Dune Wars Art Thread

[Slvynn]

Announcing DW Action button style:
small preview:

buttons for unti type sellection - 2 options - with color lights and without.
Those units presented without border - regular border of blue-white gradient. Its same scale with ZZZ.
Also some version of Zzz button. All buttons will be consistent uthing that background or desert if need to show environment
Another one is movement button - go to action.

 

[davidlallen]

Announcing DW Action button style: small preview:

The good news is that these buttons never appear half size, so the artwork may be more clear. However, I still feel these buttons are too "busy". The purpose of icons is so that the user can identify them quickly without examining the picture. I think these icons have too much "stuff" in them. However, the overall art style is nice and I agree that replacing all the action buttons with a consistent set is a nice idea.

 

[Slvynn]

The good news is that these buttons never appear half size, so the artwork may be more clear. However, I still feel these buttons are too "busy". The purpose of icons is so that the user can identify them quickly without examining the picture. I think these icons have too much "stuff" in them. However, the overall art style is nice and I agree that replacing all the action buttons with a consistent set is a nice idea.

I agree that they bit busy, but i think they are recognizable.
Just compare same buttons with Vanilla ones.
You\ll find same amount of detail. (Select same type of unit - select all types of units)
The base is from Afterworld official mod, reworked and recoloured.
And i never had complaints in FF and not in Afterworld for those buttons.
I remade already those grouping buttons, so they contain bit less details, and more contrast.

The sample of style is Go-to button.

 

[Deliverator]

I agree with david that they are a bit too busy. Something slightly cleaner and clearer would be nice. I have more trouble identifying the actions these represent than the vanilla ones. I liked the load/unload ones you posted as those are really clear. Even though these are used in Afterworld/FF I don't especially like them.

 

[Slvynn]

Ok then then i'll prefer Load/Unload style
Deal buddies
going home from job, oh how i hope to finish all this today

 

[God-Emperor]

I think the background could stand to be deemphasized - reduced contrast and possibly a slight reduction in the saturation of the colors - and the foreground elements should be made to stand out more by having greater contrast with the background adn possibly more saturated colors.

For example, the "move to" button could stand to have the "current location" ring in the lower left and the movement indication arrow stand out more. The "destination location" indicator in the upper right is white, some of which is against a black background, whereas the ring is much closer to the background color (as is the arrow, but a bit less than the ring). The gap between the ring and arrow could stand to be emphasized a little too.

This higher contrast is already present in the load and unload buttons. The action indicators in the foreground stand out much more from the background in those two than in the new ones.

 

[arkham4269]

One small gripe is that Dune Wars seems to have a small bug in that the circle that you use to click to the next turn often doesn't work in that unless you click almost dead center, you end up being shunted to your capital city as if you clicked the flag. I've noticed this in a view mods.

I tend to click that button almost every turn but click the flag to get to my capital city every blue moon. So perhaps the end of turn button should be bigger.

 

[Slvynn]

One small gripe is that Dune Wars seems to have a small bug in that the circle that you use to click to the next turn often doesn't work in that unless you click almost dead center, you end up being shunted to your capital city as if you clicked the flag. I've noticed this in a view mods.

I tend to click that button almost every turn but click the flag to get to my capital city every blue moon. So perhaps the end of turn button should be bigger.

It will but later

 

[Slvynn]

Ok, i worked quite alot, but there were some problems, and more work than i expected.

Action buttons postponed to next release. I will take my time and refine it well. There is no hurry.

Here are Buildings + religions release.
I hope nothing messed up.
FScales are ok more less. Please test though. May be i missed something so some tweaks will be needed. I am just tired and spent lots time with it. Damn fonts gone awry and i needed to redo all things again.

Ah, for the moment religion icons without alpha. Most of them are square , with some minor "shaping"
But i think that will work.
This is better, than before.
Shai-Hulud is black background, brown worm and orange sphere - very distinguishable. Later i will add alphas, and remove square background for some of them.
Buildings have own palette for icon background. They look clear and distinguishable.

PS be careful that you download file called B&R Art release - old one called dune Wars was incorrect. Replaced it.

 

[Ahriman]

That screenshot reminds me; any chance we can modify the turbine level 2 and 3 graphics to get multiple turbines on the same tile?

 

[Slvynn]

And some glance on new action button style.
Hardest are air-borne actions. Will do/polish later.
1. go to
2. Load
3. Heal
4. Settle City
5. Unload

 

[God-Emperor]

Nice. Those are all definitely easy to tell apart. They are also different from the ones in plain BtS and consistent in style. Three good things.

 

[Deliverator]

And some glance on new action button style.
Hardest are air-borne actions. Will do/polish later.
1. go to
2. Load
3. Heal
4. Settle City
5. Unload

These are great! Good work.

 

[Ahriman]

Agreed, nice job Slvynn.

 

[davidlallen]

Great! Are you also planning to include the worker actions like "build desert plantation"? There are about a dozen altogether. You can get a list by searching for <Button> in file xml/art/civ4artdefines_improvement.xml.

 

[Slvynn]

Thanks i like that you like it
Good, good point on workers - i'll check xml
The list is half done though i dont want to hurry so i guess action buttons will be for next patch
i'll do something right now but i am not sure i'll finish it today

edit: more stuff

 

[davidlallen]

I have added a bunch of UU in 1.6.4. I did not even try to add artwork; the UU and the base unit it replaces have the same artwork. I have created a list of all the units in 1.6.4 and given each of them a "grade" based on how good the unit art is. This is obviously subjective. "C" means it is actively painful. "B" means it is fine for now, it is not a custom unit but it fits in well enough. "A" means it is good. There are about 20 "C". You can sort the sheet a variety of ways.

I doubt that there are units in the download database or other mods which could improve the "C" ones. But if I am wrong, that would be the easiest source of improvement. For some of them, it may be possible to just reskin. Hopefully this can guide the unit art project.

 

[Slvynn]

On new UU :
the biggest issue with new added UUs is Trike model. It cant look like quad, so we need original model, i cant base on anything that i can find. Deon is not here (he did a model but he didnt passed it to us), so may i ask from Deliverator to make this unit's 3d art/model? Other can use just reskins for now

 

[Maniac]

another chart:
A1 - A4 - good building base art, A3 improvement from FF can be used as building art too



A5 and Further is remade and some added stuff for action buttons
C is button for choosing same or different type units in stack, i am not sure, will listen what you say

I like B5. Do you still have that button laying around somewhere?

 

[Slvynn]

I like B5. Do you still have that button laying around somewhere?

Yep I have it, our DW set will use different one, its in home tell me the thread where you want me to post with attached DDS

The way of production (this will help you a lot to reproduce this style for other buttons:
1. One of Afterworld buttons from its atlas being tintend, filtered a lot.
2. in middle you have white layer with transparency gradient – 100% - 0% - 100%
3. sign in the middle
4. 3 symetric thin lines, to give it more style over white layer dominance
quite simple


@ Deliverator
Please check 2nd unit
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=279658
here
I think that’s and awesome base for carryall – we can make differencies by size and head – as it done for thopters.