Leaderboard

As some of you may have noticed, we've created some new structure and technology icons over the past few Alpha releases. Below we'll give you some insight on how these icons come to life. The icons themselves are created at 128x128 pixels or larger, but must remain recognizable when scaled down to 40x40 pixels when used on the game's user interfaces. This need for scalability means the full size icons must have high contrast colours and sometimes include exaggerated shapes, otherwise they will fade and blur too much when scaled down. A few of you have asked how I create icons, so above is an image showing how they can develop from a concept sketch to the finished icon. The handcart technology icon started as a very simple 3D model created in Blender, with texturing applied to a render of the model using Photoshop (GIMP can easily achieve the same result). The Military Engineers icon (above right) started out as a quick rough sketch on a piece of paper which was then scanned and then textured over using Photoshop. Above are some of the new structure icons we've created over the past few months. Many of these are simply higher-definition versions of icons that have been in 0 A.D. for many years, while others are for new buildings or have been redesigned completely. Technology icons such as those above could eventually appear in Tech/Structure trees. Here's a Structure Tree design concept: Ideally this will evolve from a static design concept into an online interactive Structure Tree that updates itself whenever changes are made to 0 A.D. Last but not least, here are some animal and special object icons: I'm not very good at human faces, so some of you may recognize the couple in the above image from the 0 A.D. main menu illustration Another reason for showing these animal icons is because we still need around 40 or more icons for animals, and we need someone with good illustration skills to take on this task. If you'd like to comment on any of these, or have any questions for me, please do so below.

Thanks Ludo38! Here's a small update for what you guys suggested. The hull is more round, the sail is smoother and a couple of the ropes bend in a bit more. The triangle count is at around 550 right now. I could possibly add a bit more geometry, but I believe the gain in quality to be insignificant, so I decided to leave it like this. Please let met know what you guys think.

It's in

New timelapse featuring a track from the ROTE soundtrack written by Tim Cox!

perhaps we could have a more structural field, and maybe not have the soldiers stab it like they do now perhaps sow the field with salt animation, could be the same for sowing to build the field, or something like that. I know it doesnt quite fit in this context just now, but it could be something to consider later.