Red Crosses instead of symbols - but symbols show in selection
Hi all,
I've opened up a city map I worked on on a previous computer and while most of it is displaying fine, I have a few symbols that are displaying simply as red crosses in white boxes.
I assumed I was just dealing with symbols that hadn't been installed but reinstalling everything, I now find that even though I can access the Symbols concerned in the symbol selection columns on the left side of the screen and can see the symbols there, when I try to place them, I get the red cross. I'm not sure what is going on. Any ideas?
I've opened up a city map I worked on on a previous computer and while most of it is displaying fine, I have a few symbols that are displaying simply as red crosses in white boxes.
I assumed I was just dealing with symbols that hadn't been installed but reinstalling everything, I now find that even though I can access the Symbols concerned in the symbol selection columns on the left side of the screen and can see the symbols there, when I try to place them, I get the red cross. I'm not sure what is going on. Any ideas?
Comments
ie, that they are there, but not in the same place in the folder system that the catalogue was calling them from before.
You can tune what appears in the map in the View / Display speed settings. Does it change something?
CC uses the symbol name as a uniqe key, so this will also happen if you have different symbols, but with the same name.
To work around this, delete or renames symbol definitions in the Symbol Manager.
Of course, this has to be happening on the most detailed and complex map I've ever done...
First, where these official ProFantasy symbols? If they were, the official symbol catalogs use relative paths for the symbols, so this should not happen (assuming the correct add-on is installed of course), but it can happen if you manually loaded up the folder containing the image files for the symbols in the symbol catalog window instead of loading the actual symbol catalog. Since this skips all the information in the symbol catalog, it may also cause CC3(+) to use absolute instead of relative paths for a symbol, which is a problem.
Properly made 3rd party symbol catalogs will also behave just like the official ones in regards to paths.
You can check if a symbol is using an absolute or relative path by using the list command inside the symbol manager on it. If the file path starts with an # or @, $, it is a relative path, otherwise it is an absolute one. (The $ means it is relative to the map and not the CC3 installation however)
If it is not a relative path, you probably have to replace them. This can either be done manually (delete them form the symbol manager, then replace them), or, especially if you have many identical symbols, you can use the replace feature of the symbol manager. To use this, first rename all the "bad" symbols, then click on the correct versions of them in the symbol catalog window (simply click on each once, you don't have to place them in the map), then return to the symbol catalog window, select a bad symbol to replace, hit the replace button, and select the good replacement symbol. You need to do them one by one, but it fixes all instances of that symbol in the map, preserving scaling and rotation and other symbol properties.
If the paths were relative already, that means that the image files are not in the same location as before. For third party symbols, triple-check that they are installed, and placed in the correct folder, any mistake at all will cause the red X'es to appear. If they were official ProFantasy symbols, make sure that you have installed the correct add-on. Perhaps you used some symbols from an annual or other resource you haven't installed?
It looks to me like a number of PNG files from City Designer 3 are not installing. That seems to be the root of my problem.
As an example, this map was done with CD3 and CC3 on my older computer. One of the problem symbols is Gothic 1 from the Bitmap B catalogue of CD3.
My computer is looking for the file Gothic 1_HI.PNG - and it's not there. Gothic 1_VH.PNG, Gothic 1_LO.PNG, Gothic 1_VL.PNG are - but not Gothic 1_HI.PNG
This shouldn't be too hard to fix - I still have the old computer stored so hopefully the problem will be solved by me just downloading the missing files from there and putting them where they belong on the new computer.
But I am wondering if the problem has been caused by the fact that on the new computer I am using CC3+ (rather than CC3) - which means I downloaded the CC3+ specific version of the CD3 install (which includes "(includes ultra high resolution artwork)") rather than the CC3 version - is it possible that in creating the newer installation which included the VH symbols, some of the HI symbols were not included? Because quite a few of them seem to be missing (all of them for Gothic 1 to Gothic 15 in that particular catalogue),
Thanks for your help - I wouldn't have found out the problem without using the LIST command within Symbol Manager.
But here are one thing to try:
- Type FFIX (and hit enter) on the CC3+ command line. (This command completes without any confirmation, so unless you got an error message, everything is fine) [This will change CC3 references to CC3+ ones]
- Then save the map (under a different name if you prefer)
- Close and reopen CC3+
If the red X'es are still present in CC3+ after doing this, you can also go into speed and load settings, setting the bitmap quality to manual - very high, and clear the bitmap cache, and then try to zoom into an area with a bad symbol.