Downsides of the Advanced Strategic Icons mod

@archsimkat said in Downsides of the Advanced Strategic Icons mod:

Maybe something to hire a designer for?

This is the part where Brutus busts down the wall, chambers a round as the dust settles, and tells the shocked crowd that we should not pay for dev/design work.

Brutus as the Kool-Aid Man is a funny mental picture

But I do remember him having some good arguments for not paying for that stuff.

Maybe we want an icon tournament? The iconset voted for by the community gets a hundred bucks or so?

How about hiring an outside designer to collaborate with our FAF internal designers?

This is probably the wrong post to discuss that, and we are getting a bit off topic, but its worth keeping in mind nonetheless

I don't like either the defaults or the advanced icon to be honest.

I want an icon mod with:

Must haves:
differentiates between ACU's and SACU's
Prominently displays smd

Nice to haves:
Has some subtle difference between t1,t2 and t3 units
Differentiate between mobile arty and direct assault
Highlight tml and tmd

That's it actually?

None of Brutus arguments for paying for dev features hold for something like paying someone to entirely change icons except for the idea that everyone that devs/does literally anything for FAF will stop because they will want to be paid just as that dude was paid. In which case, how do we rationally explain any caster existing since Gyle is getting paid 1500 a month to dump like one cast a week. Or how do we explain anybody even working on FAF since you can easily go and get paid to dev at like, a job, or freelance work.

You need a reputable dude that has a solid basis in design that ideally cares about FAF, and the money is there to keep in involved in a long-term project which something like icon design is going to be. Not really hard to determine when the person has "fulfilled his job" nor does it involve knowing 6 billion different systems to accomplish.

@cheeseberry said in Downsides of the Advanced Strategic Icons mod:

Maybe we want an icon tournament? The iconset voted for by the community gets a hundred bucks or so?

Absolutely do not do this.

https://www.nospec.com/

@ftxcommando Its something to be discussed for sure, but probably not here.
Information always gets lost in those mega threads and that benefits no-one.

(Almost like with a bad icon set )

@biass said in Downsides of the Advanced Strategic Icons mod:

@cheeseberry said in Downsides of the Advanced Strategic Icons mod:

Maybe we want an icon tournament? The iconset voted for by the community gets a hundred bucks or so?

Absolutely do not do this.

https://www.nospec.com/

Hmm. How about an icon contest with like 5 previously selected entrees where everyone gets paid afterwards, the winner just gets paid more?

Actually that's just the same as hiring 5 designers but with more steps..

Idk man.

How do you make an icon mod anyway? It seems the icons are stored in "Textures.nmd". What do you use to alter this file?

Random "fixes" like this only matter to the people who are/would never do the work in the first place. Otherwise you would realise that this is completely out of any reasonable project scope.

If you're going to hire someone, (which none of you are)
Focus on making the client UX better, or fixing up the webpage that STILL has sc2 images.

These things actually matter more.

@cptant Just wait like 3 days when faf main is updated to allow you upload mods with strategic icons to the vault

@biass Changing the game icons is out of any reasonable scope? Why?

The ASI guy literally proved that it could be done, albeit there is still much to improve there of course.

Also it matters to quite a lot of the most involved and contributing community members. See for example Jip above who has put in at least like 2 months of full time work improving the game, or any of the people here who are sitting on various unpaid council/admin positions out of their own good will. If their voice doesn't count, whose does?

@cheeseberry said in Downsides of the Advanced Strategic Icons mod:

Changing the game icons is out of any reasonable scope? Why?

Because if you're going to spend money, you should spend it on fixing stuff that is far more important. People are in here trying to argue if this "change" (because ASI is not a fix) is even a positive one. Why should you spend money on this instead of for example, the terrible client ui? 99.99% of FAF users are going to be using that UI. That is not the case for an icon mod.

cheeseberry said in Downsides of the Advanced Strategic Icons mod:

The ASI guy literally proved that it could be done,

And? Just because it can be done doesn't mean it should. Do you remember when FAF made the text colours correspond to faction and people literally couldn't read the text when they chose cybran? It was "proven to could be done" but that doesn't mean anything.

cheeseberry said in Downsides of the Advanced Strategic Icons mod:

@biass Changing the game icons is out of any reasonable scope? Why?

The ASI guy literally proved that it could be done, albeit there is still much to improve there of course.

Also it matters to quite a lot of the most involved and contributing community members. See for example Jip above who has put in at least like 2 months of full time work improving the game, or any of the people here who are sitting on various unpaid council/admin positions out of their own good will. If their voice doesn't count, whose does?

Why are you telling this to me? Did you forget like a month ago I was still a councilor here? Did you forget Jip worked with me on many projects? I don't get the point of this outside of this being some pointless arguing. A word of warning though, don't speak on behalf of other people. Like 3 dudes have come in to say they like the icon mod. That's not "quite a lot" and that doesn't mean they're willing to drop donation money on it instead of important shit.

@biass said in Downsides of the Advanced Strategic Icons mod:

@cheeseberry said in Downsides of the Advanced Strategic Icons mod:

Changing the game icons is out of any reasonable scope? Why?

Because if you're going to spend money, you should spend it on fixing stuff that is far more important. People are in here trying to argue if this "change" (because ASI is not a fix) is even a positive one. Why should you spend money on this instead of for example, the terrible client ui? 99.99% of FAF users are going to be using that UI. That is not the case for an icon mod.

So it's not out of any reasonable project scope, you just think we shouldn't prioritize it. That is something different to be discussed then.

Why are you telling this to me? Did you forget like a month ago I was still a councilor here? Did you forget Jip worked with me on many projects? I don't get the point of this outside of this being some pointless arguing. A word of warning though, don't speak on behalf of other people. Like 3 dudes have come in to say they like the icon mod. That's not "quite a lot" and that doesn't mean they're willing to drop donation money on it instead of important shit.

No I didn't forget but you said:

@biass said in Downsides of the Advanced Strategic Icons mod:

Random "fixes" like this only matter to the people who are/would never do the work in the first place.

which is demonstrably untrue, as shown by some of the people here in this thread.

Still, I think that this thread has run its course. Possibly spending patreon money on changing icons is already quite far removed from the downsides of the ASI mod.

I would like to thank everyone for their contributions, I certainly learned a lot, not the least of which that the Advanced Strategic Icons mod does in fact have clear downsides as well!

If you have any more direct comparison pictures (taken at the exact same zoom level and all that) of the ASI mod obfuscating information, especially for land armies, please put them below. As mentioned multiple times, I think that would be a valuable ressource for any future icon modders.

I don't get how minor icon improvements are outside any scope

Is there anyone who thinks differentiating ACU's from SACU's is not worthwhile?
Or giving SMD a more prominent icon?

That's honestly already 80% of current frustration gone.

I don't mind taking a crack at putting together a different set of icons, though it would take time, i've already done it for my own amusement on the medium set of ASI but like others have said, the visibility of units is still quite a bit hit or miss.

It seems that many players are fine with how the general units/tanks/arty and such appear, and many of the complaints stem from the other icons just being "TOO MUCH" visually, which is a fair complaint. I felt the same way when I first used them and while I did get used to them, many times its just a wash of icons.

So I think perhaps just starting out with like others have said with TML, nuke, acu vs sacu ( which i already did for myself) but also perhaps the TML, radar, are still not subtle enough.

what are thoughts on what a good compromise should be? I personally like having the mexes a little more distinguishable, but maybe ASI design just isn't it. I changed my Engies to have 1, 2, and 3 visible because I can't see the little tech lines zoomed out, but maybe that is also too much. I linked that above.

Perhaps people can provide their own versions to find something that could become a new default if it's popular enough. No reason we can't crowdsource this.

@cheeseberry said in Downsides of the Advanced Strategic Icons mod:

So it's not out of any reasonable project scope, you just think we shouldn't prioritize it. That is something different to be discussed then.

Yes, and I think it’s out of any reasonable scope because it is so low priority. Stupid comment.

@cheeseberry said in Downsides of the Advanced Strategic Icons mod:

which is demonstrably untrue, as shown by some of the people here in this thread.

I know you’re new, but I shouldn’t need to explain to any veteran that people will say they want to do something and then won’t do it - including me. This is very extensive free work with a long iterative design phase and large amounts of tedious menial gruntwork. Claims to work on it amount to nothing.

You would be very brave to want to buck the trend but I would hesitate to call it smart - most people need to do jobs that allow them to eat.

Exactly. Instead of arguing further all of you who have issues with the default icons should just start working on better icons. You don't need a tournament for that. And you certainly don't need to argue about throwing money at it and hoping that someone shows up to do it for you.

ASI shows that you should absolutely avoid making the icons bigger than the default ones. Other than that, open any image editor and go to town.

Yep, download GIMP with the DDS plugin and you are good to go. The base icons are pretty small pixel wise, so hard to design something with much definition unless you make it a little larger, which maybe why ASI were bigger in the first place.

If you increase the size you instantly get the issues again with icons overlapping more. If you want to have an icon set with even a chance to have no downsides to the original ones, you need to stick to the size limits.
Of course if you want to just make yet another custom icon you can do whatever.

Well I think it's fine to have slightly larger icons for particularly unique structures like SML or SMD as you rarely build several in a spot. The problem is more when you give big icons for like, everything that goes into a t2 firebase. Structures that are more generic could get bolder shading or whatever for their icon as they increase in tech level or something.