I've planned to do this sooner, but the harvest approximation tool took a lot longer than I expected. The source code of the garden planner will be made available on GitHub, and anyone will be free to modify or even make variations of the project.

It's delayed because this would be my first open-source project. I'm currently making sure all things are good to go before I release it the public.

Creating a garden layout from scratch can be a bit daunting, especially if you're new to the game. As such, I'm introducing some starter layouts so that you can quickly get started with your garden.

The first batch of presets will be aimed towards players who are either new or unfamiliar to gardening. All presets will either be self-created, or (more likely) added with permission by another player. Each preset will contain some quick statistics about the layout, such as bonus coverage and gold valuation. Included will also be a small description as to how to use the layout provided by the creator.

Technically, this is actually the easiest to implement. So expect it to probably come sooner than one of the other goals. As fertilisers are a core part of gardening, they're highly prioritised and will be released as quickly as I can. The only complication with them is making them save-compatbile... in comes the v0.2 codes.

v0.2 Codes

The v0.2 codes will be a mild improvement of the current v0.1 codes. Most crop codes such as Tomato (To) will be shortened to 1-letter (T), with likely Cotton retaining its code (Co). The main difference is that the v0.2 codes will also include fertiliser information alongside the crop. By shortening most of the crop codes, this will make the addition of fertiliser information somewhat less intimidating.

v0.1 codes will still be supported. They will remain usable, and will simply create a garden layout without fertilisers. I aim to have all save codes be backwards compatible for the user's convenience, hence why each save version has to be carefully thought out before implementing.

Currently, the processing time of the Seed Collector and Preserve Jar is not taken into account. This leads to highly inaccurate averages, as the planner assumes that the crop is processed immediately once harvested.

Once the crop machines are implemented, they will be separated from the harvest approximations and will be calculated separately. This is because unlike the garden, the processing time of the machines is not affected by whether you're logged in or not, and will always take the same amount of time to process in real time.

Part of this feature will also be setting how many of each machine you have, then show how long it will actually take to process them as a result. This should allow players with less machines to be able to properly evaluate how much gold they're getting on average.

The gardens currently support non-3x3 layouts, but each plot in the planner snaps perfectly to the other plots. This is in contrast to the game's behaviour, which allows for plots to be partially connected to each other. I first made the planner without realising this, and as a result the plot placement remains flawed.

I've already developed plans for how this will be implemented. Considerations for how future saves will change without being extremely long are also already factored in. This plot placement re-write will improve a great deal of the planner internally, such as how crops are placed and bonuses calculated. This will also allow for better UI/UX improvements, such as crop placement previews and tile combining (for apple trees & blueberry bushes).