Location

icontypes.lua is a file in the Gamedata/ directory of a Spring Game.

Purpose

This file defines the icons used to represent units on the minimap and rendered in place of 3d geometry when zoomed out.

Source

The engine source code which parses the data from this file is viewable here:

rts/Rendering/IconHandler.cpp

Details

Game developers can set icons for different types of units, (such as land, air, sea), or go so far as to give every unit its own icon. The different types icons will be shown for friendly units, and enemy units within Line Of Sight. For enemy units in radar range Spring will use the 'default' icon.

IconType Properties

• bitmap - type: string - default: ""

The location of the custom icon image (not limited to bitmaps!). If it is missing or incorrect, Spring replaces it with the standard radar dot. The bitmap will get blended with the team color, so there is no special team color channel. In order to look nice, the image will need to have an alpha channel for transparency.

• size - type: float - default: 1.0

Acts as multiplier for the icon size. The larger the number, the larger the icon will be.

• distance - type: float - default: 1.0

Acts as a multiplier for the distance at which the unit will show up as an icon. The larger the number, the further away the camera has to be from the unit for it to turn into an icon.

• radiusAdjust - type: bool - default: false

Whether or not the icon should scale with the unit radius.

Assigning IconTypes

To assign units to a specific icon type, set the iconType attribute of their UnitDef to the type name set in icontypes.lua (see #Example)

...
iconType = "circle",
...

If the iconType tag is missing, Spring sets it to the "default" icontype. If the "default" type is not specified, Spring will create it with the default values. Furthermore, enemy units that are within radar range, but not in your Line Of Sight, will be shown as the default icon. Thus if there is a bitmap specified for the "default" icon type it will override the standard radar blip.

Example

local iconTypes = {
  default = {
    size = 1,
    radiusadjust = true,
  },
  flag = {
    bitmap = "icons/flag.png",
    size = 6,
    radiusadjust = true,
    distance = 100,
  },
  circle = {
    bitmap = "icons/circle.png",
    size = 4,
    radiusadjust = true,
    distance = 100,
  },
  ...
}

return iconTypes