[REL] Improved strategic icons (updated: v50742, ALL icons)

Re: [REL] Improved strategic icons (updated: v49900)

Fantastic, thanks. I'll do that tomorrow.


I'm also eager to hear anyone's ideas for how to best use multiple colours. I know it opens a can of worms, especially with colour blindness, but I'd like to at least try to come up with something good.

Given a team colour, I have to decide the border colour (probably that'll always be either black or white), and then two auxiliary colours that contrast well and are readable in conjunction with the original team colour. I could just use a triad, but the colours there could clash too much, reducing readability despite maximising contrast. In the future, I could use the secondary team colour, and a contrasting colour. Or I could just hard-code triples of colours that work well. Any other suggestions?

Re: [REL] Improved strategic icons (updated: v49900)

It's fantastic indeed, the unit names are all there, just with "//"(even units that don't exist yet). I don't think that's all that's needed, let met try.

This isn't all we need.

Obviously for the naval structures even using the same icons as their corrsponding land structures would be enough but what icon name gets attributed to what unit is in a diffrent file.

EDIT : here's the result I get: an empty icon box, but glitchy borders appear, it's clear the game is missing the final path to it's icon. we need to find another file.

Re: [REL] Improved strategic icons (updated: v49900)

Let's use sea_metal_extractor as an example. There's two ways to give it an icon.

If you want to re-use the land metal extractor icon, you need to edit the unit blueprint and add the entry "si_name": "metal_extractor",

If you want to give it a new one, you need to add "sea_metal_extractor" to the self.strategicIcons list in icon_atlas.js, then add the icon named "icon_si_sea_metal_extractor.png" to the stratefic_icons folder.


(I've tested both of these methods and given the sea extractor an icon.)

Re: [REL] Improved strategic icons (updated: v49900)

OK, I've updated the files. There are now unique strategic icons for all units and structures currently in the game, including those Uber hasn't yet made icons for. Thanks raevn!

Re: [REL] Improved strategic icons (updated: v49900, ALL ico

Marvelous, thank you thank you thank you thank you

Now we can brag that we each have a more complete icon set than even uber provides.

One question, i'm thinking of making coloured icons for the nuke capable ones (yellow obviously)

but the icon atlas javascript continues to turn every colour to the theme. the problem here is I want for yellow to remain yellow whatever the team colour, would this be possible?
(once again sorry for being incompetent at java)

EDIT : I've updated my unit pacj but the one thing i can't get to work is the catapult

Re: [REL] Improved strategic icons (updated: v49900, ALL ico

Well first of all, it's not Javascript, it's GLSL (the shader code) that's relevant.

Then, well, I can write something that does what you want if you don't know how.
Maybe in the long term it's best if you learn how stuff works. The way it works is quite nice, in that you can change the code while the game is running and see the effects, so you can learn quite fast.

If you want me to fix you up with something, I need to know what you want specifically. What happens if the team colour is yellow for instance?

P.S. The problem with the tactical missile launcher is that in the atlas you have "tactical_missile" instead of "tactical_missile_launcher". I made that mistake earlier before correcting it, so you probably just copied my mistake over.

Re: [REL] Improved strategic icons (updated: v49900, ALL ico

I created a reference guide for strategic icons: [REFERENCE] Strategic Icons & Build Pictures.

Re: [REL] Improved strategic icons (updated: v49900, ALL ico

I quickly found it and corrected it. I upload bogus versions while I'm figuring out there are quirks. If you do find more bugs please let me know. I can't garantee the files I uploaded are a collection identical to the ones I tested in every way.

Yes I'd forgotten it was the shader, I thought that was javascript also. But yes I am more than willing to learn, I don't want to end up all the dumber after all this. And I was thinking of a rule in the case of yellow where nothing happens. (or is that not necessary? but yes with my idea, yellow wouldn't be evenly matched with the other colours, maybe yellow turns to red or green in the event where the team colour is yellow?)

One more thing (and this is directed at raevn too) is there a way to get an icon to the catapult or does the fact that it's a place holder signify that there is no way to give it an icon yet. in my icon atlas file there are 82 units i've added units in alphabetically and preceded by [spaces] ' and followed by ', i've added 'catapult', and icon_si_catapult.png and even made a json file with a ubfolder in the "units" folder but it still shows up as a radar blip.

Re: [REL] Improved strategic icons (updated: v49900, ALL ico

The catapult IS the tactical missile launcher, which is why I was talking about it.

Re: [REL] Improved strategic icons (updated: v50000, ALL ico

Updated for v50000. The shader now uses secondary team colour, but there are probably some colour combinations that make for not-too-readable icons.

At some point I'm going to try to make something that ensures good visibility in all cases, but it's quite tricky to do properly (as it depends on how people view colours, instead of just comparing RGB values).

I'm also hoping we can get access to information about whether icons are selected or not, to highlight which units are selected on the strategic view.

Re: [REL] Improved strategic icons (updated: v50240, ALL ico

I've updated these again, giving more flexibility to the colouring scheme. Now the T1/T2 pips are always white (or black for very dark team colours), instead of being of the secondary team colour.

The main problem at the moment is that every icon has three main colours going for it: primary team colour, secondary team colour, and a tertiary colour (at the moment it's just white, except black for dark team colours, yet is different from the T1/T2 indicator colour). Icons are not very readable when any of these three colours are too similar. Writing an algorithm that picks dissimilar but nicely contrasting colours is hard!

Re: [REL] Improved strategic icons (updated: v50355, ALL ico

These look awesome, they have a warhammer-y feel to them, I like your new concept image and I too hope that uber will fix icon resizing. I'd love to produce icons that are not blurry!