Dark Fantasy Annual river-line weirdness
Wyvern
🖼️ 264 images Cartographer
Mapping this morning for my latest Atlas overland project, I ran into a little weirdness. Having completed the main hard-landscape features (coast & hills), I moved on to the rivers. I'm using the Dark Fantasy Annual style, so wanted to check the coastline colour and line thickness first. Did that, then right-clicked on the river tools icon to see how those parameters matched-up. Clicked "Advanced" for the "Custom drawing tools" pane, which came in showing the "River, small" details like this:
"Restrict to map border" was unchecked, which surprised me, as I couldn't recall having amended the tool (as with most Annuals, this would usually be checked). Then I saw the line colour was the classic knock-out "6" (magenta), which checking the "Properties" confirmed was correct.
So I then examined the "River, large" tool, after clicking "No" in the "Save settings?" panel that came up when I started to switch. That came up with "Restrict to map border" checked, and a wider, colour 68 (blue) line, much as expected. Then I went back to the "River, small" tool, and found this pane:
Which is pretty much what I'd have expected in advance originally.
Yesterday, I'd been completing the Blackmarsh map in the new Handdrawn Annual style (shown elsewhere on the Forum), and that does use knock-out river lines, so all I can think is this somehow got held over from the earlier mapping, for all it still seems weird it would happen.
What's even stranger is that this pattern was repeatable, because having discovered it, and without amending or resaving the river drawing tools in any way, I created the images used here, and went through the process three times more over several minutes, with identical results!
It's not a problem as such, since it went away subsequently, though it did seem worthwhile flagging as a possible odd, minor, semi-bug.
Comments
I'm not seeing the same as you. All the rivers are set up the same way in my copy, and there is no Colour Key sheet effect on any of the sheets. The river drawing tools are all restricted to map border.
Is it possible that you installed this annual several years ago, and that it might have been updated/repaired since then? My copy was installed using installers around December 2023, when I got this PC.
No, it was just as if it were a glitch that happened when I reopened the Dark Fantasy map today Sue. I think it's somehow been a hangover from the Handdrawn Fantasy style I was using the day before, as if the program was somehow "remembering" that, instead of only using the correct set of tool templates.
I wanted to flag it here, since it seems possible there's something going on in the software causing this to occur, as I couldn't think of an alternative explanation for why it happened.
After it switched back to the correct tools, it never happened again, as I was reusing the river drawing tools (as amended) for some time after that. As I said though, weird 😁!
Thanks for letting us know this, Wyvern. I will draw Ralf's attention to this thread for you.