I like very much trepan's gui_team_platter widget for easily distinguishing units from different teams. However, in games with many players (e.g.: 2 alliances with 8 players each one) it can be difficult to distinguish friends from foes due to the amount of team colors to remember. I slightly modified trepan's widget so that platters of our alliance units have a diamond shape instead of circular:

Things that I don't like about this fix:

- when zooming out, team platters may be so small that it can be difficult to distinguish circles from diamonds, and

- when zooming out even more, triangles are drawn instead of units along with their platters, independently of whether they are friends or foes (and both friend and enemy commanders and kogrots are all represented by the same robot icon); this is not consistent with the widget purpose,

Indeed, Spring distinguishes between teams and alliances, but we can only choose a different color in order to distinguish different teams; there is no feature for distinguishing different alliance units but we are to remember the colors of each team, which can be difficult for games with 16 players or more. An easy solution would be to use polygons with different amounts of sides per alliance, though I don't think that feature would be easy to distinguish when having many alliances (distinguishing heptagons from octagons? moreover, 32-side polygons already look like circles...). Anyway, usual games are either FFA or comprise 2 alliances only. In the former case, team colors are already unique for each alliance, and in the latter case we can simply use circles and diamonds. Perhaps somebody can come up with a different platter feature which better distinguishes between different alliances, even when there are many alliances...

Other solution is proposed by very_bad_soldier

http://widgets.springrts.de/index.php#105

This widget allows for defining colors for specific players and locally using them in all your games (e.g.: you can choose red color for your own units, but only you will see them as red). Yet we are faced with the problem of recalling multiple colors, and we are to choose colors for specific players. Unless we always play with the same people, we will have to be defining new colors each time a new player comes in...

already exists. I made the CA/ZeroK colors widget configurable. Grab it and knock yourself out bro.

Can that configuration define different shapes for team platters in order to distinguish between friend or foes? That was the whole point of this post...

Here you are another version of the widget which uses squares instead of diamonds for ally platters. I think it looks much better:

-_- did I quote that part? no, I answered the part that I quoted.

the lazyfolk demands screenshots

I mentioned very_bad_soldier's widget because it is related to the problem of tweaking team platters in order to better distinguish ally units from enemy units. I said this solution does not satisfy me because you still have to recall your alliance's team colors. I propose to use two different shapes for team plates in order to distinguish ally units from enemy units, and I have posted a widget as a proof of concept.

I personally use this: http://widgets.springrts.de/index.php#153

It draws a halo around all enemy units so you can distinguish quickly between friend and foe.

Thanks very_bad_soldier, I missed that widget. Indeed, it combines very well with the standard team platter widget. It would be nice to have this widget bundled with Spring as for the team platter widget.

spring isn't one game. Ask your game of choice to include it.

I know; I suggested that because gui_teamplatters is directly included in Spring, not in the games: this widget is placed in /usr/share/games/spring/LuaUI/Widgets/, not in my game's widget folder.

Let us not forget unit shapes if we're looking for platter widgets

I have repeatedly stated over the years that abslutely no widgets should be included in spring. Same for AIs.