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Topic: Tribal Resource Signs

chuckw
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Posted at: 2012-04-26, 23:07

This thread has been prompted by a discussion around the Bug Report #796690 about the red tint to the Atlantean resource signs. A wish for each tribe to have its own distinct style of resource sign needs to be further explored.

Edited: 2012-04-26, 23:11

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chuckw
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Posted at: 2012-04-26, 23:21

To start off, I present these for use. Because the existing signs have a stoney appearance, I decided to keep that for the Empire signs. A reddish stone sign is attempted for the Atlanteans and a dark wooden sign for the Barbarians.

I designed a new sign and offer it to designate no resources found (the "X") because I often mistook the empty sign for granite and vice versa. face-smile.png

signs

This is the size they appear in the game.

What do you think?


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wl-zocker

Joined: 2011-12-30, 17:37
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Posted at: 2012-04-27, 08:25

I like the idea to give different tribes different ressource signs. I also like the idea to mark an empty place with a cross and not only with an empty sign.

The Barbarian ones look very well; on the dark background, the colors are well visible.

I have no problems with the Atlanteans' red tint. The granite is then even better visible.

That is the problem for the Imperial signs: Both the granite and the cross are badly visible because they are white and the background is also a kind of white. In addition, the white signs cantrast too little to the mountain background. Could you give it a border, or would the inside area then be too small to display a big icon?


"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: 2012-04-27, 09:51

I like all the brackgrounds and find the 'much stuff here' signs easy to read for all of them. However, I have some problem with the "little stuff here" signs - always had, also in S2. I wonder if we can not find an indiciation that uses the whole canvas. The 4 pixels of red are very hard to distinguish from the 4 pixels of black imho. Any ideas?


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renke

Joined: 2012-04-07, 16:47
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Posted at: 2012-04-27, 10:08

a line instead of the dot could be a better visible design: http://gss-konstanz.de/8-kerne-und-nen-typ/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/resource_signs_proposal.png

PS oops, forgot to change Babarian gold. however, the idea should be clear...

Edited: 2012-04-27, 10:09

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chuckw
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Posted at: 2012-04-27, 16:58

@renke - Great idea! You inspired me to take it one (or two) steps further to further increase visibility. face-smile.png

Overall, I turned renke's line into a "plus" sign and in the case of the granite, I added a little highlighting to distinguish it from the background of the empire sign. (After seeing them at this scale, I think I will apply highlighting to the rest of the resource indicators, too, especially the gold and possibly the iron.)

Do you think the plus signs make them look too much like grave markers? face-plain.png I could try a different shape, a triangle maybe. I just think the single line may be almost as difficult to see as the current "dot".

To further improve the visibility of the empire signs on the berg terrain, I added some contrast to the sign's border. Because the Atlantean signs are based on the Empire signs, this change is also reflected on them.

resi 2

What do you think? (I'll work up some triangles and we'll see how they might look.)


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wl-zocker

Joined: 2011-12-30, 17:37
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Posted at: 2012-04-27, 17:24

The signs look much better, but be careful with highlighting the granite and gold: On the Empire sign (where granite is badly visible), the "little granite"-sign looks similar to the "little coal"-sign. The other ressources are well 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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QCS

Joined: 2009-12-29, 22:47
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Posted at: 2012-04-27, 17:44

The longer I think about this, the more I get to the conclusion the little dots which is the content of the sign is simply too small.

What do you, chuckw, think of making the 'high resources' signs different than the 'low resources', and the 'no resources' even different; showing the same content for all cases (a blue rectangle of the same size or whatever for water)? I'm thinking of a 'crowned' sign for the 'high resources', a quite normal sign (like the one we have) for 'low resources' and a very dull sign for 'no resources'...

Edit: To make things clearer: Instead of having different sizes of content for different resource levels, have the same size of content, but different signs for different resource levels.

This way we avoid having to keep distinctions of single dots, and even have a chance of more tribe diversity as every tribe has their own sign?

Edited: 2012-04-27, 17:51

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wl-zocker

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Posted at: 2012-04-27, 18:13

In general, I like the idea of always having a big size of content. But I think that might confuse the user because there will be 3 tribes x 2 ressource levels = 6 different signs, everyone with four or five different contents (coal, iron, gold, granite and water, which has always the "high ressource" sign) plus three empty signs (for each tribe).

We can of course test what it will look like, but I doubt that new users will cope with the different signs and symbols.


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

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chuckw
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Posted at: 2012-04-27, 18:14

@QCS - Your idea has good merit and I'll give it some thought for some examples.

Meanwhile, here are more depictions of what I was trying to verbalize above:

resi 3

Comments?

I'll probably not get to do anything else on this today, but look for me tomorrow with some conceptual graphics based on QCS's idea.


I see little people.

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