Contours and terrain problems ("decide settings myself")
PapaJohns57
Traveler
When I try to use contours or terrains, it's just a line instead of what it's supposed to be. It seems like this happens because I chose to "decide my own settings" when creating this map, otherwise it works. I just wanted to change the scale of the map. Is there any way I can get the contours and terrains back?
This is an example of how it looks now. The black and green outlines should represent a dark desert and a forest. The white line should surround a different blue sea colour.
Thanks for your help in advance!
Tagged:
Comments
Using "Decide your own settings" should have no effect at all on any drawing tools. All that does when you create a new map is allow you to control the style, size and background for your map, and also lets you add things like a copyright notice and so forth, should you wish.
I'm not sure what you're meaning by "I just wanted to change the scale of the map." Did you have a map already created that you wanted to resize? Or were you drawing a completely new map covering a different-sized area based on another map you'd drawn earlier?
The problems with the three drawing tools might be because the tools have been changed from their default settings somehow. There isn't a standard "dark desert" tool in the Mike Schley style, so did you create this yourself, perhaps?
The Forest drawing tools all use macros to fill their designated areas with trees, so there could be a problem with the macro for that one, though the standard deserts and contour tools don't use macros, so that wouldn't explain what's going on there.
I think overall it may be more useful if you can share a copy of your FCW file for this map for those more technically expert with CC3+ here (i.e. not me!) to examine.
Some of the terrain tools have symbol fills. These are loaded with the style selection of the map. You can use tool option menu to select different styles and use those tools. However, since they use a different style, the symbols are not loaded. You can load them.
I think this is what is going on. It is an issue I dealt with when learning the program.
I believe you might be right. I'm still pretty inexperienced with CC3+ and I've tried to load these symbols using a guide, but unfortunately, I either didn't understand it correctly or something else was going on. I couldn't find the symbols I'm looking for. I might just be looking in the wrong place, though.
I meant that I wanted to change the size of my map and therefore "decided my own settings". But when I use the pre-existing settings, I don't encounter this issue. This probably has something to do with "style settings", as JulianDracos pointed out.
I probably made the "dark desert" myself. I've tried to follow a few tutorials online. Aside from that, I'm still pretty new to CC3+.
You might be right, I'll share my copy.
Your example map is behaving normally for me.
Are you using the drawing tools
to draw the contours and the forests, or doing it some other way?
I've tried to use all three of these buttons.
It looks like this in the menu.
You see where it says "Overland CC3" in the Style dropdown box?
Try changing that to "Overland Mike Schley" instead and see what they look like then.
Most of them seem fine here? Some look weird likes these ones.
So it's just that I need to use this style then, right? Or I could try to find and load the right symbols so that I can use other styles as well then? I'm just bad at finding them then.
The forest back is just the shadow of a forest. It does not contain the forest. If you use say the Forest Mixed, what the program does it first draw that forest back shading. Then it fills the area with symbols. The contours just adding shading as well.
Those drawing tools look normal. Not all of them are patterned fills like the Farmland. Some of them are, as JulianDracos has already pointed out, transparent solids and other ways of filling a polygon or line.
The style of this map is Overland Mike Schley. That's initiated when you pick the template when you create the new map - an Overland Mike Schley template. That's why it opened and functioned quite normally for me as an Overland Mike Schley map.
If you want to change styles completely and create the map in a different style and use none of the Mike Schley stuff, since you have only drawn the landmass so far it's probably easier just to create a new map in the style you prefer and copy the coastline across to the new map. Use "Change Like draw tool" in the right click menu of the Change Properties button
to change the pasted landmass properties to reflect the landmass properties of the new style once you have moved it to the new map.
Oh, okay. It seems I just didn't completely understand what I was doing.
My apologies for wasting your time.
Thanks for the help though!
Questions about the product are never a waste of time! If the same question comes up repeatedly from different folks, it's a sign that there's a part of the product that can be made better and it really does help in the long run. Some folks (like me) can even learn from these questions. Thanks for taking the time to ask it!
Joe (jslayton) is right, PapaJohns.
I don't mind at all. When I first started I asked all kinds of stuff myself ;)
You're right, thanks!
I won't hesitate to ask next time I don't understand something then.
Fire away, PapaJohns... :)
Not knowing what you are doing is pretty normal for starting out. I remember getting a bunch of styles from a Bundle and I wanted to look through them all. That did not go as I intended . . .
Yep, there's a steep learning curve when starting out with CC3+, but you will find it quickly gets easier with experience.
Glad things managed to get sorted out for you with this one though.
Keep up the mapping!