Icons

[White Claw]

I know it's probably not a priority, but I started messing around with some of the icons.

[White Claw]

And some metals. Though these are incredibly small, so the existing icons might be better suited than trying to do some sort of "stack of bars?"

Edit: Added a second style.

[White Claw]

And one more ore style...

[JetMech1999]

Gotta say that I like these over the original iteration.  But, like you said, given that they are so small, it's going to be difficult making the difference between ores and processed materials.  My thought is different colors for raw materials and refined, but we still run into the size issue.  Making something identifiable and unique from everything else to reduce confusion.  You guys are on the right track.

[leeor_net]

Digging the shorter version with 3 bars for the metals. Will be thrilled to toss these in the game vs. what I have in there now.

Looking forward to seeing something for the common/rare minerals.

EDIT:

Added them to the game files. See attachment.

[White Claw]

Digging the shorter version with 3 bars for the metals.

Great! And it looks better than I thought it would.

I made the graphics 16x16, but if you need a different size then let me know. I'll see about making some minerals icons also. Should (hopefully) be easy enough. I wanted to double check...are the mineral/ore icons the next two over (with the numbers 294 and 319)?

[leeor_net]

16x16 is what I was going for so that's perfect.

It goes in this order:

Common Metals, Rare Metals, Common Minerals, Rare Minerals.

These are the refined, finished products. Ores can be seen when looking at the Mine and Smelter structures though the ores will also need icon replacements. I don't remember what I have in there now but it's pretty crude.

SMELTER:



MINE FACILITY:



Without going into too much detail, internally each structure that uses resources has two resource pools they can use -- generally this is input and output though in some cases like the mines you have "ready to be shipped" and "what's on the belts". Anyway, not important -- point being with the improved interfaces that I want to use it would be cool to have icons for the refined resources and the resource ores. Not very urgent.

[JetMech1999]

I get it now.  The icons make sense to me now.  Do the ore icons need to change for a particular reason, or do you just not like what's there?  Gotta admit, just giving my opinion on graphics seems a little lame.  I have no experience in designing graphics or coding, so does what I have to add really make a difference to you guys?

[leeor_net]

Actually yes. As an end user, I find your opinion to be more important than my own or even the other developers. Ultimately it's making sure that the users of software can interact with it effectively, intuitively and with as little confusion as possible.

The ore icons themselves aren't necessarily bad but they're inconsistent and that's the biggest issue I have at the moment. I'd like to keep the colors of the resources consistent between the ore and the refined resources.

What I really like about White Claw's updated icons is that they're very simple and immediately obvious what they are. The minerals icons aren't as immediately obvious and the ore icons, while obvious that they're rocks, don't translate to anything concrete.

[JetMech1999]

Actually yes. As an end user, I find your opinion to be more important than my own or even the other developers. Ultimately it's making sure that the users of software can interact with it effectively, intuitively and with as little confusion as possible.

The ore icons themselves aren't necessarily bad but they're inconsistent and that's the biggest issue I have at the moment. I'd like to keep the colors of the resources consistent between the ore and the refined resources.

What I really like about White Claw's updated icons is that they're very simple and immediately obvious what they are. The minerals icons aren't as immediately obvious and the ore icons, while obvious that they're rocks, don't translate to anything concrete.

Thank you.  After taking a closer look at the metals/minerals icons, I see what you mean.  Metals are fairly simple to show as ore and refined product.  Minerals are more difficult because you have a wide variety of types that come in a multitude of forms and colors.  Trying to pick one to represent a whole range is difficult.  But, it's possible you may be stressing over the appearance a little. The colored rocks for the ore are good, it's the finished product that is the bigger challenge.  For the common minerals, I was actually thinking of a salt pile, but how would you design a pile of white salt?  For a rare mineral, that's tougher.  I mean, technically gem stones are minerals, so maybe a blue gem stone for the common minerals and a diamond for the rare?

By the way, I hope the new job is working out well for you.

[Hooman]

For the common minerals, I was actually thinking of a salt pile, but how would you design a pile of white salt?  For a rare mineral, that's tougher.  I mean, technically gem stones are minerals, so maybe a blue gem stone for the common minerals and a diamond for the rare?

Huh, I never would have thought of a pile of salt, though that actually makes a lot of sense. I was thinking gem stones, as you've said.

You've kind of got me thinking of industrial piles of elemental sulphur now.

[JetMech1999]

Happy to help, Hooman.

[JetMech1999]

I know it's probably not a priority, but I started messing around with some of the icons.

I like the raised aspect of the arrows.  I was wondering about cleaning the inside lines out of them to make them more monolithic, rather than pieces that were pushed together.

[White Claw]

Do the ore icons need to change for a particular reason, or do you just not like what's there?

No particular reason. Actually, it started out because I was making some other icons (2D) unrelated to OPHD, then thought I'd come fiddle around with the OPHD resource icons while I was at it. For some reason I also did arrows...Although, if they don't get used, I have no particular emotional attachment to them (i.e. I made them for the fun of it).

Also, as Leeor said, inputs are welcome. Won't necessarily be able to implement or incorporate all of them, but still nice to get some feedback from other peeps.

For the common minerals, I was actually thinking of a salt pile, but how would you design a pile of white salt?

This is, essentially, what I have in mind. Though when I made the other icons, I didn't leave time to work on the minerals ones (yet).

[White Claw]

Well...my intent was to make "piles" of sorts, but with the small size they ended up looking more like piles of ore instead of minerals.

So I'm giving these a go first. I made a few different color schemes to see how it would come out (since it's really hard to tell without them being in-game).

#5 and #6 are sets (#5 is one set in a color scheme, & #6 is a second set in another color scheme). I also included #2 which has a bit less color, for comparison.

[White Claw]

And a diamond shape, to see if it fits in.

[leeor_net]

Very much more consistent now:



I liked the first set as the mineral 'ore':

[White Claw]

Not what I was envisioning, but looks good.

I'll try to the metal ores done to round it out.

[JetMech1999]

I agree with Leeor about the gem stones.  I was thinking of different colors, but it looks good and consistent, like he said.  If he was referring to the colored rocks as the mineral ore that he likes better, gotta go with that too.  The new design is hard to distinguish what it is, given the size restraints.  I thought the rocks made for a better description.  As for the metal ores, I'm already kind of partial to what has been put in so far.  Of course, I'm definitely open to seeing any other graphics to use.

[JetMech1999]

Leeor,

We recently talked about how the graphics updates had to go on hold for various reasons.  I was wondering about something, do all of the icons have to be altered to avoid copyright infringement (or whatever design rights someone might have on the originals).  Or will you be able to keep some of the designs (like the robots)?

[leeor_net]

I think the idea of a six-wheeled or eight-wheeled robot is something that was done by NASA and other government bodies basically making the overall design non trademark-able. I don't see any reason we'd have to change the actual design of the robots especially if they were based on real government research or modeled after government funded designs, they just can't be exact copies of the Outpost models and we'd need to replace the original graphics with updated ones we created ourselves.

Keeping in mind a lot of this is assuming that any of the original copyright holders (I believe it's Vivendi Universal or Activision at this point) even gives half a shit about the Outpost IP at all (it's a safe bet they don't considering they let the trademark slip which is something I hope to pick up at some point in the future if nobody else has) and how well we want to protect the game from being slapped with a Cease and Desist in the event somebody decides they want to enforce their copyright.

Ultimately I have no desire to infringe on any valid copyrights and want to do whatever I can to ensure that OutpostHD is unencumbered so can be distributed across several platforms including GitHub, Outpost Universe and who knows, maybe even Steam some day?

[White Claw]

Certainly low priority, but was easy to do. I've adjusted the move icons with the middle line pulled out, and sharpened the black line a bit.

[leeor_net]

Def going to include these in the next build, looking a bit cleaner.

[JetMech1999]

Very nice.

[White Claw]

This took me waaaaaay to long to make. Guess I'm out of practice.

I brought the colors in line with the buildings, but let me know if it's too drab to do it's job. Hard to tell when it's not in game.