Request: new lobby icons

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ilor
Inactive Developer
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Request: new lobby icons

Post by ilor »

As some of you might know, there's a new lobby in the making. One of the design goals is to make various bits of the interface more compact, so for instance more games can fit on one screen. Some icons are re-used from old lobby or various bits of wesnoth (GPV, xp modifier, time limit), some were taken from a user contrib.

Sadly some I had to do myself just to have something, which brings me to the point of begging kindly asking the art people for some icons that are not painful to look at.

I mostly use 16 by 16 icons, the height looks okay and should probably stay that way unless noted, width can be adjusted if needed. The icons will get tooltips explaining their meaning. All icons can use transparency, the background is brownish or dark blue (the general UI colors stay similar).

The list:
1. Passworded game icon. Currently a key-like icon-like blob I made
2. Fog and shroud. A set of four icons to convey "Fog+Shroud", "Fog (no shroud)", "Shroud (no fog)" and "No fog and no shroud". Currenly a green square for no vision obstruction with a gray part for fog and a black part for shroud. Possibly wider.
3. "Use map settings" icon. I resized a "scroll" item for that, suggestions welcome.
4. a "Reloaded game" icon. Some sort of curvy colored arrow perhaps? (currently an arrow drawn by me)
5. a "Unknown era" icon. Currently a red X, maybe make it a fancy question mark.
5b. a nice red cross for marking bad games might be useful, too
6. userlist sort icons, that should mean "sort by relation (friends before foes)" and "sort alphabetically". In "on" and "off" versions. Currently a green dot over a red dot for the relation sort, and an orange "A-Z" for alpha sort, with black and white for off. (I actually think these two might work as they are now, surprisingly)
7. pending message icon, to indicate there's a message waiting next to a room name or a nick whispered to (part of a new lobby window system for rooms and whispers). Reuses the green/red dots for now. Preferably a narrow one here.
8. a "group expand" icon. Smaller than the other ones, with a "expanded" and "folded" versions. Clicking on it shows/hides part of the player list. Currently a blue triangle that rotates to show state. 10 by 10 pixels.

Please see the attached screenshot to see roughly where the icons go, numbered according to the list. Please ignore the general layout wackiness. If something's not clear about a purpose of an icon feel free to ask. General suggestions are welcome too.

Edit: If you want to see the new lobby in action, you need a recent trunk build (a normal build will do fine) and start wesnoth with the --new-widgets command line switch. There be dragons though, don't expect a rock-solid experience yet, and if you want to see a game open you might want to start two wesnoth instances and use one to open a game or connect to the 1.7 server at wesnoth.org:14997.
lobby-screen.png
Thanks in advance!
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PsychoticKittens
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Re: Request: new lobby icons

Post by PsychoticKittens »

whats the refresh button do?

I hope we don't have to refresh to see new games now. :(
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mabeenot
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Re: Request: new lobby icons

Post by mabeenot »

I'm so glad the lobby is coming along. I like the idea behind the green/gray/black icon for fog and shroud. You could round the corners to make the icon look less huge compared to the neighboring icons.

The green/red dot system for "relation sort" didn't seem intuitive to me at first but I've connected it now. If you want to make the icon a little more intuitive, you could change it to drama masks with a green smiling mask next to a red frowning mask.

A floppy disk may be a more intuitive icon than an arrow for reloading a saved game. The only problem with a floppy is that it wouldn't keep with the rest of Wesnoth's fantasy theme. Maybe a bookmark hanging out of a book would denote that you're resuming something that was put on hold.

For the messages icon, how about a simple envelope with a wax seal?

In addition to the "unknown era" icon, will there be an "unknown scenario" icon?

Keep up the great work and I hope one of the artists will have time to help you out.
ilor
Inactive Developer
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Re: Request: new lobby icons

Post by ilor »

PK: don't worry, it's just a button and I can't even remember if it's wired to do anything

mabeenot: ah, but see, the point is *I* better not do the actual art :P. I'm kinda hoping someone will come up (as in, draw) something more fancy than a green triangle and a black triangle for fog/shroud, ditto everything else. Envelope with a stamp would be good but I'd prefer this icon to be narrow, and it probably wouldn't work in around 10 by 16 pixels
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Jetrel
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Re: Request: new lobby icons

Post by Jetrel »

ilor wrote:8. a "group expand" icon. Smaller than the other ones, with a "expanded" and "folded" versions. Clicking on it shows/hides part of the player list. Currently a blue triangle that rotates to show state. 10 by 10 pixels.
This is a "disclosure triangle" - this is a standard gui widget that should get added to our widget set, rather than just being an icon used in the MP lobby. It's useful enough that it's a part of most OS-level widget kits. (e.g. mac, win, and gnome/kde)
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ilor
Inactive Developer
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Re: Request: new lobby icons

Post by ilor »

Jetrel: ah thanks, I knew there was a proper name for that. Anyway, the lobby is a fine and likely first use case and it actually needs it now, so it might as well be grouped with the lobby-specific icons for now.
bonehead11
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Re: Request: new lobby icons

Post by bonehead11 »

I could volunteer I guess...If you dont mind...I have some small amount of time right now so I could do it in some amount of time, will check back in later with some results, if you dont mind.
bonehead11
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Re: Request: new lobby icons

Post by bonehead11 »

Ok mine first sketch hope you like them.

Lets resumarize those icons:
1. Done
2. Done,but I dont like the last one...
3. Me thinks its ok
4. Done
5. Done
6. Done, but if you want to change the shady guy into something else I dont mind, mine other idea was face torn into 2 one good one bad, good old cliche.
7. Done
8. This one I didnt knew how to do, I dont know what you want there so more detailed description what you want would be nice.

I additionally tried to upgrade the crossed eye, if you want to redo the eye just tell me + some other icons.
Attachments
fog icons.png
fog icons.png (2.35 KiB) Viewed 4140 times
wesnothicons.png
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Zarel
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Re: Request: new lobby icons

Post by Zarel »

Here's my try at a better key:
key.png
key.png (3.57 KiB) Viewed 4095 times
This is what it looks like in context:
keycontext.png
keycontext.png (5.86 KiB) Viewed 4093 times
Edit: Made it a bit lighter

Edit: I thickened the A-Z books to make them easier to read, and touched up the expand/collapse arrows. And moved them around: any expand/collapse arrows pretty much need to be left-aligned.
morestuff.png
morestuff.png (17.76 KiB) Viewed 4082 times
Edit: Here are my ideas for fog and shroud icons. I figure, at this resolution, it's probably going to be impossible to figure out what the different icons mean, so the letters should provide some hints.
fogshroud.png
fogshroud.png (3.82 KiB) Viewed 4067 times
Edit: Oh, I nearly forgot. Here is a question mark:
qmark.png
qmark.png (3.57 KiB) Viewed 4066 times
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mabeenot
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Re: Request: new lobby icons

Post by mabeenot »

Wooo. I like Zarel's fog/shroud icons and bonehead11's reload icon. Both of the keys and question marks look pretty good. Two heads are definitely better than one...
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Zarel
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Re: Request: new lobby icons

Post by Zarel »

I made the S's a bit easier to read:
fogshroud.png
fogshroud.png (3.83 KiB) Viewed 3976 times
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tsr
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Re: Request: new lobby icons

Post by tsr »

Hm, my only problem with the fog/shroud icons is that they are in English. Imho making the covering parts a bit larger, taking away the letters and ofc using tooltips it will take very little time to understand them and get their sense (so you will keep on understanding them next time yo see them).

/tsr
JAP
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Re: Request: new lobby icons

Post by JAP »

Number 3 "use map settings" was a tricky one to figure something out for.
But here is my idea a book and scales.

Edit: to show context.
Attachments
context.png
context.png (5.69 KiB) Viewed 3927 times
map_settings.png
map_settings.png (555 Bytes) Viewed 3952 times
Last edited by JAP on August 8th, 2009, 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Zarel
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Re: Request: new lobby icons

Post by Zarel »

tsr wrote:Hm, my only problem with the fog/shroud icons is that they are in English. Imho making the covering parts a bit larger, taking away the letters and ofc using tooltips it will take very little time to understand them and get their sense (so you will keep on understanding them next time yo see them).
See, tooltips are the reason the letters work in the first place - if you see a letter you don't understand, you can look at the tooltip and remember it.

Plus: I think localized images were added in a recent version of Wesnoth, so letters aren't a problem. Also, letters from a foreign language are quite recognizable, especially since you can use tooltips. It's easier to remember "F = niebla" than "bluish stuff that doesn't look all that different from the greenish stuff = niebla"

I dunno. I have a fair bit of UI experience and intuition that's telling me the letters really do help a lot. I mean, I won't say that I'm completely sure I'm right, but my gut is telling me those letters should be there.
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ilor
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Re: Request: new lobby icons

Post by ilor »

Here's my thoughts:

Fog/shroud icons: I'm not that convinced a teensy F/S there is such a good idea, and translated images were an idea but I don't think it actually got far. I like the hex-shape idea, but the fog doesn't look different enough from the no-fog version to me. Maybe try to have more of the "fog", and do away with the lettering to have a distictive texture. bonehead11's fog/shroud icons are quite distinct from one another, but are square which will make them see bigger and different from all the current icon. I really like how the "shroud" icon looks, fog+shroud doesn't work well and the no fog no shroud one was not immediately obvious to me.

A-Z sorting icon: nice, I'd take the second version, please kindly post a plain png and a "disabled" version if you have any better idea than a black and white version of the active one.

User relation sorting icon: not really sure this will show the right idea, the comedy/tragedy masks suggestion from the beginning seems more fitting.

Key: I'd take the second one (Zarael's)

Question mark icon: no opinion really. Zarael's one looks more in line with the rest of the layout but I'm not really uber-qualified to judge that.

Reloaded game icon: shape okay, color not really (in red it looks very much alike the question mark)

Disclosure traingles: unless someone thinks a different color would work better (maybe something that looks like part of the ui so in brownish colors with a gold outline?) I'd take what Zarael did as separate pngs

Message waiting icon (7): bonehead11's verson okay, but maybe make it narrower?

UMS icon: hmm, I'll see how this one looks, and I wonder if plain scales wouldn't do the trick either while being less cluttered. Good idea anyway IMO.
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