FreeOrion

Having looked at them ingame, I agree. I'll lighten up the darker areas.
But they seem discernible; however, the player will have to learn their meaning (they're not self-explanatory).



If there are no objections about the style of the icons, I'll do the rest of them sometime soon.

[Edit] Oh, and one more thing: the distance of the special icons to the planet should always be the same. Right now, the distance between special icon and planet varies depending on the planet's size. It would be better if the position of the icons was determined with regard to planet size.

I'd like to see some with the light-coloured rim that eleazar suggested... I find the icons don't jump out against the back starfield very well.

Go for it.

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These icons look like a moon... maybe you should consider not making them round.


I agree to that... after some turns the player will have learned the meaning, especially because they have tooltips. I would not worry to much about icons beeing intuitive.

I have completed a set of planetary special icons (16x16):



From left to right: Homeworld, Starvation, Techtonic Instability, Tidal Lock, Solid Core, Axial Tilt, Slow Rotation, Natural Tunnels, Ancient Ruins, Excentric Orbit, Minerals. They all have a 1px bright outline of their own colour that make them visible against a dark background.
Criticism/suggestions?

[Edit] I've increased the size of axial tilt and slow rotation. (The image above doesn't show the new icons.)

Axial tilt might look better with a full circle and a (tilted) line biscecting in... like a globe with a bar through the line between poles.

What is eccentric orbit supposed to be? It looks like a toppled over water tower, or a space probe (sputnik-esque).

In general, I like the style. I wonder how they'd look with a bit more (but subtle) 3D / depth shading or gradients, similar to the homeworld icon or ancient ruins, though I realize there's not many pixels to work with.

Where did you get your inspiration for the ancient ruins special? Is it somesort of a hindu/buddish temple thing from Far East/India? Now I am not saying it is a bad icon, but could some sort of an Egyptian or South American pyramid icon perhaps been more self-explanatory? On the other hand maybe those pyramid icons and pictures are over used, and your icon most certainly has a kind of an alien touch.

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What is your favourite alien species and WHY?
Preliminary thoughts about diplomacy
Some unfinished ideas for specials

Those look really great, although the eccentric orbit one is really confusing to me. I thought it was a spaceship at first. That's the only one I think needs work.

Here are more 3D-ish icons:



(tidal lock, techtonic instability, eccentric orbit, natural tunnels, solid core, slow rotation, starvation, minerals, homeworld, ancients, axial tilt )

Good suggestion, see above.

Never mind... (it was supposed to be a planet on an orbit); I hope the new version is more obvious.

Actually, I was thinking of an Elven tower... A pyramid would also be nice, I'll give that a try soon (you're thinking of Stargate, aren't you? )

[Edit]The icons are all a little colour-heavy, some desaturation may be good; like this:

Well, actually I was just boring and thought about actual ruins or historical sights here on Earth. Although I used to watch Stargate as well.

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What is your favourite alien species and WHY?
Preliminary thoughts about diplomacy
Some unfinished ideas for specials

I would strongly recommend avoiding making the icons look like real objects (which you have). These should remain obviously symbols, and not look like little things orbiting the planet.

I think the de-saturated ones work better.
I'm all for adding these in as soon as you provide the transparent files, and fine-tuning the concept/execution later.

I've added a new folder for these, as explained in the commit message.

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The brighter red and green originals did seem a bit too saturated, but the newer versions seem to overcompensate, and the yellows too dull, IMO.


Why is the new location preferred?

The old icons folder is just left over from before there were enough icons to warrant having separate directories for them, as far as I know. Are you assuming or assigning a special significance to the "icons" directory?


Just specify the icon path relative to the art directory the same way as is done for techs (or buildings):

graphic = "tech_icons/Algorithmic_Elegance.png"
graphic = "building_icons/Whatever.png"
graphic = "icons/specials_tiny/WhateverElse.png"

are all valid (assuming those files exist). You can even mix and match by putting a tech icon on a special, for instance.

Answered[url=http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=27529 here.[/url]


OK, so the universal use of "special_icons/Generic_Special.png" is only a default?

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Yes, it's used when no graphic is specified, which is presently just about always in specials.txt and planet_specials.txt

Similarly, "building_icons/Generic_Building.png" is used for iconless buildings.

Techs get their category icon if they have no defined icon.

The special icons (non-desaturated) can be found here: http://rapidshare.com/files/42640749/sp ... s.zip.html
I've provided the unsaturated icons since there is no consensus about how saturated they should be,
but if you want to use my settings for desaturation, it's -50.