Weird behavior with new drawtool
So I tried to make a drawtool that would allow me to create lines on my map (smooth paths in actuality) to represent railway lines. I found that for certain colors (e.g. yellow), the line looked terrible against the land on my map (it was just too bright), so I thought to make a tool that has a black "outline". I've used such tools before - the "Road, Superhighway" tool which comes packed in with the Modern Political style is like this, as are the various road tools in the Modern City style. The effect of this is to make it look like you have a line of one color, with an outline on either side of a different color.
The tool is set up so that the "base" entity is black, and then the "outline" (which goes on top and is thinner than the base, thus it appears as a line of whatever color with two black lines on either side) is set to "Use current color" so I can make it whatever color I need on the fly.
Below is a screenshot of what I'm getting when I use the tool I've created. As you can see, the top and middle lines are correct - the inner line is one color, and then there's a black outline on either side.
However, the lowest of the three lines is an example of when things get weird.
See how it's a green line (which is correct, as it's the color currently selected) surrounded by two yellow, instead of black, lines on either side?
What seems to often happens is, if I use the tool after changing the current color to something else, then it MIGHT do this: replacing the black base entity with whatever color I used last. I say "might", because it doesn't always. Sometimes it's fine. But when it decides to not be fine, I can't get it to behave properly without just... abandoning this tool, doing other stuff on my map instead, saving and closing CC3+, and re-opening it later, and hoping the thing has decided to cooperate again.
Here are screenshots of the windows for this tool in the Advanced Drawtools UI, showing how I have it set up (and as you can see, in the preview window, it looks perfectly normal - it ALWAYS looks normal in the preview window. Even if I go back to this advanced settings screen right after it goes wonky and puts down the wrong color, the preview window looks correct). If there's some setting I missed somewhere that could cause this behavior, then great, but this feels like a glitch?
Any help is appreciated as always!
The tool is set up so that the "base" entity is black, and then the "outline" (which goes on top and is thinner than the base, thus it appears as a line of whatever color with two black lines on either side) is set to "Use current color" so I can make it whatever color I need on the fly.
Below is a screenshot of what I'm getting when I use the tool I've created. As you can see, the top and middle lines are correct - the inner line is one color, and then there's a black outline on either side.
However, the lowest of the three lines is an example of when things get weird.
See how it's a green line (which is correct, as it's the color currently selected) surrounded by two yellow, instead of black, lines on either side?
What seems to often happens is, if I use the tool after changing the current color to something else, then it MIGHT do this: replacing the black base entity with whatever color I used last. I say "might", because it doesn't always. Sometimes it's fine. But when it decides to not be fine, I can't get it to behave properly without just... abandoning this tool, doing other stuff on my map instead, saving and closing CC3+, and re-opening it later, and hoping the thing has decided to cooperate again.
Here are screenshots of the windows for this tool in the Advanced Drawtools UI, showing how I have it set up (and as you can see, in the preview window, it looks perfectly normal - it ALWAYS looks normal in the preview window. Even if I go back to this advanced settings screen right after it goes wonky and puts down the wrong color, the preview window looks correct). If there's some setting I missed somewhere that could cause this behavior, then great, but this feels like a glitch?
Any help is appreciated as always!
Comments
You'll notice that if you have some color selected, then start the tool, the color indicator will change to black (the color specified for the base entity). This is basically how CC3+ makes this entity a specified color, it simply changes the active color when you start the tool. It also saves the the current color to an internal variable for use with the outline, which uses the "current color". However, these things happen when you start the tool, so if you change the colors while the tool is still active, you are actually changing the color for the base entity (the black line in your example), while the other entity still keeps whatever color was set before starting the tool.
So in short, to use a different color, you must end the drawing with the tool, then set the new color, and start the tool again.
Then again, I don't usually pick colors while using drawing tools (especially not AFTER starting the tool), since most drawtools in the map styles I work in specify their own colors. So maybe I was trying to pick a color after activating the tool (after noticing that the active color changed to black whenever I used it) and wasn't really noticing when I did or didn't do that.
So that's simple enough then, I'll just avoid doing that.
Thanks!