Internal Playtest – UI Tweaks, New Strategic Icons, and more – Jun 19

http://youtu.be/0QH37RmL-uE

Another Planetary Annihilation internal playtest from the guys over at Uber Entertainment, which include some highly anticipated changes.

• Meta went naval first. So there’s changes to naval.
• The Strategic icons look different! They seem to be pretty pixelated, but they seem to be clearer if they weren’t so pixelated.
• There are some UI tweaks
• The build menu looks different. Some of the icons are different, and the tooltip is different.
  
• The window that’s on the bottom left that pops up when hovering over a unit is different. Provides more info.
  
• Naval moves faster.
• Meta sure does float his economy a lot.
• New explosions
• Accuracy issues where an Avenger couldn’t hit a stationary Orbital Fabber. :-/
• LOL. tvinita invaded Meta’s moon, built Halleys, and then smashed it.

The new UI stuff looks awesome! Also YAY FASTER NAVAL!!
The new strategic icons are pretty nice, if a little pixelated, although they seem a little too supcom-y, and we already have a supcom strategic icons mod.
New explosions are always nice, too.

I don't care about supcomy or not. I just want to be able to easily tell the difference between units, which this seems to do a better job.

Just make it so its not pixelated, and I'm happy.

Well. Mad for the next few weeks while I re-learn the strategic icons... but happy.

Fair enough. Just saying it seems weird to change the style of icons to mimic another game's when this game already had its own style.
Although it seems that only the AA fighter and bomber changed into supcom-y icons, so it may just be those two.

Did you, by any chance, see if they did anything to the orbital icons, to make them a bit more easily viewable? I know I moan about this a lot, but it'd be good to be able to just glance at a planet and be able to differentiate the orbital stuff from all the units underneath. Right now I have to scroll and look from the side to see if there are any orbital units above my base.

STRATEGIC ICON OVERHAUL CONFIRMED (for the third time)

edit: well I don't like the new icons. I do like that they are changing the actual symbol inside the icon (+ for fabricator, — for land attack,....) but the pixelness.... not a fan. It doesn't fit quite in my eyes. It might look better once they provide retina support for the ui.

I don't like that the hovered unit moves up when it's building something. The unit you're over should always be in the same place.

In-game options (ESC) menu restyled.

The pixelation will be fixed.

Ah, did they say that in the stream? It's not in your summary and I only watched 15 mins... as usual, I don't have enough time.

Well that's good to hear then.

They didn't say it. But they will fix it.

It's the first pass. There's glitches.

Pixelated icons won't ever make it into the final product.

These naval changes have been in the build since we did the balance overhaul.

ye, he when naval because of the spot draw he got.

I'm happy about icons finally getting their turn on iterations, I'm hoping for a redesign. not just a redraw.

the logic in PA's strat icons is broken, the choice of shapes isn't judicious and results in them not being readable.

I always thought maybe for orbital icons they should just have a little arrow on the top of them pointing up for space? Stupid and simple but hey.

in my icon pack i have all orbital units have icons that completely break the continuum had with land icons, as a result they don't blend in the least bit with the land icons.

well thats not so obvious. noone builds navy cos it was too slow. noone found out it was changed

The pixelart style looks far better than what was before.

Yet there is a mod... in fact there's more than one...

Some people like the pixel icons, some don't. So I wouldn't be 100% sure if they'll change it. Especially if they never mentioned it was a glitch or something they were going to change.

We'll see how it goes.

I assume the pixelated icons are there because they had the artists do a low res version first and they tested them to see if they conceptually work before spending more time makeing high-res versions.

Or am I completely off here?

Completely (primarily because the exact opposite of what you think is high res and the exact opposite of what you think is low res is low res)

what?

first off you guys aren't using the right terms, they aren't "pixeleated" they are "pixel perfect"

second being per pixel with no gradients or transparency allows for strong readability. something you need with something that's supposed to signify alot at a very small scale in a short amount of time.

you should be like a stock optionist in front of a stock market screen: think efficiency.

the least amount of time needed looking at the screen to know exactly what's going on without missing the least bit of info.

and pixel perfect icons help our brain a huge amount in that respect.

What other games have you played that had strategic icons?

you were missing out if you never played one with pixel perfect icons. it takes things to a whole other level.

I see. Thanks for the clarification.

I haven't seen the video, I just assumed by the description that they were using low-resolution mockups to test the concept of the new icon designs before spending the time to make the proper ones.

TIL.