Symbols that won't come to the front

Loopysue

Hi everyone

I have just a few symbols in this map because I've only just started it.

I placed the rocks before the waterfall on the same sheet and layer, so the waterfall should be on top. These are brand new symbols, and do not have a specified sheet on which to land as yet. However, when I try to use the move in front of, or move behind tools, it simply doesn't work. The water fall stubbornly refuses to be moved above the rocks, and the rocks refuse to be moved below the waterfall.

I've shown the sheets and effects dialog so that you can see they are all on one sheet, so they should respond to re-ordering. Its just that they won't.

I'm probably missing something totally obvious, but I can't work it out.

Monsen

Do they behave correctly if you turn sheet effects off?

Loopysue

Oh wow!

Look at that!

Yes they do. So what have I done to upset them? The only effect I have on that sheet is a Colour Key. I was about to start chopping bits off the bottom of the cliff... but...

Monsen

This is an old quirk related to some effects, basically, some symbols are held and not drawn until after the effects have been rendered. You can turn it off with the DELAYDRAWSYM command.

Loopysue

Ah.

Thank you, Remy

Loopysue

If I use that command, are there likely to be any less favourable consequences?

I'm thinking that the settings are set that way for a reason - to cure another problem, and that by switching it off I will eventually encounter that problem.

Also, is it a global switch, or just for this file?

jslayton

It's a global switch that prevents the second drawing pass for symbols. Any partially-transparent areas like smooth edges and baked-in shadows will be drawn only once instead of the "normal" twice, meaning that baked-in shadows will be more faint than you're used to. Effects will also happen to all of your symbols.

Loopysue

Oh thank you, Joe

Now I can use it intelligently

It does appear to default back to being set to 1 (set to 'on') next time you open the file however, which in a way is handy because if its better that way for most of the time I don't want to be forever switching it on and off, but only switching it off if I have a problem like the one above in a single file among many.

I guess the baked in shadows are the shadows you get in multi-level buildings? I ask, because it doesn't seem to make any difference to the ones I'm using if its on or off.

jslayton

Baked-in shadows would the shadows that are part of the PNG image files, such as the dark glow around some dungeon symbols (like the candle) or the shadows on mountains and towers. These shadows carry important information about shape from a direction other than the main view, but it takes practice in a drawing tool to get a good idea of what the shadows will look like in CC3+ due to the double-draw.

There are some other items of transparency (e.g. the bottom fade on some mountains) that this change will affect.

The DELAYDRAWSYM flag is designed to reset on every CC3+ start to prevent maps from looking substantially different from machine to machine without intervention. Unfortunately, this behavior means that other people won't be able to see maps done in this mode without manually setting it. It's a debugging tool to hint at what things might look like in a far-future version of the product with a different renderer. Then again, it may become just another compatibility flag...

Loopysue

Ah! So you mean baked in transparent shadows, which wouldn't include anything in a very solid clean-edged building at all - which is why I didn't notice any difference.

If sharing a map with others, I think it is probably best to use more sheets instead of trying to economise by putting these symbols on the same sheet simply because neither of them require any effects and they don't usually have much going on between them.

LordEntrails

Thanks so much for asking Sue. I ran into the problem last week with my sci-fi map and ended up just using another sheet. Glad to know what's going on and possible options etc.

Loopysue

A separate sheet for everything seems to be the best way to go. Even if you don't intend to share the FCW right now, you may want to at some point in the future.