Island Chain annual
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I have come across a glitch in the latest annual. The medium island chain gives lines, not islands.
Also, can you make your own island shapes and add them in - if so, how do you add them
I have come across a glitch in the latest annual. The medium island chain gives lines, not islands.
Also, can you make your own island shapes and add them in - if so, how do you add them
Comments
Have you already reported it to Tech Support?
I haven't had a chance to look at the style myself, but I scanned the Mapping Guide and remember that the symbols are vector shapes, so I expect it should be possible to add your own.
I can confirm the problem Quenten reported. At a guess, it may be to do with the CA187_MediumIslandChain.esc file (I'm not familiar with the file type, so don't know what to open it with to check). That's the file being accessed by the macro that runs the drawing tool, at least, and it seems to be the main difference between the three Island Chain drawing tools from a quick look.
Also, can you make your own island shapes and add them in - if so, how do you add them
You can just use one of the basic landmass drawing tools in the style to do this. Note you can also delete individual islands and replace them this way (as I just did a quick test doing precisely that).
I would dearly love to add to the island choices in the tools section, ie the esc file.
And I would also like to have a river delta tool as well - that would be very useful. I think i could make one once I know how Ralf has set up the tool for the island chains and archipelagos.
Note to @Ralf - love to see these addressed on the Live Mapping on this annual when you get to doing it.
I really love this annual though - very very useful, particularly if i can make my own tools. Falkland Islands, Orkney, Shetland, Faroes, And all north polar islands and south Chile and Argentina, and islands south of New Zealand - here I come.
There was an error in the macro for the Medium Island Chains tool. I've fixed the Annual download, but if you want to just grab the one fixed file, take the attached one and unzip it to System/Drawtools/2022 Island Chains/ overwriting the existing one.
Thank you, Ralf :)
Thanks !
Sigh... download annual then patch it silly Jim.
Has anyone tested the new installer?
I get some mystical error messages and the installation breaks. The installer removed the previous version, but did not install the new one... 🤔
Hm... it worked fine for me. The only weird thing I noticed is that some of the text in the install windows was Arabic! That's happened several times before, too. Odd.
Glad, that I'm not the only one that got Arabic text in the dialogs...but for me it was the first time...
🤔
Uhm... extremely weird. No idea how that happens, sorry. I'll do a fresh rebuild with with a new installer ID.
I've noticed that my program crashes when scrolling down the tool list of the example map, every time I get to the bottom of the list, CC3+ just shuts down. It apparently only happens when scrolling through the new tools. Opening an old map, in say Schley stile and scrolling as fast as I can is no problem. =/
I can see that my mouse pointer goes into "loading" animation for each scroll, which it doesn't on any other tool list.
The Arabic script recurs quite frequently with various CC3+ installs I've noticed, and over at least the last couple of years, though you sometimes have to be quite quick to spot it, and I haven't paid it much mind till now. I assumed there was a good reason for it.
[Or maybe some Cthulhoid cult's hacked into the CC programs, checking for what non-Euclidean-angle geometry's possible in constructing maps, maybe, or whether they can randomly design night-sky charts to make the stars "right" 😉.]
Has anyone tested the new installer?
Yes, and I had no problems with it. It ran through a couple of reinstall/repair screens before it got to the normal CC3+ windows (with the EULA, etc.), and those R/R screens were where I also spotted the Arabic writing this time.
If this is the Jon Roberts example map for the Island Chain issue, I haven't had any issues scrolling the tool lists, although I did notice that map doesn't have Effects loaded on opening, which is a little unusual nowadays.
The other two example maps (Outer Hebrides and The Shining Pearls) were also fine for scrolling the tool lists. I did notice that I didn't have to scroll down the list to reach the new island chain drawing tools though, as the "All map drawing tools" pane opens already at the end of the list.
It was The Shining Pearls map that it happened on. Same thing happens on Outer Hebris map, but not the Jon Roberts version.
Also if I use the Terrain Default, Island Chain Small Tool on a map I'm already working on, this time a Schley world map, then I can't change the texture of the islands that's created. They just stay green no matter which texture or colour I change it to, but that might just be because I'm a noob still after several years =P
Not sure what's happening with your scrolling crash problems, as I'm not finding that. Hopefully someone more technically adept can comment usefully about it, however.
The Island Chains rely not simply on drawing tools, but on a whole host of Sheet Effects. You can find those by looking at the LAND Sheet when you have either the Outer Hebrides or Shining Pearls example maps open. Pages 5 and 6 of the PDF mapping guide explain how you can import those correctly into a different style, and although the Jon Roberts style is used as the example, it should be similar in other overland mapping styles, like the Mike Schley ones, although you'll probably need to adjust things in somewhat different ways than for the Jon Roberts style.
Oh, and a minor aside for @Ralf - I just noticed that the BITMAP Sheet is still present in the Outer Hebrides example map; just gives a big red "X", of course, but maybe best removed if the Annual issue's being updated for the installer?
I do not want the texture from this update though, just to use the tools to make islands fast.
The problem I have is that once the islands are made, they are locked in a green colour, no texture, just a colour and I can't go into properties to change it to Schleys Land texture. No edit I make to the islands change that green colour.
I don't own the mapping guide. The only ones I have are from Schleys overland style, also CC3+ User manual. =)
They are locked to this colour no matter what I try. =/
I looked at the settings on the map that came with the update. If I used Texture Overblend, like it's done in that map then I could make it look like Schleys. But just editing it like I normally do with landmasses doesn't work.
But now I learned what Texture Overblend does. ^^)b
The reason you can't simply change the fill is because they are symbols. Changing the properties of a symbol won't change the entities it is made up from. (May feel weird for a simple symbol like this that is just a single entity, but symbols are often made up of many different entities with different purposes, so just changing them all doesn't make sense). Symbols needs to be exploded before you can change the properties.
Aha! They count as symbols! Then I understand why adding the Land texture on them simply didn't work.
Thank's a lot Monsen! =D
Here is a trial map - used Erdan worlds for cities and forests and mountains, Mike Schley for swamp. I like this annual. Admittedly, this map is islands gone mad, but I had fun
You should have done some of the isles as if spiralling in to the whirlpool as well, maybe.😵
@Wyvern That would have made it unrealistic!!! 🤣
Yeah, it's a fine line. Or indeed several fine lines. With islands strung along them. 😎