Row Crop System Progress: 05/27/26

Hello everyone! A few things to cover as I get closer to heading home.

Game Patch A patch is dropping later today (tomorrow morning for those back home). Depending on what it changes, mod updates should follow shortly after.

Why RCS First RCS has been the main focus for a while now, and for good reason. It touches more systems than any other mod I have out, which means it generates the most reports and makes it the best testbed for performance and compatibility improvements.

What's Coming in the Next Update

1. Less Intrusive Validators The current version does a lot of auto-correction work at startup, checking whether other mods and maps are configured correctly and trying to fix anything it finds. That's expensive processing, and it ends up consuming more resources than the actual features do. The new version significantly reduces that overhead.

2. GDM/GRLE Visualizer When enabled, this shows you the actual lines being painted on the GDM grid, including row shutoff areas. Instead of guessing what's happening under the hood, you can see exactly what the system is doing in real time.

A bit of background on how RCS works: when you plant, the system paints lines on the GDM/GRLE grid. Crops are then filtered to only appear where those lines exist. Rather than using multiple work areas across many zones, the entire area is processed normally and specific results are filtered over the painted regions, which is both faster and more compatible with the base game.

One thing worth knowing: when the painter hits a boundary, you'll get clumps of pixels rather than clean lines. That's why you sometimes see doubled or thickened areas, particularly on 4X maps and curves. Even if a path looks thin visually, the game just paints whatever pixels fall under the painter with no thinning logic applied.

The visualizer makes all of this visible and has virtually no performance cost when disabled. The toggle will be in-game, though the exact form (menu toggle or console command) is still TBD. One requirement: F5 rendering must be active to see it, which is a base game limitation.

3. Row Spacing for Additional Implements Row spacing support is being extended to other implement types beyond its current scope. Implements without a crop specified, like cultivators, will need some special configuration to define where they actually work. This opens the door for things like strip tilling.

General Notes This update involves significant rewrites for compatibility and performance, so expect some rough edges early on while everything gets dialed back in. The more interconnected a system is, the more trial-and-error it takes to get all the pieces working together correctly.

More to come, thanks for being patient!