CIty Designer 3 map broken

Hi,

the last days I worked on a city map and everything looked good. Last night I opened my map and it was broken. The sheets SYMBOLS, TEXT, GRID, MAP BORDER and CARTOUCHES have been deleted and the rest (houses, roads and rivers) have been painted purple (color 216). It is a desaster!

Is there a chance to fix this or is my map lost now?

Thanks, Tequlyet

Comments

  • RalfRalf Administrator, ProFantasy 🖼️ 18 images Mapmaker
    Hi Tequlyet,

    I fear this doesn't sound good. If the sheets are truly gone (and not only hidden, but i supposed you check the sheet dialog) there is no way to recover their data.

    The color problem is probably because the custom palette entity was on one of the lost sheets. This may be recoverable though:

    - Start a new map based on the same style.
    - Open the color dialog and do "Save Custom PAL".
    - Close that map and open your broken map.
    - If the colors aren't already corrected, open the color dialog and do "Reload Custom PAL".
    - Go to File > Drawing Properties and to "Attach to Drawing" for the custom palette.
  • Hi Ralf,

    thanks for your quick reply. The color problem is fixed now but the missing sheets seem to be the bigger problem. I still don't know how this could happen because when I finished my work, I did an export to PNG which works without any problem. When I reopend the map some hours later it was broken.

    Anyway, I take this problem as an opportunity to make an even better map as the first one. Since I know now how my map should look like I bet I will be much faster now.

    Thanks, Tequlyet
  • Tequlyet, you are taking this bravely!

    If you haven't done it already, you might check the autosave copy of the map -- it might have an uncorrupted version that it not too old.

    This is a good time to remind everyone that you should save your map periodically. I have software that automatically takes a snapshot of changed files, but you can achieve the same thing by just saving with a sequential number (e.g. MyMap001, MyMap002, etc.). It can save you a lot of heartache -- not only when this happens, but also if you take an artistic path with the map that doesn't work the way you hoped -- you still have older versions that you can go back to.

    Steve
  • Hi Steve,

    I guess you are talking about the AUTOSAVE.FCW file in the installation path of CC3? Well that was already overwritten with my new map I started this morning. I have almost finished the new map in less than a third of the time I was working on the first map which got broken.

    At the moment I save regularly and save the finished maps in a different place.

    Thanks, Tequlyet
  • This why I say to 'save as' often to filename001, filename002, etc. If a map crashes, you still have the other previous copies available.

    I use this method to also diverge a map if I decide at filename105, that I have done off in a direction I don't like. I just look over the earlier maps, and diverge to, for example, filenameb010, etc.
  • Nope, not autosave, as it only saves one copy, and is overwritten at the next autosave interval.

    Sorry, tired from a long work week and didn't realize sdavies2720 had already mentioned the above method of sequential filename saves.
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