Symbol Wrangling

thehawk

Is it accurate to say that all CC3 symbols are in one of the FSCs? So if I open all 2268 (give or take) of them, then in theory I've seen all of the symbols there are? I have the Forgotten Realms and the Harnica symbols installed, but nothing else extra at the moment.

I can automate the getting the list of those files and the opening of them with CC3, but I am not seeing a way to automate the SYMOUT command - I don't see a macro version talked about in the help file or by pestering CC3, and I'm not having success trying to make it take input like you can a line (for example) by putting it all in a command line so I can script it. Is there such a thing?

As an aside question since I'm talking about symbols, is the 'Simple' button left out of DD3 these days on purpose (maybe because I'm the last person in the world still using it)? I've had to add it back in on the last couple of installs I've done. Which, on the good side, I did learn how to configure menus and buttons and whatnot..

Monsen

Is it accurate to say that all CC3 symbols are in one of the FSCs?

For all practical purposes, yes.

but I am not seeing a way to automate the SYMOUT command

As far as I know, no, it can't be automated. There isn't a macro-version of this command

As an aside question since I'm talking about symbols, is the 'Simple' button left out of DD3 these days on purpose

This button is a relic from the time before styles, where you only had a single "set" of symbols. The catalog buttons are meant to load the catalogs belonging to the current active style, and no styles come with a simple catalog, so it is basically useless (and confusing) on modern installs. Unless you hard-code it to the old simple catalog, it is going to just display an empty catalog list most of the time. If a style does define a simple catalog (The main DD3 style actually does this for legacy reasons, put it is just a pointer to the old catalog, and not really a DD3-version of it) you can easily find it by clicking the Symbol Catalog Settings button yo get all catalogs defined for the current stylke.

thehawk

For all practical purposes, yes.

Thank you! As an extension to that, are the various 'All' catalogs (where they exist) really amalgamated from the various 'specialised' catalogs, or are there symbols in those that aren't in the specialised ones? Easy enough to check for one catalog, a bit more challenging for the numbers we're talking about.
 

As far as I know, no, it can't be automated. There isn't a macro-version of this command

That's what I suspected, but wanted a real answer from a person smarter than I am - so thank you for that too! Oi, this is maybe going to take a while..
 

This button is a relic from the time before styles... (see above)

Why Monsen, that was a very polite and kind way for you to say "yes thehawk, you are in fact the only one still using that symbol set, the rest of the world has moved on to join the 21st century. Ya luddite!" I know. Maybe one of those days. I've thought for a long time that it would be cool to do the ADnD Goldbox or old Might and Magic (or Bards Tale, or Wizardry, pick your poison) in a newer style, or Perspectives, or something. Add some Token Treasury 'feelies' as encounters.
 
I did do the hard-code to put the button back into the dungeon.mnu this way (and every time it gets overwritten in an update because I can't be bothered to figure out the better way):
     #614,@Bitmaps\Icons\simple.bmp:[Simple]|SYMICONM;Simple*;
 
Probably ninety-eight and then some percent of the CC3 work I actually keep these days is this kind of mapping.

Monsen

As an extension to that, are the various 'All' catalogs (where they exist) really amalgamated from the various 'specialised' catalogs, or are there symbols in those that aren't in the specialised ones?

They should be complete, but it is a manual process building them, so there is always the chance of human error, or a "regular" symbol catalog was missing a symbol originally that has since been added, but the "all" hasn't been updated..

thehawk

Monsen said:

As an extension to that, are the various 'All' catalogs (where they exist) really amalgamated from the various 'specialised' catalogs, or are there symbols in those that aren't in the specialised ones?

They should be complete, but it is a manual process building them, so there is always the chance of human error, or a "regular" symbol catalog was missing a symbol originally that has since been added, but the "all" hasn't been updated..

Thank you again! That is a better answer than I'd hoped for! My plan is to skip looking at the 'All' files and just look at the 'individually wrapped' catalogs, so I can better groupby and orderby, or whatever.

Wyvern

I think you're wise to avoid relying on the "All" catalogues, as in my experience, they're not always reliably complete. As Monsen noted, their completeness may also be a factor dependent on when you last downloaded each one, and some I think have never been amended anyway.

Although, if you wanted to make more work for yourself, such a project could let you identify which "All" catalogues need amending still ??

thehawk

Wyvern said:

Although, if you wanted to make more work for yourself, such a project could let you identify which "All" catalogues need amending still ??

Look at you empowering me with more stuff to do. I'm on to you! I, uh, do the same thing to my team at work.

thehawk

Where is this defined? It's not hard-coded, is it?

jslayton

Everything on that dialog defaults to the shown value every time you start CC3+. So, yes, they are hard-coded and can only be changed via the dialog.

JimP

Ouch. When I have been trying to find particular symbols, I have been looking in all.fsc. I hadn't realized some of those are incomplete. Moving on.

thehawk

Ouch indeed. But thank you!

thehawk

Is it me fouling something up that I can't figure out or is the CA173 Darklands cartouches symbol catalog almost identical to its borders? And somehow pointing back to Symbols\Maps\CC3\cartouches ?

Monsen

It is the same catalog, minus the borders drawing tool. Since cartouches doesn't have it's own button on the toolbar, it isn't uncommon that Ralf takes these symbols from it and throws into the border catalog for easy access. The border catalog is usually quite small anyway, so combining them usually works out fine.

thehawk

That makes a lot of sense. Thank you!

thehawk

Am I reading the script reference correctly, the only way to get a script to run automagically when CC3+ starts is to make a .scr file that's the same name as the file being opened? There's no command line arguement to tell it to open the desired file and once open, run the scr?

jslayton

Look at having a map note named "OnOpenMacro". It will run automatically when a map is loaded, if I recall correctly.

You can also do that other thing that you mentioned with the .SCR file as well.

thehawk

Thank you neighbor!