Thread: Updated Chapter 02 Basics
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Old Jun 30 2021, 10:40 AM
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Tiger Tiger is offline
 
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Default What are the red squares or blocks of red when hiding items?

What are the red squares or blocks of red when hiding items?

They are a temporary indicator to help you know where the footprint of some of your items are on your farms. This helps you to know where your items are placed so that you don't try to place another item exactly on top of it or are trying to see if there's enough room to place something can be placed in a small clear area of your farm.

Each red square will show you where you placed an item when you hide it by using one the methods below or by perhaps by using the hide option in the menu you see when you click on an item on your farm.

When you have a lot of items right next to each other those red squares will join up and form a block of red instead of individual squares.



This is the Hide Tool in your Toolbox which you can click on to use and then click on an item on your farm to temporarily hide a single item or more if you use the tool more than once.

You can not use the Hide Tool to hide fields or ground cover, those can only be hidden in preferences. Plowed fields don't hide, they must be planted to be able to hide them using preferences for crops.

When you are done using the tool, click the green man to stop using the tool. If you no longer need to see the red squares, then you can just refresh the farm and those individually hidden items will then show back up. If you only have on farm you can reload the game.

This is an example of what will show when one of 2 pines tree is hidden. In the picture the red square is where the hidden pine tree is placed on the farm.






This is the preferences icon top right of your game screen where you would go to show or hide crops for example. When you use preferences to show and hide things like crops trees etc, you show and hide all of that item, so all crops, all trees. When you have a lot of items on your farms and you hide them after showing them, you will see more red squares or blocks of red.


Example:
If you were only showing trees in your preferences and then decided to not show them (remove the check mark for Show Trees) you hide all the trees.

The picture below is of multiple pine trees that are planted close together and there is one missing towards the middle of them.

If you look carefully at the top of the pine trees in the left picture, you might be able to see where there is one missing, but that doesn't show you where the base of the new tree should go as you can't see it. So if you hide the trees in preferences, what you would see is the right picture.


The square in the middle of that red block that is not red doesn't have a pine tree there. The block of red around that is where the bottom of the hidden pine trees are. It's a block of red rather than induvial red squares because all the pine trees are right next to each other. This is useful if you want to check where you could place another one in amongst them so you have an idea of where the foot of the pine tree should go.


When hiding crops it works a little differently because a field that you plow takes up more space than a smaller item like a pine tree or flower, so it just shows you one red square per field of crop and that red square for that field is the uppermost corner of that plot. There are many items in the game that are like this, the wider trees, buildings, bigger decorations, facilities etc

To give you an idea of the size of a plowed field compared to the space pine trees would use and where the red square would be in relation to a hidden crop, in this picture I have plowed 2 single fields, planted 9 pine trees above the plowed field and planted the other field with rice. I have also used the Grass with Guidelines ground cover which displays a red grid on the whole farm at ground level. As you can see 1 plowed field is approximately 9 squares, the similar amount of space used if you were to plant 9 pines in a squared layout.


In the picture below I only have crops showing. When I remove the check mark for show crops in preferences, the plowed field still shows up because it isn't planted. The rice field disappears and a red square appears where it was. The blue arrows in the pictures indicate the top corner of that rice field which is where that red square will be when you hide the crops.


In these pictures below I have plowed 2 lots of 16 fields in a 4 x 4 square layout, planted them. The top picture is the crops showing. The bottom picture is what you see when I hide the crops using preferences (removed the check mark for Show Crops.)



The Grass with Guidelines ground cover can come in handy when you design or remodel your farms and put more on them or want to make sure everything is lined up where you want them. You will find it easily buy Opening the Store either use the search box at the top and type in guideline or by clicking on the Path/Ground section and then click on the AZ icon top right and click on the filter named Cost and that will put all the available ground covers at the top of that section of the store. It's a one time purchase of 35FC. After that you can use and reuse it on as many farms as you want and each time you change a ground cover it will only cost 100 coins just like the other ground covers in the store.







Last edited by Tiger; Sep 13 2023 at 08:40 AM.