How do you Add Cave Walls?
JulianDracos
Mapmaker
Certain map styles have walls when you draw a cave and others do not. While I can click the wall tool and draw a wall around it, it won't really match the fractal pattern of the cave. Is there a way to add a wall when drawing a cave if the style does not have it by default?
Related to this, if the style does draw cave walls, is there a way to alter the thickness of the wall? I click on top and try a different width, but it does not seem to alter anything.
Comments
If you hide all but the floor sheet you can then copy the floor you have drawn onto the walls sheet. Then hide all but the walls sheet and use the Change Properties button to change the fill and line width of the ex-floor. Giving the polygon a line width will make it into a wall around the same shape.
Make sure you also change the layer to WALLS as well as the sheet, and you will be able to cut doors through the walls with the cutting symbols.
Thanks. So I tried this and the problem I am having is that I paste it into the walls sheet. However, it won't allow for the change of properties. It turns out what when I redraw it, it is not showing up on the walls sheet.
It's not an ordinary copy paste operation. I'm sorry. I keep forgetting to explain properly because I'm so used to doing it myself.
If you right click the Sheets and Effects button on the left you will see Copy to Sheet in the right click menu. Use that, and you can copy the floor shape directly onto the WALLS sheet. You then need to hide everything but the WALLS sheet and change the properties.
Awesome. That seems to have worked. When changing the properties, am I correct in assuming that the layer should be changed to walls?
That's right.
If it's on the WALLS sheet and layer it will behave correctly when doors, windows and other cutting symbols are used.
So after making all the caves and putting the walls around them using this method, I have run into a problem. I am not able to create breaks on the cave parts. When I do try to create a break, the entire cave wall outline disapears. If I click redraw, then the entire wall is redrawn including the spot I tried to add the break to.
Any idea how to get the break to appear?
It may be that the new walls are not on the right sheet and layer. Hide all the sheets except the WALLS sheet.
If the walls have vanished they are on the wrong sheet and you will need to locate them and use change properties to move them to the WALLS sheet.
If the walls are visible then they are on the right sheet, but make sure they are also on the right layer by using change properties.
Also, if the shape you converted to walls this way is a multipoly you will need to explode it just once. It's not possible to edit a multipoly.
Still not working :(
I started again. Turned all the sheets off but the floor. Set the layer to wall. Copied the floor sheet to the wall sheet. Turned off the floor sheet. Changed the properties. Had the line set as solid with a fill. Set the thickness at 1. Made sure the layer said wall. Tried clicking the box just to make sure. The wall is drawn around the cave.
Then I tried to break, and the cave wall disappeared until it redrew. I then used explode. It said I had selected two things, but the only thing highlighted in pink was the cave wall. After the explode, I tried to create a break. That was difficult to select, but I did get it to work. A small chunk disappeared. Then on redraw, it came right back.
I verified it was on the wall sheet by turning the wall sheet off and the cave walls disappeared.
Try using List from the Info menu on the walls you have. See whether it is described as a polygon or as a multipoly. If it is a multipoly you will need to Explode
it first before things will work.
If it is an ordinary polygon please can you upload the FCW file so we can have a look at it and see why it's not working?
The list says it is just two polygons. Here is a file showing the problem.
So, how do I could about doing that? I think the problem is once I copy the floor pattern over and then add the wall, it is making two layers. This is likely because there are two things being copied. So I either need to only copy one or separate the layers after the wall is in place. No idea how to do either of them.
The style doesn't lend itself to the method I prescribed. I was thinking along the lines of a standard bitmap fill, but this style has a vector pattern fill. That means it has one polygon filled with black vector shapes (the black pattern you see) on top of an identical background colour polygon (white in this case). The floor is made up of two polygons, so the wall is also duplicated.
I would hide all the sheets except WALLS and delete the doubled-up cave walls, then use one of the wall drawing tools and draw the walls in - using the trace function of the drawing tool (that's where you start with the drawing tool and then press t and follow the instructions).
The first method would have worked ok with any style that uses a simple bitmap texture, but not where the floor is more than one polygon.
I know others have commented on this already but I thought I would add my two cents. Draw your cave on top of your floor sheet as a wall by setting the default sheet to walls on whatever tool you are using to draw the caves. That way your wall is actually a part of the cave you are drawing already. Then you just adjust your wall effects to your liking. Its the simplest way I have found and you can still create pretty complex caves.
Of course the style I like makes things hard to do. I will think about how to do this differently. Maybe I will draw lines and then fractalize them to make it look more cave like.
In the mean time, I think I am using trace wrong. When I use the command, it traces the object. However, it just stays with the outline. I can't get it to put lines/the wall down.
If you use one of the tools for drawing walls only, and hit T once you have clicked the first point, you should be able to trace the edge of the floor. When you finish tracing you click again, and then to finish the job right click.