Unit Depictions on Screen

[Neilster]

All I can think of for displaying the long names is to replace some letters with an apostrophe. The full name can be in the unit dialog box and/or documentation.

Cheers, Neilster

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Neilster
All I can think of for displaying the long names is to replace some letters with an apostrophe. The full name can be in the unit dialog box and/or documentation.

Cheers, Neilster

I plan on using abbreviations. They will be stored in the unit data file as well as the full name. If there is no abbreviation, then the full name will be used.

However, I think I'll write special code just for the 800 mm German gun because its name is neat. I'll put its name on two lines like it is on the counter.

[c92nichj]

Would it be possible to post screenshots with the different resolutions? For example how will your medium and low resolution look like, when I played CWIF I mostly used the 75% size to fit as much as possible of the map on the screen.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: c92nichj

Would it be possible to post screenshots with the different resolutions? For example how will your medium and low resolution look like, when I played CWIF I mostly used the 75% size to fit as much as possible of the map on the screen.

There is so much conversion going on (BMP -> CDR -> JPEG) that it wouldn't be possible to tell if the loss of legibility were due to the 75% resolution or something else.

Medium resolution will drop the unit names for the land units, and replace the WIF counter images for the air and naval units with more or less what CWIF used - 2 color icons. I might increase the font size of the combat values too.

Low resolution will replace the more complex NATO symbols with somthing simple (e.g., X for infantry, O for armor) and definiitely increase the font size. For air and naval units I am thinking of going with just the 4 corner numbers in a larger font, plus a simple 2 color icon.

For your purposes, playing at 75% resolution shouldn't be any harder in MWIF than it was in CWIF. I am trying to improve on it if I can.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here are revised units for the Japanese. I have replaced the divisional interiors. I tried Patrice's pink but it was a disaster. The red just overwhelmed it. The more neutral pale yellow works ok. I lightened the interior of the corp units though not by much. When I made them too bright, they looked the same as the basic red for Japan and the interior disappeared. The militia symbol is more legible here

[Glen Felzien]

These look super. Yup. Very nice indeed.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here are the SS units intermixed with some regular German army units. The SS needed a lot of work for a variety of reasons. I replaced the red from the counter sheets with yellow. I just couldn't get the red bright enough to be seen as lower resolutions. The black surrounding it seemed to absorb it visually. The yellow might take some getting use to for those of you expecting red. However, the numbers are clearly visible now even when zooming out to 100%. No more squinting and eye strain.

I am now making the color of the M for the militia match the outline for the NATO symbol. This has the benefit of making it stand out more sharply.

I am keeping the blue for the flying boats as it was before. Patrice asked for it to match the color of the sea and I considered doing that. But these units can land in lake hexsides too and the color for the lakes, coastal hexes, and all sea hexes are 3 different shades of blue. So I punted, and kept the existing blue because it is so very easy to read the white number against it.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

The Canadians. Next on my list is to add the letters CA to the right of the NATO symbol, rotated 90 degrees. The color will be yellow. I will do the same for all the Commonwealth member nations: NZ, AU, IN, SA, and UK.

I had to choose between two conflicting standards here: (1) white print units get white interiors and (2) Canadians get yellow interiors. I went with the white interiors and I am adding the letters to compensate for the linformation that is lost by not using yellow.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

The Aussies. Note that both the elite and the standard army units have white interiors and red outlines for their NATO symbols. The only distinguishing characteristic is the white lettering versus black for the names and unit size (XXX). AU needs to be added top all these units.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

And New Zealand (the Kiwis).

[Glen Felzien]

Pale yellow on black for the SS units looks good; especially if it makes viewing easier. I know it has been a while since I last played but I remember all SS units were "white" print. Why is there both white and yellow?

Personally I like the yellow interior for all Canuck units. This would leave the actual numbers to distinguish between white and black print units. To me that's cool. Has something changed over the last few years to make white interiors mean something else.

Could the interior of the NZ units be a slight different shade of blue as compared to the surrounding colour if for no other reason than to add further colour to the unit pallete as a whole?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Glen Felzien

Pale yellow on black for the SS units looks good; especially if it makes viewing easier. I know it has been a while since I last played but I remember all SS units were "white" print. Why is there both white and yellow?

Personally I like the yellow interior for all Canuck units. This would leave the actual numbers to distinguish between white and black print units. To me that's cool. Has something changed over the last few years to make white interiors mean something else.

Could the interior of the NZ units be a slight different shade of blue as compared to the surrounding colour if for no other reason than to add further colour to the unit pallete as a whole?

The counter sheets have SS units with white lettering and red lettering. The white are elite, the red aren't. In the rules, the term "white print unit" means elite and there are different rules for them concerning their strength when out of supply.

Wait until after I add the CA, NZ, et al for final judgment on the member nation colors. For example, the NZ territorial unit has the letter T in white. The NZ will alo be white and use a slightly larger font. Making the interior of the NZ units darker is always a possibility.

I have found that changing 2 colors at once on the same unit never works out. They need to be tweaked a bit at time and kind of cajoled into becoming beautiful. It makes me think of women getting ready for an important evening out.

[Alexander Seil]

Well, if there is a conflict of principles, shouldn't the distinction between units of different nations take precedence? If doing white backgrounds for Commonwealth units makes them look like Australians, drop that principle in favor of white print. Otherwise, the player frustration will know no bounds, besides the fact that it will look downright silly.


By the way, the newer pics of the terrain look good...maybe I won't bother with changing it all to CWiF standard [:D]

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Alexander Seil
Well, if there is a conflict of principles, shouldn't the distinction between units of different nations take precedence? If doing white backgrounds for Commonwealth units makes them look like Australians, drop that principle in favor of white print. Otherwise, the player frustration will know no bounds, besides the fact that it will look downright silly.

By the way, the newer pics of the terrain look good...maybe I won't bother with changing it all to CWiF standard [:D]

As I often do, I am going to step back a bit and present a broader understanding of the problem. It would be nice if I could give a quick and short response to your suggestion, but there just isn't one.

First here is part of post #10 from this thread:
==========
There seem to be several different pieces of information we would like to convey using horizontal stripes:

1 - lend leased units

2 - loaned units (which major power moves the unit - may be temporary)

3 - aligned units (which major power controls the aligned country and therefore the unit)

4 - captured units (originally owned by another nation but now in the employ of a major power)

Examples:

1 - usually USA planes to CW or USSR

2 - CW units in France during 1940; Italian units in USSR; German units in Africa

3 - Rumania, Hungary, Finland to Germany; Netherlands, Belgium, Poland to CW; Manchuria, Korea, French Indo-China to Japan;

4 - Bearn to USA, Yugoslavian CA to Italy, French sub to Italy, Danish and Norwegian naval units to CW

As the code currently stands the solutions to these 4 caases are:

1 - central stripes added to unit to indicate the source country (they might want it back)

2 - bottom stripe added to unit to indicate controlling country (the control is only temporary)

3 - the original colors of the unit are unchanged; the countries themselves get half flags of the controlling major power to indicate their possession is through alignment

4 - the original colors of the unit are unchanged; I actually have been making changes to the code to accomplish this during setup of the later scenarios; it is a real pain because the country has either been conquered completely or partially and its units have been marked as removed from the game. I have to perform CPR on them to get them back. I have been preserving the original color scheme because I like the visual of the CW having naval units from a wide diversity of countries under its control.

That's the problem, the goals, and the current status.

Ideas? I'm going to work on other stuff while you thrash this out.
================

In reviewing the existing code, I have found that territorial units have their base color set to that of the controlling player. This has some surprising effects, that after reflection are correct. The conquered Ethiopian units are red, as they will be if they are liberated. The Ethiopian territorial units are light green to match their conqueror, the Italians. Now the Italians can't build them, so it doesn't really matter. I get the same effect for the Senegalese, and the NEI. The NEI territorial uses the Commonwealth base color, but the NEI militia unit does not. It has the Netherlands base color.

So, as currently coded, the territorial units change their base color to match the controlling player.

I have no real preference about all this at the present. The problem has been noticed only recently, and I haven't thought it through. Indeed, I am still gathering a better understanding of all the issues involved and looking forward to recommendations from forum members.

The problem is that the colors communicate information. There are at least two pieces of information we would like to gain from the color of a unit: (1) what country is it from, and (2) which major power controls it. The former dictates whether it may be lost because its owning country gets conquered. The latter lets us know which units can cooperate in attacks (particularly air and land units). Both of these are important to game play and are not merely eye candy.

[Alexander Seil]

I do not see, then, why the code should be changed at all, although Territorials should still show up in their "political", rather than military, controller's colors (KNIL troops shouldn't be showing up as British). As for captured units, is there any need for a *solution* other than making them show up as a unit fully belonging to the conquering nation? What's the use of knowing that such and such ship was captured from, say, Finland if that has no bearing on its behavior?

To get back to my original point, though, while having different backgrounds for elite and regular units is fine, the limitation to that rule should be that units must be distinguished by nationality using colors alone, as anything else is contrary to common sense and practice in other wargames.

[Glen Felzien]

The counter sheets have SS units with white lettering and red lettering. The white are elite, the red aren't. In the rules, the term "white print unit" means elite and there are different rules for them concerning their strength when out of supply.

Ah ok, things have changed since I last played. The SS units where valued due to them all be white print but the game has evolved much since then.

[scout1]

Dumb question. What happens if the player is color blind ?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Alexander Seil

1 - As for captured units, is there any need for a *solution* other than making them show up as a unit fully belonging to the conquering nation? What's the use of knowing that such and such ship was captured from, say, Finland if that has no bearing on its behavior?

2 - To get back to my original point, though, while having different backgrounds for elite and regular units is fine, the limitation to that rule should be that units must be distinguished by nationality using colors alone, as anything else is contrary to common sense and practice in other wargames.

1 - There is a continuous desire for historical verisimilitude. The Commonwealth has naval units from a whole lot of different countries. Rather than make them all apear identical, providing some indication of their provenence makes for a more interesting visual. There is a balance to be maintained here though. If the diversity of colors interferes with playing the game, then it is excessive. I am still seeking to fine tune that balance, and since it is subjective, I am trying to adjust it to suit as many players as I can. As always, success is having the number of players who think it is too much equal the number who think it is too little. Hopefully those are both small numbers.

2 - Color hue, color brightness, color contrast, shape, size, texture, and positioning are the tools for distinguishing one unit from another.

Keeping the position of things the same makes it easy for the player to interpret what the number, letter, icon, or symbol means, so changing the positioning of an element of the unit depiction is sort of off limits.

There aren't enough pixels to do texture very well.

Size is dynamic with zoom but it can be used in relative terms. However, there aren't a lot of pixels to play around with.

Shape is what we have been using to determining unit type for land units (the NATO symbol). It will also be used for air and naval units: fighters, bombers, ATR, naval air, and carrier planes each have a fundamental shape.

Which leaves us primarily with the colors to communicate ownership (original, borrowed, lend leased, controller). Hue is the most striking way to do this but it is invisible to some players. Brightness and contrast are more universally visible.

The banding proposed previously works very nicely too but it is heavy handed. It should be applied only rarely, or else the units on the map would become so diverse that all the meaning of the colors would be lost.
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And so we tweak our way along. Strong emotions on this topic actually hinder progress. I strive for a relaxed open mind when listening to suggestions. Once I have it all decided and coded, then I will harden my position - though the play testers will get another shot at complaining about things and forcing me to recode stuff.

Today I increased the number of bits for unit types from 6 to 7, so instead of an upper limit of 64 unit types I now have 128. The current count is exactly 64 and I need to add new unit types for Cruisers in Flames and Convoys in Flames.

[Glen Felzien]

Dumb question. What happens if the player is color blind ?

lol Not so dumb. One of our regulars played with several groups I was in. It was years before we found out he was colour blind! He told us that although he was not always sure (Italians on the Pacific map, Japanese on the European) he depended on the unit shades as much as colour. Frankly, I would never have guessed it until the two force pools were layed out side by side and he began deploying Italians in Japan!

[pak19652002]

I'm another member of this forgotten minority and have raised this issue several times in the past. Steve has assured me that Matrix publishes its games in full compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.[;)]

In other words, he promised to make important information available in ways color blind people can perceive.

I faithfully label every Italian unit in the CyberBoard production circle, because they look EXACTLY the same to me. The US and Russians look very similar also because it's red and green that most color blind men can't distinguish. I call the color I see GRED. That's the best way I can describe it to normals. The red or green in any color fades or disappears depending on the severity of the color blindness as well as other factors such as color intensity, lighting, etc.

Peter

P.S. You'd be surprised how easy it is to conceal color blindness...even from yourself. I didn't even know I was color blind until, at 22, the Navy disqualified me after I failed the test. But, that's a story for another day...