FreeOrion

First, I'd like to say that I have almost completed the graphics for all the production icons and can view them in the tech icons dump on the boards, but I'm stumped on Mining Engineering and Fusion Plants. Any ideas?

Second, I was working on this icon for Psicorp.



And I noticed how Icons use "human" heads and "human" brains and "human" bodies to represent ideas. SMAC could do it, it was human-o-centric. Ascendancy didn't do it, there were no humans. I'm not sure where Freeorion stands on this, which also reminds me, why do we call it Freeorion?

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Photo-dump.

Musings

The human-shape bias has been brought up before, and the consensus seemed to be:
* human-shaped heads and brains are easy to recognize as such
* when possible, use a brain without a head around it, which might seem a bit less human-centric
* it's not really that important to be species-neutral anyway
* it's hard enough to come up with icon ideas as it is, so we should avoid adding extra restrictions

There are more posts on the topic in that thread, if you're inclined to read more, but I think the above summary is accurate... though I didn't actually re-read it all to make sure.

For Psicorp, you might take inspiration from Babylon 5, and put the greek letter Psi ( Ψ ) in the image.

For fusion plants, perhaps a building-like shape with a lightning-bolt electricity shape between two spires, and in the middle a mushroom cloud, or something similar to the fusion generation tech.

For mining engineering, start with the standard pickaxe, and then maybe some geared wheels / cogs behind it? It's a tough one, since there's isn't a cadeceus-like well-recognized symbol for engineering...

That's a pretty good consensus, especially that last point about extra restrictions, but if this has already been discussed, I'm not going to argue with it.

As for the other icons, I had EXACTLY the same Idea for Mining Engineering.

I haven't carried it to fruition; I feel it needs more. Perhaps some of the other artists could use this.

And here's one for fusion plants. It's not exactly like you said, but just for now...



I'll try the Psi Symbol too, but is there some kind of secret repository of free graphics that everybody else is aware of? I've been using adobe illustrator to construct most of these Icons from scratch, and while it's been a great learning experience, a stash full of icons would be greater still.

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Photo-dump.

Musings

Well I'm not aware of any stash of free icons save the one Freeorion is creating.

As for human bias, I wouldn't worry about it. There are plenty of places where human bias (or bias to any species) would detract from the quality, but icons where the key is consistency of style and beauty isn't one of them.

That said a bias towards any one nation or culture might be annoying, given the highly abstract style of the icons the only possible way I could see that happening is in the economic tech tree with an overuse of the $ sign. Using different currencies here and there (or multiple currencies like in Galactic Monetary Policy (its on the first page of the icon thread) should prevent that.

Mining engendering and the fusion plant look very good, Geoff's ideas for psicorps seems like a good idea, especially since we already took the name from babylon5 (ever seen that show, its amazingly good)

Done. PsiCorp Icon revised.
Is the bas relief effect too much?

...and while I'm at it...


Automatic Theorem Prover


Stellar Tomography

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Photo-dump.

Musings

i mixed both versions, helpful?

Interesting. I don't want to get stuck on any one icon too much though, but your welcome to tinker

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Photo-dump.

Musings

well, i just prefer your first attempt, the second one is ... odd... somehow

//edit:
how is this:

I don't think there should be lightning bolts, it goes against the currently established theme of lightning bolts being used for power generation.

Okay, I'm flattered, but the request for PsiCorps was a symbol in the spirit of Babylon 5,


Babylon5 PsiCorp

the justification being that the concept was stolen shamelessly from that show anyways.


Freeorion PsiCorp

Whatever it's going to be, it's going to have to be an idea that appeals to everybody.

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Photo-dump.

Musings

Re: Psycorps

If we want to be different here are some ideas:

* Brain with antenae (cause pysionics is just your brain with wireless internet/radio)
* And to represent the corps, something facist, but not nazi, ie uniforms

But otherwise, the babylon 5 symbol is a good representation.

I like that latest one.

utilae, we don't need anything to say facist, being a shameless rip from B5 Psicorps automatically covers that angle nicely.

Oh everyone I have an idea for this human centric problem that will let us make all of our icons human centric.
We do as follows:


Upon starting game the following is said:
------------------
"Scanning user . . . . . "
"Human user identified."
"Loading human related text, icons, images and video."
------------------


The user will no longer wonder why there are human centric icons, etc cause the game/terminal detected they were human!!! Pure Logic at work.