Hello All!

I was applying a factory driven modified fog to a board and I thought that I could shove all the factories under the picture parts of the board, but when I went to test it, it's having numbers which are visible through the pictures now.  Does anyone have any experience at changing the settings of those factory-territories so that they can just live under the pictures happily?  Or else how to layer in a dominant picture that they can not be seen through?

Thanks a lot for any and all suggestions!

Erick

One thing you can do is made the area where you hide the territories the same color as the font, so the black just disappears into the black.  But you have to make sure all player colors have black numbers.

fill numbers are under the board, so if the board layer is transparent in that area you'll see thru it. make that part of the board opaque and should fix it.

weathertop wrote:

fill numbers are under the board, so if the board layer is transparent in that area you'll see thru it. make that part of the board opaque and should fix it.

I don't think that's how it works..  Numbers are above board.. If they were below then you wouldn't be able to see the entire number on territories that are a bit too small.

In the short run - Edward's suggestion is the only one I know of that works.

In the long run - there are a three possibilities that I can think of off the bat..

1. Create an additional (optional) layer, which sits on top of EVERYTHING ..including numbers. My sense is that this one might be easiest for Tom to implement, and the file sizes are likely to be small because they will be mostly transparent.
2. Make #s toggleable as invisible ..by territory. This clutters the designer in my opinion and is probably not as easy to implement.
3. Create an off-board 'sand-box' for factories. This could be done by allocating an area of the board (e.g. y > 850)  to "not print." This would enable designers to better organize their work, and even document it right on the board. I have suggested this feature before and I think it is the most powerful and forward looking of all. I have no idea how difficult it would be to implement, but my sense is that it would require more debugging than the first possibility.

Create an additional (optional) layer, which sits on top of EVERYTHING ..including numbers. 

M57 has the answer, and he doesn't even know it. 

Hide em in the fog. 

=:0)

And I Agree @ Weathertop: that's not how it works.  The numbers show on top of the board.

ratsy wrote:

Hide em in the fog. 

That works unless players own the territories - which is the case with berickf's board.

Oh right.  Hmmm... gotta go with font color matching then. 

I'm pretty sure you can move the territories completely off board via the xml and they will still work:

1. Put the territories anywhere convenient.
2. Save the board
3. Download the XML
4. Open the XML & add 1000 to either the x or y position of the territories you want to hide.
5. Save XML
6. upload XML.
7. Test
8. Post in the forums and let us know if it worked

Ozyman wrote:

I'm pretty sure you can move the territories completely off board via the xml and they will still work:

1. Put the territories anywhere convenient.
2. Save the board
3. Download the XML
4. Open the XML & add 1000 to either the x or y position of the territories you want to hide.
5. Save XML
6. upload XML.
7. Test
8. Post in the forums and let us know if it worked

If this works - first - I have to say that it is brilliant, but it is also evil. Regardless, I'm impressed by the idea.

Ozyman wrote:

I'm pretty sure you can move the territories completely off board via the xml and they will still work:

1. Put the territories anywhere convenient.
2. Save the board
3. Download the XML
4. Open the XML & add 1000 to either the x or y position of the territories you want to hide.
5. Save XML
6. upload XML.
7. Test
8. Post in the forums and let us know if it worked

Hey Ozy,

That sounds like a great idea!  I will try it.  It's a lot like forcing the creation of M57's off-board sandbox, but with a barrier around it saying "keep out" (since obviously these factory territories should not be visible in the designer anymore).  Now, due to that point, would you recommend that I play a number of development games before attempting such to make sure I bug check the borders first because it might be quite difficult to add them (or possibly delete - if I added incorrectly) once the factories have been pushed off screen! I found one attack border and two view borders to fix yesterday, for instance, so there are still some to be discovered, I'm sure! It also makes me wonder, if the factory-territories will still work off screen then obviously a territory does not need to be associated with a fill area to work and the fill is just for the aesthetics of game play.  If a territory is not assigned a fill, does it still create a number on screen during game play?  If it does, why?  Since such factories theoretically work without assigning a fill (if pushed off screen) then one solution to keep factories usable in the designer, but invisible to game play, might be to make it such that any territory that is NOT assigned a fill does NOT display a number since it's not supposed to be visible anyways (by the fact it has no assigned fill).  I don't know if no fill = no display number would be easy to code or not, but, I'll throw that idea into the discussion.

Thanks,

Erick

It's been my experience that each territory you put on the board (even the ones just for factories) create a fill.  If your image doesn't have any contigous colors than sometimes it's just a single pixel, but the territory still fills it. 

Hey rat,

I have not experimented yet, but that's how I think it works too.  That even if the fill is left blank (transparent) that that territory will still create it's own pixel for fill.  But what I'm thinking is that as things progress, and behind-the-scenes factories are utilized more, many would have to be kept out of site from game play and that one way to do this would be that if a territory sits on blank space (transparent in the fill layer), then it might be a quick programming fix that it does not display an on-board number and therefore is "invisible" in game, yet still usable in the designer for quick fixes and what not.  It could be one way to move forward?

Erick

berickf wrote:

if a territory sits on blank space (transparent in the fill layer), then it might be a quick programming fix that it does not display an on-board number and therefore is "invisible" in game, yet still usable in the designer for quick fixes and what not.  It could be one way to move forward?

Erick

"No Fill = No Code" is  is a good solution as well.  Transparent fill locations do not "fill," therefore the number doesn't print.

As for fixing things like view borders once you've pushed a factory off the screen -  View borders can be easily created in the xml, but if you are uncomfortable with that - move them back on the screen by subtracting 1000 on the x/y coordinate - then fix.

Worst case would simply be to delete it (in the xml) and then recreate it in the designer.

In all cases - you have to take the plunge and play with the xml 

Cram has done what Ozy suggested, although you can do this within the Designer Tool as you can place territories outside of your Board Image.  When the Board is drawn for the Native/Flash players it will only draw the regions of the Board, but (I am fairly certain) it will use all the territories of the XML.  Note, this will make it look odd if someone is still "alive" but has not territories, and may cause some unknown issues as I'm assuming this was not expected to truly be used like this.

Yertle wrote:

Cram has done what Ozy suggested, although you can do this within the Designer Tool as you can place territories outside of your Board Image.  When the Board is drawn for the Native/Flash players it will only draw the regions of the Board, but (I am fairly certain) it will use all the territories of the XML.  Note, this will make it look odd if someone is still "alive" but has not territories, and may cause some unknown issues as I'm assuming this was not expected to truly be used like this.

For some reason, the way you have explained this gave me an idea for how to make the off-board process easier for xml-phobic types. What if you started with oversized images - put in all your factories - then replaced all the images? The territories don't shift and the image is just cut from the East and South.

If that works, then editing mistakes would simply be a matter of swapping out images - In fact, making the 'sandbox' a permanent and convenient feature, by letting the designer lock and unlock the alternate images, doesn't sound so unreasonable a request.

On the other hand, I wonder that my original idea might be preferable -- a one-size-fits all board that simply doesn't print where greater than designer chosen x and y values.

I, for one, would be happy with whichever is easiest to implement, and if the workaround works there's no rush for such a feature, though it would obviously make a huge difference where collaborative efforts and the proposed 'workshop' page are concerned.

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/3211/Darkness_Falls_Dev_Journal

This may shed some additional light on the problem for you.

I have hidden territories in two ways: one is to drag them off the playable area in the designer, down by the transparency sliders, and they will not render in the played games. You'll want to have some temporary fill layer spaces on the map for while you're working, though, that you can cut out later, because it's really hard to manipulate territories that don't have a fill area behind them. For whatever reason, I have a hard time selecting them, moving them, changing their names, etc.

The other thing I've done is to put a solid bar about 25 pixels high across the width of the map on the image layer. Make it solid black. It's really inconspicuous. Then put a row of territory fills behind it for your hidden factories to sit on. The black numbers will disappear against the black bar on the image layer, and the fills won't be visible through it. I found this works a lot better than trying to drag the territories off map. They're more accessible for changes and you'll spend less time moving them around or clicking for them futilely.

Cramchakle wrote:

 

I have hidden territories in two ways: one is to drag them off the playable area in the designer, down by the transparency sliders, and they will not render in the played games. You'll want to have some temporary fill layer spaces on the map for while you're working, though, that you can cut out later, because it's really hard to manipulate territories that don't have a fill area behind them. For whatever reason, I have a hard time selecting them, moving them, changing their names, etc.

Holy Cramchackles! You can drag the territory off-board even though there is no image - the sand box is already there!  And not just down by the sliders but over to the right hand side of the board as well.  I didn't try editing them, but it looks like it should work - you just need to be able to hover over and click on the right pixel.

Yertle wrote:

Cram has done what Ozy suggested....

I thought  I rememembered someone had actually done it, but I couldn't remember who.

That's awesome Cram!

So, if I understand correctly, all I need to do is to make a fill map that has a dot off screen that will cause the board to become temporarily extended for the design process and fully useful in the designer.  Erase the dot and all the territories put in that transparency slide off screen... Brilliant!  A make your own 'sand box' which can be switched on and off as the designer requires, simply by switching out the fill images!

Thanks a lot!

Erick

berickf wrote:

That's awesome Cram!

So, if I understand correctly, all I need to do is to make a fill map that has a dot off screen that will cause the board to become temporarily extended for the design process and fully useful in the designer.  Erase the dot and all the territories put in that transparency slide off screen... Brilliant!  A make your own 'sand box' which can be switched on and off as the designer requires, simply by switching out the fill images!

Thanks a lot!

Erick

I think this was my suggestion (Post #15) Although I don't see a need to "erase"the dot if you pull the image. - so maybe it isn't my suggestion..

Also - (as Cram suggested) - technically you don't even have to upload an oversized image if you are willing to just drag territory markers off the board.