Highlighting the alternative to ASI: Brewlan UI!

@Jip good! But personally I would still like another icon (perhaps that double-spanner for T2, single spanner for T1 and triple for T3?).

What do you mean with double-spanner / triple spanner?

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

That icon you just used for the engies is a double-ended spanner... sorry, "wrench" in American.

I seem to misjudge army size dramatically since using the large icons.

Think I need to stop using them.

One problem is that the radar blips remain small, so an army reinforced from the back basically has invisible reinforcements.

That is one of the counter arguments against ASI too - and this doesn't change a bit in that regard. It is useful for 4k displays or people with poor sight.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

@valki
i too find large icons on normal resolution beeing way too big. The normal/small size is in that regard considerably better imo. One thing i want to add is that you dont have to use all icons. Just use the icons which seem useful too you and delete the rest. E.g i deleted nearly all T1 unit icons and most T1 building icons except radar. With this setup I feel the assesment of T1 army sizes is not obscured but you also see mixed in T2/T3 units much better.

To do that, you can open the icon file with a file-archiver program like win rar or 7-zip and delete the icons you dont wanna use. You can also open the icons within using e.g. irfanview with a plugin to see whats what.

@jip said in Highlighting the alternative to ASI: Brewlan UI!:

poor sight

As said that is my problem. With highlighted large icons I gained a lot in being able to identify most units at a glance without putting my eyes close to the screen. However, ultimately, it seems accurately seeing the amount of units might be more important than seeing the type.

I will try the highlighted small icons now. The colors seem useful I will let you know in a week or so.

I assume that making a medium highlighted icon set would have been another heavy pixel-precise drawing job?

First impressions are that the colors are extremely helpful. Despite the icons being smaller identifying tanks from artillery is now easy and immediate.

@Valki / @Cyborg16 After discussing your suggestions with Balthazar we decided that they're not trivial time-wise to implement - this is it for now. We reversed what broke ASI (as far as I am aware) with patch 3724, therefore you can install the medium package of ASI as an potential alternative.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

@jip said in Highlighting the alternative to ASI: Brewlan UI!:

After discussing your suggestions with Balthazar we decided that they're not trivial time-wise to implement

Thank you for discussing it.

If the small icons turn out inadequate for me I will try ASI. So far though, my conclusion is that colors are better than pixels. They are definitely better than classic symbols despite their small size.

If you are going to do anything, I would suggest expanding on the color highlighting.

@Jip thanks for discussing it at least, but no, I'm decided not to use the ASI/Brewlan icon mods. They are too busy; even the Classic version. Blackheart wrote some thoughts on the ASI icons in this thread which is worth a read.

Currently I'm using a 150% upscaled version of the stock icons + Penguin's icons. Unfortunately it seems whatever processing is done in game does not work well with blended pixels, so I applied a sharpen filter which makes the result usable but still disgusting. I'm playing on 4k/28" screen so upscaling is a must (but personally I don't want 200%).