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Re: Tech Icons

Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 6:29 pm
by Tortanick
OH! Now I do, I was looking at the white not the black where it looked somewhat like 3 very odd penguins. Its a lot clearer if you invert the colours IMO. although the fruit looks like a drop of water to me.

Still L like it now I see it, why not keep it for orbital gardens? The theme for orbital techs is nice but its not a commandment or anything.

I beg to differ

Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 7:56 pm
by Josh
Actually, I beg to differ; It's a commandment as of now. A modicum of thematic unity is something that is very important for the tech icons, as it facilitates recognition, whereas pretty pictures do not.

For Orbital Gardens, either:

a) the wording is wrong
or
b) the picture is wrong

Something has got to give. If it's an orbital tech, the picture needs to go for theme's sake. If it's not, it should be rephrased so that it's not confused with the ones that are.
Just a modicum of thematic unity is all, not a complete overhaul of the system :)

Re: Tech Icons

Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 8:25 pm
by Tortanick
I'd go for a. Just rename it to Luna Gardens, the text already says its a moon. And the crescent shape looks like a moon more than a planet.

Re: Tech Icons

Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 8:27 am
by MrV
Colonial Economic Blueprinting:
Image
I hope I used the right category icon :P
Anyway, this is useless as of now on a light background. There's too many thin lines and too many details to look good if I apply any sensible amount of outlines to combat this. Any ideas on how to do it would be wonderful.

Edit:
Image
Here's with some grey and (possibly) too thin outlines just to demonstrate.
Tortanick wrote:OH! Now I do, I was looking at the white not the black where it looked somewhat like 3 very odd penguins. Its a lot clearer if you invert the colours IMO. although the fruit looks like a drop of water to me.
I agree; although I saw geese where you saw penguins. It took a lot of effort to change that impression too :D
pd wrote:
Could you replace the paradise planet icon with the (former) orbital gardens one?
Good idea, I guess this could work. It definitely has an Eden-like feeling. Maybe the description should be changed towards recreation/recovery instead of "pleasure seeking" in this case?
What will be the actual effects of these two? If it's not set in stone, the Paradise Planet could be as is - pure R&R in all forms, with the population happiness increasing as result - while Orbital Gardens would function as a botanic garden today, increasing culture and such like a museum (while also being prerequisite for certain farming techs). In this case, both descriptions would be pretty accurate as they are. That's not to say I think it's easier to change an effect than to change a description, by the way...

Re: Tech Icons

Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 4:48 pm
by Josh
Wow you really are a graphics designer :)

Good work for the economic blueprinting, I think you've got something.

As of right this moment, paradise planet kills industry and mining for extra money (basically). Orbital gardens generate lots of revenue, and do some farming as well.

PERSONALLY, I don't think they are set in stone. In fact, I'm sure they could be better realized.

Re: Tech Icons

Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 1:45 pm
by MrV
Thanks, Josh!

Image

Tanker spaceships, and some laden with boxes of supplies. Works for fleet logistics?

Re: Tech Icons

Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 2:56 am
by Josh
Well, I've said it before, I guess one more time won't hurt.

I believe a ship category icon would work the best for this one. Unfortunately, we don't have one yet, only a placeholder is available (don't use the placeholder btw ;) ). SO, the way I see it, you can either wait until a ship category icon comes along, or if you feel up to it, you may take it upon yourself to design the ship category icon yourself. I have some work available in this arena, if you're interested.

Re: Tech Icons

Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 1:36 pm
by MrV
Josh wrote:you may take it upon yourself to design the ship category icon yourself. I have some work available in this arena, if you're interested.
Absolutely. These next two-three weeks will be pretty busy for me, but from what I've gathered, nobody's in a rush here - so I'm more than willing to give it a go :)

Re: Tech Icons

Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 11:55 am
by General_Zaber
Here's a very Conceptual idea for a SHip Category Icon.

Image

I was just trying to combine the symbols of star for space and shield for military/protection, I originally had an anchor in the background but it looked horrible as to be expected from my level of skill (or lack thereof :wink: )

Re: Tech Icons

Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2009 6:01 pm
by lazor
I don't post here very often, but I browse the forum quite often, and I am really interested in freeorion. And since I would like this project to finish so very much, I thought maybe I should try to contribute something myself.

So, I was a little bored last weekend, and eventually sat down and tried do some techicons with inkscape:

Image
Distributed Thought Network
Image
Stabilized Hypergrowth

After making them, I did actually read this thread (shame on me for not reading it before fiddling with inkscape), and discovered those were already made, but the wikipage with all the techicons has not been updated yet.

So, after discovering that and deciding that mine do not look as good as yours, I hesitated a bit to post them but eventually decided to do it anyways, because I thought the worst thing that could happen is that these two icons are used as some kind of bad example, and I learn what I did wrong.

Ok, so this is just a very little thing, but hopefully it'll help me overcome that 'initial barrier to contributing' that I kind of feel is there. Or at least just get a little more active in the community to give you guys some feedback and show interest in general.

PS: I think I like the versions MrV made of the two icons most. Although Joshs version of Stabilized Hypergrowth is good because it is "not another linechart". It seems there are already quite alot of them.

Re: Tech Icons

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 12:06 pm
by Josh
I wonder where MrV went... and a couple of other people as well...

By all means, if you have an icon for a tech that has nothing-at-all, by all means, submit. I'd be too happy to see all the tech icons finally finished. If you want to get it added though, it also has to go through someone with clout, like pd.

Re: Tech Icons

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 2:13 pm
by Tortanick
Hey Lazor, welcome to the project :)

I think the reason that tech icons have slowed to a halt is that they're all but done: Looking on the Wiki page these are the only ones that don't have pics, and below them the images I found on the last few pages of this thread:

Distributed Thought Computing
Image

Galactic Infrastructure
Image

Stabilized Hypergrowth
Image (I actually prefer this one, Josh's looks like growth then decline to me)
Image

Colonial Economic Blueprinting
Image

Deep Green
Image
Image

Fleet Logistics
Image

and the ship catagory icon, that has 100 options by now.

I'm not sure if every icon is good to go, since PD hasn't explicitly rejected any of these or added them to the wiki, it might help if he chose the good ones so people knew what still needed icons.

BTW PD, any reason you didn't use this version of collective thought network, its a small change but I think it works a lot better:
Image

Re: Tech Icons

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 2:32 pm
by Geoff the Medio
Tortanick wrote:I think the reason that tech icons have slowed to a halt is that they're all but done...
If this is the case, I encourage icon submissions for buildings. I don't know if there have been any discussions about the style of building icons, but I'd suggest icons that look more like actual buildings than abstract concepts. We don't necessarily need building icons that attempt to resemble the building they're supposed to represent, as this is probably impossible for most buildings, but a variety of distinctive shapes and feels would be useful. I'd at least like a few more building icons than the single one we have now that's used to represent all buildings.

There's probably is or should be another thread for building icon discussions, much like there is for ship parts... I don't mean to force this thread off topic.

Edit: There are actually a few ship category techs that don't have icons that aren't listed on the wiki.

Re: Tech Icons

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 4:34 pm
by Josh
Could you start a building icons thread? I can't make stickies.

Re: Tech Icons

Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 11:13 pm
by Tortanick
Is there a list of buildings that need icons anywhere? I can see a few buildings in the tech icons page but they all have icons already.