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Fieldwork Course Generator

This is an extended course generator for Courseplay. It can be used in standalone mode or from within the game.

Using from the Game

HUD

You can now select 'Vehicle location' in the HUD as starting corner. If you do so, Starting Direction is set to automatic too and one headland is selected (can't generate without headland)

As usual you can set the number of headlands, clockwise/counterclockwise and headland/center order.

If you select anything other than 'Vehicle location' for the starting corner, the old generator is invoked.

Using the Standalone Version

Since this generator is now part of the Courseplay release, the only point of having a standalone version is to provide an efficient development environment for the course generator outside of the game engine. This allows shorter development cycles and some automated tests as well.

Standalone mode requires that you embed the Courseplay repository under the courseplay folder.

The rest of this guide is outdated and startCourseGenerator.lua is not maintained anymore (it still may work).

Generated course

In standalone mode it'll loada saved field or a fieldwork course previously generated in Courseplay, then you can make some adjustments and save the customized course.

Note that if you load fieldwork courses the course must have a headland track as the tool uses the outermost headland track to find the field boundary.

You can then load this customized course in the game just as a Courseplay generated course.

What this preview does:

  • generates tracks in any direction
  • finds the optimum angle, that is the direction the parallel tracks must run in order to have the minimum number of turns.
  • makes a best effort to find an angle for non-convex fields which results in continuous tracks
  • start the headland tracks at any location.
  • link the headland tracks with the parallel track (remember, the parallel tracks start location changes with the angle)
  • generate course starting in the center and finishing with the headland for sowing and any fieldwork other than harvesting
  • interleaved parallel tracks (sorry, don't know the exact term) where you work every second (or 3rd, 4th...) track to prevent Y turns.
  • non-convex fields: can generate path for non-convex fields. This is an experimental feature. If there is no convex solution for a field or the non-convex solution results in significantly less tracks it'll choose the non-convex solution. A non-convex solution will always have the middle of the field divided in two or more blocks which will be worked one by one. Once a block is finished, the course will lead to the next block on the innermost headland path. This is not optimal but will cover the entire field and the course will always remain within the field. In general, the algorithm will try to create the minimum amount of blocks and avoids creating blocks with just a few tracks.

Upcoming features:

  • integration with Courseplay so courses can be generated in game
  • optimized headland track generation to prevent skipping fruit at corners.

Installation

The package is for Windows and contains everything needed to run, including a lua interpreter and the LOVE graphical framework.

This is the Windows version, I don't have access to Mac computers. If you are willing to install lua and LOVE, you can run the scripts on a Mac too.

Just unzip the latest release from https://github.com/pvajko/course-generator/releases to any folder you like. The release has all the required tools bundled.

Alternatively, if you have lua and LOVE (love2d.org) installed and the executables in the PATH you can clone or unzip the source from git.

Usage

  1. Find your game folder. On Windows, this will most likely be under My Documents\My Games\FarmingSimulator2017

  2. Under that, there is a CoursePlay_Courses folder with a subfolder for each installed map. This is where the Courseplay courses are stored for each map. Note the full path to these folders.

  3. MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR CoursePlay_Courses FOLDER! This is a beta version, there may be bugs in there I don't want you to lose your saved courses!

  4. Now switch to the folder where you unzipped the course generator and type: lua.exe startCourseGenerator.lua for example, on my computer this would be:

    lua53.exe startCourseGenerator.lua "c:\Users\Peter\Documents\My Games\FarmingSimulator2017\CoursePlay_Courses\FS17_coldboroughParkFarm.SampleModMap"

    for the Coldborough Farm map. Make sure there is no \ at the very end of the folder name just before the ".

  5. Alternatively, you can load a previously saved field with:

    lua53.exe startCourseGenerator.lua

    (Courseplay saves the fields into the savegame folder) for example, on Savegame 8 on my computer would be:

    lua53.exe startCourseGenerator.lua "c:\Users\Peter\Documents\My Games\FarmingSimulator2017\savegame8

  6. You should now see a list which contains either the the saved courses of the map (if you started it with a map folder) or the saved fields of the savegame.

    Has limited support for course folders: when a new course is created from an existing one it'll be in the same folder as the original. If created from a field, it'll be in the root folder.

  7. Select a fieldwork course or a field by typing in the number of the course and pressing enter. The course generator will use this course or field to generate the course. If you selected a course, the course generator will use the outermost headland pass of the course without alterations and build everything based on that. Remember, the course must have a headland track! Selecting non-fieldwork courses or fieldwork courses with no headland tracks will result in errors.

    If you selected a field, the course generator uses the field boundary to generate the headland tracks.

  8. Next, you have to select the course where you want to save the generated course. Or, you can create a new course and type in the name.

  9. After you confirm the creation/overwrite of the course, the course generator window appears showing the outline of the field.

  10. Set the width and number of passes using the w/W and p/P keys.

  11. Next, you'll have to define where to start the headland track. Use the right mouse button to place a marker where your want to start it, just outside the field boundary.

  12. The course is now generated. Green is the headland, blueish
    are the tracks in the center of the field and the red line is the path between the two. The green dot is where the course starts, the red is where it ends.

  13. By pressing 'c' you can toggle between clockwise or counterclockwise headland tracks.

  14. If you want you can reverse the course so it starts in the middle and ends with the headland passes. This is great for sowing and other, non harvesting fieldwork.

  15. You can experiment with the various settings (you may need to press g to regenerate the course).

  16. If you like what you see, press s to save the course.

  17. If you are in a game, you'll have to quit it and restart to be able to see the new course, otherwise it won't show up.

  18. Load the new course and test.

Thanks for giving it a try. If you have any problems, report it on github https://github.com/pvajko/course-generator/issues or at [email protected].

Peter