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Topic Summary

Posted by: EclipsedStar
« on: June 13, 2025, 05:00:20 PM »

If different shapes don't look too great/ it gets cluttered, would having the ability to set a colour for a ship-class or its status help with differentiation? Though then you might get a ton of colours all in one place and you might confuse what's a hostile/civilian/wrecked ship and what isn't. Maybe a toggle in the display options to toggle between viewing things normally and viewing coloured ship-types / coloured statuses? Or maybe something like three concentric circles where one represents their diplomacy stance (civilian, self, neutral, hostile, wrecks etc.), another for different status (probally one for if it has hangers and any docked fighters, one for if it has hangers and no fighters and one for if it has no hangers), and then another coloured circle for ship-class colours with non-player ships just having all three set to their 'diplomatic' colour to avoid spoiling/giving away information that shouldn't be known? Not sure what you'd do when you zoom out though- maybe merging them to just show their diplomatic stance? That sounds like it might get a bit complicated though.
Posted by: Mint Keyphase
« on: May 31, 2025, 11:13:04 PM »

I mean something like perhaps a triangle to denote launched fighter squadrons, and squares to denote space stations (engineless hulls) It does not have to give too much details, just giving us basic idea of the nature of what the object on the map is.
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: May 31, 2025, 05:43:33 AM »

Quote from: Mint Keyphase on May 31, 2025, 01:19:24 AM
I wish one day Steve would implement icons other dots we can use to denote fleets. Even something to distinguish launched squadrons and 'proper' fleets would be great...

I did implement the NATO icons (like Harpoon) in Aurora II, which was an aborted early attempt at C# Aurora when I was playing around with WPF for graphics instead of the GDI I used for C# Aurora. There is probably a screenshot somewhere on the forums. They looked messy TBH - it was a lot easier to understand what was happening with the dots and names than with the icons, especially when you zoomed out.
Posted by: Mint Keyphase
« on: May 31, 2025, 01:19:24 AM »

I wish one day Steve would implement icons other dots we can use to denote fleets. Even something to distinguish launched squadrons and 'proper' fleets would be great...
Posted by: Droll
« on: January 25, 2025, 07:06:02 PM »

Quote from: Mark Yanning on January 24, 2025, 10:41:54 AM
Any update on implementing those symbols? They could be very usefull and nice actually

Well you just necroed a 4 year old post, even I forgot about this one and I have a prior post in the thread.

So I'll go with a no  ;D
Posted by: Mark Yanning
« on: January 24, 2025, 10:41:54 AM »

Any update on implementing those symbols? They could be very usefull and nice actually
Posted by: liveware
« on: June 21, 2020, 12:33:47 PM »

Quote from: xenoscepter on June 11, 2020, 05:12:52 AM
I don't like the first two suggestions, too comprehensive. Player's ultimately decide what constitutes a Frigate or a Destroyer and may well decide to name their gulls "Ragglsnufts RGL-S" and "Ingiwiggz IG-WZ" or some other non-sense... more like "Assault Carriers", "Heavy Battlecruisers" and such, but the point is the symbols being tied to nomenclature is a bad idea for Aurora specifically.

I looked at the provided screenshots from Aurora II, and yeah, that'll clutter up right quick. Having the symbols scale down as you zoom out, eventually becoming dots after a certain point and then scaling back up as you zoom in might be one way to solve that. No idea how you could implement it though... or how hard that might be to implement.

I agree. If new map symbols are implemented it must be done carefully so as to avoid limiting player creativity. This is a major strength of the current implementation in my opinion.

Also... I like the current circle symbols. They remind of my college MATLAB robot projects :-)
Posted by: xenoscepter
« on: June 11, 2020, 05:12:52 AM »

I don't like the first two suggestions, too comprehensive. Player's ultimately decide what constitutes a Frigate or a Destroyer and may well decide to name their gulls "Ragglsnufts RGL-S" and "Ingiwiggz IG-WZ" or some other non-sense... more like "Assault Carriers", "Heavy Battlecruisers" and such, but the point is the symbols being tied to nomenclature is a bad idea for Aurora specifically.

I looked at the provided screenshots from Aurora II, and yeah, that'll clutter up right quick. Having the symbols scale down as you zoom out, eventually becoming dots after a certain point and then scaling back up as you zoom in might be one way to solve that. No idea how you could implement it though... or how hard that might be to implement.
Posted by: stabliser
« on: June 10, 2020, 06:23:31 AM »

Ive been experimenting with various fonts and labels. some of which would cover this and leave the exact icons to the player to choose.... But... the labels dont attach to the systems and so on the many rearanges to the map theres a lot of labels to move.

So, could we attach labels to systems located at 6 or 8 points around it that were dragged with it?

Edit: I guess everyone else is talking about the tactical map and I was talking about the galactic map, but perhaps a rightclick to anchor a label to a body would allow players to decide what wingding to attach to the tactical map too. Even waypoints could have additional notes attached.  More than 16 set colours please.
Posted by: Droll
« on: June 10, 2020, 05:41:15 AM »

Yeah this is a great idea. The previous idea that Steve employed didn't because of the background and relatively massive size. You would certainly icons that need to be differentiable at small sizes though.
Posted by: MarcAFK
« on: May 14, 2020, 09:53:29 PM »

If theres stacked icons you could display a + next to the symbol that has priority, clicking on that expands out the list of other symbols. or displaying every symbol as well , to its right could be an option.
Posted by: Shadow
« on: May 14, 2020, 09:43:50 PM »

Quote from: consiefe on May 14, 2020, 09:28:42 PM
Quote from: Steve Walmsley on May 14, 2020, 06:16:51 PM
A different shaped, but similar-sized, icon might not be too bad I'll look into it at the weekend to see how easy it would be to implement and what effect it would have on performance. There is also the complication that different types of fleets would be in the same location, plus system bodies, so there would need to be some order of preference for which icon was displayed. System body should probably have the highest preference or they would disappear when a fleet was in the same location.

Yes, they might be ordered like system body > stations&static > military fleet > commercial fleet > missiles.

I concur!
Posted by: consiefe
« on: May 14, 2020, 09:28:42 PM »

Quote from: Steve Walmsley on May 14, 2020, 06:16:51 PM
A different shaped, but similar-sized, icon might not be too bad I'll look into it at the weekend to see how easy it would be to implement and what effect it would have on performance. There is also the complication that different types of fleets would be in the same location, plus system bodies, so there would need to be some order of preference for which icon was displayed. System body should probably have the highest preference or they would disappear when a fleet was in the same location.

Yes, they might be ordered like system body > stations&static > military fleet > commercial fleet > missiles.
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: May 14, 2020, 06:16:51 PM »

A different shaped, but similar-sized, icon might not be too bad I'll look into it at the weekend to see how easy it would be to implement and what effect it would have on performance. There is also the complication that different types of fleets would be in the same location, plus system bodies, so there would need to be some order of preference for which icon was displayed. System body should probably have the highest preference or they would disappear when a fleet was in the same location.
Posted by: vorpal+5
« on: May 14, 2020, 03:31:27 PM »

But you can already prefix all your fleets names with Unicode symbols ...