Sorting Promotions

[Sureshot]

(E) Experience:
- BLUE/gold (default)
- if to do with magic/magic resistance (spell extension etc.) PURPLE/white

(M) Magic: All different mana types.
- PURPLE/x (x is colour based on sphere...obviously stylised logo as well)
- or maybe image backgrounds as in 0.23, as long as all other img backs replaced

(U) Unit: Only given by special cases. Like from wonders/special unit/civs.
- GOLD/black (except when ties into (E) tree e.g. medic II)

(I) Item:
- [depends on how this will be implemented...GREY/black?]

(S) Spell: Promotions gained by magic (can sometimes be gained in other ways).
- some colour coding related to if this effect is beneficial or detrimental to the unit it affects:
- beneficial: WHITE(CREAM?)/x
- detrimental: RED/x

(R) Race: The different race types.
- BROWN/white

(W) Water (crew?): The different settings you can make on ships.
- BLUE/gold...for lack of a better idea

thats a really cool idea, currently i cant tell what many promotions are, just get a basic idea like "i think that might be X", would be nice to have things standardized and readily recognizable.

 

[xienwolf]

Another category of Promotions to consider a color combo for are those granted only to Summoned Beings. Black and White maybe? (since they are supposedly boring / two dimensional entities. Unless you ask Keelyn's Opinion)

Also, might be hard to come up with 21 colors that are readily distinguishable on a Purple background for each magic type to have a seperate color. I'd suggest that the colors are grouped by which Tech opens the mana (Alteration is Yellow, Elementalism Red, Necromancy Black or something like that...)

Though even with Colored Icons as a main choice, I would say that the Magic Spheres should be fine to keep the Icon/Image for the Mana Nodes and the like. Especially if the mana bar makes a return, people will understand those rather easily/quickly, and learning a new image for the promotion might make it MORE complicated.

 

[Zuul]

Anyone tried the download yet? Do you like the sorted promotions in the civilopedia?

Now Im trying to find redudant promotion settings, and add minning pedia info, and after that I will start converting all experience promotion to blue/yellow promotions.

 

[xienwolf]

I just loaded it up last night, it is mildly nifty as is, but I sure wish that the (*) junk could be hidden (but doubt it). I am also not liking the sorting at the moment, so will quite likely change things up myself (I DO like the concept).

It might be a nit nicer to change from (*) to a full word, though that might lead to text overflow on the Pedia. I'll see how it looks sometime.

The sorting I do not like: You have some spell buffs listed as Items. Flaming Arrow, Enchanted Blade, Spiritstaff, Hammer & Shield of Divinity...


But overall, I am thinking to do the same tag concept with Civ unique units and buildings (tag only the unique ones. No easy fix for the civs who CANNOT do some random building).

Question I had: I see where you flagged things in the bottom of the Excel with a 1 and name of your promotion type assignment. Was this just for reference, or is changing that line going to change the values? It does not state the (E) or (U) or the like anywhere I can see as yet in the Excel, so I wasn't sure if I could add new types (Hero only).


Nifty thing I noticed: Bane damages show the new promotion names (+40% vs (U) Orc). Mildly amusing, at least now I know when something is referencing a promotion, and when it references the spell by the same name which grants it!

 

[Zuul]

The bottom field was just for reference and for sorting. Would be nice if Kael added a real field so you can choose how to sort in the pedia.

The sorting I do not like: You have some spell buffs listed as Items. Flaming Arrow, Enchanted Blade, Spiritstaff, Hammer & Shield of Divinity...

But are they not items summoned by magic?

 

[xienwolf]

Ok, I can see what changes were made in the Civ4GameText_FFH2.xml (tedious work. I appreciate this more now!), but what did you modify in CIV4PromotionInfos.xml?

 

[Zuul]

Well nothing really yet . Next version will have some redudant code removed. But I must bug test it so I dont change anything that makes any difference.

 

[xienwolf]

Grr, getting frustrated with XML this morning. Attempting to make it so that the Adaptive Trait has a Mousover for each trait and not having ANY luck. Can't find where the mousovers for any of the dang events are.

Anyway, as for the Batch File, I repacked mine so that when I open the .rar all I see is the folder Assets and Original Files (which then contains just the folder Assets). This way I can load (unload) all the changes with a single folder movement.

 

[xienwolf]

Wow, before you get too far into this sorting, I finally looked into the BUG mod and Sevopedia. He does everything I could dream of with the Civlopedia it seems.

SevoPedia

The main thing I wanted to show it to you for is the section of the Promotion Tree. Quite the amazing way to sort it out, though it'll need some reworking for FfH since there are many promtions which aren't quite promotions still.

I'm actually amazed this isn't worked into FfH somehow since Kael made some reccomendations to Sevo according to the changelog. Ah well

 

[Zuul]

Yes there is alot of mod that should be included in ffh2. But I think Kael want to wait until shadow is out first.

 

[zxcvbnm]

Another category of Promotions to consider a color combo for are those granted only to Summoned Beings. Black and White maybe? (since they are supposedly boring / two dimensional entities. Unless you ask Keelyn's Opinion)

Also, might be hard to come up with 21 colors that are readily distinguishable on a Purple background for each magic type to have a seperate color. I'd suggest that the colors are grouped by which Tech opens the mana (Alteration is Yellow, Elementalism Red, Necromancy Black or something like that...)

Though even with Colored Icons as a main choice, I would say that the Magic Spheres should be fine to keep the Icon/Image for the Mana Nodes and the like. Especially if the mana bar makes a return, people will understand those rather easily/quickly, and learning a new image for the promotion might make it MORE complicated.

I guess the idea was to use the colour of the mana in the mana bar, ie yellow for spirit, light blue for life, making it actually less complicated as it seems that the icons would also be 1-colour versions of mana-bar pictures.

 

[the_fish]

Right, ignoring magic for the time being (partly because of colours, partly because I don't know where to get the ingame sphere symbols), I've decided to start redoing the race icons.

I've got a nice, elephant-skin-type brown background, on which I was planning to place white icons - three JPEG examples of this are attached (I have the components as bitmaps).

I guess there are two main styles I could use: the first, with the angel graphic, is a simple stylised monocolor icon; the second, with the dragon and golem graphics, is allowing a slight grey gradient into the icon to give it more depth.

I'm also making them 100x100pixels, because I figure they'll be less than that in game so can be resized without loss of quality.

These don't take too long to make, so I reckon I can do the complete set reasonably quickly in my spare time

Feedback? (I know these aren't great, it's just an initial stab at the problem)

 

[zxcvbnm]

Ingame symbols are in the mana bar, Art Team Blog's latest svartalfar picture features them if you look carefully.

Angel could have a white glow and be dark on it, like this

 

[zxcvbnm]

Ingame symbols are in the mana bar, Art Team Blog's latest svartalfar picture features them if you look carefully.

Angel could have a white glow and be dark on it, like this

[edit]Me draw very well. Me need better program

Sorry, accidental doublepost, was going to edit but quoted

 

[the_fish]

Actually, all I'm using is Paint and Irfanview (which is free, and awesome).

I've developed a method of ripping off other people's art and turning it into icon form I've redone the angel, attached below...tried to do a glowy thing but gave up (difficult to do with a transparant background).

So...more arty? More icon-like? More/less border space?

edit: added higher contrast, less cluttered angel

 

[Sureshot]

personally i think more Icon like.. those icons are generally really small most of the time you check them, and it'd be nicer to be able to tell what they are at a glance than to have them look detailed when big heh

 

[zxcvbnm]

Actually, all I'm using is Paint and Irfanview (which is free, and awesome).

I've developed a method of ripping off other people's art and turning it into icon form I've redone the angel, attached below...tried to do a glowy thing but gave up (difficult to do with a transparant background).

So...more arty? More icon-like? More/less border space?

edit: added higher contrast, less cluttered angel

What? Mspaint? I use exactly the same programs but get results like that dummyangel. If I had a proper program which can blur-paint so it won't be like black or white always, I could make a bit more publishable drawings.

I agree with Sureshot, bit more like the original but if you could get some kind of glow there it would be awesome.

 

[the_fish]

Here's my attempt at a glowing angel logo, as you requested...

Not sure this is the way to go...ideally you'd want all the icons in the same group to look similar, and I'm not sure the glow would suit the other races.

Also the glow doesn't work great with the brown textured back, but I can't think of another suitable colour/texture for race. Any ideas?

 

[xienwolf]

I like the grayish of the dragon and golem. Wings says Angel as well as glow does, so unless you use a VERY similar icon for the Demon, glow isn't neccessary. But you could use the same layout as the glowing angel with no visible feathers (leathery wings) and a red glow to make the demon decently well.

 

[the_fish]

My first attempts at Elf, Orc (two versions, high and low contrast) and Angel revised yet again - I couldnt find my source picture so I had to artificially try to include some greys in there by blurring etc.

I wanted Orc to be less detailed, but everytime I tried to remove some feature of the face it ended up unrecogniseable. Likewise with Elf, if the hair got removed it just looked like an alien/goblin.

This just leaves Dwarf, Undead (which should be easy, as long as I can find a decent skull), Elemental and Demon (likewise, I'm thinking typical Balrog style head with ram's horns)...but now I have non-ffh work to do