Post by: bvanevery on February 21, 2018, 12:31:21 AM
Anyways, I want a cool icon that instantly indicates to someone that they're getting an AAR with a lot of pictures. Do you believe "Let's Play" has that connotation? I don't. Culturally, I think it means there's going to be a YouTube video, and I don't know what it even means to have that message icon in a forum post. Unless it's a link to a YouTube video. I'm not really into "Let's Play" culture to be honest. Let's just say that I'd get awfully handy with the jog control.
So I don't think there actually is a message icon for the kind of AAR that I'm doing.
In other news, the rate at which I can spit out an AAR has gone way up. I finally threw in the towel about all the image cropping. It just takes way too long. I don't like that the website reduces my 1440x900 screenshots to 1200x750, but it's way easier to just accept that and move on. I don't have to open a paint program, I don't have to fiddle with sizing the crop window. I don't even bother to name the image anything appropriate anymore. I just grab it straight from the user "Screenshots" folder and call it good.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on February 21, 2018, 01:19:39 AM
I'll tend to follow your suggestion about the look of it - "Illustrated"? "Pics"? -shorter will be far more legible- and any idea what sort of background?
Post by: bvanevery on February 21, 2018, 04:18:16 AM
For background, there should be some kind of rad ass gun or violent weapon, from SMAC. Or a shiny Alien Artifact head maybe. Visually those track well. I'm trying to remember what the Conquest victory icon looks like. I'll open up SMAC and poke around for a minute, see if I find anything "label worthy".
Looking at my own screenshots, a Drone Riot head as appears above a city is definitely a candidate.
Monoliths are distinctive on a map at least, although this wouldn't be my 1st choice. And might not translate well to a horizontal format.
"Images" is shorter than "Illustrated" and gets the point across.
The guy in the corner who can be Nerve Stapled is a good look.
I notice that the message icon can be animated, although maybe that would be distracting if used post after post. Makes me think of the rotating unit designer.
Well I just tried scaling the conquest icon to the size of a 15 pixel high image. It looks terrible. Back to the drawing board.
I'm learning that artwork with continuous tones, does not scale readily to a 60x15 message icon size. Hmm.
Highly discontinuous images seem to be needed, like what was probably the source material for the "DISCUSSION" icon. Hard edges of letters will show up. And then the actual pixel result, is chopped to heck according to filtering algorithms. It doesn't look at all good when blown up. Only looks good when small.
I wanted to see what can happen when downscaling, so I created the following 60x15 proof of concept, based on part of the title lettering of Alien Crossfire:
alien60x15 |
I came up with another method of generating a background. Just apply a 60x15 cropping rectangle to any part of the game, as taken from a screenshot. Here's a snippet of the nerve staple guy's face, for instance. Unfortunately this doesn't carry over well, the features aren't distinct enough in this small a format. But it's a valid way of thinking about / examining what is and isn't possible.
nervestaple |
Compare now, the drone riot head captured in its native resolution, 120x30:
droneriot |
droneriot60x15 |
With the right background, that could almost work. I'm sure there's a "clean" version of the drone riot head in the unit sheets somewhere.
However, I went a little nuts and worked with the nerve staple guy some more. I continued his background on a pixel by pixel basis.
nerve |
I find that basically half of the area is usable for a word. 30x15 on the right part of the message icon. I'm going to look at fonts in the game and see if they fit in that format or not. An anaysis of the fonts is that they are simple monotone aliased things, that anyone could draw manually as pixel art if need be. A lifted sample in 30x15:
LABS |
I've realized that I can use the "rename base" function in the game, to generate a visual image of any text I want. Getting it to be white takes a bit more doing, such as making the base very happy, or using the University. I use the "very happy" method and find that "IMAGES" is 45 pixels wide:
IMAGES |
"PICS" only needs 28 pixels:
PICS |
So now I have this prototype "nerve staple PICS" icon, but I don't know how to get the colors on the left into the background on the right. It should be a trivial operation, but the GIMP is too obtuse for me to figure it out easily. Maybe I can manage it in a lesser paint program.
nervePICSgray |
After some attempts at paint programs that sucked, I found AvancePaint (http://users.belgacom.net/rgs/) which didn't. I managed to sample the colors and fill the background stripes, and I moved the letters a little to the left. Thus:
nervePICS |
Now I felt very clever for having done this, and it's almost 4 AM, but I have to wonder if that red face is too subtle. Let's try with a drone instead of the nerve staple guy, hoping that eyes are easier to perceive.
drone60x15 |
I'm afraid it still looks like red junk to me, not a face. I will try some of the other people. I have found that the icon artwork for Talents, Workers, and Drones lives in newicons.pcx. Here's a sample of the talent's faces. They're a lot clearer than drone faces, but I'm going to look at other things to sample before committing to working on this one.
talent60x15 |
A sample of Yang's eyes from hive.pcx. I think I could get the singular "PIC" in there.
yang60x15 |
I learned how to select a single pixel brush in the GIMP and manually drew the white letters in there.
PICyang60x15 |
I'm sold! I think that looks very professional. Ok you've got the needed message icon.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on February 21, 2018, 05:32:57 PM
Post by: Geo on February 21, 2018, 07:32:08 PM
Post by: Buster's Uncle on February 21, 2018, 08:50:31 PM
Post by: bvanevery on February 21, 2018, 09:09:15 PM
Post by: bvanevery on February 24, 2018, 05:18:16 PM
If not, well at least making the change manually is as fast as one could hope.
I could also experiment with the non-attachment way of inserting images again. However then it would be the same question: can the website somehow automatically recognize that a picture is being used and select "PIC" ?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on February 24, 2018, 05:28:55 PM
Post by: bvanevery on February 24, 2018, 07:16:40 PM
Post by: Buster's Uncle on February 24, 2018, 07:54:28 PM
Post by: bvanevery on February 24, 2018, 08:35:42 PM
My job is to keep you happy,
That almost demands another message icon. What would be thematically appropriate? Is there any faction or technology which forces people to be happy?
Post by: Geo on February 25, 2018, 08:14:55 AM
What would be thematically appropriate?
The positive half of the attached pic?
Post by: bvanevery on February 25, 2018, 01:42:53 PM
artbox5 |
Meanwhile on the "negative" side of things, I sure would like to find a use for this iconography:
artbox10 |