Invisible Symbols

roy.denton · April 2020

I am trying place a symbol that is white with a black outline. The basic symbol of a non-fortified structure in the Mappa Harnica symbol set. However, when I click on these I cannot see them except for a periodic ghost of it. Is there a reason for this to happen?

Monsen · April 2020

Symbol outlines on the cursor is generated by XORing the outline with the background to make it always visible no matter the background color. Unfortunately, two outlines on top of each other means two XOR operations, which thus cancels each other out. To avoid this problems, the outline of a symbol should always consist of an odd number of overlapping entities.
(Note that by "outline" I mean the edge of the symbol, not specifically your black outline entity)

JimP · April 2020

I remember that, even sided symbols would vanish when moved.

Wyvern · April 2020

It's not just symbols this happens with either, as some forms of drawn polygon can similarly "vanish". I find it helps if you make sure the cursor crosshairs meet at some key point (not necessarily the centre) of whatever you're trying to move or place, though you do need to remember what size the thing is before it disappears in critical cases. If the symbol isn't perfectly located on the crosshairs for what you need, just place it anywhere and then carry out a Move action, being sure you get your cursor in the exact place you need before performing the Move.

roy.denton · April 2020

Thanks Monsen. I went into the symbol catalog and edited all of the symbol types that were invisible when I tried placing and/or moving them and found, when I used list on them, they two or three definitions. I deleted all but one of the definitions and edited what was left to make it look as it should and once saved had only one list definition left. Everything works fine now. Of course, after saving the symbol catalog, I had to purge the symbols of this type from my map and save/close it and when I reopened it I was good to go. Luckily it was only a handful of symbols on the map at this point.

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Invisible Symbols

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