FreeOrion

Yea, lol Linux only, sigh, that will be the day

Here is just some conceptual doodles.


By porternielsen at 2008-04-03

Some attempts at replication icons. Big versions and then what they look like scaled to 128 X 128. My favorite is the first one. Feedback please.

Yeah that's a lot of stuff there... Let me see If I can get through this point by point.

...

Actually I'm gonna try and get it all in one go.
Revisions aren't bad, but could you re-apply it to something that doesn't have an icon instead? I'd really just like to get these done first and foremost, and if someone could nail a ship category icon down the fleet logistics might quickly follow (slap the category icon on somewhere e.g. autolabs and autofactories.)
Try applying that pattern to economic colonial blueprinting, the building stuff from the ground up idea makes sense there.

And to shrinkshooter,

the living planet with the computer at the middle makes sense, but it's not quite ready yet. Try doing it without trees. Try putting the trees in different places. Try using a small part of the tree. Try thinking of the things you're used to in ways you're not used to thinking of them. Also the fleet logistics could use less explosion looking like symbols, and IMHO I think it would much easier to establish the ship category icon first. (For the reason I mentioned previously)

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Photo-dump.

Musings

Thanks Josh, I can do that. I have downloaded all the current graphics and have looked at the icon list and thought I picked some icons not finished yet. I will work on your suggestions, but besides that where do I go to see a list of needed icons?

See the very first post of this thread.

Joshs latest contributions are not yet listed, because they'll need some polishing, which I haven't had the time for yet.

I can if you want me to, but the reason I put those up there was because I thought you could make them better by iconifying them with major changes included. I can further expound on the living planet if you would like, and I can screw around with it, but I'm not really sure if I can come up with better ideas.

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[[[===LEAN, MEAN, PURPLE AND GREEN MACHINE===]]]

Redcap,

you really shouldn't work on Icons at such large sizes. 128x128 is the max size an icon will be seen in. Working 10x, 20x, or 50x larger than the final use of the graphic encourages you to include all sorts of details (your grid pattern for instance) which will simply turn into mush in the final use of the icon.

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Oh.

I'm gonna polish my stuff first, but it would be really cool if the growth category got finished by coincidence. (1 icon left!!! arrrgghhh....)

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Photo-dump.

Musings

Alright, lets see if I can do this right this time. Looked at what was missing and just did a preliminary rough mock-up. Here are just three ideas before I try a cleaner model. What do you think?

I can see where you were going with the lighthouses, but everything else is pretty unclear to me. The fleet logistics I don't think are as clear as they can possibly be, and we want to try and keep away from abstract ideas as much as possible, IMO, so a look at the icon ties in directly to what it's talking about. The fleet logistics with the sheet of paper icon is semi-understandable, but the telescope with a gear really doesn't go with it.

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[[[===LEAN, MEAN, PURPLE AND GREEN MACHINE===]]]

It's a sextant - used in naval navigation since centuries.

Yeah, I know what a sextant is. It doesn't really go with fleet logstics though; it would go best with fleet navigation or something that allowed the player to see the details of systems a jump or two away, something like that. I don't think a sextant should be used for the logistics of supplying a fleet a jump or more systems away, however.

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[[[===LEAN, MEAN, PURPLE AND GREEN MACHINE===]]]

Just posting for feedback so if it is something that is confusing to one, it will probably be confusing to more. I did a sectant, and yeah you are probably right that it fits better for navigation that logistics; however, what about the compass. Compasses have been used in logistics for years and years. Maybe a compass and a telescope, because telescopes are also heavily used in logistics.

Let me see if I can explain the middle icon. Externality economics is where you ignore your immediate wants with the understanding that what may be immediatley good for you will not be good in the long run, so you have to look at the bigger picture. Hence there are people holding hands representing how others are tied into your economics, and then the obvious economic graph in the background. I thought of maybe have the graph breaking out of its frame, thus representing good economic growth, but looking at the other economic icons I don't think it would look good.

Anyway I have had only one comment and a few more would be nice before I flesh out any icons because I don't want to spend a lot of time on an icon to find out someone doesn't like it.

I'm afraid that's just the way it is, especially in design. It's also quite hard to judge from the sketches, whether the icons will work, because some things will always have to be changed or simplified. The only advice I can give is, to explore every idea as good as you can - to a level that you are comfortable with it and then implement it. That's where experience comes in. The problem with the attitude quoted above is, that one will never gain experience.

edit: Here is another advice: If you work with lines, you will easily get lost in details. Try to work with shapes, either using markers or by introducing hatching to clearify, what are dark and what are light areas.