I rewrote the appeal heatmap to be a generic heatmap service, and when messing with my own heatmaps I’ve noticed that at least trees and pets do not get hilighted the passed color _radiant.client.hilight_entity(item, color): they only hilight white. (Berry bushes and other plants, as well as non-pet critters and wild game do get hilighted correctly.)
This might be getting overridden by the HilightService:_hilight_entity in hilight_service.lua. Do you know if your call to hilight_entity happens before or after that? (You can check using print statements)
I don’t think that’s the case, because this is happening for more than just whatever the mouse is directly hovering over, and as far as I can tell that’s the only thing that the HilightService is highlighting. You know how the appeal heatmap highlights every entity in its area with a color based on its appeal value? That’s what I’m talking about: multiple trees/pets within the heatmap area getting highlighted simultaneously by my calls all get highlighted in white (which is not the color they’re being directed to be highlighted), while other entities that I’ve described do get properly highlighted in that situation.