Command Line Automation

Gaea's Build Swarm (Gaea.Swarm.exe) can be automated via the command line interface.

See Command-line Interface for details on the full CLI available in both Gaea.exe and Gaea.Swarm.exe

Arguments

The Build Swarm can accept the following arguments:

Argument	Description
-filename <filename>	The fully qualified path to the .terrain file that should be built. It should be wrapped "" quotes for safety.
-interactive	Show interactive prompts when launched from the CLI.
-ignorecache	Ignore baked cache when set to true.
-verbose	Enable Verbose logging for diagnostics purposes.
-safemode	Enforce Sade Mode for debugging or diagnostics purposes. Not recommended for production builds.
-seed <int>	Mutation seed to use for the build.
-v or --v	Variables. This argument marks the beginning of key-value pairs of variables. ⚠️ This must ALWAYS be the last argument. All other switches and arguments should precede -v ⚠️ The -v argument must be repeated for each variable (key-value pair). For example: -v foo=bar -v value=0.35 -v erosion=1
--va <string>	Comma separated variable values alphanumerically-sorted by variable names. Must include all values. This is to help reduce character count by not having to i Variables passed this argument must be equal in count to the number of variables declared in the terrain file.
-vars <filename>	Instead of -v the -vars argument can be used to pass a specifically formatted plain text or JSON file to provide Variable values.

The Build Options window has a helpful button to Show Command Line that will show the current file's Build Command Line including all variables. It is useful to copy this and then modify it as needed.

Using Files for Variables

You can store variables in delimited files or JSON and pass them in the -v argument. This is useful for more complex automation where an external tool may save variables instead of passing them directly to a command line.

Text file

The text file is an INI style dictionary of key-value pairs.

variable=value
filename=C:\Path\File.ext
erosion=0.35
switchErosionProcess=1

JSON File

{
  "variable": value,
  "filename": "C:\Path\File.ext",
  "erosion": 0.35,
  "switchErosionProcess": 1
}

Variable names cannot be repeated.

To see how variables can be bound to node properties, see Variables