the cutting room mirror

Farming Simulator 2008

view on tcrf.net

To do:

  • Regional differences (German, Polish)
  • Revisional differences (Original, Classic/SpielSpass)
  • Prerelease and Bugs subpage

Farming Simulator 2008 may fool some into thinking it was a title released for the Sega Dreamcast, due to its scrappy and out of touch graphics. But unlike the said graphics, the gameplay idea was quite revolutionary for the tractor/farming simulation genre.

Debug Tools#

A handful of debugging tools of various uses are present in the game. To use them, you need to activate the development controlsby going to Appdata\Roaming\FarmingSimulator2008\game.xml and under setting totrue'.

Debug keybindings#

Some debugging tools are activated through a keybind. Those tools are the following:

Console#

Pressing ~ opens the game's console. Development console

FPS Counter#

By pressing F2, an FPS counter is toggled in the top right corner of the screen. This counter is overlapping with the in-game clock, hence it may be quite hard to read. This keybind has the same functionality as the show_fps console command. The counter toggled in the top right corner of the screen.

Play animations#

Pressing F3 plays all animations present in the loaded savegame, most notably on tippers.

The animation being played on the small tipper.
The animation being played on the small tipper.
Playing the animation does not affect the grain inside of a tipper.
Playing the animation does not affect the grain inside of a tipper.

Wireframe renders#

Pressing F4 renders wireframes of every rendered 3D model. The wireframes toggled on.

Light sources, collision bounds and unknown property rendering#

This needs some investigation.
Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.
Specifically: Find out what the unknown property is.

Pressing F5 cycles through three debug-related renders:

A render of every present light source.
A render of every present light source.
A render of every present collision bound (except for terrain).
A render of every present collision bound (except for terrain).
A render of an unknown property related to every entity. It is currently unknown what this render shows, but it seems that it's in some way related to an entity's geometry.
A render of an unknown property related to every entity. It is currently unknown what this render shows, but it seems that it's in some way related to an entity's geometry.

Various map cameras#

When being outside a vehicle and pressing F7, the player can scroll through every present camera view in this order:

The first camera is located in the null point of the map's coordinates, with all of its rotation angles set to 0 degrees.
The first camera is located in the null point of the map's coordinates, with all of its rotation angles set to 0 degrees.
The second one is the last saved camera frame in GIANTS Editor.
The second one is the last saved camera frame in GIANTS Editor.
After going through the first two camera views, the game will then scroll through every camera view present in the loaded vehicles. Pictured above is the tipping camera on the FENDT 716 Vario tractor, which can normally only be activated while a tractor is unloading a trailer.
After going through the first two camera views, the game will then scroll through every camera view present in the loaded vehicles. Pictured above is the tipping camera on the FENDT 716 Vario tractor, which can normally only be activated while a tractor is unloading a trailer.

Various savegame stats#

Pressing F9 allows you to scroll through various statistics related to the loaded savegame. The viewable stats are the following:

  • Rendering stats.
  • Physics stats.
  • Profiler stats.
  • Animation stats.
  • Effect stats.
Rendering stats.
Rendering stats.
Physics stats.
Physics stats.
Profiler stats.
Profiler stats.
Animation stats.
Animation stats.
Effect stats.
Effect stats.

Connect to NVIDIA PhysX Visual Debugger#

Pressing F9 connects the game to an open Ageia/Nvidia PhysX Visual Debugger window. FS08VisualDebugger.png

(Source: Morc)

Save/update profiler.csv#

Pressing F12 saves or updates the profiler.csv file found in the game's installation folder.

Console Commands#

This needs some investigation.
Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.
Specifically: Find out all command functions.

Upon opening the console, starting a line with ~, and pressing Tab ↹, the player can scroll through a selection of debugging commands. The commands are executed by pressing ↵ Return. The available commands are the following: The ambient command activated in the console

ambient#

Lists the 0-1 RGB value of the present world lighting.

enableFramerateLimit#

Enables a set framerate limit. This same command can also be activated through the F3 keybind.

exit, q and quit#

Closes the game.

framerateLimitFPS#

Sets an input framerate limit.

globalClipDistance#

Changes the global clipping/rendering distance.

The normal culling distance.

The culling distance set to 1.

globalCullOverride#

Toggles culling. (Enables and disables the rendering of unseen geometry.)

listEntities#

Prints a list of all entities present in the loaded savegame.

listResources#

Prints a list of the sources of all entities present in the loaded savegame.

parallelRenderingAndPhysics#

Toggles parallel rendering and physics (switches the rendering and physics processes to run on different CPU threads).

profilerSaveHistory#

Enables/disables profiler.csv saving.

reload#

Reloads a resource with given name.

reloadAll#

Reloads all resources with the same given type.

showControlMeshSubds#

Something currently unknown.

show_fps#

Toggles the FPS counter. This same command can also be activated through the F2 keybind.

sortGeometry#

Sorts render queue by material sort ID.

subdsLevelOverride#

Something currently unknown, likely related to the terrain model's subdivisions.

subdsMaxLevel#

Something currently unknown, likely related to the maximum level of subdivisions the terrain model can have.

Unused Bergmann HTW trailer#

The wagon loaded in place of tipper_01 The trailer's odd collision shape, resulting in the said abnormal behavior In the trailers folder there is a completely unused Bergmann HTW silage wagon. Loading it into the game does not work as the .xml file is seemingly supposed to be used with an older version of GIANTS Engine, evidenced by the file using brackets instead of ones.

Fixing the bracket issue allows the trailer to be loaded, however the trailer is pretty much unusable due to an absurd collision shape, hence the trailer flinging and swaying around when attached to a tractor. Other than that, the wheel movement is broken, but the trailer works for it's intended use, which is transporting grain. Good luck doing that though...

The trailer is featured in multiple prerelease captures, in which it seemed to work properly. The trailer was likely never updated to work on the final version of GIANTS Engine either because of the Bergmann licensing, or due to the lower model quality compared to the other vehicles.

The wagon's appearance in a prerelease screenshot

(Source: Boleklolo, Benzinly)

The Large Tipper has a sticker on it's tailgate with the text "Respektuj Prawo Autorskie", which translates to "Respect Copyright Laws". Oddly, despite GIANTS Software being located in Switzerland, the text is written in Polish, and what makes this even weirder is that this text is also present in the original German release, not just the Polish one. The sticker on the tipper's tailgate. The tipper's texture.

(Source: Boleklolo, Benzinly)

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The Farming Simulator series

Windows, Mac OS X

2008 • 2009 • 2011 • 2013 • 2017 • 2019 • 2022

Xbox 360, PlayStation 3

2013