Unit Depictions on Screen

[scout1]

OK, until you posted the Germans, I had a question (that covered ALL examples). All the counters (except the germans now) have 6 retangular boxes at the top of the counter. Does these serve some purpose ?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: scout1

OK, until you posted the Germans, I had a question (that covered ALL examples). All the counters (except the germans now) have 6 retangular boxes at the top of the counter. Does these serve some purpose ?

I haven't gone into these in detail and I want to. There are a host of different colors associated with the status boxes that tell you the status of the unit. Right now (taken straight from CWIF source code) they mean the following:

1: Sentry, Flying, Selected
2: Damaged, Forced to abort, Disrupted, No pilot, 1st build cycle
3: Loaded, Transported
4: Combat strength doubled, Staying at sea
5: Supply, Isolated
6: Unit has attached note
7: Unit on loan

I know there are only 6 boxes but 7 cases. It doesn't make sense to me either. The mulitple meanings mostly have to do with unit type. For example, box #4 informs about land units being doubled in combat strength (HQ support or engineer) and has the meaning the unit is staying at sea for naval units.

I don't want to get into this right now. It all needs a thorough review. Each box that is colored other than white has associated text describing what the color means for that particular unit. So you get a message that the unit is out of supply as well as seeing the box colored black (I think it's colored black for out of supply).

When I do get to this I will start with a clean slate and decide what information we want to communicate using the status boxes. For example, at first glance, #6 and #7 don't seem important enough to warrant the pixels.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

OK, this is for all you guys that made fun of my last attempt at an anchor for the marine ANTO symbol. Mziln's graphic of the actual marine emblem was my reference.

[dhatchen]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

OK, this is for all you guys that made fun of my last attempt at an anchor for the marine ANTO symbol. Mziln's graphic of the actual marine emblem was my reference.

As one of "all you guys" I simply have to respond. They are perfect, these I like!

In the German SS counters above, I don't really like the red either.

[amwild]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

OK, this is for all you guys that made fun of my last attempt at an anchor for the marine ANTO symbol. Mziln's graphic of the actual marine emblem was my reference.

Looks pretty good to me. You could try extending the cross over which the anchor lies inside the anchor's flukes and stock, and see how it looks. I think it should look like there is an invisible border around the anchor, not like you've cleared away the dark pixels from the area the anchor goes into.

ORIGINAL: dhatchen

In the German SS counters above, I don't really like the red either.

I have no problem with outlining to make text more visible, as long as you are consistent with it across all nations' units. As a relative newcomer to WiF, inconsistency in this manner makes me wonder if there is any special significance to this appearance beyond mere visibility. The red against the black is a bit low in contrast, so the red could stand to be more orange.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

Here is a pass at using red for the German SS non-elite units and outlining it in white.

You can see the pure red in the name of the unit and the alternate yellow in the unit size (XXX) and reserve letter (R).

I prefer the yellow. I find the plain red hard to read and the outlined red somewhat strange compared to the numbers on other units (e.g. the German SS elite also shown here).

Well, I agree that the outlined red is somewhat strange, but I prefer it rather than the yellow. At least those SS look like SS (those from the game).
But I'm sure the pure red would be fine, even if slightly difficult to read, it would not be purely impossible or impairing the game.

[Froonp]

1: Sentry, Flying, Selected
2: Damaged, Forced to abort, Disrupted, No pilot, 1st build cycle
3: Loaded, Transported
4: Combat strength doubled, Staying at sea
5: Supply, Isolated
6: Unit has attached note
7: Unit on loan

I already posted this in another thread a long time agon, but I post it here again, it may help.
It is straight from the old CWiF help system.

[Froonp]

When I do get to this I will start with a clean slate and decide what information we want to communicate using the status boxes. For example, at first glance, #6 and #7 don't seem important enough to warrant the pixels.

Yes, especially because loaned units already have the color of the counter changed (I posted a picture in another thread, or in this one, don't remember).

[Froonp]

OK, this is for all you guys that made fun of my last attempt at an anchor for the marine ANTO symbol. Mziln's graphic of the actual marine emblem was my reference.

OK, these anchors are great, as are the ARM symbols [:D]
Have you tried not to erase the INF cross on the back of the anchor ?

[Caranorn]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

Here is a pass at using red for the German SS non-elite units and outlining it in white.

You can see the pure red in the name of the unit and the alternate yellow in the unit size (XXX) and reserve letter (R).

I prefer the yellow. I find the plain red hard to read and the outlined red somewhat strange compared to the numbers on other units (e.g. the German SS elite also shown here).

To me the red with white outline looks great. The yellow (of the corps/division symbols) is appears almost identical to the white of the elite units. Though maybe all of that is different yet within the game (BMP vs. Jpeg). If it were up to me I'd use the outlined text.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp
OK, these anchors are great, as are the ARM symbols [:D]
Have you tried not to erase the INF cross on the back of the anchor ?

A full X confuses the image of the X with the ends of the anchors. I'll try extending it into the middle some more. The length of the X is already a little imbalanced top to bottom.

[buckyzoom]

SWEET! I really like the MAR unit.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
Here is a pass at using red for the German SS non-elite units and outlining it in white.

You can see the pure red in the name of the unit and the alternate yellow in the unit size (XXX) and reserve letter (R).

I prefer the yellow. I find the plain red hard to read and the outlined red somewhat strange compared to the numbers on other units (e.g. the German SS elite also shown here).

Well, I agree that the outlined red is somewhat strange, but I prefer it rather than the yellow. At least those SS look like SS (those from the game).
But I'm sure the pure red would be fine, even if slightly difficult to read, it would not be purely impossible or impairing the game.

I am ready to wrap up the design for the land units at high resolution.

First I want to redo how the colors are stored in the CSV data files. Right now there are 7 colors and one boolean flag for each country. I will expand that to 11 colors and 2 boolean flags. That will simplify the coding and give the players more control over the colors if they want to change them. I will have to make changes to the data files and also to the code, so it uses the new data correctly.

I have a draft of where each of the 11 colors will be used. When I have it finalized, I'll post it.

In my opinion the red doesn't work. Reading the II SS, V SS is easy. Reading the I SS, 8 SS is hard. Reading 'Paris' is very hard. This is at maximum size (level 8) and when the counters are reduced even 1 level, it becomes harder. I want the high resolution counters to be legible at levels 8, 7, and 6, though the last will be pushing it.

Anyway, I'll set the default for the regular SS units as yellow and if the players want to change it, they can.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here is my current design document for redesigning how colors are stored in the data files for each country and where they are used when rendering the unit counter images on the screen.
==================================
Unit Colors
(as of January 9, 2006)

There are 3 levels of resolution for the unit counters: high, medium, and low. The high resolution contains the most information and requires the most control over colors. There are 3 basic unit types: land, air, and naval. The land is the most demanding because of the wide variety of unit types within that group.

The colors are stored by country, though there are some subcountries for which colors are irrelevant because they have no units (e.g., Karelia, Bessarabia). The colors for the Communist Chinese are hard coded into the program, as are the colors for airborne, marine, and artillery units. That might change at a later date.

All the colors are stored in RGB format. This is a hexadecimal number of 6 digits. The leftmost two digits are the Blue intensity, the middle are the Green intensity, and the rightmost are the Red intensity. This is backwards (i.e., BGR), but I didn’t design the format. Each 2 hexadecimal number ranges from $00 to $FF (0 to 255). The $ indicates that it is hexadecimal. Pure red is $0000FF; pure green is $00FF00; and pure blue is $FF0000. White is $FFFFFF and black is $000000. The program also accepts these basic colors as clRed, clGreen, clBlue, clWhite, and clBlack. There are about a dozen others available as clXXXX but you can get perfect control using the hexadecimal digits.

Here are the data fields for the colors that are part of each country’s data.

1 Basic color. This is the background color for all the country’s units: land, air, and naval.

2 Icon color. This is the color used for the icon silhouette for the air and naval units at medium and low resolution.

3 Text color. This is the color used for all the numbers for air and naval units that do not appear in circles/rectangles. It is also used for a land unit when writing its name, size (XXX), reserve status (R), and country abbreviation.

4 Strength-movement color for non-elite. The color used for the strength and movement factor for non-elite land units.

5 Strength-movement outline flag for elite. When this boolean variable is true (i.e., -1), the elite unit’s strength - movement numbers are written inside a black outline. This is used for countries that have a very light basic color (#1) so the white numbers used for elite units have higher contrast and can be seen. It is set to true for the Chinese, Italians, and French.

6 Strength-movement outline flag for non-elite. This is similar to #5. It is not used in the default color setting for any country but is available to players for making increasing the contrast for non-elite units. For example, it can be used when using red for #4 for the German SS.

7 Outline color for #6. This is the color that is used for the outline when #6 is set to true.

8 Outline color for NATO symbol for non-elite. Non-elite units use this color for the outline of the NATO symbol and the graphic (e.g., X for infantry, / for cavalry).

9 Outline color for NATO symbol for elite. Elite units use this color for the outline of the NATO symbol and the graphic (e.g., X for infantry, / for cavalry).

10 Letter color for NATO symbol non-elite . This color is used for non-elite units for the M, T, and P letters inside the NATO symbol (for Militia, Territorial, and Partisan units respectively).

11 Letter color for NATO symbol for elite . This color is used for elite units for the M, T, and P letters inside the NATO symbol (for Militia, Territorial, and Partisan units respectively).

12 Interior color for NATO symbol for non-elite. This is the color used for the interior of the NATO symbol for non-elite, non-division units. Elite units have white interiors (exception: Commonwealth member nations do not have white interiors). Divisional units use the color #13. This color is typically a darker version of #1. This color is not used for airborne or marine units. Instead, those units have the hard coded colors for their respective types (light blue and light green).

13 Interior color for NATO symbol for divisions. This is the color used for the interior of the NATO symbol for divisional units. This color is not used for artillery, airborne, or marine divisions. Instead, those units have the hard coded colors for their respective types (light blue, light blue, and light green).

[YohanTM2]

Make sure you keep the colours bold for us partially or more colour blind folks. I remember when I was playtesting WaW I pointed this out a number of times. I like the R for Reserve.

Rob

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Yohan

Make sure you keep the colours bold for us partially or more colour blind folks. I remember when I was playtesting WaW I pointed this out a number of times. I like the R for Reserve.

Rob

Check out the posts # 180, 181, 182, 186, and 187. Are all the different nationalities obvious to you?

The last two posts were expressly for the purpose of receiving comments/suggestions/criticisms from people who see colors differently. I have one note associated with those 5 posts concerning a problem identifying unit nationality by color. Let me know if I should have more concerns about them.

You could think of it as a responsibility to all your brethen who see colors the same way you do.[;)]

[Caranorn]

The funny part is that the issue of SS non elite unit readability for color blind people has possibly led to a problem for those among us who are not (according to the tests I'm not, I also work on graphic files almost daily and generally consider myself good at distinguishing colours...). But then again Steve's option to include colour outlines is a neat workaround that should in the end make counters legible for all of us.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Caranorn

The funny part is that the issue of SS non elite unit readability for color blind people has possibly led to a problem for those among us who are not (according to the tests I'm not, I also work on graphic files almost daily and generally consider myself good at distinguishing colours...). But then again Steve's option to include colour outlines is a neat workaround that should in the end make counters legible for all of us.

Thanks. I would like to have the default color scheme work for everyone, but it is pretty close now and I believe other things should have higher priority.

One reason why I am not as concerned as I might be about the difficulty in distinguishing the white lettering for elite SS units from the yellow lettering for non-elite is that there is a much bigger difference between the two unit types. Elite have NATO symbols with white interiors. Non-elite have black interiors, and divisions have gray interiors (see post 253). Those differences are easy to see, so the white/yellow lettering is only a supplemental graphic to differentiate the two.

[pak19652002]

ORIGINAL: Caranorn

The funny part is that the issue of SS non elite unit readability for color blind people has possibly led to a problem for those among us who are not

I'm not sure the Steve's decision to stick with yellow was based fully or even partially on accommodating color blind people. I didn't write and don't remember reading any comments from other color blind people about the SS text readability. Although red text on a black background can be problematical, in this case I did not comment because, frankly, I had an equally difficult time distinguishing the white text from yellow.

To summarize, either option, while not ideal, seems to be acceptable from my perspective and the option to change color schemes adds an additional degree of comfort.




Peter

[Shannon V. OKeets]

Here is a current view of the British Isles.

I discovered that CWIF wasn't using the full 68 by 76 pixels for each hex. When I doubled the hex size (width and height) I did not get the 136 by 152 I was expecting. Close examination of the British Isles bitmaps revealed that the hexes were not aligning correctly - about 8 pixels were being dropped and the connections between hexes were off. This was part of the problem with the Hull - Sheffield hexside. The hexes align correctly in this screen shot. That makes the Hull - Sheffield hexside better but I still want the artist to simply clean that estuary out. A thorough dredging seems in order.

Once I got the full 136 by 152 pixels to display for each hex, the antialiasing effects that the artist used for each coastal hex became a visible problem. You see it here where the coastal hexes abut all sea hexes. Once the artist redoes the coastal hexes putting in all sea hexes where they belong (a simple matter), all those stupid yellow hex borderlines will go away, and the coastal hexes adjacent to all sea hexes should look like the two east and northeast of Harwich.

You might notice that using the full 136 by 152 pixels makes the unit counters sit inside the hexes better.

I changed the labelling in the sea boxes and a couple of them are shown here.

I changed the icons for the ports, cities, and resources. The cities and resources still need to be improved, but that is for the artist to do - my graphics talents are limited.

I now have the positions of the icons all data driven. Check out Belfast. I am using 13 positions: center and 12 clock positions. My original thought of using 24 clock positions was overkill. If you look closely at this screen shot you can find an example of an icon for each of the 13 positions (except 5 o'clock). There are 1193 names on the full map. Some of those are for countries and the like, but most of them are for cities or ports. I have put in default locations with cities in the center, factories at 9 o'clock, ports at 3 o'clock, and resources at 1 o'clock. That way I only have to manually set icon placements in congested areas - mostly in Europe and along the coasts.

I repositioned the labels for named locations in the British Isles. These are not final, for I have to put in the railroads yet. However, they kept annoying me every time I looked at the screen. Changing the data is not hard to do, though you have to be careful or the simple comma separated values file can become unreadable by the program.

I took the abbreviations for the country on the counters down a font level. They now match the font size used for the unit names.

The artist has to do the rivers as an overlay and I have to integrate those overlays in to the map as it is drawn on the screen. I have a pretty good idea how I am going to do that.

What I am working on now (as far as the map is concerned) is puting in the railroads. That is an interestng problem to automate because I want them to be curvilinear, not simply straight lines, while at the same time connecting to the icon of the city (or port), in each hex that has one, and simultaneously avoiding all salt water. I am close to finishing the logic design for that routine. A couple of more days of fermentation should let me distill it into crystal clear code.