Changing Stars

Development of artwork, requests, suggestions, samples, or if you have artwork to offer. Primarily for the artists.
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Geoff the Medio
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Changing Stars

#1 Post by Geoff the Medio »

EDIT: Split from the Binary Star topic.

The transparency of some of the system sidepanel stars doesn't fade smoothly to the edges of the texture, leading to some semi-ugly edges such as in the attached image.
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Sidepanel Star Texture Edge
Sidepanel Star Texture Edge
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eleazar
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Re: Binary Stars

#2 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:The transparency of some of the system sidepanel stars doesn't fade smoothly to the edges of the texture, leading to some semi-ugly edges such as in the attached image.
That's because of the weird way that the star image fits in the side panel.

A whole lot of the image to the right and above is not used, and image doesn't go all the way to the left edge. It's rather a pain to try to figure out what part will show.

If you want to re-anchor it to the upper left corner or the image to the upper left corner of the box for the star, i'll redo the images.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Binary Stars

#3 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:If you want to re-anchor it to the upper left corner or the image to the upper left corner of the box for the star, i'll redo the images.
Given that the sidepanel can resize (bottom-right tab), so has variable width, but a fixed gap between the top and the the planet panels list area, how should things be laid out? Resize the texture to the width of the panel, with equal height and width? Or fixed size regardless of panel size? Render under the planet panels or not?
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star texture resizing?
star texture resizing?
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eleazar
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Re: Binary Stars

#4 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:Resize the texture to the width of the panel, with equal height and width? Or fixed size regardless of panel size? Render under the planet panels or not?
Definitely not render under the planets panels.

For the rest, i need to do some mock-ups to be sure. That'll be next after i finish this stage of the recalibration.

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eleazar
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Re: Binary Stars

#5 Post by eleazar »

Do you want a quick "make it not obviously broken" fix or a "make it actually look good" fix that requires more work on your part? I'm not yet exactly sure what the second would entail.

Under normal use, we actually only have half the vertical hight that a planet gets for the star:
Screen Shot 2012-03-31 at 9.50.26 AM.png
Screen Shot 2012-03-31 at 9.50.26 AM.png (36.36 KiB) Viewed 2863 times

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Binary Stars

#6 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:Do you want a quick "make it not obviously broken" fix or a "make it actually look good" fix that requires more work on your part?
Propose how you want it to look... Moving and resizing textures usually isn't complicated...

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eleazar
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Re: Binary Stars

#7 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:Do you want a quick "make it not obviously broken" fix or a "make it actually look good" fix that requires more work on your part?
Propose how you want it to look... Moving and resizing textures usually isn't complicated...
I know-- i'm referring to other interface stuff. For instance, it's kinda unproductive to have a big star graphic and then cover more than half of it with dark opaque bars (not that i want them made more transparent-- that would just muddle things more.

The only way to guarantee that the companion star is visible is to anchor to the upper left, and do no scaling. That should work, and i'll make sure it ends gracefully on the right edge with wide sidebars.

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eleazar
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Re: Binary Stars

#8 Post by eleazar »

1) After having lived with the binary stars for a while, i have to admit they haven't been as useful as i had hoped. I seldom find myself use them as "landmarks", and pretty much just ignore them. At some zooms they hardly are visible anyway.

2) I think effort would be better spent on stars that threw away the thin pretense of realism, (main sequence size/color) and harked back more to MoO1 &2, included purple and green stars and generally tried to make the stars more individually recognisable. How hard would it be to add more star colors?


I've been thinking along these lines for a while, but left it on a back burner until i realized that i have a lot of side panel stars to change, many/most of which i may have to change again if i do anything about the two complaint/ideas above.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Binary Stars

#9 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:How hard would it be to add more star colors?
Not extremely difficult, but a bit of work due to all the different places the current set of values is used and some where all the possibilities are listed out...

But why are more star types needed? Just to have a few different colours of star icon on the map doesn't seem worth the effort or attention.

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eleazar
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Re: Binary Stars

#10 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:But why are more star types needed? Just to have a few different colours of star icon on the map doesn't seem worth the effort or attention.
Because as the graphics continue to be improved and beautified, (see attached mock up) the star types need to keep up or get drowned out. More colors require the matching of stars, halos, and tiny-stars, which needs a new star type to coordinate them all.
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pretty-galaxy.jpg
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Binary Stars

#11 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:...as the graphics continue to be improved and beautified, (see attached mock up) the star types need to keep up or get drowned out. More colors require the matching of stars, halos, and tiny-stars, which needs a new star type to coordinate them all.
I don't follow your point or understand what the galaxy image is illustrating. It sounds like you want to be able to coordinate which star core, halo, and tiny images are used in what combinations. I don't see why doing that requires additional system types to be added to the game mechanics. Would it be sufficient to be able to specify combinations of these that are allowed and which system types they are used to represent?

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em3
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Re: Binary Stars

#12 Post by em3 »

eleazar wrote:(see attached mock up)
Woah, trippy. :)
https://github.com/mmoderau
[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - Randall Munroe, title text to xkcd #556

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eleazar
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Re: Binary Stars

#13 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:I don't follow your point or understand what the galaxy image is illustrating. It sounds like you want to be able to coordinate which star core, halo, and tiny images are used in what combinations. I don't see why doing that requires additional system types to be added to the game mechanics. Would it be sufficient to be able to specify combinations of these that are allowed and which system types they are used to represent?
*Sigh*
I missed april fools, but when i saw this extremely hideous galaxy map, i though i would give it a belated try. Intradepartmental humor often doesn't work.

Real answer soon.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Binary Stars

#14 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:I missed april fools...
By 9 days?

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eleazar
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Re: Binary Stars

#15 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:I missed april fools...
By 9 days?
I missed my chance to do something on april 1st-- and regretted it.

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