The images will be shown on the ship design screen. Please see this site for missing icons and basic descriptions. Ship Part Icons should be as clean and simple as possible while still conveying the concept. Symbolism can be used(see shield icons), but you don't have to. Choose what works best.
Icons should:
Be on a transparent background
Be recognizable at smaller sizes
Have a strong, distinct silhouette
Be provided in 64px*64px and in color
If you want to take part in the creation of those icons simply reply to this thread, mention the part and post your icon - sketches are fine too.
Do I read things correctly in that ship icons are suggested / required to look like tech icons? Why is this? I expected full colour, detailed icons that look roughly like a physical object... perhaps more like the specials icons than tech icons. A laser, armour plate or colony pod isn't an abstract concept like many of the tech icons, and there's no need to colour icons with empire colour, so why greyscale and SMAC-tech-like? Even SMAC's unit parts weren't rendered like tech icons on the design screen.
I thought about this and to keep things simple for us I'd prefer a simple icon like representation. I also thought about showing the weapon types similar to how they will look in combat(I've even done fast laser image, see attachment), but since they are the only kind of parts, that will be visible in some other area of the game, I think it doesn't justify doing all the other parts in the same pictorial way. But since you brought this up, I am willing to treat weapons slightly different.
jpg + png
I never intended to color ship parts by empire color, but they come in different categories - so I think it makes sense to treat them similar to techs and color them by category. The player will be able to instantly see what kind of parts a ship is using, even without knowing the exact meaning of an icon.
I'm doing this mainly to keep the workload down, not knowing how many parts there might come in future. It really depends on their amount. Personally I think we should focus on developing the complete combat UI and all the conceptual and 3d content required for 0.4, though. Those parts play a minor role.
In generally i'm all for simple, clean graphics. I don't know if that's our best choice in this situation, but there's harm in starting out this way. Our list of ship parts is rather short and preliminary. We might as well do them as simply as possible for the mock-up.
If that doesn't work we can consider a more involved graphics style when we get the "real" list of ship components.
Edit: ok, they actually are, but I couldn't see the white on the nearly-white forum background at the particular angle into the LCD I was looking at. After a suitable tilt, they've shown up.
But based on the dark background image, and how nice the armour plating looks IMO something that looks like an actual part, or turret, or gun or somesuch would be better than the beams.
Is there a reason why the British spelling of armor has been used in shipparts.txt?
Because that's how I spell, mostly... Canadian spelling can be somewhat flexible between American and British variants.
I like that the beam weapons could look like they would in combat. This will help remembering and picking the right ones a lot. A turret on the other hand isn't visible. Having a picture of it is basically like a detour.
Then again, the second armor icon wins hands down over the first one.
I think people really do want to "see" the parts they are putting on the ship, and I feel this goes for buildings too. it's not just about making them recognizable either, it just really helps the immersion factor. Anyways, I'll let you have the first crack at this, whatever you choose to do, I'm gonna go finish up the tech icons and building icons before I get started on this.
deflector shield - sketchy and flashy, I might have to clean this up.
Those colorful, pictorial icons seem to work very well on the very graphical backdrop image - it's a nice contrast. So, there is even an artistic reason to go down this route:
I'm not too sure that having "components" in the background image works too well when you add actual components on top.
This is not the place(and time) to discuss this, but the "components" in the background are just shapes, that suggest some kind of technology, but nothing in detail. It could be anything.
The "components" the player adds, are simplified representations and not actual components either.
Preview on a dark background(those three have been commited):
They contrast a bit with the sobriety of the GUI...
1. There hasn't been put any effort into visually designing the UI. Granted, it doesn't look bad as simple as it is, but I'd like to see this polished at around 0.9 or 1.0
2. Thinking along this line, any pictorial graphic does contrast with the UI(stars, planets, resource icons, etc.).
3. Contrast, to some degree, is a good thing, because it adds visual interest.
pd wrote:1. There hasn't been put any effort into visually designing the UI. Granted, it doesn't look bad as simple as it is, but I'd like to see this polished at around 0.9 or 1.0
2. Thinking along this line, any pictorial graphic does contrast with the UI(stars, planets, resource icons, etc.).
3. Contrast, to some degree, is a good thing, because it adds visual interest.
Honestly I really like the UI as it is, and I don't think the actual icons contrast with it: simple flat images are ok. The components, on the other side, are a bit "cartoonish". It doesn't mean that they aren't good (I like them), but that they're really different from the other icons I saw
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