Things I forgot to mention (part 1)

I was a tad sleepy when I wrote the release announcement for v2.4 beta1, and consequently I seem to have forgotten to mention a few useful morsels of information. Here is one of them:

You can now edit the placement of land-types in the attributes map using your favourite image editor. Said differently, you can paint land types. To do this you need to use the 'colour-mapped' PNG format, which is activated by:

1. Select 'File→Preferences' in the menu.
2. Select 'Attributes map→PNG'.
3. Hit both the 'use format' and 'make default' buttons.
4. Click on the 'Options…' button.
5. Double-click on the 'ColourMapped = false' item (to set it to true).
6. Close the options dialog and file-preferences dialog using the 'OK' buttons.

This will save the attributes map in the same colour-scheme as it appears on the screen in L3DT (example). However, this must be used with care, as it makes it very easy for you to corrupt the contents of your attributes map. The following rules should be observed:

1. Only use colours already defined in the map (!).
2. Never JPEG an attributes map (will violate the first rule unless lossless compression is used).

Furthermore, there will be problems if multiple land types share the same display colour, as the PNG-loader will pick the first land type with a matching colour. User beware!

Anyhoo, I'm sure I've forgotten something else, so stay tuned for Things I forgot to mention (part 2).