Icons for the unit pictures in the build menu

[YokoZar]

BA might become a bit more accessible if a user could reasonably guess what each unit does without having to hover over every unit and memorize their descriptions. 12 kinds of labs times 2 factions producing 6-12 different units each is an awful lot to swallow the first time. Even relatively experienced players might find themselves hovering over the tooltips even when they already have a pretty good idea what they want ("the builder" or "the normal tank")

My proposal is to create a set of standard small icons that can go in the corner of each units build pic. No more than 1 or 2 icons per unit, but they would be standard across the whole game. For instance, if every builder unit had a little tiny construction icon in the upper left of the build picture it would be very quick to recognize and pick out the builder unit from the group. This makes the builder more usable, but also every other unit (who are in turn "not builders").

Some initial suggestions for icons:

• builder
• produces energy (for buildings)
• radar/sonar
• fast (for fleas, zipper, jeffy, etc)
• Anti-air

Some things that probably shouldn't be icons:

• amphibious -- should be shown by the background instead (sand/water for amphib, grass for land, water for sea, clouds for air)
• "normal" -- should be more or less implied by the picture and the lack of other tags

Importantly, we don't want to overuse icons. There's a danger a new user will think the icons have more meaning than the unit descriptions, and then be surprised when, say, a pyro is substantially different from a zipper.


If we do want to do this, we should start by just adding some real obvious tags, like builder, and then see if that's enough. Thoughts?

[SinbadEV]

probably a reasonable idea, I would suggest that making the tooltips a little more friendly by including these icons would also be a good idea...

Also, I think CA has a system like this for borders (differentiates between infrastructure, offense, defense and construction.)

[Caydr]

wot? I thought the last version of AA had this, didn't anyone use my most recent buildpics?

edit: now that you mention it, I guess I never released that version, it doesn't appear on sourceforge or anything. Well you can wait for the next version of AA and just grab my new buildpics if you want. What I did is, I made a set of unit icons and then added them to the buildpics, with some additional hints where necessary. Anyway, you can have them once the new version's out. They're pretty decent and intuitive.

[hoijui]

I think this indeed would be very usefull.
I have a lot of friends that like to play RTS, but dont like TA, becuase htey say there are too many units that all look the same and you have no idea what they do.
Two of them sometimes come and play some BA or the like in a small LAN. As they usually play it only once in 2 weeks or less, they are very unfamiliar with the units, and this after more then 2 years!
One of them repeatedly told me that exactly this is hte big problem with BA. He keeps asking me where the unit doing X is in the build menu, happens at least once per game.
In other words, this could help popularity a lot!
Best would be to even have the same symbols apear on/near the units on the battlefield, at least as an option for noobs. As it is now, my firends just spam all kinds of units, and then hope that some in the group are anti air, for example.

I see a problem in htat.. Ba is relatively complex, and to be consistent, there would have to be up to 10 symbols or so per unit, which would make them either very small, or clutter the buildpic.
therefore, an alternative could be to either show normal build pics, or when pressing a meta key, only these descriptive icons.
though.. for a start, the few mentioned by Yokozar could be enough.

also, if you have these icons, maybe make them the units radar icon as well.

[Caydr]

Yes, you *could* use 10 hint icons per unit, or you could just be an awesome he-man developer with huge balls. Just saying.

[el_matarife]

It would be great if the same icons were strategic zoom icons for when you're zoomed out like Supreme Commander as well.

I also suggest adding an "Artillery" category for anything that fires high trajectory. A jammer category may be useful too.

[Petah]

Why not try something different, use tabs to separate builders, resources, offensive and defensive units etc.

I disliked the icons in the build menu in CA....

Also tool tips do need a revamp.

And what bout having a little gage/graph to show things like attack power, cost, resource stuff etc?

[YokoZar]

Why not try something different, use tabs to separate builders, resources, offensive and defensive units etc.

I disliked the icons in the build menu in CA....

Tabs will drastically increase the number of clicks you need to build things though.

Now, sorting the build list does have some merit. But we should only do it once to minimize the amount of learned habits we break.

Also tool tips do need a revamp.

And what bout having a little gage/graph to show things like attack power, cost, resource stuff etc?

Agreed, this was brought up earlier I think.

[Caydr]

If I may, I will be resorting the icons in AA in this order that I found would be most efficient:

//ground - resource

//ground - production

//ground - defense

//ground - anti-air

//ground - detection

//water - resource

//water - production

//water - defense

//water - anti-air

//water - detection

It keeps the mos frequently-needed items at the top of the menu and usually all on the same page.

For units I'm using this order:

//construction

//scout

//attack

//artillery

//anti-air

//detection

//misc

for much the same reasons.

[luckywaldo7]

Yes but this is a BA thread, so I don't care what it has, they are two totally different games.

As much as I am tempted to flame that statement into oblivion, I will resist. They run on the same engine, there is no reason why BA can't have anything that CA has.




Here is a picture of the work they have done so far. I know you guys might get tired of seeing "CA has it!!!" but there is some cool useful stuff they have done, and there is no need to reinvent the wheel when you want a similar feature.

[manolo_]

Yes but this is a BA thread, so I don't care what it has, they are two totally different games.

As much as I am tempted to flame that statement into oblivion, I will resist. They run on the same engine, there is no reason why BA can't have anything that CA has.




Here is a picture of the work they have done so far. I know you guys might get tired of seeing "CA has it!!!" but there is some cool useful stuff they have done, and there is no need to reinvent the wheel when you want a similar feature.

yeah i like it

[TheFatController]

(Cleaned the CA advertising from this thread...)

The plan is still to make a floating tooltip for units, whenever you mouse over a unit icon which gives a set of stats in a form very similar to when you inspect an item in an MMO, for example:

[row of icons/labels indicating Builder, AA etc]
[unit name]
[unit notes eg. "+50% damage to boats"]
[costs]

This should look quite neat and give the feedback and education on unit types as people play, it could then also be turned off for pros who don't care about the extra info.

[YokoZar]

(Cleaned the CA advertising from this thread...)

The plan is still to make a floating tooltip for units, whenever you mouse over a unit icon which gives a set of stats in a form very similar to when you inspect an item in an MMO, for example:

[row of icons/labels indicating Builder, AA etc]
[unit name]
[unit notes eg. "+50% damage to boats"]
[costs]

This should look quite neat and give the feedback and education on unit types as people play, it could then also be turned off for pros who don't care about the extra info.

I agree very much with the tooltips, however I think the icons should also be on the buildpic itself so they're more recognizable and you don't have to mouse over each one individually when you have a general idea of what you want.

[hunterw]

CA has so much aweosme shit, prob is its not BA

[YokoZar]

CA has so much aweosme shit, prob is its not BA

In truth one reason for this is that they have a much more open development process and a version control system. I might contribute more "patches" to Fat if it was easier to see this sort of process - as it is the best I can do is suggest a change and bother him with it, and then he has to do all the work.

[YokoZar]

(Cleaned the CA advertising from this thread...)

The plan is still to make a floating tooltip for units, whenever you mouse over a unit icon which gives a set of stats in a form very similar to when you inspect an item in an MMO, for example:

[row of icons/labels indicating Builder, AA etc]
[unit name]
[unit notes eg. "+50% damage to boats"]
[costs]

This should look quite neat and give the feedback and education on unit types as people play, it could then also be turned off for pros who don't care about the extra info.

Do you think it would be possible to put small icons on top of the unit build pics entirely using lua? That way we could just modify the units config file to get new icons rather than having to change its build pic.

[Gota]

Amount of help content can be determined by a players rank in the lobby.
Beyond a certain rank some stuff can stop appearing Completely.

[Gedanken]

It would be great if the same icons were strategic zoom icons for when you're zoomed out like Supreme Commander as well.

I also suggest adding an "Artillery" category for anything that fires high trajectory. A jammer category may be useful too.

This

Also the CA forum is here please don't spill over into BA forum with helicopter thinking tia

[Achilla]

CA icons are not only awful, they are pretty unclear to me as well and those bizarre 'borders' are must unwelcome.

I, for my part, never had a problem remembering each and every unit and what it does as well as corresponding picture ... I never saw myself looking for something more than 1/4 of a second either. Perhaps that's because I used to play GW competitive on the ladder for over 4 years and remembering close to 1000+ skills and 40+ recent meta builds was a common trait of anyone in top500.

I guess each to his/her own, but I for the very part would rather not want any 'odd' patterns over unit icons. Both BA and NOTA icons are very clear and easy to tell an unit from another one, and actually look in-game like the corresponding unit, unlike in CA (CA icons are good for cartoons, but not for a RTS game).

[Gota]

Suggestion.
You can divide icons to 3-4 groups.
Say front line attackers art and AA..
Each type would have its specific angle of shot.
So all the game's artillery would be screened from a certain angle and all AA would be screened from a different angle ....
That way people will intuitively be attracted to arty in even unfamiliar labs since they were used to the angle arty was screened in the lab they do know.

Of course all different ypes have to appear in the same places in the unit menu...
for example,arty units always at the end,aa units always at start.