It would be nice to have control over which icons would take precedence in foreground focus. i noticed when modifying files, that sometimes the wrong thing would overlap, e.g. the mass storage would block out the mex, but i'm not sure what caused it.

while i use the advanced strategic icons mods, with the medium icons and in higher resolution, the overlap can be an issue in certain situations. A big thing I didn't like with them was that the white border could be obnoxious with a lot of units, and other items such as storage around mexes was less discernible when zoomed out.

which is why i modified the icons to make them a little less garish. Where possible, I adjusted some icons to be slightly different size to differentiate tech levels, etc. other icons such as t3 gunship and t3 bomber, i changed the tactical icon because i couldn't tell them apart when zoomed out.

here is my take for anyone that wants to give it a try, just backup your original file in case you don't like. all based on medium set, since i run a higher resolution.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BztpHQoY-zDCZccRLE_zJ370G9kwl-fX/view?usp=sharing

While the borders are probably intended to help differentiate it at a glance, I agree that these borders aren't really necessary, or there is simply a better way to go about it. Maybe I'll try and modify the default icon set to bridge the gap between the two to find a happy medium. I wish the icons were vector based.

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.

We discussed this a bit one the other thread. TML, sacu and nukes are obvious choices.

I changed both the t3 gunship and t3 bomber to use the armored t3 bot x emblem instead of the + because it was easier to see at a glance. The T2 and t3 gunships are especially hard for me to distinguish zoomed out but this small change helps.

Making some icons, a pixel wider, while subtle helps to differentiate tech level.

I would personally like to have kennel drone engies be able to have different icon from default engineers.

I plan to test the default icon set to see what pixel size starts to cause overlap issues, and to test different sizes to increase visibility without adding clutter.

I would also like to point out that some of ASI issues is that the white borders are just too pronounced in some cases and making them thinner worked for me.

Cptant. I put a sash over sacu. Simple but easy to spot.

@Resistance lobby.txt

This isn't perfect, but I updated kyro's for UI scaling, and few other things that didn't work. It still has issues though which I cannot fix, such as colors not always assigning correctly. Works fine for me otherwise. You will have to rename it from txt to lua since it wouldn't let me upload it otherwise.

are you playing with it set to only display on secondary monitor? maybe having both laptop screen and secondary monitor running is causing an issue.

some older games do weird things when told to run on a secondary monitor that isn't the primary. easy enough to rule out, by setting it to only display on the external monitor.

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.

Updated this so it would work with any UI scaling, with other misc changes.

Also added additional buttons to change Share Mode and Balance without going into options menu.

Player color menu will only show available colors that are still left, because that annoyed me.

For those who've never used it, it's simply shows the Teams separated into two columns with each team rating and game count to more easily see the balancing.

there is a drop drop down menu with different sort options so the proper opposing slots are matched up. This unfortunately will not line up slots perfectly in all maps, but it still makes it easier to balance the teams if not the slots.

It reverts to default single column for non team games, or if you disable it from Team Sorting Menu.

Readme.txt has more details on install, and other changes. Click the the download button in upper right to download the zip file.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iLzboy6N6AHiSoTA-EEHi2ZWosSu2OsF/view?usp=sharing

i don't know about your particular laptop, but hdmi doesn't always work well with higher refresh rate monitors if the hdmi isn't the newer specification.

i had similar issues with a gtx 1070 going through a 120hz monitor, could only play stable at 60hz through hdmi, and when i upgraded to a 2070 it improved quite a bit, but that was on a desktop. may want to just get the mini display port adapter/cable first before you do anything else, they are cheap, but make sure you get the newer display port version, i forget what it is off the top of my head, but even an older cable won't support higher refresh rate.

you can also force the video card its using in nvidia control panel, but it sounds like you already did that.

Correct if the HDMI supports the higher refresh rate than it must be okay or the newer version.

Mini dp to dp isn't the issue as they are both display port just with a different connector. It's only an issue when the port is using an older version and the monitor requires the newer version to reach the higher refresh rate. This was more an issue on older stuff when needed to run 4k at 120 Hz but the older spec dp cables could only do 60hz, or the video card didn't support it. Sounds like none of this applies to you here.

Updated this so it would work with any UI scaling, with other misc changes.

Also added additional buttons to change Share Mode and Balance without going into options menu.

Player color menu will only show available colors that are still left, because that annoyed me.

For those who've never used it, it's simply shows the Teams separated into two columns with each team rating and game count to more easily see the balancing.

there is a drop drop down menu with different sort options so the proper opposing slots are matched up. This unfortunately will not line up slots perfectly in all maps, but it still makes it easier to balance the teams if not the slots.

It reverts to default single column for non team games, or if you disable it from Team Sorting Menu.

Readme.txt has more details on install, and other changes. Click the the download button in upper right to download the zip file.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iLzboy6N6AHiSoTA-EEHi2ZWosSu2OsF/view?usp=sharing

I meant more that i don't want some icons to get bigger and overlap. Just stay small size when you zoom out, except maybe i do want to see that TML etc.

It would be nice to have control over scaling as you zoom out, but no clue if that is even possible. Sometimes i feel like I just want some icons to scale while others i know i just need to zoom in.

I'll post images of my changes later for debate.

We discussed this a bit one the other thread. TML, sacu and nukes are obvious choices.

I changed both the t3 gunship and t3 bomber to use the armored t3 bot x emblem instead of the + because it was easier to see at a glance. The T2 and t3 gunships are especially hard for me to distinguish zoomed out but this small change helps.

Making some icons, a pixel wider, while subtle helps to differentiate tech level.

I would personally like to have kennel drone engies be able to have different icon from default engineers.

I plan to test the default icon set to see what pixel size starts to cause overlap issues, and to test different sizes to increase visibility without adding clutter.

I would also like to point out that some of ASI issues is that the white borders are just too pronounced in some cases and making them thinner worked for me.

Cptant. I put a sash over sacu. Simple but easy to spot.

The different player colors probably prevent having unique enough shading to be noticeable, or they would work with some colors, but not others. Some things like TML don't really need a player color, but unique shapes are also feasible. The ASI mexes sorta already do this with with center square turning into an x like symbol that gets slightly larger. Maybe SAM, and Radar can have their own shape for instance. The Radar doesn't necessary have to be square, everyone recognizes the radar symbol on its own, as long as it stands out from the map textures.

don't know if this is relevant, but did you delete the corresponding folder in documentss\my games\gas powered games\forged alliance\mods\

i've had at least once instance where a mod wouldn't install/update until I manually deleted the folder there, and then redownloaded from vault.

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.

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.

are you playing with it set to only display on secondary monitor? maybe having both laptop screen and secondary monitor running is causing an issue.

some older games do weird things when told to run on a secondary monitor that isn't the primary. easy enough to rule out, by setting it to only display on the external monitor.