Tech List View

Development of artwork, requests, suggestions, samples, or if you have artwork to offer. Primarily for the artists.
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shrinkshooter
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Re: Tech List View

#16 Post by shrinkshooter »

eleazar wrote:There's no good reason that any of the newer ones should have been designed with only full-size display in mind.
Well, now that I think about it, you're right. On the other hand, I was (and I suppose still am) relatively new here, and the guidelines said 128x128, so that's what I did. I dunno if pd told me anywhere along the line that they should be recognizable at smaller sizes. He might have, but I don't remember him doing so. Anyhow it's his decision which icons to commit, and in my opinion the ones he chooses are pretty recognizable at smaller sizes. Like someone else said, they may not necessarily have to be completely identifiable (i.e. make out exactly what the picture is) as long as it's recognizable (easily determined shapes people know are unique to that tech).
Photobucket account for FreeOrion and List of Techs and Icons

[[[===LEAN, MEAN, PURPLE AND GREEN MACHINE===]]]

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pd
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Re: Tech List View

#17 Post by pd »

As said, there will have to be a re-design of the tech screen. Using icons at a size of 32x32 or 48x48, when they were created with 128x128 in mind, is just a bad idea. I see three possible ways to solve this:
- We don't use the icons in the tech panels(those things, that make the tree) at all, the category icons will have to do.
- We completely redesign the panels to hold bigger icons and generally more information. They will get bigger, obviously.
- Scaled down icons are used in the panels, popups provide the original images and additional information. Similar to special icons, as mentioned.

I tend towards the second proposal. It doesn't involve reworking half(or more) of our icons. Techs can be identified by icons and it does not involve additional UI elements(popups and such).

Personally, I need to work on some other things I've promised Zach first though. Reworking things, that already work (to some degree) is just not my priority at the moment. Feel free to open a thread about redesigning the tech screen. I'll provide comments as much as I can.

edit: This is far from a finished design, just to illustrate my point, here is what could be done. The information window on top, would be redundant in this case, but would be useful for the list view. I imagine, people would actually spend time exploring the tree now. Quite a lot can be done with typography by the way, which seems to be completely ignored in FO at this point.

Image

This should probably get split into a new thread, if there is interest in working on this.

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eleazar
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Re: Tech List View

#18 Post by eleazar »

I get the impression that some people are a little ashamed that some of these icons don't work quite right. But this isn't something that needs to be blamed on someone, or explained away, it's a natural part of development. Stuff gets committed with the best of intentions, and as we get a clearer idea of what the game is going to look like, stuff gets reassessed and often needs to be redone. Good planning may minimize it, but it is to some degree unavoidable.
pd wrote:- We completely redesign the panels to hold bigger icons and generally more information. They will get bigger, obviously.
...
I tend towards the second proposal. It doesn't involve reworking half(or more) of our icons. Techs can be identified by icons and it does not involve additional UI elements(popups and such).
I don't see how that is a solution.
The tech-tree is zoom-able already. And if you have a huge screen, or you are happy with only seeing 3 techs at a time, you can have a view with a very big icons. But otherwise you'll frequently need to take a step back to see how things interconnect and thus icons will be small.

pd wrote:- Scaled down icons are used in the panels, ... Similar to special icons, as mentioned.
When a flat graphic is going to be viewed a variable sizes, for graphic perfection, this is never a bad idea. The only question is if it's worth the trouble at this point.

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Josh
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Re: Tech List View

#19 Post by Josh »

Tweaking tech tree to be just right is very important, but this does go under fine tuning for FO. First let's finish the tech tree by giving every icon a picture to it's name, so we can step back and have a look to see "what" needs fixing. I don't want to ru around in circles here.

There's about 10 more or so empty slots, and given the pace the design process for the tech tree goes, it should be done in about a month at least I guess, so Instead I'd like to discuss finishing the tech tree first before anything else is discussed about it, including tweaking it.

Right now, time has proven we have plenty to handle.

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