triangles vs descriptive fleeticons

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miu
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triangles vs descriptive fleeticons

#1 Post by miu »

I kind of want to discuss little further about the decision of using triangles as fleet icons, as it is implemeted now. As much I hate doing a issue about it, I have to disagree with this. I thought quite a while if I should bring this up but I feel that I would make a mistake if I wouldn't at least mention my points, and I couldn't find any previous discussion about this.

Why to use descriptive icons:
Firstly: Association, it easier for player to associate different races on the map by shape and color than just by the color.

Secondly and most importantly: Triangles take away from the feel of the game. After playing a while, player begins to associate the icons to the standard races they represent and thus, how you feel towards them. They have very varied emotional possibilities from first glimpse you see them appear on map, like: "Yikes, those ugly insectoids are going to spawn over my colonies with their horrible ships!/ nice, I see I have those friendly researchers as my neighbourghs, better to start produce spys/ Oh f*ck, not those silicoids again.." Meaning that descriptive icons have much more emotional potential than those triangles, that leave you cold. And in gameplay view, by first glimpse of icons, you have a general picture in your mind about what kind of race you are dealing with without needing to click the icon for more information.

Fleeticons have a possibility to add to the immersion level of the game, and it would be a design mistake not to use it. Triangles are better looking, clearer and easier to implement, but in larger view, it's wiser to use descriptive icons. A gameplay/feel vs. eyecandy issue.

But for 0.1, triangles are good, but in later stages I would really hope to see usage of descriptive icons. And with little polishing, they can be made to look almost comparable to triangles. Or if we want to stay on abstract level, maybe each reace should have a symbol (star, triangle, cross, whatever) to represnt their fleets, so that they would be distingushable by shape and color.
How do you think about the issue?

.Miu
Difference between a man and a gentleman is that a man does what he wants, a gentleman does what he should. - Albert Camus

Tyreth
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#2 Post by Tyreth »

I agree with you actually. I see the triangles as a temporary solution. I think your fleet icons are a much better option.

Not sure about 0.1 (maybe), but I'd definitely like to see them used on the main map in later versions.

tzlaine
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#3 Post by tzlaine »

Icons are valuable, but not universally so. When you need to convey more information than "there's at least one ship here", use an icon, a fleet box, etc. When you want something that scales well, doesn't take up a lot of real estate, and only says "there's at least one ship here", use something really simple, like a triangle. The triangle is only supposed to convey this small bit of information, so that you can know where to click to investigate further, such as by clicking on the triangle to see the contents of the fleet(s) it represents. Cluttering up the map with individual ships or fleets is a bad idea.

Tyreth
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#4 Post by Tyreth »

I'm not sure how pictorial icons would be too much clutter. If you have pictures like Miu's rather than triangles, it takes up little more space, and conveys more information instantly. You don't need to think "hmm, red was player X", or click on it for more info. You can instantly see "that is the insectoid race".

I don't really think color is optimal. It's sufficient, but imo inferior.

miu
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trying to clear my views.

#5 Post by miu »

If it isnt broken, dont fix it. - In my view the system used in MOO games has worked very well so far, cant see much ways to improve it without losing any of it benefits.
Ah ok, didnt get earlier that point that you would stack all the fleets in one system under one triangle, instead of just replacing the icons. Hm, that's new.
I see your point kind of useful when for example when there are fleets from 4 different empires in one system, only one triangle to click to see the details. But this is the only case when it reduces clutterniness, most of the time there would still be as many triangles around the map as it would be with traditional system.
And if I've understood right, as one triangle would represent all the fleets in the system, you would lose the "departing fleets on the left, staying fleets on the right" separation. Having these informations behind click would really make the fleetmanagment and moving them around more clumsy - the fleetmovement should be made directly in mapwindow with as little use of extra panels as possible.
Making triangles to show only "there's some ships here" information would be an unnecessary simplification, when they can show directly ownership of ships by color and nature of that empire by shape.

And the main loss would still be in the feeling and association, using triangles make the mapview much duller. It's a nice idea, but the benefits are smaller than the drawbacks. I'm not against development and innovation, but in this case we have a very well working system available I would recommend sticking with it.

edit: Tyreth, exactly :) I see I cant compress my view too well :)
.Miu
Difference between a man and a gentleman is that a man does what he wants, a gentleman does what he should. - Albert Camus

tzlaine
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#6 Post by tzlaine »

I didn't make myself clear before, but I meant one triangle per empire that has ships present, and I did want to have departing fleets at a different spot, such as on the left.

The reason that the icons will clutter up the interface is that a triangle that is 10x10 or 8x8 or even 6x6 pixels will be clear and easy to see, whereas icons of different sizes will not only be difficult to read and look screwy when you zoom out and they get that small, but the fact that they may be different sizes introduces a lot of logic into the code as to where they are placed; if you have 4 races with ships at a system, and they each have a fleet icon of a different size and shape...you get the idea. The triangle is small and elegant, and will always be clear, easy-to-read, easy-to-place with potentially many others, and will not look warped at any magnification level.

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skdiw
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#7 Post by skdiw »

We can use fixed magnification level so we don't get this warping effect. I don't think the warps will be that bad if the icons are relative in size. If we use only triangles, maybe we can use animations to represent different race. ie. silicoid are triangle that rotate clockwise, psilon flips... and have the icon grow in size or shrink to represent fleet strength.

Instead of departing ship going moving to left, we can use ant trial toward the destination with length proportional to speed. That way, the screen is less monotonous and it conveys a lot of information without clicking. We can also use colors to depict fleet size instead of race, and use icons to symbolize race. Maybe we can also use an active filter on the galaxy map.
:mrgreen:

miu
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Misunderstood a little.

#8 Post by miu »

Ah ok, I get your view, sorry about mixing thigs up.
The Icons do not vary in size as they are 32x32, and work well as 16x16 and even as 8*8 they are somehow readable. So that there wouldnt be major issues in placing them. I put them closer to each other in that collage picture than they would be placed in reality, my bad. The icons I did do have empty space around them/icons do not look cubical exactly for the reason that the shapes would be easily distinguishable even when in very small resolution.

Yes, the triangles are clearer, but they miss information that fleeticons should deliver. Give the them later a try and see how it would work?

About clutternes, were you really annoyed by the amout of fleeticons in moo2/moo3? I never saw anything wrong with them or didnt find them hard to organise, but maybe that's just me. And those occasions when you had fleets from more than 3 empires in single system were rare.

.Miu
Last edited by miu on Sun Sep 14, 2003 10:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Difference between a man and a gentleman is that a man does what he wants, a gentleman does what he should. - Albert Camus

Feanor
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#9 Post by Feanor »

I agree with tzlaine here.

The additional Information delivered by these Icons would be only the race - something that you usually already know if you have contact with them. And it would clutter the screen if there are more then one or two fleet in the system.

Empire-icons might be used to indicate which empires have a colony in a system, though.
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skdiw
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#10 Post by skdiw »

The only difference that I see between miu and tzIaine ideas is miu perfer icons that have shape instead of a simple triangle. I interpret miu's "fleet" as ships owned by a particular race/player and not individual ships, which is same as tzlaine's triangles. I like miu's shape icons better than simple triangles if we don't get warps. I think both wanted one symbol per race.

For me, the fleet/triangle icons in moo3 didn't bother me at all; I think they are fine and don't clutter. Even better is if we used simple animations that I described to indicate vector and fleet strength in a glance.

As for empire icons, I think they way moo3 did it is fine too.
:mrgreen:

miu
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one picture.

#11 Post by miu »

I was discussin with Skdiw about icons, and I edited map-picture to clear my view and to demostrate one possibility to use dot's as fleet-size indicator and I thought to share it with you too. The dots on picture are maybe too big, but you get the idea. The icons are at 24x24 resolution which is good for this zoomlevel.
http://users.evtek.fi/~k0201783/main_map-edit2.jpg

edit: link may appear dead as my school's servers are down because of upgrade, it should be back by tomorrow, but for now, here's link to another server:
http://miutemp.1colony.com/images/main_map-edit2.jpg

.Miu
Last edited by miu on Fri Sep 26, 2003 5:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Difference between a man and a gentleman is that a man does what he wants, a gentleman does what he should. - Albert Camus

Tyreth
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#12 Post by Tyreth »

I think the dots are a good size. I imagined them horizontal, but that works good as you posted it.

Edit: if we use dots, they should measure the size exponentially, eg...
* 1-10 ships
** 11-100
*** 101-1000
**** 1001-10000
***** 10001+

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skdiw
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#13 Post by skdiw »

You mean fleet strength, not fleet size. 10000+ ships :shock: can your graphics card even support 500 ships?
:mrgreen:

iamrobk
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#14 Post by iamrobk »

Seriously, from a technical standpoint, unless we REALLY waterdown our models and textures, it will be hard to have over 500 ships in a battle (total) without SEVERE lag. Personally I still hope for a max of 100v100 for tech reasons among other things, but thats an arguement for another time. Anyway, maybe size could determine it? Larger=more?

Tyreth
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#15 Post by Tyreth »

As I said, it was just an example. The maximum number of ships isn't decided - I was just showing that we should do it on an exponential scale :) Much like whitewolf's dot system for it's roleplaying games.

One dot higher doesn't mean a little bit more, it means significantly more.

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