Regenerate single segment?

[nDervish]

I finally got around to trying out 0.9.3 last night after a month or two of not making maps. (Shameful, I know...) After drawing some landmasses and getting unsightly cusps where fractal edges meet, I started looking for the controls to regenerate the fractal for a segment, but wasn't able to find it. And I feel absolutely certain that it existed in previous versions. Where is it these days? Or, if I just imagined it being there previously, please add it! (I was able to find the button to regenerate all fractals along the entire perimeter of the landmass, but, once you get over a certain number of segments, that just tends to remove one cusp and create another one somewhere else.)

Also, is it possible to add bezier shaping when editing an existing point/segment or is that only available when the segment is initially drawn?

[Kanchou]

I finally got around to trying out 0.9.3 last night after a month or two of not making maps. (Shameful, I know...) After drawing some landmasses and getting unsightly cusps where fractal edges meet, I started looking for the controls to regenerate the fractal for a segment, but wasn't able to find it. And I feel absolutely certain that it existed in previous versions. Where is it these days? Or, if I just imagined it being there previously, please add it! (I was able to find the button to regenerate all fractals along the entire perimeter of the landmass, but, once you get over a certain number of segments, that just tends to remove one cusp and create another one somewhere else.)

Also, is it possible to add bezier shaping when editing an existing point/segment or is that only available when the segment is initially drawn?

We combined the Point Edit and Segment Edit tools into the "Shape Edit" while also adding the ability to edit Branches. The "tooltips" for the buttons didn't get properly updated, so it's confusing. However, you can use the "move" button of the Control Point/Segment edit mode to select a fractal segment. That way, "re-rolling" of the fractal applies only to that segment.

We'll update the text for the next release and also have a tutorial.

On the second part, in full path mode in the Shape Edit tool you can do bezier shaping. Fractal segments tend to be very "tight" (almost linear) bezies, but if you pull from a segment or from the edges of a point you can get the bezier control points to show up (you can practice with a landmass drawn with the bezier tool).

Let us know if that does it

- Alejandro

[nDervish]

We combined the Point Edit and Segment Edit tools into the "Shape Edit" while also adding the ability to edit Branches. The "tooltips" for the buttons didn't get properly updated, so it's confusing. However, you can use the "move" button of the Control Point/Segment edit mode to select a fractal segment. That way, "re-rolling" of the fractal applies only to that segment.

OK. I found the Shape Edit, but then ran into a wall when I wasn't able to use the "Select" mode to select segments. What's the reasoning behind using Select to select points, but Move to select segments?

Let us know if that does it

I'm currently in Linux, but I'll give it a shot next time I'm in Windows.

[Kanchou]

OK. I found the Shape Edit, but then ran into a wall when I wasn't able to use the "Select" mode to select segments. What's the reasoning behind using Select to select points, but Move to select segments?

I'm currently in Linux, but I'll give it a shot next time I'm in Windows.

Select is for selecting an item into "wireframe" mode (to call it something). That locks the item into Shape Editing so that then if you happen to click outside the item when trying to drag a point, select a segment, add, etc. the shape doesn't become unselected.

Before, for complex maps, users (and us) found it very frustrating how easy it was to unselect the object while trying to edit it.

We are changing the names of the buttons (which should help a bit) to reflect this. The select is for select an item and locking into wireframe, the "move" is for selecting or moving points and segments (we'll update the text and possibly the icon to reflect this).

Tutorials would also help..which is why we've been creating them regularly for our blog now

Thank you!

- Alejandro

[nDervish]

So, yeah, I gave it a try last night and using the Move tool to select segments worked. Then I kept working on my world map and came up with a bunch of additional comments, questions, suggestions, requests, and so on. I'll just list them here instead of starting a new thread for them:

1) Related to your comment about de-selecting shapes in the Shape Edit, it would also be nice to have a keypress available which hides the control points, either while the key is held down or as a toggle. When I was trying to get fractals to meet nicely, it got a little tedious to select the landmass, switch to Move tool, select the segment, regenerate it, switch to Select tool, unselect the landmass, see that I'm still not happy with the shape, select the landmass again...

2) When two adjacent regions both have "soft edge" enabled, they should blend into each other rather than blending from region 1 into the landmass, then from the landmass into region 2. I was experimenting with different ways to handle a landmass that was half glacial/half rocky with a little forestation on one side and one of the things I tried was using a white landmass with rocky and forest regions on top of it; this resulted in "glowing" white lines separating the regions.

3) I didn't seem to be able to move control points added in Shape Edit. They still functioned to break a segment into shorter segments, but wouldn't respond when I tried to drag them with the Move tool. Control points placed when I initially drew the landmass, however, were movable as expected.

4) "Follow contour" doesn't handle transitions from one object to an adjacent object. To draw a region adjacent to an existing region, I needed to "continue following contour" to as close as I could to the point where the region-contour met the landmass-contour, click there, then click to "start following contour" on the other side of the junction and hope that it wouldn't create a noticeable break. Even if you need to click at the junction to provide an extra hint, it shouldn't be necessary to put two control points right on top of each other (or as close to it as you can manage).

5) Is it possible to copy the drawing settings from a landmass to a region or vice-versa? In the course of my experiments mentioned in #2, I noticed that glacial landmasses weren't the same shade of white as glacial regions and couldn't find a way to make them match other than by manually changing every setting in one to match the other.

6) Given #4 and #5, it would be nice to have a one-touch function to select a section of a landmass which is not allocated to a region and create a new region which exactly fills that area without having to track all the way around its border, jumping from the edge of one object to the edge of the next (#4). (The connection to #5 is that assigning regions to completely cover a landmass could be an alternative to giving the same drawing properties to regions and landmasses.)

7) Being able to set an alternate border color for landmasses/regions to use when they're being actively edited (e.g., when initially drawing them or in Shape Edit) would be handy. I'm working on top of a background image with light-colored seas (it was rendered to look like a parchment map) and those glacial areas I mentioned involved a lot of changing the border color to black because the preset's white border wasn't visible, then reverting to the preset when I finished.

8) Is it possible to combine multiple landmasses (or other objects at the same level of the object tree) into a single entry in the layers list, both to conserve display space and so that they can be toggled on or off as a single unit? I had expected the Group function to do this, but it doesn't appear to. I have lots of chains of small islands, so I think I'm probably going to end up with 150-200 landmasses by the time I finish this world map and it would be nice to be able to organize them.

9) Any chance for options to select multiple Features and choose randomly among them when placing them on the map (e.g., select five different trees and then each click randomly picks one of those five trees to place) and/or a "Feature Fill" function which scatters Features (from a user-selected set and with configurable density) throughout a region?

(*whew* That's quite a list!)

[Kanchou]

(*whew* That's quite a list!)

Going through it right now . Sorry for the lateness.

- Alejandro

[Kanchou]

First batch of replies

1) Related to your comment about de-selecting shapes in the Shape Edit, it would also be nice to have a keypress available which hides the control points, either while the key is held down or as a toggle. When I was trying to get fractals to meet nicely, it got a little tedious to select the landmass, switch to Move tool, select the segment, regenerate it, switch to Select tool, unselect the landmass, see that I'm still not happy with the shape, select the landmass again...

When you are in "Select" mode in shape edit, holding shift will make the tool behave like the the move/select mode (Ctrl will add points, etc). Using that would help a litle.
Didn't think about hiding points because there shouldn't be that many control points normally (unless you are clicking very closely to create fractal segments - but that's probably getting you shapes with more points that are needed.

Hiding the points wouldn't be hard, but trying to think what key to use . Shift/Ctrl/Alt are already used.

3) I didn't seem to be able to move control points added in Shape Edit. They still functioned to break a segment into shorter segments, but wouldn't respond when I tried to drag them with the Move tool. Control points placed when I initially drew the landmass, however, were movable as expected.

I can't reproduce this. Does it happen every time? Can you email me a map that shows this issue.

5) Is it possible to copy the drawing settings from a landmass to a region or vice-versa? In the course of my experiments mentioned in #2, I noticed that glacial landmasses weren't the same shade of white as glacial regions and couldn't find a way to make them match other than by manually changing every setting in one to match the other.

Not yet, but it's on our to do list . Realized too late that it would be a good idea. Will try to add this soon.

8) Is it possible to combine multiple landmasses (or other objects at the same level of the object tree) into a single entry in the layers list, both to conserve display space and so that they can be toggled on or off as a single unit? I had expected the Group function to do this, but it doesn't appear to. I have lots of chains of small islands, so I think I'm probably going to end up with 150-200 landmasses by the time I finish this world map and it would be nice to be able to organize them.

We're working to make it so that items that are grouped can be shown as one item in the layers window. Grouped items *should* toggle visibility as one unit, the fact that they don't is a bug.

You could also merge the island togeather - of course the side effect is their properties become all the same (i.e. texture).

9) Any chance for options to select multiple Features and choose randomly among them when placing them on the map (e.g., select five different trees and then each click randomly picks one of those five trees to place) and/or a "Feature Fill" function which scatters Features (from a user-selected set and with configurable density) throughout a region?

The first part is already possible. You can define custom lists of Features from the Feature Properties, and the toolbar has the option to "Scatter" features and of going through the current list. We plan to add this behavior also to the "Feature Fill" hopefully within a rev or two.

[nDervish]

Didn't think about hiding points because there shouldn't be that many control points normally (unless you are clicking very closely to create fractal segments - but that's probably getting you shapes with more points that are needed.

Nope, not because I have a ton of control points (I try to keep to as few as is workable), but because I've got segments that come together in undesirably-sharp points because the fractals are concave on both sides (I'm trying to make the join change from \/ to \_, if you follow) and I can't tell whether the point has been smoothed out or not when it's hidden behind a big red dot.

3) I didn't seem to be able to move control points added in Shape Edit. They still functioned to break a segment into shorter segments, but wouldn't respond when I tried to drag them with the Move tool. Control points placed when I initially drew the landmass, however, were movable as expected.

I can't reproduce this. Does it happen every time? Can you email me a map that shows this issue.

Sure. I'll verify first that it still happens after rebooting (I haven't touched OWM since I posted the list - I'm not normally in Windows that much). If it does, what address should I send it to?

You could also merge the island togeather - of course the side effect is their properties become all the same (i.e. texture).

I missed that feature... Sharing the base landmass texture is no problem for me.

The first part is already possible. You can define custom lists of Features from the Feature Properties, and the toolbar has the option to "Scatter" features and of going through the current list. We plan to add this behavior also to the "Feature Fill" hopefully within a rev or two.

Ah, great! I'll take a look for that when I check on moving control points.

[nDervish]

3) I didn't seem to be able to move control points added in Shape Edit. They still functioned to break a segment into shorter segments, but wouldn't respond when I tried to drag them with the Move tool. Control points placed when I initially drew the landmass, however, were movable as expected.

I can't reproduce this. Does it happen every time? Can you email me a map that shows this issue.

Sure. I'll verify first that it still happens after rebooting (I haven't touched OWM since I posted the list - I'm not normally in Windows that much). If it does, what address should I send it to?

Finally got around to trying this last night and the control points on the landmass where I saw this all moved as expected, both those that were originally present and those that I added. Guess it was just transient weirdness, not an issue with the map file.