New PTE Icons Discussion - New Icons Suggested

Does it flush rendered icon caches? Or just that it's drawing a blank image?

Not even close to being as good as Transicons, I have to say.

+1

I like the minimalistic feel of transicons.

Personally, I think the one thing that would really help with differentiating between basic and advanced would be the use of the secondary colour in the outline of the advanced units.

I agree to this, having another color to contrast the unit icon would greatly benefit the player.

Alright, Uber one of the reasons you released this game to the public was so we(the public) could help you shape it. Now I really like some of wpmarshall's stuff above. I don't know how the entire community feels about it, but I think you(Uber) should take some of his ideas as well others that are sprinkled across forums. And your new and old ideas as well as maybe some of your ideas we have never seen and let the community vote on it.

You don't necessarily have to do what that community have most votes for, but it would give you an excellent idea as to what people want rather than constantly changing them because you release new ones then just get bad feedback then change again.

TBH I really don't care how the new icons are drawn, I and and will be using the transparent strategic icons mod. Hopefully it won't undergo a radical change and will keep to it's current style.

You should have a chat with some of the arty guys on the teamspeak and see about having a digital mock-up of those done

I've seen that mod floating around too (someone's sig), but I'd +1 something more akin to SupComs Icons.

There's a whole mod that replaces all the icons with supcom's icons

Since we're talking about accessibility issues, using colors to distinguish icons doesn't work for people who are color-blind. (Not that I am color-blind myself.)

I realize this is extra engineering work at a time when Uber is most likely in crunch mode but perhaps enabling users to select among several icon sets could be formally added to PA as a built-in feature? That would cover both low vision and color-blindness.

Yeah, I couldn't remember where I saw it. Went back and found the sig that had the link.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-supreme-commander-icons-faf.48554/

Hi all,

Long time Supcom fan and PA player here - I had to comment on the official forums about the somewhat baffling symbology they've chosen!

• I like the tall rectangles and the lopped tall rectangle shapes for point defense and AA turrets. But I don't think they need symbols inside. You can recognize their function just by the tall shape. If they need to have an obvious line symbol, I think they should use a thicker line on the top edge instead (or slanted top edge).
  I actually made a shitty picture, see right hand side:
  i.imgur.com/w64bjWr.jpg (sorry can't link properly, new user)
• If they really want to stick to the horizontal line motif for layer-vs-layer units, they could use a bolder top edge of the unit, like in the image above (hope it works!) But I think they should stick to having no inner symbol for layer-vs-layer units.
• The wall is a little tall now! It should remain a square. The tall rectangle shape should be reserved for point defense buildings. The square shape represented its function perfectly - it's a block.
  
• I kinda like the triangle for aircraft, but the shapes are too big for some of them! I also don't like the inner triangle symbol for the air factory. It's too hard to distinguish from the vehicle factory symbol! I think they should stick with a chevron, even if it's inconsistent with the triangle shape of the unit.
• Why is the metal extractor inner symbol slightly squashed now? Is it to distinguish it from something else, like orbital units? Because I felt it occupied a unique and unmistakable niche already. Your mileage may vary, though.

It's interesting when you get down to the philosophy of symbol choices. I mean having a plus symbol for all the fabbers makes sense right? Because they all fulfil the same purpose. But if you have a symbol for ground units that shoot down air, what symbol do you use for air units that shoot down air i.e. fighters? Does the fact that it fires against its own layer take precedence in symbol choice, or does the fact that it exclusively shoots down air take precedence? What about layer-vs-layer-below? That's a mode of attack that ground units don't possess. So what symbol do you use for that?

I think they could perhaps introduce a unit shape variation or two, or maybe size variation to distinguish unit types a little better. Also, you look at the shape first before you look at the symbol - I think they could explore a couple more shapes to distinguish air or orbital units quickly instead of so having many inner symbols to parse. Perhaps an air scout could be a chevron (with no symbol), but all other aircraft are triangular.

Or on the other hand, they could reduce the number of inner symbols used by reusing some. For instance, they could re-use the arty's filled dot symbol, for air-to-ground bombers - even though it's not entirely "consistent", because we have the unit shape to give the symbol context. "Has large ordnance!" is what the filled dot symbol says to me - and this applies to artillery and to bombers. Reusing the dot symbol might be inconsistent symbology, because arty is ground-vs-ground and a bomber is air-vs-ground, but you mentally categorize it differently because the unit shape gives it context. You feel me?

Thanks for reading my blog.

Welcome to the forums!

Here you go: http://i.imgur.com/w64bjWr.jpg

I really like those, very professional looking as well!

I can't believe noone has mentioned mods yet. My current icon set available on PAMM is for the PTE build.

I'm still working on the shader/mouseover animation. but I can use all i've done to make a brand new icon pack much quicker.

If you guys finalize your ideas and send them to me i'll make you an icon pack to your liking