Building Icons

[Cmd. Marko]

Is this better? Made the resolution to be 256x256 and lowered the horizon line.

PsiCorpsHQ.png (205.19 KiB) Viewed 4062 times

AP - large1.png (173.45 KiB) Viewed 4062 times

And as a bonus, how about a shipyard?

Shipyard.png (228.28 KiB) Viewed 4062 times

[Cmd. Marko]

In one of my perusals of the game I saw in the buildings list one item called: "Concentration Camps". Now that's an interesting building to have, I said to myself, not really good as a real life social or political policy, mind you, but as a game-mechanic it's quite rich in flavor. As it is [personal view], it reduces your planets population each turn giving great bonuses to whichever sector your planet is focused on and of course an unrest factor, until the population is reduced to 1 or becomes an outpost whence the bonus is lost.. When adding other possible game mechanics it gets a little more interesting. Let's say with government type, if your Democratic or Unity all your planets get a happiness hit with each camp within the empire while the Dictatorial ones are free of the extra unrest. Or with "population transfer" you can "feed" your "prison planets" with extra labor keeping them from devolving into outposts and still having your planetary bonuses. Then if you add the diplomacy layer, some races might hate you for having camps, others might praise you and the rest could ignore the fact altogether. Anyho' here's the model:

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WorkCamp2.png (147.81 KiB) Viewed 4002 times

[Cmd. Marko]

The Science Institute! [batteries not included]
This nifty little thing [again, personal view] makes the planetary target science never drop under X on planets graced by its presence. Other possible things connected to the building:
- limited number of these per empire ... or ... each drains the imperial trade pool ["Institutes" need financial grants to function];
- you need one of these in your empire to continue research at some point in the future;
- some perquisites for techs include the available Science Institutes in the empire;
- can be built only on Ancient Artifact planets?
- etcetera and so on...

Science Institute.png (246.51 KiB) Viewed 3985 times

It sports the science green of Free Orion as the chromatic predominant choice.

[Bigjoe5]

Interesting icons. As well as the larger version, could you also continue to post them at the size they'll appear in game, with transparent and black backgrounds? It makes it a lot easier to see how it will work in the game.

[Cmd. Marko]

Smaller, in-game, icons?... Sure! Hmmm... how 'bout a "retrospective" with all in one place:

Retrospective [black].png (105.31 KiB) Viewed 3722 times

Retrospective[transparent].png (140.1 KiB) Viewed 3722 times

[Bigjoe5]

I like the lab. It seems to work well at smaller sizes, too. Shipyard is interesting, but it might be a good idea to hold off on those for now. The plan is to represent shipyards as objects in combat, so presumably the icons for those should be based on the 3D models (which as of yet, don't exist to my knowledge). Also, it would be good to know exactly what type of shipyard it is, since there are lots, and each one's icon will have to be distinguishable even at small sizes.

The Concentration Camps look nice, but I think I preferred the lower angle you provided earlier. I doubt it would work well at such a small size though, which is presumably why you went with this one, but I think that an angle closer to that at which the others are viewed would make it look less out of place.

Imperial Palace just seems... not flashy enough, you know? I mean, it's the imperial palace. What you have there sort of looks like a box with a target on the side.

Psicorp isn't scary enough. I like the shape, but those target shapes seem to be a bit overused in your designs. Maybe instead, some kind of flowing, streamy pattern going down both sides in glowy purple, and make the whole thing darker and more sinister.

[Cmd. Marko]

Thanks for taking the time to give feedback.

About the shipyards.
I have no idea how the "add 3D models to the 3D engine" magic works but if it starts with a .3ds or .obj file then it's possible for me to send such a file type with the shipyard model.
My original line of thought was that the "extra" shipyards sounded more as factory modules added to the basic shipyard structure then separate constructions. If you look at the model you'll see on the side, four such modules [in this case of the same type]. So we can call the model "Orbital Drydock" instead of "Shipyard", the modules are the "factories" where the basic ship components are built in-orbit. The icons for the "extra shipyards" [like: Industrialized Organic Assembly, Orbital Incubator, Bioneural Modification Unit, etc.] would be represented by modules that get attached to the side of the Basic Shipyard. Also the icons will feature only the module and not how they look connected on the shipyard structure. Just my two solar cents.

The Concentration Camps
The most cost effective icon would be a pair of handcuffs. At the moment I don't have an idea on how to model a camp and keep the view ground based. Maybe it'll come to me in the future or possibly someone else will create something better. Well see.

Imperial Palace ?... *cough* Administrative Hub *cough*
You're right about the epicness level. It looks a little better from the aerial view, designed it without the "must look best from ground level" theorem. Perhaps another try will generate better results.

PsiCorpsHQ
You know what they say:"When in design doubt, use concentric circles!". Hmm... Salient points, I'll see what I can do about the "creepy" factor.

Err... since other work is priority... updates will be later during the next week.

[Cmd. Marko]

... myeah, that was more workload then I imagined. Anyway... back to Free Orion:

Hey there! Wanted to work on the "Lighthouse" Building but when I finished one phase of modeling I realized that the building had a pinch of "corporate" to it that couldn't be ignored. So, I thought that... ok, what is a corporation and has broadcasting equipment on top of its building... A Broadcasting Corporation... !
"Storywise" its the HQ of the famed GNN. "Gameplay-wise" I guess you could find dozens of uses for a building that can do "propaganda" and affect the happiness of the citizens.

Or... its a Galactic Lighthouse...

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Interstellar Lighthouse[black].png (16.88 KiB) Viewed 3769 times

Interstellar Lighthouse [transparent].png (23.77 KiB) Viewed 3769 times

Note: The Retrospective a few posts up has been updated with the new buildings.

[Cmd. Marko]

Let's see what more do we have in our bag of tricks. Ah! Here's the Imperial Commerce Agency... you know it by the name Commerce Union. This building should allow you to focus your planets on trade. Otherwise you don't have access to the trade focus option. One building per empire.

ICA [large].png (255.69 KiB) Viewed 3740 times

ICA [black].png (20.69 KiB) Viewed 3740 times

ICA.png (30.81 KiB) Viewed 3740 times

[Bigjoe5]

I like the lighthouse, generally. I think the base could be a bit more 'glowy', if you know what I mean (sort of like the effect of putting neon lights on the bottom of your car; those dark spaces at the bottom are just begging for it), as well as those red stripes. Partially to make it look more futuristic, and partially to make it more distinguishable at smaller sizes.

The Commerce building somehow doesn't feel unique enough. I mean, that building could be anything, really. I think it needs some other architectural feature to really scream "commercial center of the galaxy", you know? The yellow colour is good, though, IMO.

[Cmd. Marko]

I've updated the Lighthouse in its original post with more of the glowy. Lemme think about the ICA a little bit more. Have a good Sunday.

LE: Well I think it's good practice to have a color overlay on each building to signify which group it corresponds to:
- yellow - agricultural
- purple-blue - industrial (like my avatar)
- science - green
- commerce - orange
- starlanes(lighthouse, etc. ) - greenish blue
- specials (PsiCorps, Terror Lab, etc.) - purple or red

[Redcap]

I can't believe pd hasn't committed any of these yet, they are really really good. Love to see all the work you have done in the frontier.

[Cmd. Marko]

Love to see all the work you have done in the frontier.

Thanks for the kind words, sheriff Redcap. *Plays the Saber Rider Theme*

Committing building icons is really low priority thing at this point, I think. Still room for improvement and change. Oh and the buildings role in-game is still very much fuzzy so there's no hurry.

Much Later Edit: Updated the Imperial Commerce Agency in its original post. Added a volume with an abstracted coin plaque on it and above it a "holographic" representation of a stock graph (which on lower resolutions doesn't appear, but the coin plaque works... maybe I should make it taller).

[Cmd. Marko]

Hmm... today's update is a bit of ... "I guess that looks like that". First up, tried my luck again on the concentration camp. Here's the result:

Concetration camp2[large].png (187.35 KiB) Viewed 3726 times

Concetration camp2[black].png (28.75 KiB) Viewed 3726 times

Concetration camp2[transparent].png (37.68 KiB) Viewed 3726 times

Or it's the Industry Center...

[Cmd. Marko]

Second it's a generic high-tech building:

Generic Building[large].png (178.99 KiB) Viewed 3726 times

Generic Building.png (20.94 KiB) Viewed 3726 times

Generic Building[black].png (21.5 KiB) Viewed 3726 times