UI Design and Suggestions

[Nathan_]

Graphics aren't my end but I'd imagine that we can take that image as is, and replace every blue pixel with whatever.

[Nathan_]

On the subject of UI, I need a faster way to display ships then my current kludge of creating, then destroying markers. Just a circle would be fine, but I'm not entirely sure of how to update position on something on the screen. Also Default_GLFONT2 seems a little hard to read(it is the only one with numbers currently, thats why WP numbers aren't being displayed if anyone is wondering, they are default_GLFONT not default_GLFONT2). I haven't uploaded this yet because it is again a giant kludge at the moment but here is what I've been working on:

[sublight]

Would it be faster to generate each visual frame from scratch internally every time and then do a single graphics update to replace the old frame with the new one?

I'm not sure how things work with OpenGL, but in console applications every command to display new text takes one screen refresh cycle, or about 17ms per print call. If, speculation, the same is true with every screen graphic update then destroying and creating 30 icons individually on 60Hz display would take 1 second for a complete update.

[Nathan_]

Graphics programs generally do that the way you suggest, with a screen refresh call pushing the display buffer to the screen. you can see so and so object.refresh() calls throughout the code that is there. But the particular way I am doing it, using map markers, and deleting/recreating them is far far from optimal. Map markers shouldn't be used for this, thats just a stand in that I can draw right now.

[Nathan_]

Would it be faster to generate each visual frame from scratch internally every time and then do a single graphics update to replace the old frame with the new one?

Again, my problem is that I do not understand how to do this. Just changing the PrimaryPrimitive's location does nothing. Changing it, recalculating the matrix, refreshing, and rerendering the primitive also do nothing.

[ollobrains]

How are these for basic ship icons, as a general style?  Making them with three for each ship type, currently in one color but can do whatever people think works.  Haven't touched any warship icons yet, because it seems I can't manage to draw a decent diamond, but working on it.

Cargo ships, large and small:
Colonist ships, large and small:

Will they be somehow given race colors, or is multiple colors of each icon needed?

i think multiple colors might be a good way forward for each icon

[SnopyDogy (OP)]

the easiest way to give them race colours would be to tint them in the shader. in that case then all we really need are the white versions of the icon so we can colour them.