NextUI.Icons - A Modern Strategic Icon Overhaul
Hi everyone!
I've been working on a new strategic icon mod, and I'd love to share it with the community.
The goal of this project is to preserve the original Forged Alliance strategic icon artwork while adding subtle, elegant visual cues that make important information easier to recognize at a glance.
The mod will also add an upgrade animation to all the upgrading structures.
The project is open source and available at the FAF client:
And Github:
https://github.com/NextUI-FAF/Icons
The philosophy behind this mod is simple:
Keep the original FAF strategic icons while enhancing them with essential visual information without cluttering the UI.
Icon Generator
To make creating and maintaining icons easier, I also developed Icon Generator, a Python-based tool included in the repository.
It allows you to:
- Generate new strategic icons
- Modify existing ones
- Customize colors and symbols
- Automatically generate preview galleries of all icons
Complete documentation is available in the repository.
Generated previews are automatically saved to:
icon-generator/previews/
About the Colors
Finding colors that survived DXT5 compression while remaining distinguishable in-game turned out to be much harder than expected.
After a lot of testing, these are the colors that consistently produced good results:
# Working colors with DXT5 compression, tested in-game.
# These colors are safe for strategic icon symbols in the tested layouts.
black = "#000000"
white = "#ffffff"
blue_tactical_navy = "#051C33"
silver_bright = "#c9d2dc"
red_signal = "#ff4d57"
red_bright = "#ff3855"
red_orange = "#ff594d"
coral_warning = "#ff6b57"
orange_safety = "#ff9f43"
peach_bright = "#ffad80"
yellow = "#ffff33"
gold_bright = "#ffd84d"
amber_signal = "#ffbf24"
ochre_bright = "#dba82b"
sand_bright = "#e8cf91"
green = "#4dff70"
lime_energy = "#b8ff4d"
green_neon = "#39ff88"
mint_bright = "#66ffd1"
turquoise_bright = "#33e6c4"
cyan_ice = "#66f2ff"
cyan_pale = "#bffcff"
blue_light = "#27d9ff"
blue_electric = "#4d9dff"
indigo_bright = "#6670ff"
periwinkle = "#91a1ff"
pink_signal = "#ff5cce"
violet_electric = "#9d5cff"
purple_bright = "#c45cff"
magenta_vivid = "#f238ff"
lavender_bright = "#c7a6ff"
Player Color
The game replaces the following color with the owning player's color:
player_color = "#7b7d7b"
Avoid using this color for custom symbols unless you intentionally want them to inherit the player's color.
Additional Candidate Colors
I didn't have time to test these in-game, but based on previous results there's a good chance they'll also survive DXT5 compression.
If anyone tests these, I'd love to hear the results.
copper_bright = "#d98245"
orange_bright = "#ffb347"
yellow_soft = "#fff066"
chartreuse_bright = "#c8ff57"
green_spring = "#57ff7a"
emerald_bright = "#4dff9a"
seafoam_bright = "#8affd1"
teal_neon = "#33ffd6"
sky_bright = "#66d9ff"
blue_ice = "#8abfff"
rose_bright = "#ff6ba8"
pink_soft = "#ff8fd8"
FAF Player Colors
For reference, these are the colors defined in GameColors.lua.
I don't recommend using them for strategic icon symbols, since they can easily be confused with player ownership or become difficult to distinguish against friendly units.
FAF_PLAYER_COLORS = {
"cybran_red": "#e80a0a",
"dark_red": "#901427",
"nomads_orange": "#ff873e",
"brown": "#b76518",
"sera_golden": "#a79602",
"yellow": "#fafa00",
"order_green": "#9fd802",
"mid_green": "#40bf40",
"green": "#2e8b57",
"olive_dark_green": "#2f4f4f",
"blue": "#436eee",
"uef_blue": "#2929e1",
"dark_purple": "#5f01a7",
"purple": "#9161ff",
"aqua": "#66ffcc",
"white": "#ffffff",
"grey": "#616d7e",
"pink": "#ff88ff",
"fuschia": "#ff32ff",
}
I'd really appreciate any feedback, suggestions, or ideas for additional icons.
If you create your own icons with the generator, feel free to share them!
