Spring RTS Engine

Even just adding small icons to the corners of them would probably give the best of both worlds. You could have a number in the top left corner to denote the tech level, a small icon or letter in the top right to denote type (e.g. P for plasma, S for shotgun), and maybe special icons in the lower corners for things like transport, cloaked, stealth, etc. Even having letters or icons in the top right might be confusing, but if you just had a P on a green background for plasma, an M on a yellow background for missile, etc then it would be at least quick to learn without memorising the differences between somewhat similar units.

That might not even be necessary though. As far as I'm aware, the units tend to appear in the sidebar in similar order, e.g. the first one on the list at a factory is always a con unit if one exists, the second is a plasma/cannon unit if one exists, etc. so there's still a way to remember if you find the icons confusing.

If there was a way to choose between simple, high contrast icons and more complex, high quality icons without a huge amount of work involved then there wouldn't any question.

Fanger wrote:what was the consensus on build pictures.. TA style landscape ingame backgrounds.. or keep trying with the unit on stuff..

They're beautiful... any difficulty distinguishing between the buildpics comes from difficulty distinguishing between the units themselves, so keep the buildpics as is.

icons aren't very helpful trust us there we've tried that already... twice.
if they are big enough to be seen they dominate the bp too much but if they are too small they become useless...

I really like the currents buildpics. When you wan't to chane them a bit, I suggest you take a look at the left column and add these detailts to the units on the right column, too.

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Additionall I wan't to see some LVL-Indicator (for example 1-3 Stars in a corner of the buildpic) on factories and Hubs, because if you have a unit selected, that can build multiple of them (or simply multiple builders at once), they are not easy to distinguish at first glance.

(Yes I know, I allready posted something like this about 10 pages ago, in this thread)

So slightly alter some of the unit positions and add some level indicators, would a number be ok instead of stars..

Otherwise keep em..

That what im getting..

those URC L3 long range missle artillery turrets are a damn nuissance.

They're excellente' for breaking porc.

I found them more annoying built behind a porc I couldnt break

maybe for level indication one could rotate the background grid 45°?
of course that only works if you still have the pictures without background.

icons are good, but think about it: What does the misslepicture on the AA tank's picture tell you? That it shots missles. But not that those are anti aircraft missles, which is the important part. If the tank was portraited with the barrels facing towards the sky (like on the artillery picture) it would be clear the second you look at it.


random idea:
in most RTS there is a "random race" option. It might be possible to implent that in spring by having a side called "random" which only has one unit: some kind of startpoint marker. Ingame, this unit/icon could then build the real commander of the race the player wants. It is not really random but the idea is that you do not know what you are up against in the first minutes. In Generals and Broodwar that is an "important" aspect of the gameplay.
When the third and fourth race are added to e&e that might become interessting.

knorke wrote:maybe for level indication one could rotate the background grid 45°?

That's an interesting idea that actually may work. But a 45° rotation would only work for two lvls. As 90° equals 0°. But using the grid in some way makes sense.

On the random race thing. Thats a great idea and should be added to the engine. I think many mods would benefit from it.

Fanger wrote:would a number be ok instead of stars..

How about stripes in the lower right corner to indicate level? Something like this: (quick mock-up, for some reason ps made it blurred even though its saved on highest quality )

PNG! :)
The red is wrong IMO, should be green. Other than that, they're okay.

I could do that...

I don't think level is needed. You already know what level they are because you clicked on a light/medium/heavy factory. The only thing which isn't immediately obvious from looking at some (not all) of the pictures when you want to build something is their role.

Scikar wrote:I don't think level is needed. You already know what level they are because you clicked on a light/medium/heavy factory.

Buildpics can be displayed in a starcraft-like way with the help of a widget, so this can matter.

A random side feature would be a good idea for a lobby.........

Actually for the buildpics, I was just thinking about RTS games I've played with good build icons. I got thinking of Tiberian Sun actually. The icons in Tib Sun were quite well distinguished, but they also had a line of text at the bottom so if you hadn't played before you could still tell what things were. How would EE's buildpics look with say a small black bar at the bottom with white text just saying PLASMA, MISSILE etc?

EDIT: Quick and dirty mockup:

It's a bit ugly and I don't really know how much better it could be either. Perhaps with the text simply overlayed over the image without the black bar? Probably best just as an optional newbie set I suppose.

something like that could be better read if you looked at the UNIT INFO AT THE BOTTOM.

Actually, Smoth, I woulden't mind the name under the build pic.

I would, I think that in a mod with MANY units unlike C&C it would be a WASTE.

also, fang can do it with lua and not have it permanently on the image.