildings whatever they need, big vehicle sheds or something else.

And farm yard Location-13 done in no time

Farm yard Location-14 done, yeah baby!

This has turned into screenshot gallery eh?

2022-01-31T16:36:51Z Just finished creating farm yard Location-15 is plenty of farming functionality for large scale farmer

And then created sixteenth placeable farm yard location, so that is 1 new farmer and 1-16 (so 17 total) buyable and sellable farm yards with buildings

Edited selling points locations in PMC_Helper because fields got bigger they were partly on fields now, almost all of them. All got fixed.

2022-01-31T17:05:22Z Hmm not sure what to edit next, well adding trees and utility pole lines for the new farm yards, sure, hmm but I kind of want to hold off for the utility pole work as there might be a way to do it in blender tomorrow (after I learn it).

So I'm going to casually add some tree lines to populate the place now before getting tired and need to call it a night. I have no idea when that happens as with the nap my sleeping schedule is off whack and I don't even have my next meal timer running in phone, I'm just free falling here heh. Anyways, more trees, coming up!

Managed to place very nice sparse tree coverage in first try on one of those forest patches.

2022-01-31T17:58:58Z OK my eyes start to get that eye strain of being up too long staring computer screen, body doesn't otherwise announce being tired but yeah eyes are sure to give that sign. So I exported PMC_Helpers, deleted it and then saved the project.

Time for todays first(?) and last in-game check, how does it look and run. Exciting.

Except I forgot placeables.xml, the filenames are not set, uuh need to put those in. Hmm going to make powergrep4 regexp replacement line for them.

2022-01-31T18:25:16Z In-game check complete, its looking good, no errors

2022-02-01 Resolving Map CTD

2022-02-01T02:58:00Z New editing day has started, but honestly after yesterdays big push... not sure what would I edit today. Day starts with usual in-game orientation check and, yeah dunno what then.

In-game orientation check. Looks like icon/preview image is from outdated mapview image. Silage is still accepted on all selling points, this might cause issue with BALES supposedly accepted there but in reality they are not so contracts will break when they ask you to drop silage bales to lets say selling point 2 but it will not accept them, nothing happens when you drop them off.

2022-02-01T03:44:37Z Created new updated overview and icon/preview PNG images.

Updated selling points XML config files from PMC King Corn 45km which had BALE type filltypes removed. This should fix the contracts deliveries to selling points which do not accept bales.

2022-02-01T04:04:24Z During another in-game check I discovered a critical bug: ESC mapview -> soil composition causes CTD. Yikes!

Investigating density images especially stones_density image resolutions and looks like for some reason cultivator/fruit density images are 8192 resolution while rest are 16384. That could be the cause for the crash. Going to increase design doc density image resolution to 16384.

Created new _run_graphicsmagick_resize_design_doc_to_CUSTOM_VALUE.bat file which resizes current 10240 x 10240 resolution images to 16384 x 16384 resolution. Yes I know resizing smaller image to larger is fake bullshit, but yeah.. insert excuses here haha.

Then ran _run_design_doc_to_density_weight_images_all_in_one_2022-01-28.bat to generate new terrain project images, then copied them to the project dir and launched GE to see whats up.

Saved in GE and exited. Then did the usual GDM/GRLE/PNG shuffle to get ready for another in-game check.

2022-02-01T04:58:42Z In-game checking, ESC mapview -> soil composition, works OK, no issue anymore after resizing cultivator_density and fruit_density back up to 16384 pixel resolution.

Checked selling points, now silage, grass and hay is only accepted on animal dealer (by the vehicle shop area), however straw is still accepted on all selling points.

2022-02-01T05:08:41Z I feel very good about this current build, yes it needs more trees and utility pole lines, but it is awesome for what it is, I'm going to switch editing into the next terrain project which is PMC Cereal Region 32km.

2022-02-04 Editing Objects

2022-02-04T09:29:24Z New editing day has started, I think, my sleeping schedule is so off everything has become a o.n.e.b.i.g.b.l.u.r...

This is the last terrain which is missing TrailerParkFarms (TPF) big vehicle sheds and today those get added in. So took backups just in case, loaded terrain project in GE and started to import PMC_Helpers with the insane "Loading..." time.

While GE was thinking, I fixed the mapUS tutorial floating icons finally, dunno how that simple PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km.xml text edit didn't get done until now.

2022-02-04T09:43:43Z GE PMC_Helpers loaded in, now we get to start.

Started to go through the farm yard locations and it was slope after slope after slope... and I got frustrated real quick, this ain't going to work. I only got to add TPF vehicle sheds to few of the most level heightmap farm yards.

The flat enough farm yards were location: 4, 7, 9 and 10. Heh not much out of 17 locations.

Oh well, in the future I know that before I even export L3DT heightmap it has to be leveled out for all farm yards. No idea how it would work, I know how to level a spot on a heightmap but how to make it look natural, no clue whatsoever. But that is for future date and seeing how things are going, it will be very very far in the future.

I numbered 276 objects in placeables.xml config file, plus then there were close to 10 already numbered ones, plus usual selling points of course. That is a lot of placeable objects heh.

2022-02-04T10:20:11Z Then it was in-game testing time again.

During testing I discovered there is a liquid fertilizer tank in center coordinates of the terrain, underground. This must have been some accidental leftover in PMC_Helpers into one of the Location-0? placeable transformgroups. Or who knows maybe there are more of them underground, I just see the liquid fert tank in ESC mapview. Well this is easy fix, just requires one more GE load and save. I actually started loading while still at in-game testing things out.

Well in GE I did not see anything in 0,0,0 coordinates, hmm, interesting. So I imported PMC_Helpers, no idea what might be there which would help me but this issue right away feels like "all hands on deck" type of situation, so lets bring all the tools to the table.

Hmm in GE there was nothing in those coordinates, so it must be from placeables.xml then. I saved GE terrain project just to make sure and exited.

Quickly scanned placeables.xml through with string search position="" and position="0 but found no matches, hmm. That is odd. Need to sync the project files into fs22 mod dir once again and re-check.

New in-game test and nope, its still there. Hmph. Okay time to empty placeables.xml config file to verify its not coming from there (I mean it is).

Deleted every object line from placeables.xml, in-game test shows nothing anywhere, no icons of any kind. So yeah placeables.xml is our culprit for this bug. Okay time to start combing through it line by line to find the offending liquid fertilizer tank, or well I could just search those through first because if liquid fert tank is the problem why inspect vehicle shed lines.

Okay that was easy to find, it was fifth liquid fertilizer line to check where I found this: position="-180 -68.94999695 -180" so its not exactly zeroed out but the elevation -68m matches my description and those -180s make it more or less center of the terrain. Okay time to fix it, once again we load GE and PMC_Helpers, etc, oh my...

2022-02-04T11:01:57Z Found the coordinates from PMC_Helpers and fixed them in placeables.xml config file.

I left GE still running when I went to in-game to make sure its fixed.

2022-02-04T11:07:26Z In-game test confirms, its fixed, liquid fert icon near terrain center underground is gone.

But now I discovered a new bug, none of the placeable objects work, meaning I cannot buy diesel for the fuel tank etc, the refill tank option does not come up. Hmm that means the object XML files have not been updated and are lacking the buy with farmland property. Hmm wonder how many of these terrains have them missing, better to check them all while I'm at it.

Went through this terrains placeable/ dir, yeah it was outdated, there was even the I3D/shape files present, deleted those and copied over the new updated ones. Now all placeables should work as designed.

Doing in-game test I could already see from minimap view that its now working. When you start a savegame and not own any land with placeables, nothing shows up in ESC mapview or minimap, once you buy the land with placeables... they appear in mapview and then you get to use their functionality, cool.

During another in-game check found three more errors:

2022-02-04 11:12 Error: Failed to open xml file 'C:/FS22.Mods/Dev/PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km/maps/placeables/unia/farma/farma400/farma400.xml'.
2022-02-04 11:12 Error: Failed to open xml file 'C:/FS22.Mods/Dev/PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km/maps/placeables/unia/farma/farma500/farma500.xml'.
2022-02-04 11:12 Error: Failed to open xml file 'C:/FS22.Mods/Dev/PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km/maps/placeables/unia/farma/farma800/farma800.xml'.

This is caused by storeItems.xml having lines for these placeables, but I am not using these placeables, their XML config files are not present in maps/placeables/... dir. The storeItems.xml file includes these as it was copy pasted from my template "one size fits all" dir. Removed those and error went away.

But still one more in-game test just to verify log is error free...

2022-02-04T11:29:29Z In-game verify complete, log is error free. We are SO done here.

Uuh what a great feeling to have this terrain finished for its first release

2022-02-09 Proper Name

2022-02-09T15:22:35Z New editing day has started. Its time to give this terrain project a proper name, its "PMC Undefined Farms 20km"

So the usual rename shuffle, change directly and file names, then powergrep4 mass string replace to all the i3d/xml files.

2022-02-09T15:29:42Z Directory and file name rename and mass string replace complete.

Next copy pasted mapUS storeItems.xml trees and plants lines to our storeItems.xml which fixes the landscaping tool not being able to see those tabs.

2022-02-09T15:43:19Z In-game test complete, works ok, landscaping tool also does trees and plants.

2022-02-11 Final Editing Day

2022-02-11T04:30:52Z Final editing day before release has started

Plan now is to create new farmer game-mode starter vehicles.

And it got done.

2022-02-13 First Release Day

2022-02-13T17:18:00Z Created PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km_v0.1.3.7z release packet, we are good to go.

2022-02-13T18:06:00Z PMC Undefined Farms v0.1.3 first release!

2022-05-09 Farmland Image And Field Definitions

2022-05-09T01:07:55Z Notes from my bugs/issues website (used rather honest language there heh):

undefined farms 20km farmland image for farm yards is basically missing

today's game-play test shows that you cannot buy a single farm yard, you have to buy some 1 million - 2.5 million costing mega land lot.

central east farm yard actually is split in half between two land lots costing more than 2 million each. hah awesome farm yard, no?

make farm yards their individual farmland images, you know this, why the fuck didn't you do it before. moron. fix your shit.

2022-05-10T1644 not only farm yards are missing, but most of the fields are split between two farmland lots, this is just extremely sloppy and stupid.

hate to tell you this, but easiest way would probably be to just remake the whole fucking thing with detailed 255 colors.

2022-06-15 Farm Yards Image Editing

2022-06-15T01:03:00Z New editing day has started, been long time on my mind mainly due my Start From Zero savegame, but need to add field numbers and fix farm yards in the farmland image.

Just took backups of the terrain project, then GIMP design doc dir.

2022-06-15T01:19:00Z First row in the north is done, all farm yards in that row are now individual small compact and cheap farmland buyable land lots

2022-06-15T01:48:00Z About half of the terrain's farm yards are now their own individual buyable land lots.

2022-06-15T02:32:00Z Done, all farm yards painted. Hopefully didn't make any RGB mistakes.

Then ran graphicsmagick bat file to generate farmland PNG image for GE importing. Copied it over to terrain project dir, deleted farmland.grle, edited TERRAIN.i3d to swap grle with png file extension, then loaded terrain project in GE v9.0.2 and checked it out. Looks good so far.

Saved, exited. Then edited TERRAIN.i3d farmland.png back to .grle, then loaded project back up again to check if everything is OK. It does.

Next I opened fields and toggled render field areas... hmm now I should add all the field numbers, only numbers no corner pieces, so they would still be "meadow" fields without AI planting them but having numbers so players can identify them.

But once I started to add new fields numbers only... I realized that there is no way for me to tell which field has field definitions already because the corner piece-less transformgroup is not show in the map, well obviously, DOH!

Hmm this needs more thought... Then proceeded to create those very small field definitions with corner piece.

2022-06-15T03:33:00Z My pinky copy-paste CTRL pressing finger is screaming in agony

Also getting really tired, almost in full zombi mode.

2022-06-15T05:05:00Z Field definitions done, total number of fields 1880

2022-06-18 Painful Field Definitions

2022-06-18T05:08:00Z New editing day has started, todays goal is to sort out the mess I did with v0.1.4 which was the version I created couple of days ago. Issues there are that all the new fields are GRASS, I accidentally copy-pasted one of the grass fields so now we have 1800+ tiny hectare size grass fields. Another issue is that all these new fields have field definition corner pieces so AI will plant on them and they appear as contracts, we don't want that, all we want is the field number to identify the field.

So while its not copy-paste finger torture, its going to be quite huge task to delete corner pieces from 1800+ fields, not to mention the field grass mission. Yesterday I already took a look at TERRAIN.i3d file and the node bullshit is just linked together with ID numbers so we cant just use text editor to remove stuff from there, it would all fall apart like a house of cards.

Need to fire up GE and painstakingly delete all corner pieces, I'm hoping the field grass mission attribute wont matter after that. This whole deal pisses me off as I cannot just do one field and test as my win10 computer (SSD device) is offline.

2022-06-18T05:14:00Z Loaded undefined farms project in GE v9.0.2 and then simply exported Fields transformgroup, let me try if I could actually text edit and remove those attributes and corner pieces, I believe you cant but lets get a confirmation for it right now...

This is the actual first field I added, its identified by "fieldXX" name:

        <TransformGroup name="fieldXX" translation="532.734 9.50049 91.683" nodeId="24544">
          <TransformGroup name="fieldDimensions" nodeId="24545">
            <TransformGroup name="corner01_1" translation="75.5767 0.72699 -15.2097" nodeId="24546">
              <TransformGroup name="corner01_2" translation="-40.4294 -0.31366 85.3845" nodeId="24547"/>
              <TransformGroup name="corner01_3" translation="-168.792 0.153137 35.031" nodeId="24548"/>
            </TransformGroup>
          </TransformGroup>

So I loaded the exported fields i3d in text editor, searched that above location, then simply deleted "corner01_1" transformgroup and its child transformgroups corner01_2 and corner01_3, I assume that when I load this i3d back to GE there will be some missing / mismatch nodeId error, but lets try and see what happens.

It worked without errors, hmm very strange, wonder what use the nodeId's are then if they have no bearing in missing stuff heh.

2022-06-18T05:53:00Z Uuh been deleting what feels like endless number of transformgroups now and the scroll bar in text editor hasn't move much at all, it is just insane amount of stuff I need to delete in these 1800+ fields. Was even considering just re-creating the field definitions in GE but that would be much worse.

Oh man, such a small mistake of choosing the wrong field definition to copy-paste and now I'm suffering through all this text editing work.

Luckily I won't be doing the same mistake again so lesson learned.

2022-06-18T07:16:00Z Unfuckingbelievable it took me all this time to get those transformgroup deleted with text editor, uuh my mind is blur right now and fingers are hurting from 1800+ repetitive 5+ (at least) commands

Never. Again.

And now, if it doesn't work in GE or in-game... yeah I don't even want to think about that, its rage quit time then

2022-06-18T07:18:00Z Loaded terrain project in GE, deleted Fields transformgroup, then started to import the text editor edited fields I3D file...

It took a really long time while GE was processing, that was a bad sign...

2022-06-18T07:25:00Z Finished importing, no errors that I can see, pfewf!

Well get field sizes script of course it not working as there is no corner pieces to measure, I'm just hoping that this crap works in-game, if it doesn't then we are back in square one, we need to decide if we add fields to our terrain or not, there is no "just add field numbers" option then. But that is for testers to discover.

Changed modDesc to v0.1.5, updated readme, generic release compile bat and then compiled that 7-zip release packet.

2022-06-18T07:29:00Z We are done here, now its up to testers to report back does this version even work in-game.

2022-07-03 Broken Fields Editing

2022-07-03T21:06:00Z Was extremely pissed off yesterday when discovered that v0.1.5 edits are total garbage, those gave over 1800 multi-line errors in the log. This is what you get when you edit blindly without the ability to immediately test your edits. PMC DevSurf computer is running windows 8.1 which as we all know, doesn't run fs22 so I did not test these edits.

Now I wanted to restore the old v0.1.3 official first release version project dir just to erase the memory of that editing fuckup. Well turns out... the backup is nowhere to be seen. I am baffled because as it reads above I did take that backup on june 15th but I cannot find it now, only thing I have is june 18th backup which is from v0.1.4 which already has those 1800 field definitions and the farmland image edits.

I have no idea where I placed the backup taken in jun 15th, its not in PMC DevSurf or PMC Linux hard disks anywhere, yes I looked everywhere. Makes no sense.

2022-07-03T21:14:00Z So nothing more to do than try to fix this piece of shit broken ass v0.1.4 now. I selected all the new field definitions labeled "fieldXX" transformgroups and deleted them.

Edited modDesc.xml and changed version number to v0.1.6 to erase the shame of zero point one point five crap. Also changed descVersion to 67 as I saw on courseplay github repo that it is the current version.

2022-07-04 v0.1.6 Into Testing

2022-07-04T23:10:00Z Compiled v0.1.6 for testing, went to PMC Gaming computer to test it out and was relieved to see that farmland image works as designed.

Uploaded PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km_v0.1.6.7z to farming-simulator.org and then posted message to PMC Tactical forum about the testing release (nothing to test I tested it already but still).

Now all is good as the terrible 1800 error mess has been fixed. Sure its not really a fix when all the erroneous field definitions got simply deleted, but hey zero tolerance policy for errors no matter the collateral damage. All the way.

2022-12-09 Fix My Fields Punk

2022-12-09T17:50:00Z New editing day has started, edited modDesc.xml descVersion to 72.

2022-12-10T04:09:00Z Took 7-zip backup, copied the .7z archive to three HDDs for safe keeping. Now I want to add few more field definitions.

Started GE v9.0.2 which announced v9.0.3 update, not now. Loaded PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km.i3d, ran script for setup large terrain, then toggled field view thing and then imported PMC_Helpers.i3d which took fooooorever, man what a bizarre piece of shit GE v9 is

Its already been quite a long editing day for me, did some good edits, but I would still like to add several field definitions to PMC Undefined Farms 20km before bed time, then hopefully continue tomorrow with the ultimate goal of adding all of them. I'm just a bit scared of how many fields there are in this terrain, its 20.4km with nothing but fields after all

Once got started I realized heightmap PNG is still in place which means not very enjoyable 2D top down flat field definition work plane, saved and exited GE, I need to level the heightmap out, its the best way to create field definitions.

Took backup of PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km_dem.png, opened PNG in GIMP and set it to RGB 0,0,0 which is 0 meters flat. Then again loaded all that junk to GE

2022-12-10T04:41:00Z Total of 38 new field definitions are done and my copy-paste pinky finger is already screaming in agony

Creating field definitions wouldn't be that bad, if the controls were just a bit easier to operate, CTRL-D to duplicate/copy-paste a field definition and CTRL-B at least 4 times to align it and its corner pieces to correct location. Not fun.

2022-12-10T05:04:00Z Hmm decided to create a tiny field definition which will be pasted to all cultivator_density field areas to have full "NUMBER" coverage, then once pinky copy-paste finger gets better and I have more enthusiasm, I'll edit the corner pieces to fit the cultivator density better. This regular even single shape creation just feels so fucking awful right now, its like torture, heh no joke

Then I configured GE keyboard shortcuts to have CTRL-D set to key 1 and CTRL-B to key 2. Those keys are easy to press and then you have ready to place field definition, small yes which doesn't fit very well to larger cultivator_density area, but at least this way its a bit more comfortable to create those many field definitions for the number purpose.

2022-12-10T07:57:00Z Had to take couple of hours break to do a chore, now back few more moments before bed time, I'm actually already over 17hrs awake today so dunno how long can I go on.

2022-12-10T08:22:00Z Okay need to call it a night, going into zombi mode now, more editing tomorrow...

1888 Field Definitions Clutter

2022-12-10T15:52:00Z New editing day has started, today we continue creating single shape field definitions, those small patches. Lets see how many I'll manage to do.

2022-12-10T17:09:00Z GE finished creating single shape small patch field definitions! Now they are all done, I cant see any fields without field definition now, nice!

Yes of course these are copy-pasted identical size patches, too small to be useful, but now field NUMBERS are are in, its easy to start improving them from this point

2022-12-10T17:36:00Z Did some tweaks to few fields, exported fields-2022-10-10.i3d for backups as that saves time, no need to CTRL-S save the whole project which is slow when you can just export small I3D. Then counted field sizes, there are total of 1212 fields now, hmm that is odd I remember it being 1880 before when there was the buggy grass field thing going on, oh well anyways.

Usually I'd continue editing here, but lately those "editing blindly" things have scared me so bad that now I'm going to compile a new testing version and right away check it out at Gaming computer just to see if new fields work OK.

Changed modDesc version to 0.1.7, edited compile bat and readme.

2022-12-10T17:55:00Z Compiled PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km_v0.1.7.7z for testing.

And of course I forgot to unpack the original heightmap PNG so everything was flat 0m elevations

So changed to v0.1.8 and compiled a new release.

2022-12-10T18:17:00Z Tested v0.1.8 and it runs good, no errors. However those new fields were total of 1888 (dunno why GE v9.0.2 only showed me 1212, maybe it was still processing when I checked the log) and they completely clutter minimap (9) so its useless.

Goofy stuff man.

But guess there are no other way around it if you have a huge terrain with small fields. If the fields were larger, lets say well above 20ha or maybe even 50ha, then I don't think there would be that much cluttering in minimap (9).

Anyways, time to ship v0.1.8 for testers in our forum.

2022-12-10T18:30:00Z Started uploading PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km_v0.1.8.7z for testers.

2022-12-13 Field Definition Corner Pieces

2022-12-13T22:12:00Z New editing day has started, kind of... I'm currently editing ArmA 3 terrain PMC Latvia Lielvarde and there are long processes running leaving me bored with nothing to do, so why not add few more field definition corner pieces into PMC Undefined Farms 20km FS22 terrain ;)

As always I first ran 7-zip backup bat file which copied the created .7z archive into three other HDDs and one other computer, never forget backups. Then unpacked heightmap PNG with 0 meter elevation flat setup, yeah I still had the 7-zip backup of that file too, good choice to save it for future use.

Started GE v9.0.2, loaded terrain project up, ran large terrain script and toggle render field areas script. Now I'm ready to start adding editing field definition corner pieces.

2022-12-13T22:36:00Z Finished editing field definition corner pieces, added few more grass fields too, all in the dealership neighborhood for short traveling distance.

Changed modDesc version to v0.1.9 and edited compilation bat file and readme.txt file.

2022-12-13T22:39:00Z Compiled PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km_v0.1.9.7z new testing version packet.

Short while later tested these edits, I did F591 oat harvest contract and it worked fine, it was close with the "can keep" better contracts mod announced value but yeah it worked fine.

2022-12-15 Final Field Definition Corner Piece Edit

2022-12-15T05:55:00Z New editing day has started, plan is to add few more field definition corner pieces around the dealership.

You know the drill, first taking backups, then unpacking 0m elevation heightmap PNG and only then launching GE v9.0.2 to start editing.

2022-12-15T06:00:00Z First corner piece just W of the dealership edited, increased the single corner piece size now its much bigger field and covers cultivator_density pretty nicely.

2022-12-15T06:11:00Z Finished small editing session, dunno how many fields I did, funny how it was only 11 minutes and my pinky copy-paste finger is already hurting (the previous keyboard shortcut keys did not work anymore, dunno why huh), but I pretty much got those fields done that I had plans for. Now I'm taking a lunch break.

2022-12-15T06:37:00Z Lunch break over, hmm I'm going to do few more corner pieces...

2022-12-15T06:56:00Z Uuh another set of corner pieces done, got some pretty nice medium to big size fields done now. At this point we are in the "what difference does it make" situation, there are already SO many fields with field definitions that nobody can claim there aren't enough to get Start From Zero or any other kind of savegame going and with 1888 fields... there is probably about 1800 field definitions to fix which I am for sure not going to do. So any further work would be just waste of time for no tangible result.

Exited GE v9.0.2 and then restored original heightmap PNG again. Changed modDesc version to v0.2, edited readme.txt and release compilation bat files for new version.

2022-12-15T07:00:00Z Compiled PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km_v0.2.7z new testing version

2022-12-15 Utility Pole Wires

2022-12-15T22:18:00Z New editing day has started, todays short term goal is to add utility pole wires which I learned to do late last night (black wires for FS22). Also late last night I released v0.2 for testing with more field definition corner pieces, so that update was somewhat small even though it adds a lot of playability.

Editing day starts with taking backups, as usual. Now backups are especially important as I start to mess with utility poles.

Started GE v9.0.3, loaded terrain project, ran script to setup GE for large terrain and imported PMC_Helpers. Importing that tiny I3D again took forever, well I believe the I3D imports fast but then GE v9.0.3 is frozen (Not Responding) mode for many many minutes.

2022-12-15T22:38:00Z Created first utility pole line with wires attached to the poles, it went through alright, starting to get muscle memory back, I have placed a lot of these wires with this technique.

2022-12-15T22:43:00Z Second utility pole wire setup created, there was only two very long lines in this terrain. Cant recall if they were work in progress or by design only two lines.

Then saved project and exited GE, we are done for utility pole wire editing

Changed modDesc version to v0.2.1, edited readme.txt and release compilation bat files.

2022-12-15T22:48:00Z Compiled PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km_v0.2.1.7z testing version, first I'm going to test it on Gaming computer before uploading to PMC Tactical forum developer testing, cant let buggy stuff through.

2022-12-15T23:03:00Z Utility pole wire test was successful, no issues no errors. However after test was complete I checked required mods functionality... and there was none, log got errors for missing required mods when I started it without TrailerParkFarms (TPF) vehicle sheds.

2022-12-15 23:00   Warning: PlaceableUtil.loadPlaceable can only load existing store items, no store item for xml filename 'C:/FS22.Mods/PMC_Terrain_Testing/FS22_90x200ShedPack/92x200RedWhite.xml'
2022-12-15 23:00   Warning: PlaceableUtil.loadPlaceable can only load existing store items, no store item for xml filename 'C:/FS22.Mods/PMC_Terrain_Testing/FS22_72x150ShedPack/72x150shedRedMain.xml'

So came back to editing computer and added modDesc.xml lines for:

	<dependencies>
		<dependency>FS22_72x150ShedPack</dependency>
		<dependency>FS22_90x200ShedPack</dependency>
	</dependencies>

And changed version to v0.2.2, then compiled another test version before heading to restroom for a much needed relief

2022-12-15T23:18:00Z Started to put together forum post for PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km_v0.2.2.7z testing release.

2023-01-03T19:15:00Z New editing day has started, not really, but in Sources/ dir GIMP design doc image dir files are still named "test" so I renamed it properly to PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km. Renamed one bat and two GIMP XCF files too. Replaced test strings in the bat files using powergrep4.

2023-01-20 More Field Definition Corner Pieces Editing

2023-01-20T04:41:00Z New editing day has started, todays goal is minimal, to enlarge as many field definition single shape corner pieces as I can before switching to PMC Gaming computer to create actual Start From Zero savegame

Plan is to leave GE running with field definition work ongoing, but as I want to have newer version for todays Start From Zero beginning, I need to do the heightmap 0m backup / restore and GE restart shuffle twice. On ideal conditions you would do all the corner pieces at once, but there are 1888 of them and I can tell ya, CTRL pressing copy-paste pinky finger will resign within hours, its just not possible for me to do them all at once, it has to be spread out over several days or at least editing sessions, that's why I want to leave GE open so I can do a few corner piece edits when ever I feel up to it.

First took backup of the project dir, copied to three different HDDs and PMC linux computer.

Then restored heightmap 0m elevation PNG image. Launched GE v9.0.2 and loaded terrain project up. Ran script to setup large terrains, then imported PMC_Helpers for that 2d top-down camera view which is excellent / must have for field definitions editing. Lastly used script toggle render field areas, now we are ready to continue editing.

2023-01-20T05:41:00Z Done editing corner pieces for now, deleted PMC_Helpers, CTRL-S saved project and exited GE.

Unpacked original heightmap PNG image, edited modDesc.xml to v0.2.3, readme.txt and release compilation bat files.

2023-01-20T05:44:00Z Compiled PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km_v0.2.3.7z for testing.

Restarted GE v9.0.2, loaded terrain project up, ran script setup for large terrains, imported PMC_Helpers, changed to 2D top-down camera, ran script toggle render field areas, selected the last field I edited (as I marked it down) and F moved camera there. Now I'll leave GE just sitting here when I'm going to PMC Gaming to create Start From Zero savegame

2023-01-20T13:17:00Z Was playing Start From Zero and realized sprayrate edit is not in, lets get that done now...

Saved terrain project in GE (yeah it was open there), then restored original heightmap PNG, edited PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km.xml file for <sprayTypes filename="maps/PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km/maps_sprayTypes.xml" />, then copied that actual XML file from PMC Super Six 6km into the correct dir.

Edited modDesc.xml to v0.2.4 plus the others, then compiled v0.2.4 for testing. Done, heh.

2023-02-12 Editing Field Definitions Corner Pieces

2023-02-12T00:37:00Z New editing day has started, this will be very casual relaxed editing day because the job at hand is taunting, field definition single shape copy-paste template corner pieces fixing, those need to be edited bigger to suit better contracts savegames like Start From Zero, it means crazy amount of GE CTRL-D and CTRL-B pressing which kills my pinky finger on long editing sessions. So I'm going to get started but take a break THE MOMENT it begins to feel boring or my pinky gets sore. Its going to be on and off editing through out the day, no stress, no fuss, etc

First took backup from the terrain project dir, usual copying to 3 different HDD and one computer.

Then unpacked the 0m elevation heightmap PNG image, launched GE v9.0.2, opened terrain I3D up, ran script for setup large terrain 32km, imported PMC_Helpers which oddly was without the 10+ min delay, nice. Now I got my 2D top-down camera and ready to start editing field definitions.

2023-02-12T00:56:00Z Wrote few bug / issue report edits (not new ones), now reached field definition which is the first "new ones" at the NW tip, however here I realized cultivator_density has no "field divider" for the terrain edge, meaning all fields are drawn right up to the edge there oblivion starts making courseplay use on these fields impossible. This must be fixed, trying to decide should I just mark this field transformgroup down, exit GE and go back to GIMP to fix the design doc, or just continue field definition work and just mark all the fields that are on the edge so they are easier to find once design doc is fixed later, hmm.

Decided that yup, it has to be fixed properly, from the ground up, so closed GE straight up as no edits has been made, created _run_backup_Design_Doc_PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km.bat backup bat file and ran it, now design doc has been safely secured.

In GIMP went to open PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km_Design_Doc.xcf which save date is 2022-01-31, over a year ago, man does time fly by fast. Created new layer called Field Dividers, this will be the edge "no fields here" selection. Now, if I just remember how it was done quickly, I should have written it down somewhere in my notes

2023-02-12T01:47:00Z Wrote a new PMC forum topic Fields cultivator_density Terrain Edges Gap FS22.

As said in that topic I used position: 10, 10 and size: 10220, 10220 for rectangle select tool before inverting the selection and fill it with another color. This color doesn't matter as its not shown anywhere else except in design doc.

2023-02-12T02:18:00Z Okay PNG images exported after using selection; grow 15, invert, shrink 5, grow 15. This was now with the field dividers layer included selection, the terrain edge. Came out all right looking, happy with the results.

Then used the same old _run_design_doc_to_density_weight_images_all_in_one_2022-01-28.bat to graphicsmagick process source PNG images into GE readable format and file names. This bat file is still doing 4096 res weight images, I do have a bug report which say those should be increased to 8192, but not yet, one issue at the time, nice and smooth.

Edited PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km.i3d to replace cultivator_density.gdm and fruit_density.gdm with .PNG file extension, then deleted those images from data/ dir. Then ran _run_graphicsmagick_FS19_weight_images_to_all_black_blank.bat just in case. Finally used _run_copy_weight_to_PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km_GE_data_dir.bat which copies weight images into terrain project dir, now its scary time, load in GE to see what did I break

2023-02-12T02:37:00Z It looks good, weight and density, all looking good cannot tell anything being wrong in GE. Saved project and exited.

Edited PMC_Undefined_Farms_20km.i3d file extensions back to .gdm and restarted GE back to the field definition editing point.

2023-02-12T02:42:00Z Now field definition corner pieces editing session starts, as said this will be laid back, on and off, I'll take many breaks and expect this editing to last hours and hours, days maybe if it starts to annoy me too much. I take no pressure or stress about this corner piece work, its done when its done. But once its done, then PMC Undefined Farms 20km will be glorious for Start From Zero contract work with 1888 fields to choose from without the need to worry about field definitions being tiny copy-paste templates

Plan is not to play-by-play tell story here, I'll just mention if anything major happens, lunch break, nap, playing fs22 heh, anything that makes longer than 30min break to this editing session. Actually I should not even call it a "session" because it sort of gives false impression, anyways.

2023-02-12T03:33:00Z Took the first backup from "Fields" transformgroup and now its time for a first legit break, visit to the head

About fifty minutes in one sitting, so far going good, wonder how much of that tedious work is psychologically driven, if you go in hating it, then obviously every minute will be agony, but if you just go in like "doesn't matter if I do one or hundred..." attitude, maybe it overall just goes smoother, dunno. On the other hand its been hmm more than a week as I edited the last time so maybe this is just an welcome change of scenery after just being farming in fs22 for so many days straight. Who knows.

2023-02-12T03:44:00Z Now I reached the first tiny copy-paste template corner piece, these are the little bastards that make contracts so bad with the puny identical size field definitions which spand across hmm hundreds, actually above thousand I believe. Now work begins which really makes a huge game-play difference in-game. Awesome.

Here is a good example screenshot of NE tip of the terrain, can see the new field dividers AKA edge gap I did in GIMP design doc and also highlighted field definition is one of these tiny copy-paste template ones.

2023-02-12T04:47:00Z Okay time to take a real long break, honestly don't feel that bad, no finger ache soreness or mind going blank yet, but its time to cook some food and I actually want to farm some in PMC Undefined Farms 20km Start From Zero, so it most likely will be hours if its even tonight when I return to this editing

2023-02-23T09:09:00Z New editing day has started, its been many days since I edited the last field definition corner piece, GE has been running all this time, it still seems to work OK which is always nice. Now today feels like a day with all the other video editing etc work that its good time to continue editing these corner pieces. Same plan as before nothings changed, I would like to finish all of it today but might be too much to ask to do close to 1800 corner pieces, so I'll do what I can with relaxed pace.

2023-02-23T10:28:00Z Did first export save to fields.2023-02-23T1027.i3d file, its been going slow but steady, doing 1-3 corner pieces quite detailed and then checking forums etc to relax, to make sure wont get that copy-paste CTRL pinky finger soreness which kills these field definition editing sessions very fast.

Oh I'm tired too, slept barely six hours last night and now eyes are all tired, hopefully wont need to take a nap today but we'll see. So far today has been a good day, got several field definition corner pieces done, good stuff. Also today I wont be writing play-by-play about lunch breaks and such things because those are expected with relaxed "edit what I can" mood.

2023-02-23T14:51:00Z After a few hours nap I feel energetic again, time to jump on some field definitions before grabbing days next meal.

2023-02-23T16:25:00Z Did another backup after good progress being done after a lunch break, fields.2023-02-23T1625.i3d file exported.

2023-02-23T17:47:00Z Hmm realized I am spending way too much time fine tuning corner pieces, when I zoom into the detailed cultivator_density view, you lose the sight of the bigger picture, you are wasting your time tinkering with the meaningless details on these field corners when you should just zoom back out again and mind the bigger picture, get good size field definitions done as easily and quickly as possible. If the field is 0.02ha smaller means absolutely nothing when doing contracts or otherwise using those AI fields.

So yeah I need not to zoom into the most detailed cultivator_density field view and just do the average bulk work, its much more than good enough for enjoyable contracts game-play.

2023-02-23T18:04:00Z Another save after good progress, fields.2023-02-23T1803.i3d file name.

2023-02-23T19:50:00Z Export saved fields.2023-02-23T1950.i3d file name as now I need to take a longer break because starting to feel that hmm how should I define it, not frustrated but ... heh cant describe it any other way than "painful" mood after editing so many field definitions. Now I need a break, I'm hoping this is only hours so could do few more corner pieces before bed time tonight, but I want to take it casually, relaxed, no pressure so whatever happens I'm cool with it.

2023-02-23T21:37:00Z Bored, back to field definitions, one at the time, nice and slow... nice and slow...

2023-02-23T23:37:00Z Another save for fields.2023-02-23T2336.i3d file name, slow but steady progress while watching leaddawg's twitch live stream.

2023-02-24T12:57:00Z New editing day has started, currently I'm twitch live streaming PMC RedWhiteBlue 10km and PMC Super Six 6km Start From Zero VIDEO recording, it will last 3 * 45min and I'm monitoring chat there (which there are none). So now I'm casually continuing again this never ending field definition work while OBS is playing a video and streaming it, if there are anyone in twitch chat I'll chat with them, if not... I'll keep editing corner pieces.

2023-02-24T13:08:00Z Hmm saved export to fields.2023-02-24T1308.i3d file name, seems like OBS gives more dropped frames when I move about in GE which also feels quite choppy, hmm wonder if my GTX 1060 3gb card is struggling to handle all that OBS twitch stream video stuff along with 4k triple screen desktop hmm.

2023-02-24T18:59:00Z Another save for fields.2023-02-24T1858.i3d file name, taking a lot of breaks while doing other stuff on the side, but still slowly and steadily plugging in few corner pieces here, and few over there...

2023-03-02T04:58:00Z New editing day has started, well not really, just finished a long day of playing PMC Iowa Garden City 8km Start From Zero (yeah FS19), had a lunch and now have nothing to do before bed time, so just for "no reason" I'll do few corner pieces, maybe if I could do like 5 it would be nice set.

Did one but GE seems to stutter a lot, I'm rendering video using Kdenlive on the background but there should be plenty of CPU power and cores left in PMC DevSurf AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 16 core, so hmm wonder if GE gets sluggish when its been running non-stop for over a week, hmm.

2023-03-02T05:14:00Z Okay probably well over 10 corner pieces edited, that is enough for now, exported fields.2023-03-02T0514.i3d file out. Okay, that was a nice quick editing session

2023-03-03T02:30:00Z New editing day has started, not much new, just want to chip in todays quota of corner pieces editing, have to make some progress every day and maybe one day all these 1.8k field definitions get done.

2023-03-03T02:35:00Z Heh this is kind of funny, but I need to take a half an hour hair cutting, shaving and showering break right here, yeah I know this sounds really bad as dude just FIVE minutes ago started to edit and now bunny hopping into other household chores heh, yeah yeah.. but hey, corner pieces editing work WILL continue when I'm freshly cut and showered

2023-03-03T04:13:00Z Okay back, just had a lunch too so quite nice break, now back to corner pieces before something else comes up.

2023-03-03T06:15:00Z Well spent a lot of time in xr-renegade's chat voice comms (listening and typing in chat) about his ohio terrain, so kind of lost a lot of editing time, but now back at it for at least few more corner pieces. Man, this field work task is going to take weeks with this pace

2023-03-03T06:39:00Z Exported fields.2023-03-03T0639.i3d file for backup, or well save in this case. Hmm my eyes are strained, feels like left eye is not watering but has that morning "dew" on it, I have to blink like traffic light when watching the screen heh, need to go restoom and clean eyes with tissue maybe it helps, or, maybe I'm simply tired even though not yawning yet

Hmm still got 2hrs 17min on the clock here before bed time, so should not be too tired yet. Went to restroom and cleaned yes with tissue, that was the issue (tiessue issue, it rhymes whoah), had some smudge in eyes for long day of computer monitor staring, now I'm good to go rest of the day with clean eyes

2023-03-03T07:07:00Z Exported fields.2023-03-03T0707.i3d for save thing, going to take a break by doing some global mapper work, just too much field definition stuff for now.

2023-03-03T17:51:00Z New editing day has started, you know the drill, one corner piece at the time ...

2023-03-03T18:20:00Z And exported fields.2023-03-03T1819.i3d file name for saving progress, time for another break.

2023-03-04T04:52:00Z Back to add few more corner pieces, I have nothing else to do so lets put in some work again.

2023-03-04T05:24:00Z Exported fields.2023-03-04T0523.i3d file name for safe keeping, enough editing for one session again. Its interesting, on rough ballbark it looks like I have patience to do about half an hour editing work on corner pieces hmm.

2023-03-04T17:15:00Z New editing day has started, OK today I have nothing else to do so maybe I'll try to squeeze in lets say at least 2hrs worth of field definition corner piece editing time spanning across the whole day.

2023-03-04T18:55:00Z Exported fields.2023-03-04T1855.i3d and now its time for days first meal, I'm starving...

2023-03-04T19:19:00Z Feeding time is over, back to editing.

2023-03-04T20:26:00Z Okay time to export fields.2023-03-04T2025.i3d file name out and take another break.

And after this came a change of plans, PMC Ohio Alger 10km terrain was born and my focus shifted completely to its development for now. I saved terrain project in GE and exited, no idea how long it will be before I return to this never ending field definition corner piece editing work...