Graphic improvement - Ships and missles

[Kaiser (OP)]

Hi Steve, thank you for sharing yor monster simulation-game with us, I've been playing it for years now.

I know it is probably last or perhaps second last point in your list, if it does even exist, but would be possible to change the way objects are shown on the map? I've always found this small circle for everything very monotonous (ships, missles, planets, asteroids...).

Let's say, to begin with, to implement a different icon for military and commercial ships and for missles, nothing of complicate, just a different icon to display them instead of rounds.

I am sure many of us here would came up with different solutions that you could then apply.

[Mark Yanning]

I think this is a good idea, it will add a bit of graphic variety to the game. It could be nice also to have different military ship icons, due to different size (frigate, cruisers, battlecruisers etc). Let say as was in Eve online . Something like this? What do you think?

[Kaiser (OP)]

Exactly, that what I mean! The game would gain in strategic and stylistic depth. It will also be much easier to distinguish individual ships and TFs on the map.

[Steve Walmsley]

I did experiment with using icons but it looked very cluttered and I went back to the dots. Here is a screenshot:

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=3011.msg29849#msg29849

[Inglonias]

One thing I saw someone doing that I thought was very clever was to use Unicode's geometric shape characters in the names of their fleets. I know for a fact that Aurora supports Unicode because I tried changing my decimal separator to a Unicode smiley face to see what would happen. (The game seems okay with that, incidentally, though I didn't run any of my serious save files).

I don't know if replacing the dots with these glyphs would be a good idea or not (probably not) but using the glyphs in fleet names may get you closer to what you want.

[Kaiser (OP)]

I did experiment with using icons but it looked very cluttered and I went back to the dots. Here is a screenshot:

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=3011.msg29849#msg29849

Yes that solution was cumbersome, I suspect because the light blue background aroung the icon.

We need something of the same dimension as the dots without colored background. Mark Yanning and Inglonias proposal seem fine with it.

[Second Foundationer]

I'd welcome some basic visual differentiation, too. Different geometrical symbols are a good idea, at least for the most fundamental categories: celestial bodies/artificial objects/waypoints and markers. I'd be fine with differentiating that a level or two further.

But, once it gets too detailed or too graphic as with certain ship shapes, I would object because it might limit/predetermine my imagination that is given so much liberty by Aurora in most other areas. – It's not my standard diet, but among a long list of other things, I plan to tell Aurora one day to send me to the (space) Realm of Galadriel the Fair, behold her beauty and despair, a few ages after she has wisely accepted the ring of power. And while I have no details cooked up yet, I'm very certain that ships or missiles or possibly even celestial bodies would have to look very different from a standard sci-fi setting.
Graphics have a different, more subtle effect from text on most brains. I can easily tell my brain to think of sorium as pipeweed or whatever. But seeing a preset battleship shape over and over and keep imagining a spaceborne Oliphaunt would be more difficult.

Keeping it simple and geometrical would also limit the clutter effect to most eyes, in my utterly unhumble presumption.

[Eretzu]

Maybe it could be something very simple like adding triangles (fleets) and squares (engineless fleets?) into mix. Maybe have separate colors for commercial and military/imperial targets objects. Just throwing random ideas out.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Freeorion uses small icons for fleet symbols, but it doesn't get as crazy as Aurora does where you can have multiple overlapping dots that aren't quite in the same place.

[TMaekler]

Maybe you can do it in the style of paradox. When the mouse hovers over a point a list of what that point represents opens next to the mouse. In that window the ships can for example be displayed with different icons etc.

[Shadow]

As far as iconography's concerned, it should be distilled to the essentials, identifiable at a glance.

From my point of view, including unicode shape suggestions, we're talking about:



*The basic filled circle character is a bit too small.

These would be coloured following the current palette (blue player, red enemy, etc.). There could be multiple types of vessels within a same location, but the icon pertaining to the majority should prevail.

What do you guys think?


EDIT: Had to host a screenshot of my proposal since apparently the forum isn't quite Unicode.

[Warer]

Shadows appeals most to me as it seems to follow the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid), though I know nothing about programming it looks like it would be simplest to apply.

[Shadow]

It should be "easy" to implement, at least from the graphical standpoint, because they're type characters, presumably fairly standard and not images.

There's some elegant intuitive design connotations behind the shapes, which should make them easier to grasp:

Diamond: edged, aggressive, diagonals symbolize movement
Circle: round, friendly, harmless
Square: stable, static
Triangle: wedge, most aggressive

I believe some of these connotations are at play in NATO naval iconography (NTDS), in which diamonds and triangles represent hostile units, and circles and semi-circles friendly units. Squares tend to represent neutral/unidentified contacts as well as static items.

This proposal is a bit of a streamlined mix, and would rely purely on colour to differentiate sides.

[Kaiser (OP)]

As far as iconography's concerned, it should be distilled to the essentials, identifiable at a glance.

From my point of view, including unicode shape suggestions, we're talking about:



*The basic filled circle character is a bit too small.

These would be coloured following the current palette (blue player, red enemy, etc.). There could be multiple types of vessels within a same location, but the icon pertaining to the majority should prevail.

What do you guys think?


EDIT: Had to host a screenshot of my proposal since apparently the forum isn't quite Unicode.

That would be already a huge step onward in this sense, then there will be space for improvement (different colours for example).

Let's see what Steve says. 

[Jarhead0331]

Jumping on the bandwagon. This would be a great enhancement.