It's good work, Jim :)

Win 10 strikes again!

Excellent! It works. Thanks Joe. I just wish I'd known about that years ago.

I had started to import the symbols, then open the results in GIMP to select alpha and sharpen the mask, fill with black on a new layer, then invert the mask and trim the semi-transparent pixels away before merging the two layers to form one antialiased image with nice clean edges. It takes too long, though, when you are still drawing new symbols on a time limit.

The symbols generated without any kind of antialiasing look rougher at lower resolutions, but at least they don't have those white fringes on them anymore, and I don't have to waste so much time preparing them all by hand now.

@jslayton - If there are any semi-transparent pixels around the edge of the graphic, they show up as opaque white. I can fix this by ensuring there are no semitransparent pixels at all - at least in the VH version of the file. Here is a snapshot of the perfectly sharp VH symbol and then the lower res shot of the same, showing the white pixels that appear when the edge has been antialiased in the HI res version of the symbol.

Not everyone takes care to fix the resolution at VH just prior to export, so to counteract the unsightly white fringe we put a dark line around everything and cut the map file short of the edge by the width of the dark line.

(Having said that, of course, I've just shown you the experimental house symbols where I've taken out the dark line and replaced it with a more subtle dark inner glow on the symbol itself. It appears that the dark line can be done away with, as long as you make sure the edges are never paler than the interior).

The hole is part of the symbol, but could be made as a separate symbol as well if I have time. The handover for this set is in 7 days time.

EDIT: I've discovered that if I do the HI and LO resolutions by hand in GIMP without any antialiasing (taking the sizes from the previously created HI and LO res versions from CC3), I can also prevent the white fringe on those two resolutions. Here I have done it to the house on the left, but not the one on the right.

Ok. I now have holes in the roof on both tiled and thatch houses. The thatch house holes were a lot harder to work out than the tiled ones. No sharp edges!

Anyway! I was hoping to find out what you think of the 'derelict' version of this cottage. Does it go far enough... too far?

There will be full ruins in part 2 later on in December.