Larger panel or smaller icons?

[Nescio]

A clear majority seems to favour D2875 over D2806. The number of votes hasn't changed in nearly a week.

For the record, I've just updated D2875, which remains principally the same, but now the same icon size is used in various panels (e.g. selection groups). This is how it looks like on minimum resolution (1024×768):

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 7/18/2020 at 1:24 PM, Nescio said:

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2875 (shrink right selection panel icons).

This needs implemented. I've been running this patch for the past 10 days and it works beautifully. It even allows for up to 5 resources to show up in the Market's barter panel. It's the only way some mods can give all buildings to a unit to construct. 

[Stan`]

Do you feel it makes icons harder to distinguish? that's my only concern

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

26 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Do you feel it makes icons harder to distinguish? that's my only concern

I'm having no trouble distinguishing them.  

[Nescio]

12 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

It even allows for up to 5 resources to show up in the Market's barter panel.

Yes, the left selection panel needed to display five columns for formations and stances, therefore there is no reason limit barter resources to four when there is space reserved for five, hence why a fifth resource is supported.

I didn't touch the top panel, though (that's beyond the purpose of the patch).

11 hours ago, Stan` said:

Do you feel it makes icons harder to distinguish? that's my only concern

The distance between the individual icons remains the same.

I have a 3840×2160 screen and play with gui.scale = "2", because otherwise texts are hard to read, but even with gui.scale = "1" I have no difficulty distinguishing icons. That said, I'm biased, of course.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Nescio
3840×2160, not 1920

[myou5e]

On 7/19/2020 at 8:07 PM, OptimusShepard said:

Why don't have a third option? In my opinion, the more icons at once, the worse the clarity.

So I would suggest to splitt them into sub panels like in Spellforce 3.

I can think of three different variations. First possibility, splitting them into phases like Spellforce. Second possibility, splitting them into buildings and units. Or splitting them into civil and military.

I think what you are saying is the same as with the Command & Conquer games which have a tab to click to move between different types of construction. There are 4 tabs. Main Buildings, Defensive Buildings, Infantry, Tanks.

 

[wraitii]

I'm really warming up to D2875/shrink variant, I think.

[Stan`]

23 minutes ago, wraitii said:

I'm really warming up to D2875/shrink variant, I think.

Yeah that's my favourite as well.

[Nescio]

D2806 was uploaded two months ago (June 8), D2875 a month later (July 12), and this poll has been around for a few weeks (July 18), so maybe it's an appropiate time for the team to make a decision?

It's a visible change, but necessary for future additions, and helpful for mods.

[Nescio]

And another month has passed.

@wraitii, @Stan`, other team members?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 7/20/2020 at 8:20 AM, Stan` said:

Indeed. Well I guess that why super sampling is so popular. Unfortunately, I can't really use such high resolution textures for that purpose or @vladislavbelov will yell at me

 

On 7/20/2020 at 8:48 AM, Nescio said:

Is 16×16 really a high resolution texture? Those pngs were created ten (!) years ago, but nowadays some people have 3840×2160 screens, therefore scaling them up is not inappropiate, hence the mod.

I feel like if making the images slightly larger solves the problem then the (very) minor inefficiency is warranted.

The underlying problem remains though as sometimes I see dark lines through the minimap, but that is a different topic than icon sizes.

Let's please get D2875 implemented. 

[Stan`]

Was accepted by @Angen today after requesting fixes.

[Nescio]

14 hours ago, Stan` said:

Was accepted by @Angen today after requesting fixes.

It's not been committed yet, so you or others can still raise objections or request changes.

15 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I feel like if making the images slightly larger solves the problem then the (very) minor inefficiency is warranted.

The underlying problem remains though as sometimes I see dark lines through the minimap, but that is a different topic than icon sizes.

For the sake of discussion:

• The mini map itself is generated by the C++ source code; how scaling is handled is too, I presume. Understanding and changing this is complicated.
• The gui/ JavaScript code defines how various elements interact.
• The gui/ XML files define the sizes and positions.
• The images themselves are art/textures/ui/ PNG images.

D2806 and D2875 change the XML to accommodate more icons. The black line artefacts @Stan` spotted (previous page) are a completely separate issue, which is neither caused nor solved by D2806 or D2875. They don't happen at gui.scale = "1", but do when it is a different factor. To address this I scaled up the border PNG images by a factor 4, which I bundled as a mod. I've now modified and scaled up the minimap_circle_modern.png too, to ensure the ring has about the same line thickness and colour as the panel borders. Here is a new version of the mod:  gui_borders.zip

How it looks at gui.scale = "3" without the mod:

Spoiler

Zoom in and look at the panel corners, as well as at the bottom of the mini map ring.

How it looks at gui.scale = "3" with the mod:

Spoiler

I've tried it at gui.scale factors 1, 2, 3, and 4, and did not encounter those black line artefacts. However, I guess they can still occur at other sizes. Although it's quite unimportant, it's nonetheless an improvement for people with high resolution screens, therefore I'd still recommend @Stan` to commit the scaled up images to the svn public mod.

Interestingly the new 4× versions have actually smaller file sizes, although it's only a couple of kB, therefore presumably negligible.

[Silier]

Now it is.