Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => C# Suggestions => Topic started by: Kaiser on May 14, 2020, 03:33:09 AM
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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.
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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?
(https://content.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/67311/1/category_shapes.png)
(https://content.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/66945/1/ORVAR_1.png)
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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.
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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
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One thing I saw someone doing that I thought was very clever was to use Unicode's geometric shape characters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_Shapes) 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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:
(https://i.ibb.co/mvcrZkC/icon-suggestions.png)
*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.
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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.
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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 (https://awacstacsim.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/ntds-naval-tactical-display-system/)), 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.
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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:
(https://i.ibb.co/mvcrZkC/icon-suggestions.png)
*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. :P
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Jumping on the bandwagon. This would be a great enhancement.
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Yes but nothing too complicated like the present dot sized triangle, square etc. Just geometric shapes.
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:
(https://i.ibb.co/mvcrZkC/icon-suggestions.png)
*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.
This style, I liked very much.
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For the fleets, I'll be happy to have an option to see it's flag rank symbol.
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Yeah, replacing the dots with text glyphs would be fantastic. Bonus points if we can configure them by fleet, too, or at the very least select what glyphs get used for what categories.
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IMO the icons are great but with hostile contacts you don't always know the exact type of ship it is - especially with statics. There probably should be an "unidentified" icon as well.
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IMO the icons are great but with hostile contacts you don't always know the exact type of ship it is - especially with statics. There probably should be an "unidentified" icon as well.
This could be handled with color, as well. Something similar to the color system used by Command Modern Operations for designating bogeys, bandits, allied, neutral, etc.
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Shadow's proposal is very good - having the option to add icons yourself in addition would be nice, but that could easily be a pain to manage, so simplicity is good.
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If it#s hostile it just all get's the "hostile military vessel" as default, missiles as such. There are more developed possibilities but I think that'd may well be overcomplicating things.
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But you can already prefix all your fleets names with Unicode symbols ...
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 :-)
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Any update on implementing those symbols? They could be very usefull and nice actually
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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
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.