FreeOrion

EDIT: specifications for species icons

* 64x64 px transparent PNG --take advantage of the whole width and hight.

* Must have a strong silhouette so it can still be easily recognized when shrunk to 16x16.  Very important.

* If you can tell what direction it is looking, it should look left.

* Colors: mostly white with light to medium greys. Because it will generally be displayed on dark grey or black, and will probably be sometimes colorized with an Empire's color.

* Homage is OK, straight duplication of somebody else's IP is not.

* Transparency: You should paint the creature on a transparent layer, not try to cut out the black background afterwards-- quicker, better results.  No dark halo around the edge.  Transparency shouldn't be binary-- the outside edge should be crisp, (unless is some fuzzy glowing thing), but also aliased.

* See data/art/icons/species for examples

End Edit



I know i've been a way for a while, been busy, etc. etc.

I checked out the latest progress today, and was inspired to make more species icons. I uploaded the transparent PNGs to trunk.

Included are some of my favorites: Eaxaw, George, Scylior, Egassem, Dertherean, Chato'matou.

So now there are 9.

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Thank you so much. These are really nice. I've tried to do them myself, but just couldn't do it. Could you perhaps try to rework the previous ones?

OK, here's the Trith and Gyisache with the Cray and Hhhoh thrown in.

Here's a reason to avoid lots of humanoids-- they are hard to distinguish at icon size. For the Trith i added glowy "telepathic" marks. Kinda a cheap trick, i know

I may do some "random" alien icons -- for the faaaaar off day when the player can design his own species. It would be a lot easier to make aliens up as i draw rather than try to cram a preexisting concept into very few pixels.

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Perfect, thanks.

Many games had lots of humanoids as aliens. I'm not negating the whole idea of non-humanoid beings, but a bipedal and two-handed form has probably some evolutionary advantages over some Gyisache... I mean, where does that thing hold it's tools? It looks like it's unable to build a car and i'm not going to talk about space ships.

Or maybe I'm "to human" im my thoughts.


Is there already a list of species that are going to make into the game. Isn't that some place far away on the road map (0.8)?

What about logos or banners? These would be easier to make and distinguish than a picture of an the alien being itself.

These are used for population indication(species). Flags will be there as well(initial content done, waiting for implementation/mockup)and indicate the empire(which can be made up of multiple species).

For details about species please the the story and brainstorming forums. This post in particular might be interesting to you.

I get it. I thought that these will be indicating the empire as a whole and the only graphical representation it has. Sorry for my mistake.

It would be cool though to see these icons on a chart that indicates species populating your empire.

Note that currently these icons are used at 25% of the size of the examples in this thread. Distinguishing between 2 humanoids is a lot trickier at that scale than at the full 64x64 shown here.



Theoretically, i agree that having multiple "hands" of some kind is very important in being able to develop mechanical technology. The Gyisache combines the function of eye-stalk and arm into one (and presumably has very durable eye-lids). Admittedly this is not the most likely configuration, but FreeOrion is very openly NOT hard sci-fi.



These aliens are by no means the final roster. I'm just picking more or less what i think are the best ones, with the full knowledge the final roster could look very different. These icons don't take very long to do, and any unused icons could probably be used for player customized species.


Yeah.
I expect species icons will find use at larger sizes elsewhere in the interface.

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Some random alien additions:
(added to trunk)

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I just love the simplified, cartoony approach. That's exactly what needs to be done for this scale. With the subtle shading it also works at a bigger scale.

Thanks, these are fun. I'm doing them as the "warm up" before getting down to my freelance work.

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14 more including the "Laenfa".

Admittedly i'm not hitting all the most popular alien bauplans. Since these icons are being produced way ahead of urgent need i'm just following my whim. Somebody can worry about filling in the gaps later, when it becomes a problem.

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13 more icons, mostly icthyoids, and some star control homages.

Ideally i'd like only very experienced players to be familiar with all the species icons (assuming we implement random minor species). For a game like this it's great to have something new to discover in the galaxy.

Current total: 63

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10 more species icons.

Total: 73

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Do I see a P'kunk in there?