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Topic: Icons for the website

Nasenbaer
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Posted at: 2012-03-26, 19:54

One idea of the "New website Design" thread was to create new icons for the news post based upon the blender files of the workers and similiar. When looking on the "tribes group pictures" Chuck created some months ago, I believe this would be really cool.

So what are your ideas? face-smile.png

Anyone willing to try creating such icons? face-smile.png

Brainstorming start

  • Development Newsposts: Stonemason working on a marble column
  • Release / Downloads: Smiling worker, that carries a package (visible from one side, front and top) showing the WL icon on the side of the package and an arrow poiting to the bottom on the front <- visualization of downloading
  • Feature freeze: Worker sitting in front of an ice cube (containing some stuff like e.g. a bottle ship, a tree, an animal, etc) with a pick ajared to the cube showing no more work can be done.
Edited: 2012-03-26, 19:55

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chuckw
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Posted at: 2012-03-27, 03:58

Nasenbaer wrote: So what are your ideas? Anyone willing to try creating such icons?

Yes, someone is willing. face-wink.png

Brainstorming start

Development Newsposts: Stonemason working on a marble column Release / Downloads: Smiling worker, that carries a package (visible from one side, front and top) showing the WL icon on the side of the package and an arrow poiting to the bottom on the front <- visualization of downloading
Feature freeze: Worker sitting in front of an ice cube (containing some stuff like e.g. a bottle ship, a tree, an animal, etc) with a pick ajared to the cube showing no more work can be done.

Great ideas!

How about:

Website Development: The Atlantean spider-breeder holding one of her "pets" with a big spider web behind her.

Play_Day News: One or two workers with a soccer (football).

Tournament News: A couple workers sitting/standing on a 3D match grid.

Wihack: Two or three workers with their noses in their little laptops. Maybe one taking a nap? face-grin.png

Miscellaneous News: A worker with a megaphone?

Security: Has to be one of the soldiers don't you think?.

Artwork/Media: A worker with a beret, brush and palette with perhaps some music notes in the air around him?


I see little people.

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chuckw
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Posted at: 2012-03-27, 04:59

Maybe a Welcome to Widelands image?
friends

I think that I should put some blue, red and green player color on these guys like this:
friends_clr
Or should I leave the clothes white? Or use a different combination of colors?


I see little people.

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Astuur
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Joined: 2009-02-28, 10:08
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Posted at: 2012-03-27, 09:20

Hehe, nice stuff. face-grin.png
But if you're going to present it in this scale, you'll need to work on the ball hands, chuck face-smile.png


Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills.
I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino).

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wl-zocker

Joined: 2011-12-30, 17:37
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Posted at: 2012-03-27, 09:44

The image looks already very good.

What I do not like is the person on the left side: It is nude, it has a strange skin color and the bald head does not look really good. Should it represent the Atlantean tribe? If yes, do they all look like that (I have never seen a big picture of an Atlantean worker)?

The green eyes of all three look strange. The white should be visible.


"Only few people know how much one has to know in order to know how little one knows." - Werner Heisenberg

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SirVer

Joined: 2009-02-19, 15:18
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Posted at: 2012-03-27, 10:29

I feel that presenting the workers at this scale is not a terrible good idea: it conveys that the graphics in widelands are crude and simplistic - but they aren't. They are sophisticated and very detailed - with respect to the scale they are needed in the game engine. Therefore I think we would need more detailed models of the workers - which is also not a good idea (imho) because it takes away from the picture each of us has in his head. Slight tangent: I always felt that the settlers graphics lost from S2 to S3. S3 had more detailed models of the workers which gave them goofy looks (imho), the comic like style from s2 allowed me to fill in the blanks of my workers like they were some character from a book. The very same applies to widelands for me and I like it. The tribe group-pictures in the artwork section are different: players will likely already have played widelands and identify with their tribe already. They already know that the graphics are awesome and will maybe even enjoy the lack of details. It just not something that first timers knowing nothing about the game will appreciate (imho).

Also, as we want to convey a meaning with the image I would suggest resorting to symbolism (as we currently use for the news pictures). Taking the symbols from the widelands context would be totally cool of course.


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Nasenbaer
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Posted at: 2012-03-27, 13:28

I see your point, SirVer. However I think the image is too big for an eyecatcher for news posts anyway. And if we scale it down to a similiar scale than the currently used ones, the style looks fine for me face-smile.png -> !

Edited: 2012-03-27, 13:29

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Shevonar

Joined: 2011-09-05, 21:28
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Posted at: 2012-03-27, 14:03

Actually I thought to take this cute not so little people instead of the current Widelands screenshot on the landing page: http://192.168.0.100:88/v2/ I like it but that's my personal opinion and I will change it if necessary. I share your opinion about settlers. S2 was the best of the series. However I don't think people will judge Widelands graphics as crude and simplistic just because of some image they see first. I also added a link to the screenshot section, so people can have a look at the ingame graphics. I actually really like the style of the 3D models also in large scale. Of course they are not state of the art 3D-models but they have their own charm. And last but not least: I guess most people play Widelands because of its gameplay and not because of beautiful graphics.

Thanks chuck for this image. And your ideas for news categories are exactly what I had in mind. Love to see them face-smile.png

Thanks for all the support and participation in making the Widelands website a better place!


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chuckw
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Posted at: 2012-03-27, 14:15

Thank you all for your comments.

I realize now that I should have stated that I did/do not intend to have them that large on the web page. My bad. I just like to give them some "face time", (warts and all) when they are with friends. face-smile.png

Certainly what is designed to work at 1 centimeter can't be expected to always translate well at 10 times that size. The opposite is also true. Fingers and thumbs are obviously missing on the large scale images, but such details are lost at the scale of the game.

Case in point:

wl-zocker wrote: What I do not like is the person on the left side: It is nude, it has a strange skin color and the bald head does not look really good. Should it represent the Atlantean tribe? If yes, do they all look like that (I have never seen a big picture of an Atlantean worker)?

Yes, the members of this mysterious race all have a similar skin tone and most of them have light blonde hair and go bare-chested. The men wear their hair in queues (pony-tails) and typically shave the rest of the head including the eyebrows.

The green eyes of all three look strange. The white should be visible.

You can barely see that they HAVE eyes, let alone whites of the eyes, at the scale in the game. face-smile.png

I do not intend at this point in time to refine the images for realism at these large scales.

At the same time, I do not think we need to abandon the idea of using the workers in the icons. Bear with me while I cobble up some more examples at a scale I would suggest for their presentation to the public at large. Something closer to this, say: friends_80x80

If they don't meet expectations (and they may not), I will gladly pursue more symbolic images without the workers in them. (Of course, the little guys will be very disappointed.) face-wink.png


I see little people.

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chuckw
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Posted at: 2012-03-27, 14:26

About the hands: With some thought and ingenuity, I might be able to conceal the absence of their digits by either obscuring the hands in some way or having them hold something. Note that only two of the six hands are visible in the scene above and with the addition of a couple objects, their missing digits could be overlooked. face-smile.png

Edit: I just KNEW the Empire carrier's wave was going to draw attention to their "unique" hands. face-smile-big.png

Edited: 2012-03-27, 14:27

I see little people.

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