FRIA has problems with symbol fills created in CC3+

roflo1

I've been trying to recreate a style based on the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas for CC3+ (because, why not? and also because I already have access to the symbols) and I'm having a bit of a problem with symbol fills.

Not on the CC3+ side, but on the FRIA side.

In CC3+ the fill is displayed on screen as expected. This is a screenshot of a part of the High Moor that I'm trying to recreate:

And this is the same map as displayed by the FRIA:

I found out that the FRIA does have a working command prompt, so I went ahead and LIST'ed the entities for the moor on the right, using the same map: FRIA says the fill style is "Hollow", and CC3+ says it's "Wasteland Symbol".

I know for sure that FRIA does support filled symbols (I tried LIST on the original "High Moor.FCW" that I'm using as a reference).

As I was writing this, I thought of another test: I opened the original "High Moor.FCW" in CC3+ and just saved it in another location (no edits)... and sure enough, FRIA no longer recognizes the fill.

While I could just use CC3+ for all my needs, it would be nice to maintain backwards compatiblity for my FRIA edits.

Anyone have a clue as to what may be going on here?

EDIT: Oddly enough, there's a thread with another possibly unrelated symbol fill style problem, but Monsen's recommendation may just be the best long-term solution: replace symbol fills with symbols in area.

JimP

If memory serves, FRIA is based on CC2, and it doesn't understand. I could be wrong though.

roflo1

That crossed my mind. But FRIA does understand symbol fills, I made sure to rule that out beforehand:

I know for sure that FRIA does support filled symbols (I tried LIST on the original "High Moor.FCW" that I'm using as a reference).

Also, Monsen refers to symbols fills as an "ancient" technique in the post I linked above.

But... there might be some other difference between the CC2 and CC3 format that eludes me.

roflo1

I revisited this and everything keeps suggesting it's just due to differences in CC2 and CC3 file formats... and it's possible there's no solution (if I wish to keep opening the edited maps in FRIA; note that CC3+ has no problems).

Anyway, I didn't include screenshots from the listings in my original post, so I opened an original FRIA map and LIST'ed the entity with a Symbol Fill style..

As soon as I save it in CC3+, as a CC3 map, I get this from FRIA:

Same FS number, but it's now identified as "Hollow". Weird, right?

The only truly different thing I tried this time, just to rule things out, was adding an extra "Hollow" entity. FRIA reports as:

There's several maps that would benefit from minor fixes and edits, so I kinda keep hoping there's a way around this. Or maybe I should just browse the FR maps with CC3+.

jslayton

The software is generally backwards compatible (that is, a given version will read older files). However, it is also very much NOT forwards compatible (older versions may or may not be able to read newer formats). If you're lucky, the file format version listed in the file will have been revised enough that the older versions can tell you that it can't open the file. If you're unlucky, the software will simply crash.

Hollow has an ID of zero, which is also the ID that the system will return when it can't locate a fill style (if, for example, a fill has become corrupted and a given name or ID can't be located in the list of fills). The sort of symptoms that you're showing here indicate that the FRIA engine doesn't like something in the fill styles list, but it's not bad enough to crash outright. I recommend using CC3+ for viewing FCW files, but any saving is likely to cause problems for older software versions.

The definitive check would be to save the original file out as uncompressed using the original FRIA software to get a reference, then load that file in CC3+ and save it out as a different uncompressed file. A comparison tool like Beyond Compare will show what's different between the files and it might well be a lot of things. I mention this purely for academic reasons as someone would need to write some specialized software to revert the CC3+ FCW file to a FRIA FCW file.

roflo1

The sort of symptoms that you're showing here indicate that the FRIA engine doesn't like something in the fill styles list, but it's not bad enough to crash outright.

Yup. I've been (slowly) reaching that conclusion. It was a long stretch, but worth trying nonetheless. Not all is lost though, I can still use Symbols in Area as Monsen suggested.

Though it must be said: it's still impressive to see that the backwards compatibility works as intended, flawlessly I'd say. And even the fact that FRIA didn't crash is outstansding (I once opened a Mike Schley map with FRIA by mistake, and even then it didn't crash. It still rendered the best it could).

I mention this purely for academic reasons [...]

Oh, don't tempt me. Lol. :)

I'm gonna be one of those guys who, after retirement, will still have something to do all day long.