Forest planting issue with copied APCDs

[Adelade]

Today and yesterday I have been wrestling with a to me previously unknown APCD issue, and thought I'd share my findings. Some may already know these things but I never saw or heard anything whatsoever about this before and there is a chance this information may be of use to some APCD designer sometime. If Im extremely lucky someone might even know some fix or workaround.

Until yesterday, I had never tried using the Forest planting tool in any of my copies of APCD except for my original one. I now find that the Forest planting tool simply will not work with any copied APCD. Im not sure what the cause is, but since none of the things I tried worked, Im forced to suspect it is something about a missing proper install that plays in.

This is what happens when I try to Forest plant on any APCD other than my original one: There is no error message or anything like that, I click on "Plant Forest" and nothing happens. If the object size is not locked it updates to new random size as if the Forest planting was successful, but there are no objects added that can be seen. However, if checking course statistics it shows that a number of 2D objects have been added to the course, they somehow exist in a state of practical nonexistence and cant be selected in any shape or form except with the "select all" command, and even then there is no indication that you have anything selected anywhere. Now, I wouldnt think this all that strange, but what I find really mystifying is that planting individual 2D objects works completely fine. So that would hint that there is no fundamental problem with the objects or object library that I otherwise would have suspected. I tried many things - my many different copies of APCD, running as admin, remaking planting set from scratch, trying freshly added objects, I even tried deleting the object.lib file and everything within the Object folder and starting an object library from scratch, Forest planting still would not work while individual planting kept working fine. Another thing I find interesting is that 3D object "Fence" planting works fine, which has similarities with Forest planting except for 3D Objects.

While certainly inconvenient, I dont think this issue necessarily has to affect me that much. I've heard several other designers say they use a separate APCD or even separate computer for exclusively planting all their courses, perhaps running into this issue caused such decisions. I now think I am going to do the same, and do all Forest planting, and perhaps individual planting as well, on my original APCD, and pray I never mess that object library up. I will just have to be mindful of separating user libraries. There seems good reason to believe that my frequent backups of that APCD would also fall victim of this Forest planting issue. Worst case I will at least always have the .tga visuals backed up and be able to rebuild an object library from those.

I daresay other people would find the same issue with copies of APCD that me and Dan have recently shared (or anyone else ever). I know of no other issues with copying over APCDs so it doesnt render the practice of sharing copies of APCD obsolete. Just look out if attempting to Forest plant, and if wanting tips on how to work on a course from different APCDs just ask. The main thing I would say is backing up the different user.lib files, keeping track of which are which, and being very deliberate about which user.lib is in use before opening up a course within any given APCD.

[MrMoggie]

Adelade - are you running APCD as an Administrator?

If so, try running it without

I seem to remember that should fix it

Steve

[Adelade]

That does seem to fix it! Wonder why it works like that. Thanks so much either way! At the moment I cant think of any reason doing things this way would cause any issues, but I have basically no experience of using APCD without running as admin so I dont know.

Since I use Win 10, have my APCD copies placed in the default location (Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games) running without admin means APCD uses some files in the VirtualStore (C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore). In my case - with the specific APCD I tested with this time - this made APCD confused about planting sets but all I needed to do was load a planting set from file. If anyone else uses this method, be mindful of any files in the VirtualStore (such as object.lib) being different to their equivalents in the normal location. If they are different, it should work to simply replace whichever of them is less ideal with the other.

[derricksummers]

Hi Adalade
I have read your post several times and there is one remark that rings a bell
Sometime ago I was given a course to look at, the problem was that down one
side of the fairway nothing could be planted, and the plot was completly bare.
I made a copy of the course, box selected the entire plot and deleted using the
red cross. So far so good, no plants were in sight but I still could not plant any
objects.
When I checked the course details it said that there was still hundreds of 2D
objects planted, even though nothing showed up on the course. I decided to
try a different method of deleting. Again I box selected the entire course and
this time I clicked on Select at the top and then All and deleted. This time the
course details said that the course was clear of any 2D objects and from then
on I had no problem planting
For some reason the red cross did not delete all the objects ? even though none
showed up on the course.
Could the hidden objects you mentioned have anything to do with the problem
One other thing I would like to mention is that I once saved a planting set and
some time after I tried to find it. The planting set was not in the normal APCD
folder with the other planting sets.
It was only when I was going through the list of courses in the Links folder that
I found it, I must have boobed when saving it as it should not have been there
I moved it back into the APCD folder with the others but when I tried to use it
nothing showed up in the planting window.I moved it back into Links and I had
no problems. It would seem that the APCD only looks for it in the original place
it was saved to.If this is the case moving other items could cause problems.
I have very limited know how with the APCD so I try to keep things as simple
as possible, I have never worked on more than one course at a time, and I use
the same original install untill it is finished. I hope this is of some use !!
Derrick