Grafix for Military Units

[Blade Runner]

Dominique,

I mean the player's color has different color deep:

1. Player,
Strong TF: Dark Red
Weak TF: Light Red

2. Player
Strong TF: Dark Blue
Weak TF: Light Blue

.
.
.


Probably we can use 8 different color to show the different for the users. We can also put this color code table somwhere on the screen.

Blade Runner

[Rebel]

Druid

What is represented by the military symbols that Richard mentioned ie modern army, is the dominant type of unit in the army, fe an armored division's symbol looks like the track of a tank or bulldozer, but is actually a combined arms unit that includes tanks (primary), mech infantry, artillery, helicopters, and support units ie supply,maint, clerks,cooks,etc. If the TFI indicates the PRIMARY type of unit, ie foot,cavalry,cannon, it shouldn't be a problem to tell what kind of army it is.

What we might want to do, since it looks like we are going to allow custom units is to work along Druid's line and allow multiple types of armies or navies in each era, depending on what the player wants to emphasize.
Ancient Age
a.Amy: Foot, med defense,med offense slow.
Horse,low defense,hi offense,fast
Archer, low defense,hi offense,slow

Etc, etc,

Rebel

[Richard_III]

Theban-
Yes, Tactics II and Third Reich used (reasonably) standard symbology. Ugly, yes, but it also probides a very clear representation of the type and strength of units contained therein. The fancy units can go on the battle screen.

Druid2-
As Rebel indicates, the symbol used is determined by the primary component of the unit. Nearly all modern units of brigade size are combined arms yet use one symbol. In much the same way, any 'icon' used to represent a TF is also only an approximation of the TFs contents.

Oh well, I suppose this suggestion just shows up my own bias in Civ type games -- conquest or bust.

[Dominique]

Seems the "GFX Duke" is called for...

Some basic things:

When showing ANY value on a TFI (Task Force Icon) (be it power, size, which player's army, ZOC etc.), a singe value needs one "dimension".

Dimensions can be:

- width (of what's-o'-ever)
- height (same)
- (depth) not easily feasable on a 2D projection, so forget it
- color (shade)
- color intensity / brightness

There are other methods, as well, namely

- numbers
- symbols

I think we all agree that it's not a good idea to glue too many numbers / letters to a single unit (personally, I don't want to see ANY numbers on the map).

If we try to use dimensions to visualize relative values, we should keep in mind how suitable dimensions are:

- unidirectional dimensions are VERY easy to interpret (e.g. length of bars, height of flag)

- bidirectional dimensions (areas) are harder to recognize if exact information is called for, but gives a good idea on a first glance. Try it - you will see that it's much easier for you to estimate an exact length than an area.

- 3D-information is bad for exact information, but very good for the casual glance (even better than 2D).

- color is a VERY strong indicator... that's why I don't want to see differently coloured bars as power inicators. Colors should show the empire of the unit, nothing else.

- color intensity is VERY,VERY hard to recognize. The fact alone that many 256-color gif images seem to be "true color" prooves that. While the human eye CAN distinguish millions of colors, it must see them next to each other to see a difference. You'll find it VERY hard to distinguish more than, say, 8 brightness levels.

- Transparency is even wors, since you can't concentrate on one color, but look at a pattern shining through.

Many games rely on the good ol' color bar (e.g. CIV, CtP etc.) - that's not a good idea in a game that tries to be "realistic", since the differences may become too huge. How long must a tank division's bar be in relation to a platoon of snipers, let alone a single scout?

What's left are symbols - but I won't have tactical / strategical symbols. These are for the hardcore gamer and scare away many "fun gamers" - AND they have to be "read" instead of "casually glanced at". Furthermore, it's outright ugly

So, after much thinking, I suppose, maybe we should try to do what Mark proposed: Enlarging / reducing the size of the TFI as power indicator and draw a translucent disc (in player color) to show the ZOC / the occupied area (I prefer ZOC). However, a more exact value should be shown as soon as the mouse touches the TFI.

But, Mark, if you don't like the cylinders / boxes, then be warned: Drawing differnt-sized icons has the same effect of turning a "landscape" into a "statistics table"...

[Mark_Everson]

Dominique:

Thank you for the tutorial (seriously). If we just let the height of the units vary by a factor of two I think we can get most of the important information out without things looking too bad. Full size: one of the larger TFs around; half size: usually a single-unit TF; 3/4 size: the full size one should beat it every time, and it should beat the half-size one every time. If this ends up not looking good we could just vary the length of a flag by a factor of two, and leave the unit size unchanged.

Your thoughts?

If I were the only one who didn't like the cylinder, I wouldn't worry so much. But I think many wouldn't

RIII: I'm with Dominique, the standard symbols are too ugly even for me!

[Druid2]

I think a standard size unit would be ok, with various size flags. The color of the flag fill could indicate health. The outline color of the TFI is Civ owner. The size of the 'halo' that surrounds the TF is the Recon Zone.

Remember that there may be other units in the 'halo' so it has to be transparent.

[Mark_Everson]

Dominique:

Revolting Also when you get to WWII-type combat the units will possibly be close together and so something that can push the figure up high will lead to overlapping with adjacent ones.

How about some kind of 'nimbus' outlining the TF graphic? Say, in the player's color. and use the width of the outline (between figure proper and terrain) to give the power of the unit. Hmmm you'd need a lot of masks wouldn't you...

I kind of like your idea of transparency though. can we put something just 'under' the unit, but partly transparent, so it looks 'underground'? Or maybe if we can work with just a disk rather than a cylinder I wouldn't find it so disquieting.

[Mark_Everson]

Thought this could use some prominence since we're trying to work out different graphics specs soon.

Just as a side-note, what I'm doing in my demo version is just putting a rectangle as the TF, and filling up the UL corner of the rectangle with a bold color to represent the TF power. The area in the corner is the fraction of the bigger rectangle's area proportional to the TFs power vs A max-power TF for the age. If the diagram comes out right it will show the UL rectangle to be about 1/3 of the length and height of the big rectangle. So if a High-Powered TF for the age had a power of 100, this TF would have one of about 11 (~ 100 x 1/3 x1/3). In the Real graphical version we could put a box like this Under the TF grafix. Comments?

________________
|XXXX|..........|
|XXXX|..........|
|..................|
|..................|
|..................|

Paul: Power = TF Strength

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited September 17, 1999).]

[Paul Crocker]

Mark: When you say "power" are you referring to size, or are you talking about the strength of the unit (they're not the same thing IMO...)

Another option would be to use a horizontal bar at the bottom of the icon. I kind of liked the idea that was brought up in other threads that proposed using flags. Sure, it would be a little more difficult to distinguish between somewhat similarly-sized units, but that's real life!

[Mark_Everson]

Since we're talking about this area again I thought I'd bring this back up top.

Paul: Sorry I never got back to you! Yes power means attack power right now. It has nothing directly to do with manpower or combat 'footprint' as it spreads over the terrain at combat dispersion.

[Doc Dee]

I guess this is the best place for this discussion (unless we want a new thread to keep the size down)
So I think there's been a general agreement on TFs as more-or-less standard air/land/sea indicaters, changed for each techlevel. As i understand it (forgive me if I'm now out of date) but the techlevels for advances have gone, but they can remain militarily.

The modifications I'd suggest are
(1) distinguish cavalry/mobile TFs from slower ones (foot, artillery)
(2) Combined air/naval units (ie a carrier group) should be different from conventional naval groups of the same era.
(3) there should be a cheap, special unit for each era (SCOUT!) which has longer LOS and enables a player to learn what elements make up another players TF (but NOT the injury status).

This would involve
Maybe a primitive 'horde'
3 icons for ancient units (Sea, Infantry, Cav) - trireme, Phalanx, Cavalry
3 icons for medieval - Galleon, pikemen, knights
3 icons for renaissance/early industrial - Ironclad(?), musketeer, cavalry(pistol type)
4 icons for early modern (Sea, inf, tank, air) - Battleship, rifleman, tank, biplane (looks cool!)
6 icons for ultra-modern (sea, carrier, inf, tank, air, missile) - AEGIS cruiser, carrier, marine, modern tank, jet-fighter, cruise missile

Some other unit if we have spy satellites (I think we should). But probably no space combat.

So: I make that 22 icons
BTW the examples for each icon are for appearance only - I don't think the actual unit techs have been finalised yet. Plus I'm a fan of the idea of personalized units eg the 4th light cavalry, kings own dragoons etc. These would appear in the TF detail panel

To indicate TF strength, I like the idea of unit size=strength. So 0.5, 1, 1.5 probably gives enough casual info (you need scouts for detail).

And now back to unit-civ ID. Earlier in this thread, it was suggested that there could be a 'spotlight' of colour around each unit indicating the ZOC (dim and almost transparent) Any thoughts for and against? I'll try and get an example up to show what it would look like.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I think the idea is overall good...some minor changes I'd like to see, mainly based on the fact that i'd like some more oriental or neutral character icons used for earlier periods since i think this will have TOO much of a western style atmosphere and if its a civ type game it shouldn't IMO.

Also civs that can use stealthy technologies and tactics should make their units invisable if the opponent doesn't see them.

3 icons for ancient units (Sea, Infantry, Cav) - trireme, Phalanx, Cavalry

Pretty good...no real changes here

3 icons for medieval - Galleon, pikemen, knights

Well add Samari if ur using knights for those civs that follow a more oriental type path...not too much more work, but these wouldn't use horses either. Also maybe add ninjas/spy for single units (there are many cases where a single unit is sent for infiltration rather than a group)...also a pic of a sloop might be useful since during this time there were two types of ships, the galleons being the war ones and sloops being used more for merchanteering, but the roles could be reversed.

3 icons for renaissance/early industrial - Ironclad(?), musketeer, cavalry(pistol type)

Use the galleon unless they've developed the appropriate technologies. Also gunpowder may not have been invented by this time as apposed to other items.

4 icons for early modern (Sea, inf, tank, air) - Battleship, rifleman, tank, biplane (looks cool!)

No real prob here that i can see.

6 icons for ultra-modern (sea, carrier, inf, tank, air, missile) - AEGIS cruiser, carrier, marine, modern tank, jet-fighter, cruise missile

also if u have a fighter plane u SHOULD have a bomber otherwise make it a generic plane.


In conlusion i think on the whole its good, i just think u shouldn't leave out the oriental advances in military esp since they will be in my tech model.

[Mark_Everson]

I was about to raise the point about not being too eurocentric in the units too. For some TFs we might need as many as three versions IMO. European, middle-eastern or indian, and oriental of some type.

Of course the first priority is to get one TF icon from each age starting with the earliest. Then we can get some Real graphics in the demos.

Perhaps we do need a light infantry unit... But I'd say lets see how we like playing with your good limited suggestions first. This is one area where I think we don't need to exhaustively plan ahead.

Cya,

Mark

[johnmcd]

The arguments here may have been finished off somewhere else, so I’m sorry if this is in the wrong place. I think scaling units to show power would be ugly in a very big way. The resolution one must work with when drawing Civ II units is quite extreme. If or when you look at a Civ II unit at 200% it looks very stupid. Equally, drawing a unit at twice the resolution and shrinking it doesn’t work either. You end up with badly defined edges, blurs instead of points of light and smudges instead of hollows of shadow. You could certainly de two icons, one large one small, but that really doesn’t provide much extra information. I would think a five point scale would be the minimum and that is starting to head towards quite a bit of work. Further to this it might be possible to Add different layers according to what was actually added to the TF.

What I would propose instead is the use of a basic TF icon, a couple of men, maybe a siege engine or whatever. Then, when it is made more powerful another layer is placed on it, perhaps a horse that would stand at the back, or to the side. There could easily be a dozen such layers that would slowly build up to give a nice portrayal of a growing force. This would also avoid my second objection to the scaling theory. In AC the infantry are different sizes depending on whether or not they are using hand weapons or one or those ridiculous tractors-with-a-gun-on. I hate that, they are all men, and they should all be the same size. I don’t insist that they be drawn to the same scale as grav ships, just that they are drawn on the same scale as each other. I find it very upsetting visually, and I would be disappointed if this ‘mistake’ were to be repeated in Clash.

This is also on the general Graphics thread, where there is some discussion of it, so post on either. Thanks.

[This message has been edited by johnmcd (edited November 19, 1999).]

[alms66]

I think this is the same point Mark was trying to make but I'll add something.
You count 22 icons for the European units, we could also do 22 for middle-eastern and 22 for Oriental, just to give the icons a little more flavor. The middle-eastern would dress the part(Face veils and such), as would the Oriental(with the Samauri look and stuff). That's a total of 66 icons.
These could be tied to their civs (Chinese,Mongols, and Japanese use Oriental while Egypt uses Middle-eastern, and European units are used by those countries).
Only one problem I see, What about the Native Americans, would that be another 22, and the "Barbarians" 22 more?, and the Jungle tribes of South Africa 22 again? I think it would be really cool to do, but obviously alot more work.