More questions! Modifying assets, selecting drawing tools, editing
Yep, I'm back with even more. I guess since getting the 2010 Annual and trying to get used to the Modern Political Style so I can work on my real project, I'm discovering a lot of aspects of CC3 that I didn't know about before or forgot about after my big hiatus, which leads me to new questions...
1 - What are the rules when it comes to modifying assets that come with an Annual? I ask because there are a couple things in the Modern Political style that - ideally - I'd like to change. For example: one of the highway symbols actually says "Imperial Route", so if I were going to use that symbol, I'd have to change that text (there's nothing about the place I'll be creating with this style that is "Imperial" anything). Another example would be: the MP style comes with only one "railway" drawing tool; in order to have more than one type of rail line present on the map (i.e., high-speed vs. normal), I simply created a new drawing tool called "Railways 2", which is a 100% copy of the default Railway tool, but red instead of black. So, is that allowed, to alter the art assets that come with a style pack (as opposed to creating my own from scratch), and then use the altered assets in my maps? (I did ask this at the end of another thread I'd made, but the other questions from that thread have been solved so it's not really getting looked at, and since I needed to make a new thread for the below questions anyway, figured I'd just ask again here).
2 - In regards to modifying symbols (assuming I am allowed to do so)... the guide on how to change symbol properties in the User Manual was pretty good, but I still don't quite get a couple of things. My understanding is that what I would want to do, again using modifying that highway symbol to no longer say "Imperial" as an example, is first clone the symbol, then select the clone and "Edit" it, and remove the text (replacing it with whatever text I want)? Is that pretty much it? And will the new symbol then be where it needs to be in terms of being in the right Symbol Catalog for use along with all of the symbols I can access by default as part of a "Modern Political" style map, or do I need to move it to a catalog or create a catalog or... something? (symbol catalogs still confuse me! X_x)
3 - Re: drawing tools. How is it determined which tools will appear in these windows?
In the picture (that window appears when clicking on "Default Road" in the Modern Political style), you've got two each of several of the tools for some reason, with Railway and Ferry being absent (so EVERY time I want to use either of those tools - or any new tools I create, for that matter - I need to click on the drawing tool, then "Advanced", then navigate to the one I need... kind of a pain). Is there any way to manually dictate which tools appear in these dialog windows? I was thinking maybe something in the Advanced section would allow me to do so, but I couldn't find anything...
4 - Editing mountain contours and roads: I can't. That's it, the edit function just isn't there. Instead of "Polygon: First Point (E - Edit):" showing up like it normally does in the lower left command area, it just says "Smooth Polygon: First Point)" (or smooth "Path" in the case of a road or river). It seems to be that I can't edit anything defined as "smooth".
Now, it HAS been a while since I've really been into CC3, so is this just normal behavior, a limitation of the program that I've just forgotten, or is something screwy? And yes, that out-of-place closing parenthesis appears in the program, that wasn't just a typo on my part (and is one of the main reasons I wanted to make sure this isn't some kind of glitch):
I created a new map and selected the standard CC3 overland style, just to make sure this issue wasn't limited to the Modern Political; it's the same case with the Standard style, I can edit fractal polygons such as land, etc., but not anything "smooth" (contours, roads, rivers, etc).
1 - What are the rules when it comes to modifying assets that come with an Annual? I ask because there are a couple things in the Modern Political style that - ideally - I'd like to change. For example: one of the highway symbols actually says "Imperial Route", so if I were going to use that symbol, I'd have to change that text (there's nothing about the place I'll be creating with this style that is "Imperial" anything). Another example would be: the MP style comes with only one "railway" drawing tool; in order to have more than one type of rail line present on the map (i.e., high-speed vs. normal), I simply created a new drawing tool called "Railways 2", which is a 100% copy of the default Railway tool, but red instead of black. So, is that allowed, to alter the art assets that come with a style pack (as opposed to creating my own from scratch), and then use the altered assets in my maps? (I did ask this at the end of another thread I'd made, but the other questions from that thread have been solved so it's not really getting looked at, and since I needed to make a new thread for the below questions anyway, figured I'd just ask again here).
2 - In regards to modifying symbols (assuming I am allowed to do so)... the guide on how to change symbol properties in the User Manual was pretty good, but I still don't quite get a couple of things. My understanding is that what I would want to do, again using modifying that highway symbol to no longer say "Imperial" as an example, is first clone the symbol, then select the clone and "Edit" it, and remove the text (replacing it with whatever text I want)? Is that pretty much it? And will the new symbol then be where it needs to be in terms of being in the right Symbol Catalog for use along with all of the symbols I can access by default as part of a "Modern Political" style map, or do I need to move it to a catalog or create a catalog or... something? (symbol catalogs still confuse me! X_x)
3 - Re: drawing tools. How is it determined which tools will appear in these windows?
In the picture (that window appears when clicking on "Default Road" in the Modern Political style), you've got two each of several of the tools for some reason, with Railway and Ferry being absent (so EVERY time I want to use either of those tools - or any new tools I create, for that matter - I need to click on the drawing tool, then "Advanced", then navigate to the one I need... kind of a pain). Is there any way to manually dictate which tools appear in these dialog windows? I was thinking maybe something in the Advanced section would allow me to do so, but I couldn't find anything...
4 - Editing mountain contours and roads: I can't. That's it, the edit function just isn't there. Instead of "Polygon: First Point (E - Edit):" showing up like it normally does in the lower left command area, it just says "Smooth Polygon: First Point)" (or smooth "Path" in the case of a road or river). It seems to be that I can't edit anything defined as "smooth".
Now, it HAS been a while since I've really been into CC3, so is this just normal behavior, a limitation of the program that I've just forgotten, or is something screwy? And yes, that out-of-place closing parenthesis appears in the program, that wasn't just a typo on my part (and is one of the main reasons I wanted to make sure this isn't some kind of glitch):
I created a new map and selected the standard CC3 overland style, just to make sure this issue wasn't limited to the Modern Political; it's the same case with the Standard style, I can edit fractal polygons such as land, etc., but not anything "smooth" (contours, roads, rivers, etc).
Comments
2. Yes, that is the procedure, but if you wish to have it available in more than the current map, you need to open up the symbol catalog itself for editing (Just do a normal File -> Open, select symbol catalog as file type, browse to it's location, and open it up just like a regular map). When you save it after you are done, it will then be saved in the actual symbol catalog. If you do it from inside a map, the symbol will only be available in that map. (Although just as you can load up a symbol catalog as a map, you can also load a map into the symbol catalog window to use the symbols from a map as a symbol catalog.) [Truth is that maps and symbol catalogs and templates are all exactly the same thing, using the same file format.]
3. Two things determine what shows up in that window. It is the filter, tot he top left, and style (top right). The filter is set automatically when you click a button that opens that dialog, and the style is a property of the current map. The reason the railroad is not in there is because the tool is called "Road, Railway", while if you look at the filter in your screenshot, it says "Road, Default*", which the railway tool doesn't match. Try right clicking on the road button instead, that will bring up all the road tools, and not just the ones indicated as "Default".
However, sometimes you do see double entries, and some entries that are supposed to be there are missing. This is a bug. The easiest workaround is to uncheck the "Display Sample" checkbox, this will display a correct list.
4. Not sure why you don't have the edit command on a smooth poly, but try to simply use another drawing tool instead. You do not have to use the original drawing tool to modify an entity, and as long as the original shape was smooth, it will stay that way even if you edit it with a non-smooth drawing tool. Do note that smooth polys are trickier to edit correctly however, since the smoothing function means that the actual nodes are NOT located on the entity border.
Each drawing has a list of symbol definitions. These are invisible, and contain the entities in the symbol.
Then, you add a symbol reference to the drawing, it looks at the definition and displays a copy of the definition at a particular scale and rotation.
A catalog is just a drawing which has lots of symbol definitions in it.
When you open a catalog in the catalog window and select a symbol, the symbol definition is copied to the map you are currently working on. When you place that symbol. you get a symbol reference. If you then modify the symbol in the current drawing it has no effect on the catalog.
To modify a catalog, you need to open the catalog associated with the style as a drawing, not in the catalog window.
Use File >> Open, Type Fsc. Catalogs are found in the Symbols folder. Make changes in the catalog, not drawing you are working on.
Then edit each symbol exactly as you've described, and save the catalog. (Make a backup beforehand I'd suggest)
There is one thing to beware of though. If you edit a definition in a catalog (rather than clone and rename) and then insert that into a drawing which already has a symbol of that name, then the drawing's symbol definition will take precedence. So, I wouldn't do that. The tools you see depend on the string you see in the top left. Any tools the name of which matches that string (in this case Road, Default*) will appear. Each of the different toolbar buttons sets this string, so you'll see a subset of the tools if you click those. If you click the All Drawing Tools button, it displays all the tools in the current set.
In answer to your question, though, there are a number of ways to control which drawing tools appear.
1. Rename your tools so they match the wild cards. If you want them to appear when you click the Default Road button, call them Road, Default Railway or similar.
2. The other option involves editing menus which is more advanced - I can get into that if you like, let me know. You can't edit smooth polygon drawing tools by selecting a drawing tool. There is an historical reason for that, but I'm afraid I can't recall what it is. It's easy enough to do though - just click Node Edit on the toolbar, then select the edge of the smooth entity.
I'll try out the whole deal with editing the symbol and saving it to the catalog and etc. shortly. It's time I tried to figure that whole mess out anyway. But first, on the Drawing Tools issue...
The only way I can figure out to rename a tool is to just create a new tool (that's really just a duplicate of an existing tool) by using the "New" button in the Advanced window. i.e. click on new with the "Road, Railway" selected, and name the duplicate tool "Road, Default Railway". If there is a way to rename an existing tool without creating a duplicate in that fashion, then I missed it.
That said, after creating entries for "Road, Default Ferry Route", "Road, Default Railway", and "Road, Default Railway 2" (the latter being for my modified tool), I got a window that had MOST of the tools, but regular Railway is still missing, despite having the "Road, Default Railway" entry in there. Still, unchecking the box for "Display Samples" does indeed display a list with each "Default" road entry (with nothing missing and no duplicates). I do prefer the visual look of the window with the samples, however, so I'd like to use it if I can, but it's not the end of the world if I can't.
The other thought I had was to change the filter setting (instead of "Road, Default*", I thought I could just change it to "Road*"). But, while I can do that and it makes the proper tools appear (albeit with some duplicates still), it's only temporary. The next time I open the tool, the filter is back to "Road, Default*". Is there any way to permanently change that filter, so it will simply always look for "Road*" instead of "Road, Default*"? Would that be part of the more complex process involved in editing menus, as you alluded to, Simon? I'd certainly like to see what the deal is what that, if you don't mind, so I can at least see if it's something I want to bother with or not, heh.
On the other hand, if the problem of not all the tools appearing in the "Samples" window is just a bug, changing the filter might not help anyway, so eh... we'll see.
As for the editing thing: yeah, seems you can't select smooth polygons or paths for Editing. I tried the Node Edit tool, but it seems really cumbersome, at least to me. Think I'll just stick with either adding new entities right next to the old (i.e. if I want more mountain contour, I'll just add another one next to the existing one) or deleting and re-drawing such entities to make them larger or smaller.
EDIT: Oh and one other thing! I almost forgot about this. Note that this problem, as far as I can tell, is unique to the drawing tools in the Modern Political style. Sometimes when using the Railway or Ferry Route tools, every now and then, a "block" appears in the finished path. Like this:
I added those really crude circles around em so you can see what I'm referring to.
I feel like maybe there's something causing this, like if I place the points a certain way while making the path? I dunno, just a thought... I don't think they are supposed to be there, in any case. When one appears, hitting undo on the newly created path and simply drawing it again usually seems to make it disappear, so it's not an earth-shattering kind of problem, but I figured I'd mention it anyway.
The blob you see in the railroad lines is caused by the line style settings ... they sometimes don't work 100% on smooth lines, especially if nodes are close together. To fix this move the nodes around the offending bit just a little bit with the STRETCH tool. You need to use Stretch, because it's really two lines top of each other.
@Ralf: Yeah, I've been playing around with different angles of placement and such... hard to find an exact rhyme or reason to what will or won't make the blocks appear, but it definitely felt like it was something along the lines of what you're describing. I'll try "Stretch" out, thanks!
@everyone, basically: CLICK! You ever have one of those moments where something confounds you, you just haven't been able to get your head around it, then finally you just sit and spend like 45 minutes straight trying to figure it out, and then SUDDENLY it just makes sense and you feel silly for having been so confused by it before? That happened to me with symbol editing and catalogs earlier. XD I really have no idea why they gave me so much trouble before, but now it's like Oh right, this makes perfect sense.
I think I'm finally ready to start working on the "real" map (starting with tracing over the landmasses from my half-assed, freehand drawn map that I made in Gimp). So, thanks for all the help!
So I've modified some of the symbols from the Modern Political Annual, and saved those changes as a new symbol catalog (with a different name from the original).
I create a map, I go in and manually open my custom catalog, place some symbols on the map, save, and close the program. When I reopen the program and load that same map, the default MP catalog is again loaded, and I have to click on the "open catalog" button and load my custom catalog again.
Is there any way to "associate" the custom catalog with this map, so that each time I load it, it simply defaults to having my custom catalog open, rather than the default catalog? Would I have been better off simply replacing the default catalog (i.e. naming the custom one with the same name as the default and overwriting the file, having made a backup of the original catalog elsewhere)?
EDIT: Just to cover bases, I tried replacing the file called "CA42_All.FSC" (which is the default catalog containing all the MP symbols) with my custom one. But the map still loads up the original catalog, with the unmodified symbols. I then go and manually load that catalog file, and it only then loads my custom catalog. So I suspect there just may not be a way to do this? If there is something else I am missing, let me know. Thanks!
Also, one oddity: when I DID have my custom catalog as a separate file with its own name, it doesn't show up in the folder with the other symbol catalogs in Windows Explorer. It's saved in ProFantasy > CC3 > Symbols > Maps > Modern Political. But when I navigated to that folder, it was nowhere to be found.
CATALOG #Symbols/Maps/CA42_Symbols.FSCAssuming you put your custom catalog in the same directory as the original ones, simply change the file name at the end to your file name. Here, you can also see why replacing the CA42_All.FSC catalog didn't work for you, because it is not that catalog the map loads at startup.
As for the oddity you describe, this is part of the user account control (UAC) system in Windows Vista and later. It will prevent programs from writing to anywhere within the program files folders, but instead of failing, it will silently write the file to a completely different location on your computer. When the program that originally wrote the file looks for the file, windows lets the program see the file as if it were there, but if you try external tools, like windows explorer, you won't see the file. There should be a button called "Show Compatibility Files" on the explorer toolbar when you are inside a folder that has such shadow files, and when you click it, these files should appear. The files are actually stored in C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\ProFantasy\CC3, assuming a default install of both widows and CC3
As for your answer regarding the oddity: Sweet muster, I had no idea that Windows 7 did that! I've NEVER encountered a scenario like this before, haha. Thanks for the info!
Also, a couple of other bugs I wanted to report on.
The first one I found by chance: if I open "Symbol Settings" from the "Symbols" menu, and then if - and ONLY if - I close that dialog window with the "Ok" button, the drawing workspace shrinks. Like, the whole thing:
Clicking on restore or maximize just shrinks it down further with each click, until it's all smushed way over on the left side with buttons and commands all piled on top of each other, at which point the whole program crashes. The only way I've been able to fix it is by simply closing the program before reaching that "point of no return" (and whether I close it or it crashes, it's fine when I restart CC3). I have been able to replicate this consistently; it happens every time I exit that window with "Ok", but NEVER if I exit the window by clicking "Cancel" or hitting escape.
Bug #2 is something that occurs on startup. CC3 always loads the last map that was being used the last time I closed it; regardless of what file is loaded (whether it's one of my actual maps or a symbol catalog I was working on or whatever), when the program first loads, it looks like this:
Playing with the zoom controls will (usually) replace the green with white, but that's all (sometimes nothing at all happens). Activating and then dismissing a menu dialog window (anything that brings up its own window, i.e. "Symbol Options" or "Tools > Menu"), or placing a symbol, will restore the drawing to normal.
Note that I'm reporting these cause I figure you guys want to know about such things. I'm not trying to give anyone a hard time; I know I've had a lot of questions and issues lately, so I didn't want to seem like I was just piling on, haha.