Live Mapping: Monthly Symbols - Battlemaps

Loopysue

Hi Everyone :)

Tomorrow, the Live Mapping session will have Ralf showing us the first of the new monthly symbols by Mike Schley, expanding his beautiful Dungeons of Schley style. (SS4)

Watch it here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OfqiDTVyTc

Or join in the live chat on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OfqiDTVyTc

Loopysue

30 minute shout :)

Fersus

I have a few questions about the last few minutes of this session:

I bought a token Set from Mike Schleys Homepage and wanted to add it to the woodland symbols, as those would fit nicely together. So as a first step I made a new file with the Mike Schley style (I chose the metric version). Then I rewatched the part with the symbol filters as I guessed I'd probably need that.

I saw that Ralf had different Buttons for the different symbols than I do:

Some of those do nothing (e.g. weapons), some of those (the floor and the wall button) open an empty catalogue.

How can I fix that? I don't have a vegetation button at all, but that's where ultimately I'd like to add the new symbols to...

Next: I tried to use the 7th button as a temporary vegetation button, just to try out my knew knowledge.

It has Geomorphs* as the filter setting. I changed that in the advanced section to Vegetation*, saved and closed it. I was asked a second time if I wanted to save the setting upon closing the dialogue. I said yes. But by clicking the button it still was set to geomorphes*

Does that have anything to do with the empty entry in "symbol catalog file"? or where is this setting being saved?

Monsen

I saw that Ralf had different Buttons for the different symbols than I do:

This is the SS4 toolbar. SS4 did come with it's own toolbars because at the time it was released, Dungeon tools wasn't part of the core package, so SS4 had to get it's own for users who didn't own DD3. What Ralf was using was the standard dungeon toolbar.

Some of those do nothing (e.g. weapons), some of those (the floor and the wall button) open an empty catalogue.

How can I fix that? I don't have a vegetation button at all, but that's where ultimately I'd like to add the new symbols to...

This is simply SS4 not having symbols for all the categories. Not all styles do. If you try with another style, for example the DD3 Color style, then the buttons will load these just fine.

It has Geomorphs* as the filter setting. I changed that in the advanced section to Vegetation*, saved and closed it. I was asked a second time if I wanted to save the setting upon closing the dialogue. I said yes. But by clicking the button it still was set to geomorphes*

I think you are misunderstanding how this works. That dialog doesn't configure what the buttons do, that dialog is used to get an overview of your available symbol catalog settings. The geomorph button will always use the geomorph filter (Unless you edit the actual menu file and change what the button do). What you see currently in this dialog is that you don't have any symbol catalog settings matching the two filters (Geomorphs* + SS4 Color). To get the Geomorph button to do something (with the current style), you need to make a new symbol catalog setting that is named SS4 Color Geomorphs something something. Once you have a symbol catalog setting with the appropriate name available, the button will load it. And that Symbol catalog file field is critical, because that's the symbol catalog that setting will actually load. If you create a new setting without pointing it to a file, it will basically do nothing.

Fersus

Thanks @Monsen for your insights, but I think I'm not quite there yet:

So if I understand correctly Ralf has the SS4 toolbar while I have the DD3 one? But I do have SS4 installed:

But clicking the SS4 button does not change the toolbar.

@Part 2: I can confirm that clicking the DD3 Button makes the toolbar button do what they're supposed to do (in the DD3 style at least) So this part I understand :)

@Part 3: Ok, I rewatched the section again and I think now I've got it: Ralf did not change what the button does, but he made a copy of the woodcutter symbol catalogue and renamed it in a way that the existing button will find it!

So with that cleared up, I think the first thing I try to get the toolbar fixed is to reinstall SS4, maybe that'll help...

Thanks again, Monsen!

Fersus

Unfortunately installing SS4 and adjacent addons again did not solve the problem, I still didn't get the vegetation button.

But I still figured out a way to solve it at least somewhat:

I figured that the buttons should be defined in a mnu file or something.

So I searched my PC for ss4.mnu and I found 3 hits (2 in archives and 1 actually in use).

The one in use had 0 kb and was completely empty. I don't know why or how, especially given I just did a reinstall, but anyhow: I replaced the empty one with the most recent in the archives.

That helped in the sense that I now have the same buttons as Ralf in the livestream, but given that the archived mnu file is 3 years old I'm sure it does not have all the bells and whistles the most recent one has, but I'll attend to that if I ever come across something else that's different than it should be.

Wyvern

Just a thought @Fersus, but did you install the latest CC3+ Update again after you'd reinstalled SS4? Not promising anything, but it does sometimes solve oddities of this sort.

Fersus

Oh! Good Idea! no I did install it before SS4, FC and the Monthly stuff. I'll do that again, just to be on the save side!

Fersus

Ok, now I've got the buttons and I could replicate what Ralf did with the Woodcutter symbols :)

I now want to add the newly bought symbols and make myself an "All of Mike Schley" Template.

So far I only made "template" in the sense that I made a map with all the stuff I wanted to have in it and made a separate copy of it which I named "template ...". That way I could guarantee that all my battlemaps use the exact same raster and Page sizes and I didn't have to remember wich dimensions to use.

Is this approach still useful or should I attempt to make a custom template in the wizard (I think there was a live session covering this?)

What's the best approach for adding the new symbols? I was thinking that as the woodcutters don't have that many symbols and the bought set has symbols that are similar in content to the woodcutters that I could attempt to just expand on the woodcutters catalogue and add the new bought symbols to the woodcutters list.

I haven't done something like that before, so I'm not quite sure if that's feasible or recommended...

Fersus

I decided to just make a safety copy of the original "Monthly 1.FSC" and just make all the changes there.

I managed to add the additional files and make appropriate symbols into a set and even apply some random transformations to it, but I didn't dare to make varicolor versions of the symbols. (I once tried it with an other symbol and while I got it to work well enough to use in a particular map, I didn't act like all the other symbols in the catalog...)

Anyhow: I run into a strange problem:

I edited a tree from the woodcutters set so that it's oriented horizontally. Like this:

this screenshot is taken from the edit option in the symbol manager AFTER I saved, closed and re-opend the monthly 1.fsc.

I did this with all the trees from this set.

But when I load the monthly 1.fsc in another map, this particular tree starts in the same angle as it originally did, while all the others start horizontally like I wanted them to.

Does anyone know what I might have done wrong?

Monsen

CC3+ uses the name of the symbol as a key, so if you already have a symbol with the same name in the map, it will use the symbol in the map instead of your custom one. So if you've ever used the original symbol from the original catalog, that would cause it.

Fersus

Oh, ok. That might explain it. I did place a few symbols on this map for test purposes.

But the thing is: this is meant to be an empty map I set up as a template. Can I erase all the references to former used symbols somehow?

Monsen

You'll find the purge button in the Symbol Manager. That will purge the definitions of all symbols not actually in use in the map.

Fersus

Thanks, Monsen! I didn't dare to use a button that's called "purge" as I didn't want to undo all the work in setting up my template/symbol catalogue.

Worked perfectly :)

Monsen

Make sure to only use it on maps/templates though, and not on symbol catalogs, since a symbol catalog by it's very nature is a collection of symbol definitions that aren't being used anywhere.

Fersus

that what I was afraid of ^^

Thanks for your insights :)