Hmmm, I'm not seeing much of a difference, but there's some glare on my screen at the moment. Here they are:

First Edge Fade off, second one on

First Edge Fade on, second one off

Both Edge Fades off

And here's the FCW file:

On today's Live demo, which was about Sinister Sewers, I asked for recommendations for what to use as a fill style for pure water uncontaminated with sewage (such as water runoff from storm drains). I had been using Effluent 05, but on another Water sheet with a transparency effect. Sue recommended trying one of the Bitmap Solid fill styles.

Here's a practice attempt, with the five effluent fills above and then five on the solid bitmaps below (from Solid 10 Bitmap through Solid 50). The five below are on a Water 2 sheet in case anyone recommends effects different than the regular Water sheet. Right now, I put the same effects on Water 2.

I am leaning towards Solid 40 Bitmap for storm drain runoff (since that water will have dirt and other impurities), and maybe something like Solid 20 Bitmap for pure water (for example, if dwarves are using this technology for a subterranean aqueduct).

Thoughts? (If this is too difficult to see here, I can post it in my Gallery if that has a better resolution.)

The clouds (or smoke?) are great! Are they from a symbol set or did you use a different technique?

Realized I didn't have any stains or scum, so added a bit. Really love how this template includes so many different effects options for adjusting the coloring.

Okay, I think I've done my final tweaks for my practice sewers.

I realized that my sewer pipes weren't actually doing anything, so I used end-pipes off of T junctures to allow the graywater they're carrying to be deposited into the sewer canals. Added a few more bridges over the canals because there were a few areas that were inaccessible to maintenance workers. Tightened up the border texture. Moved the water (Effluent 05) in the storm drain canals to a new water sheet to give it a slightly higher transparency. (Not sure if I did that effectively or not.) And I added a bit more drama to the tentacle action in the lower right.

Been plotting out how the waste management system in my major cities will work. From the age of 6 to 14, I grew up without electricity or indoor plumbing, so the ecology of outhouses isn't foreign to me. (What do you do when you fill one up? Dig another hole, and with enough time, the first one will be ready to be re-used again.) We sorted recycling long before curbside recycling existed (not that we had a curb -- we were a mile outside of our tiny town of 3,000 people). Compostables were sorted four ways: veggie peelings and ends for the rabbits in their elevated hutches, coffee grounds went to the worms that broke down the rabbit droppings below the hutches, egg shells were ground up and fed back to the chickens to give them calcium to strengthen their shells, and the rest went to the compost heap. Glass was sorted into separate bins for clear, green, and brown glass. Metals were sorted into separate bins for tin and aluminum. The rest was junk. Plastic wasn't as prevalent then and wasn't recyclable, and had to be taken to the dumps for landfill. So yeah, I've been thinking about the waste management issues for a medieval city. But also: humans and intelligent humanoids are nothing if not resourceful and inventive. In a fantasy world, what sort of burrowing or earth-eating creatures could be put to use to make tunnels easier than medieval humans could? What sort of debris-eating creatures like gelatinous cubes could be used to manage waste? No need in my world to dump untreated sludge back into rivers or oceans!