Developer feedback requested: Ship Icons.

[eRe4s3r]

You could also have unique pip (shown in-game view) for each MK level instead of unique pip for types.
like so

(quick mock)


If you make the MK levels fancier (ie with more details) like in bottom # MK4 example, or maybe different shape with more functionality included, Basically a cake-system, MK4 has full 4 pips, and MK3 has 3, MK 2 has 2 etc. like this



Note, doesn't have to be a circle ;p And this is to show how you could show mk levels.

more examples


Well, or the simple way, MK level on the pip as text...

[Cinth]

Sidebar icons should probably just be the ship and have all info be tooltip.  The sidebar is a general overview of the type of ships in a particular system, not a detailed list.  I think the basic functionality here should be pretty close to what is in Classic (it works).

[Toranth]

Sidebar icons should probably just be the ship and have all info be tooltip.  The sidebar is a general overview of the type of ships in a particular system, not a detailed list.  I think the basic functionality here should be pretty close to what is in Classic (it works).

I agree.  Trying to list each individual ship/squadron seems like a bad idea, as the numbers will quickly get out of hand.  Even in the pre-alpha, it's easy to get 200 squadrons in a single battle.

So, the sidebar should probably not list:  Mark, health, orders, status, or anything else specific to a unit.  Just the ship type.
Maybe Arks and Flagships should not be summarized, but instead listed individually with health, status, etc.

[eRe4s3r]

I can get behind that bit I guess, if it's XML based and the filters are xposed to that XML, we can always get more fancy later on in mods. Especially how the list is sorted in the sidebar, not everyone might want thing X at the front and thing Y in the middle. And it'd allow Blue to make nice glowy icons for the sidebar and get more scruffy with pips ;P

[Cyborg]

Are there callbacks for when different LOD levels are triggered?

[keith.lamothe]

Are there callbacks for when different LOD levels are triggered?

You mean an event that fires when it actually switches them over, or just handling logic differently based on the LOD level?

More to the point, what specifically are you wanting to do with the hooks?

[Cyborg]

Are there callbacks for when different LOD levels are triggered?

You mean an event that fires when it actually switches them over, or just handling logic differently based on the LOD level?

More to the point, what specifically are you wanting to do with the hooks?

Events that are generated. I would like to be able to show/hide icons.

It might be handy to have a control that does it on demand. I see myself doing the navigation orders at the top-down level and zooming in electively. I don't see any tactical advantage to trying to coordinate battles from up close. You might want to be able to bring in a selection group to finish off some target, but I think you'll find most people giving orders at a farther distance.

The mockup by blue seems like it's getting closer. There's a lot to like there. I would prefer to see Mark levels on the sidebar.

[keith.lamothe]

Events that are generated. I would like to be able to show/hide icons.

Ok, I wouldn't normally think of that as a callback, but I see what you mean for the in-game-space icons (as opposed to the sidebar icons).

It might be handy to have a control that does it on demand.

Yep.

Agreed that most orders will be given from zoomed-way-out. It's just inevitable.

[Blue]

Thanks Wanderer!

[x4000]

Okay!  Notes I sent to Blue this morning, just to give you a heads-up on where I'm at right now on this:

------------------

One of the things that you need to bear in mind is that this can't be pixel art.  You need to be working at a larger scale and have this scaling up and down gracefully.

The reason is that people have different monitor sizes, and different pixel densities even on monitors of the same size.  Between retina displays and 4K monitors and so forth, we wind up with a lot of situations where things will be absolutely tiny if you do them as pixel art.

I feel like the last two passes are moving in the wrong direction, in terms of heading into pixelart and just going too simplistic.

For the really large ships like the ark, you have to also think how those are going to be displayed on the screen.  It would look really strange to see an icon drawing of the ship that you are looking at.  We're basically talking about something that draws as an overlay like augmented reality.

So, some observations:
--------

Main part of the icon:

1. This has to be essentially vector art.  It can have shading to it so that it looks nice when the color is shifted, but beyond that it needs to be based around shape.

2. This should be a simple enough shape that we can recognize it and not go "what's that spikey head-thing that looks different from that somewhat-different spiky-head-thing?", but also detailed enough that it's not "what's the circle mean, again?"

3. This probably means that I need to go through the ships list and come up with a better list of icons and their function.  So I'll do that, coming up next.

4. This will be colored by player.  Can you make me a gorgeous version that is just all gold tones, and I can then shift it to other colors?  Ala what we did with TLF with the red?


The roman numeral:

1. That needs to be bottom center.  Pretty much everybody likes that, I think.

2. This will have a different color based on the mark level, based around what was there in the first game.  Mark I is white with maybe a hint of blue, Mark II gets a slightly yellow, Mark III gets slightly red, Mark IV is suddenly very angry red, Mark V is suddenly a threatening and powerful purple.


The stance of the ships:

1. I like the idea of the little "hats" that you have for those.  We'll need to really get that fully tuned up with time, and those need to be larger vectors that shrink down (same as the roman numeral does), but it's good stuff.


Other stuff:

1. I like how you moved those things down below the roman numeral.  It's the least-important stuff, fairly well agreed, so doing that makes good sense.

2. Bear in mind that we already have tooltips planned, so having little pop-outs doesn't make a big difference here.  Let's just focus what is always on the screen instead... but with the understanding that players could choose to turn off all the stuff in this section if they want a more clutter-free environment.

3. So with that in mind, the "other stuff that's stacked under the roman numeral" would be:

a. First a line with the health bar.

b. Then a line that may or may not be there.  This line is stylized and is a lot like the shield bar, but not as tall (as you mocked up).  It will either show up as:
-- A full-width purple line to indicate that it is cloaked.
-- A full-width cyan line to indicate that it is shielded.
-- A full-width line that is cyan on the left and purple on the right to indicate that it is both.

c. Finally, and optionally, we'll have another little space down here for any sort of "sub-categories" that we need.  Basically if we keep the main icon set sufficiently small, then that means we'll need some sub-category icons to show what the specific ship is.  We'll work out the details on this later.

I'll send a mockup of some of what I'm thinking, shortly, along with a list of icons.  I think that we've solicited enough feedback for this round, so we're just going to do this and implement it and then let people comment from there.  Past a certain point, people can't really comment until they see it in action.  I feel pretty confident that this is close enough for the first new prototype of this stuff, at the very least.  I'm sure it will evolve from there.

[Draco18s]

One of the things that you need to bear in mind is that this can't be pixel art.  You need to be working at a larger scale and have this scaling up and down gracefully.

I can totally understand this sentiment, Chris. No worries from me, there.
I think the only reason we started veering into "pixels" is because the restricted environment requires simplicity. You can scale up from pixels to full size graphics, retaining that simplistic style fairly well.  Pixel art is all about reducing things to the bare essentials. Once you know what it is that's important you can work large again.

Anyway, that all sounds good to me, so I think the trip into 8-bit was a good one, overall: we identified the 7 key pieces of information that players want/need to know:
Team Color
Ship class
Health
Mark Level
Shield
Cloaked
Action status

[x4000]

Indeed, I think that was a useful detour.  Here are some sketches of mine, very loose stuff.

[x4000]

Okay, so based on the poor little sketches that I just sent in my prior email, here are some things that I thought/discovered as I was working on them.

Fighter Image
------------------------------

- For the most part, this is exactly what I described earlier this morning.  However, there are a few notable deviations.

- In terms of the "stance" of the ship, I kind of fell out of love of putting that as an icon above the ship.  That winds up making it feel like the ship icon is just surrounded by junk.  More on that in a second.

- In a general sense, there's been a lot of commentary about how the stance icons have to be learned, and how they create extra visual clutter, and so on.  I think that is pretty valid.  I've also noticed that it's not actually hard to tell what the mark levels are at a glance, in a generalized sense.  The mark levels are important to have, but the color on them is not absolutely critical to telling what they are.  So...

- Putting those three observations together, what if the mark level icons are simply white normally, and then get colored based on their stance?  These would be colored by hand in the dictionary both for speed and attractiveness's sake.

- Additionally, I realized that rather than having the "flair" for sub-types of a ship be below the bars at the bottom, that would actually fit really well as "wings" on either side of the mark level roman numeral.  It's more compact, and helps to give the message "mark I eyebot" in a more concise way all on one line.

- There may be some problems with this approach in practice, but I think it's about as condensed as we can get, and likely to have the highest ratio of clarity to information conveyance.  So let's give this a shot as our first mockup.

Icon Mocks Image
------------------------------

- This one is basically a todo list for the first pass of icons.  It has a pretty decent basic set of ships in it, so we can see what they will look like.

Icons:

1. Fighter.  This is the most basic icon, it's iconic, it's in the logo pretty much.  Doing a 2D version of what is already in the game in 3D is something I'd very much like to see.

2. Bomber.  Same notes in terms of how iconic the version already in the game is.

3. Corvette.  This one is a problem in the game at present because it's such a long thin icon.  We need icons that are more square, overall.  The overall theme here is missiles that are fired from afar, so doing some sort of thing vaguely in the realm of the crude drawing I made is perhaps an idea.  It needs a much better concept artist than me, at any rate -- but this is one of the three core icons of the game, so having it be big, bold, and clearly distinct from the fighter and bomber is good.

4. Kings.  What about some sort of military rank insignia?  I was basing my sketch on something along the lines of this: http://cfw.sarna.net/wiki/images/6/6d/MagistracyOfCanopus-Admiral.png?timestamp=20100301145819

5. Flagships.  These would have a central icon that is whatever their starship line is in general (represented by the circle and question mark here), but then they would get those extra stars up around the top to show they are super important.

6. Controllers.  Since these are the things that let you control the planet, why not have a form of planet icon?  Using some negative space (holes in the icon, I mean) in a way that is consistent with some of what was done for the stretch goal icons on the kickstarter itself could be great.  Those are actually a perfect example of the sort of "vector art" I have in mind.

7. Warp gate.  My mock is pretty terrible.  The existing icon in the game looks like it is already selected in a lot of ways, though, because it is a bunch of rings.  So we need to do something else that looks like a gate, and I was thinking more of fantasy gates or the Stargates from the TV show of the same name, etc.  It didn't really work out how I planned, but it's an idea.

8. Forcefield Generators.  My mock is basically a triangle, but with cuts in it to evoke the pyramid-like tiering that is part of the design details for its visuals historically.  Figured that could look kind of neat, and it keeps it simple while again using negative space to add a bit of extra detail.

9. Space Dock.  How the heck do we represent "space factory" in a very generalized way?  My thought was to put some nodes in either a triangle or a pentagon, with then a smaller ship-y looking icon in the center to kind of evoke the idea of it creating the thing in the middle.

My mockup indicates that the central icon would change based on the type of space factory (advanced factories and starship constructors and so on), but honestly for the sake of consistency those should probably be flair instead.  Oops.

10. Guardians.  Here I was thinking that just something really scary as like a evil robot face would be appropriate.  These then would have flair for the specific sub-types of guardians.

Regarding flair, I figure that that can be colored completely agnostically of the player color.  Aka, it doesn't have to be the generalized central color to match the team color.  The color of the flair can be a part of the message of "what is this thing," which is useful since the flair itself will be pretty small.

So... getting specific, we have thus far:

- MLRS Guardian: Maybe some little red bursts of what looks like tons of bullets out of a shotgun, kinda?

- Needler Guardian: Maybe a little light-purple set of lines coming out of almost a chain gun looking port?  This one is super tough.

- Laser Guardian Maybe little green laser bolts, Star Wars style?

11. Turrets.  The idea here being basically a turret type graphic, drawn in something like an isometric profile.  Or something like that.  This would then use flair for the specific sub-types of turrets.  And when it comes to things that match with the guardians in terms of the type, it would reuse the EXACT graphics for the flair, so people have fewer things to learn.

- So MLRS, Needler, and Laser turrets all use the flair that is whatever the guardians of the same name are using.

- Missile Turret: Maybe something that is more of a singular large red missile icon?

- Plasma Torpedo Launcher: Maybe something that is a bit more of a bluish purplish star burst or similar?

- Tractor Turret: Maybe something that evokes cyan handcuffs or similar, heh.  I'm not really sure on this, but something very iconic so it's easily recognized.

- Tachyon Array: This should probably be like a purple eyeball, a kind of "I'm watching you" stealth icon.

12. Reactor.  Just keeping this iconic and going with a lightning bolt seems smart to me.

13. Fuel refinery.  Again going iconic, and sticking with whatever we eventually figure out for the fuel icon.  Whether that's fuel barrels or something else, keeping this consistent with the in-interface icon seems like it would be easier on players to understand at a glance.  This would be bigger and monochrome of course, but the idea is that it's recognizable across.

14. Then we get into more of the individual ships, which would be flair on either the fighter or bomber in these cases.

- Autocannon Minipod: Some sort of eyeball flair on the fighter icon.

- Raptor: Again some sort of flair on the fighter, but this time perhaps evoking the wings of the raptor model.

- Eyebot: This time flair for the bomber icon, and I guess something that is along the lines of the purple stealth eye?  I dunno.

- Spider: Again flair on the bomber icon, and this one perhaps looking like a little black widow icon with the legs pointing outwards?



And there are other icons as well that we're using right now, or will be using soon, but this seems like plenty to be going on with for a first pass.  It's enough that we can start getting an idea of what is too similar and what is not, and if things are clear enough.

[x4000]

Also, inb4:





One of my favorite movies.

[treyra]

Interesting ideas Chris, I think that might look really nice. I definitely agree with the idea of reusing icons for similar things. One thought is that with the abstraction, the learning curve again starts to increase (although the shear number of ship types probably does that by itself). I had the idea that it might be worth while to have an in game encyclopedia type thing that players could easily access by doing something like hitting '?' and clicking the icon. I was thinking something along the lines of Civ or Total War's unit entries. It would make it a LOT easier for players (especailly new ones), to remember what the unit types are and what the various strengths and weaknesses are. The tool-tips will probably do a lot of this, but it still might save some effort. For example, if you know the bombers are made of polycrystal, you might then want to know what that is and what is good against it, etc.

Complete side topic, but the thought occurred to me.

3. Corvette.  This one is a problem in the game at present because it's such a long thin icon.  We need icons that are more square, overall.  The overall theme here is missiles that are fired from afar, so doing some sort of thing vaguely in the realm of the crude drawing I made is perhaps an idea.  It needs a much better concept artist than me, at any rate -- but this is one of the three core icons of the game, so having it be big, bold, and clearly distinct from the fighter and bomber is good.

Agreed, I thought they were nukes at first.