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Styles and icons
Part of Map Making Tools
Styles and icons is one of the occasional tools on the rail, below the stages. It holds the map's four kinds of style (pin styles, route styles, region fills and label styles), the pin icons offered in the pickers, and the file that shares your custom biomes and styles with another map.
A style is a named look. Everything that uses a style follows it: change the style, and every pin, route, region or label using it changes too. You choose a style for an object in its inspector or, for the next object you make, on the tool's bar (see Routes and pins, Regions and Labels).
In version 3 these were called Quick Styles, and this tool was the Style Library. Biome colours and custom biomes are now in Biomes.
Styles and icons: the Pin styles and Route styles, each with a preview and how many items use it.
Share your custom biomes and styles with another GM, or between your own worlds and maps, as a small file, without sharing (or rebuilding) a whole map.
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Export settings: opens a dialogue with one checkbox for each category: Custom biomes, Pin styles, Route styles, Region fills and Label styles. Under each, a line says how many the map has ("12 saved on this map"). A category with nothing in it is greyed out. Tick the ones you want and click Confirm: the file downloads at once, named after the map (for example
fwmb_styles_my_world.json). - Import settings: opens a file picker. Choose a file exported this way and its contents are added to what the map already has. Importing never overwrites or removes anything, so it is safe to import into a map that already has its own biomes and styles, and safe to import the same file twice: anything that exactly matches something already on the map is skipped. The check is on the content, not the name, so a shared style that has since been changed (a recoloured "Tundra", say) is added as a new, separate entry rather than updating the one you have. If the file holds nothing the module recognises, a warning says so.
Worked example: if you run a Rolemaster Unified (RMU) campaign, you could build that system's biomes once, export only Custom biomes, and send that one small file to anyone else mapping for RMU. They import it and have the same biomes to paint with at once.
Note: custom pin icons don't travel in this file. A custom pin icon is a link to an image file in your own Foundry data (or, on the web, an image kept in your browser), not something stored in the map. A map's own JSON file and Back up all maps (see Maps) do carry the custom pin icons the map's pins use, and add them here when the map is imported.
Each kind of style has its own section, whose title shows how many styles it holds. The styles are listed by name. Each row shows:
- a preview: the pin's icon, the route's line in its colour, width and stroke, the region fill's colour (crossed through for No fill), or "Aa" in the label style's font and colour;
- the style's name;
- how many objects on this map use it (hover over the number for "Used by 14 on this map");
- a More options menu with Rename, Duplicate and Delete.
A route style's More options menu: Rename, Duplicate and Delete.
Opening a style. Click a row (or press Enter on it) to open the style in the inspector (see The inspector). The row is marked while the inspector shows it, and focus stays in the list, so you can move through the styles with Up and Down and watch the inspector follow.
Adding a style. Each list ends with an add row (+ Pin style, + Route style, + Region fill, + Label style). It opens a naming row at the foot of the list with a name chosen for you. Type a name and press Enter (or click away) to make the style; Escape cancels and makes nothing. A new style starts with the look the tool's bar would give the next object of its kind, and opens in the inspector.
Rename turns the row into a naming row in the same way. Duplicate adds a copy called " copy" (or " copy 2" and so on) and opens it in the inspector. Delete asks first, saying how many objects use the style ("14 routes use Trunk road; they keep its look as Custom"). The objects keep how they look, but no longer follow a style.
Adding, renaming, duplicating and deleting a style are each one step of undo.
You can also make a style from any pin, route, label or region: Save as… in the object's inspector makes a new style from its look, and the object then follows it.
A new map starts with these styles, which are then the map's own to change, rename or delete:
- Pin styles (seventeen, one for each kind of settlement or site): Capital, City, Large town, Town, Market town, Large village, Village, Castle, Fortified town, Port, Ruin and Landmark, and for what an earlier age left behind, Ruined capital, Ruined city, Ruined large town, Ruined town and Abandoned castle (each in the icon of what it was, in red). Each holds an icon, a colour and a size, the detail levels its pins and their names are shown from, and the size, visibility and label style its pins' labels start with.
- Route styles (ten): Trunk road, Main road, Minor road, Track, Lane and Old road (for roads), Sea lane and Minor sea lane (for sea routes), River trade and Minor river trade (for river routes). The sea and river styles share a pale blue that stands out against the water: the main ones dashed, the minor ones dotted. A map saved before they did takes the new look when opened, for the styles (and the routes following them) still in the old colour and line.
- Label styles (ten): Realm, Duchy, County, Capital, Settlement, Place, Water, Note, Road and Sea lane.
- Region fills: none. Make your own, or use Save as… on a region.
Maps you made before version 4.0.0 keep their own styles. A map saved before pin styles existed is given the default pin styles when it is opened.
Generate finds the styles it uses by the kind of place, route or name each stands for, whatever you have renamed them, and adds any the map lacks from the defaults. Its Use the default styles switch sets them back to the defaults before a run.
A route style can be for roads, for sea routes, for river routes, or for any route (its Transport in the inspector). River routes are made by Generate; the drawing tools make roads and sea routes. The style pickers for a route, and the Routes bar's style for the next route, offer only the styles for that route's transport, so a sea lane is never offered a road style. A route already using a style keeps it if you change the style's transport.
This section starts folded. It lists every icon that comes with the module, each with a checkbox (Hide from pin picker). Tick an icon to hide it from the icon pickers, to keep them tidy; Hide all and Reveal all tick or untick every one. The default pin icon can't be hidden, since it is what a pin falls back to. Hiding an icon doesn't change any pin that already uses it.
In Foundry, the icons you hide apply to every map in the world.
The section's title shows how many custom icons you have, and its + button (Add custom pin icon) adds one. Click a custom icon's row to change its name or image. Custom icons are offered in the pickers alongside the built-in ones. In Foundry they belong to the world, so every map in it can use them.
The Add custom pin icon dialogue asks for:
- Name: the icon's name, shown in the pickers.
- Icon path: the image. Custom pin icons must be solid white on a transparent background (an SVG works best), because the module colours them itself. On the web, an image chosen from your computer must be a PNG, JPEG, WebP or SVG file; it is checked by what it contains rather than its name, and an SVG has any script or link to another file taken out.
- Preview: the icon on a dark background, so you can check it will show before you accept it.
Remove pin icon (the button on its row) removes a custom icon from the pickers. The image file itself is not touched. If any pins use the icon, in the open map or in any saved map, the confirmation says how many, and those pins change to the default icon if you go on.
A style opens in the inspector with its name as the title and a line such as "route style · used by 14" under it. Every style has a Name, then its own fields:
- Pin style: Look (Icon, Colour, Scale, Detail level) and Label (Size, Visibility, Name detail level and Label style for the labels of pins made with this style). Detail level is the level of the map's Detail menu from which pins with this style are shown (World (always shown), Province, Regional, Local or Everything), and Name detail level the level from which their names are shown. A name never shows before its pin, and a label set to hidden stays hidden. See Detail level.
- Route style: Transport (Any, Road, Sea or River), then Line (Colour, Stroke, Thickness, Outline and Smoothing).
- Region fill: Fill (Colour or No fill, and Pattern). A region's border belongs to its layer, so a region fill has none (see Regions).
- Label style: Look (Font, Bold, Italic, Size, Colour, Justify and Line width). A font without a bold or italic face shows that control greyed out (see Labels).
Changes apply at once, to the style and everything that uses it, and each is one step of undo.
- Build a style kit once (the biomes and styles of your game system or setting) and import it into each new map.
- When you delete a style, the objects using it keep their look, so you can delete a style you no longer want to manage without changing the map.
- To restyle many objects that don't share a style, use mass edit (see Map Making Tools).
Related: Routes and pins, Regions, Labels, Biomes, Map Making Tools