next »

[eigenbom]

Looks awesome!

[caiys]

you have my interest sir, spiffy 

[gears]

Thanks for the comments guys!

Oooo, sexy new graphics.
I like.
But I'll miss the simpler ones.

I'm sort of glad to see that someone else misses the old graphics, because I do too! It's definitely some loss of simplicity, and part power levels are not nearly as clear. I've thought about incorporating the old style, if not the exact graphics, in a blueprint view.

Thumbnails

Ship thumbnails are currently in progress as part of some weapon group UI work. Thumbnails are part of a blueprints system that allows you to save your lineup of ships and weapon group presets for quick fabrication or repair.

Below is a structure and its rendered icon (shown larger and with bounding circle). Icons will be pretty small, and I'm not sure how well this will work yet. I could also see these used as (procedural?) faction symbols.

Thumbnails might also show up as part of a radar or proximity indicators on the sides of the screen, but those features are low priority. Personally, I'd like it if I could get away without a typical radar cluttering the display, but they can be incredibly useful. I've also considered zooming in/out as an alternative to a radar.

[eigenbom]

What?! No! The other graphics were far superior.

[gears]

What?! No! The other graphics were far superior.

You mean the new graphics with lighting or the neon originals are superior? Nothing's final, so there's plenty of room for tweaking

[eigenbom]

This is bad


This is good


And if it's fleet-based then it'll complement warning forever and captain jameson, rather than compete.

[Netsu]

I too consider the neon-like graphics far sexier actually.
Either way, this looks awesome, can't wait to see it in motion

[sublinimal]

I find the neon style to be more memorable too. Sounds like the sort of game I'd like a lot.

[gears]

This has all been great feedback!

While I like aspects of both styles, I'm revisiting the neon style and looking at ways of visually differentiating enemies (which was the problem the other style attempted to overcome). That's been the sticking point, and I haven't come up with anything I really like yet.

Sandbox/test feature: copy/paste ships
In the meantime, I added a copy/paste feature for testing that was long overdue. Copying a ship puts its text representation on the clipboard, and pasting text attempts to parse the text on the clipboard. The text form has been very helpful for a long time now. The format is my own, but I got the idea of using text visually from Captain Forever.

So copying this:



Puts this on the clipboard:

      /.\p/.\p/.\
    /u\./.\o/.\./u\
  /i\./.\u/ \u/.\./i\
/.\./o\./i\u/i\./o\./.\
\i/.\u/         \u/.\i/

And vice-versa. Any of the rotated variations below paste in the same orientation as the first version, as it's based on the calculated forward direction of the ship:

/i\./u\         /u\./i\
\./.\o/.\i/u\i/.\o/.\./
  \i/.\./u\ /u\./.\i/
    \u/.\./o\./.\u/
      \./p\./p\./
 
        /.\i/.\
        \u/o\./i\
        /i\./.\./u\
      /i\u/ \u/.\./.\
/.\u/o\./.\u/.\o/.\p/
\i/.\./i\./u\./.\p/
 
/i\./.\i/.\u/.\./p\
\./u\o/.\./u\./o\./p\
      \i/u\ /u\./.\./
        \i/.\./.\u/
        /u\o/.\i/
        \./i\./
 
      /.\p/.\p/.\
    /u\./.\o/.\./u\
  /i\./.\u/ \u/.\./i\
/.\./o\./i\u/i\./o\./.\
\i/.\u/         \u/.\i/

[PythonBlue]

Looks very interesting, indeed!

[gears]

Experimenting with a darker color theme for enemies (yes, neon style is the way forward):



My intent is to show the team/alignment through the core glow and overall theme, but I still want to indicate power levels using hues in the same way as the player's ships.. without making it a giant mess of random/clashing colors that no one can understand.

[eigenbom]

bewdiful!

[gears]

bewdiful!

Glad to regain your approval!

[eigenbom]

bewdiful!

Glad to regain your approval!

Be careful, I may turn again at any moment.. 

[lithander]

I liked the new graphics. They just were a little hard to read... maybe a combination of the two?

The approach of having an Ascii representation of ships that you can copy&paste is so cool! You found a neat way to map a hex-grid to text that preserves the look & feel.