Hard Light Productions Forums
Community Projects => The FreeSpace Upgrade Project => Topic started by: Mito [PL] on December 16, 2019, 05:50:49 pm
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Hello!
So basically here's a new (meaning: ripped from Inferno modpack :P) set of radar icons for the MediaVPs. These ones are much more sharper than what was in MediaVPs and there is much more variety as there are new ones for, for example, each race's cruisers, corvettes, destroyers... I've also taken some time to properly configure their scaling, and now they work well for both 2D and 3D radar options.
The only problematic thing is that there doesn't seem to be any option for icon scaling depending on the distance from the player, which forced me to go for a couple compromises. For example, a huge icon for Knossos in every mission starring it looks definitely fine, but the icon for that one portal in Into The Lion's Den... absolutely does not. I'm not sure if I could fix it anyhow. Most of the icons here are scaled for FS2 missions, so ones where installations and capships are close to the player and take up a rather large portion of the field of view, and radar reflects that.
Also, no new radar-drydock icon, so the old one stays.
Grab it here: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/223516619052285952/656277845030731807/MV_RadarIcons.zip (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/223516619052285952/656277845030731807/MV_RadarIcons.zip)
Yeah, my lazy ass doesn't want to use any sort of sensible file hosting option.
Installation instructions: unpack the archive and then throw the whole 'data' folder into your MVPS-4.0.0 directory (or any MVPS release you might be using).
Any feedback is welcome!
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- All of the icons could probably stand being scaled down a little, if possible. They're all bigger than the "normal" radar icons, but the radar itself isn't any bigger, so they take up more space, and when there are a lot of ships around, they become an indistinguishable mess. Even the icon for the supply ship is huge.
- The default icon for a Shivan destroyer is a Ravana. Ravanas are generally less common than Demons, and there are no Ravanas at all in FS1, which will break immersion in any FSPort-based campaigns. It may also be confusing for new players.
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This is basically the set made by Bird of Prey like 6 years ago with a few updates, mainly the new Vasudan and Shivan specific icons.
If you're using 2D radar scaling for everyone's needs is nearly impossible as you can only define the length of the image in pixels. With 3D radar you have a multiplier which is often a lot more helpful.
The main problem comes with the way HUD tabling and scaling works. If you define your HUD gauges for 1080p, then use $Force Scaling Above: to scale it up for larger resolutions this won't affect radar icons.
On a 4K screen a 16 pixel fighter icon is miniscule while on a 768p laptop screen it can be rather huge.
As for the Ravana icon... there are 3 Ravanas in the singleplayer FS2 campaign and only 1 Demon. It's also the first Shivan destroyer you encounter and has a set of missions built around it, it's definitely more common in FS2.
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Generally I like the idea of having different radar icons for FS1 and 2, just like the HUD and briefing icons are different too.
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Okay, so I've been away from this and it's definitely high time to respond.
@Antares:
When scaling the icons, I've mostly wanted to roughly imitate the size of the objects as seen from the player's perspective, mostly using typical FS2 mission space distances to get the "feel" of it. Sathanas and Colossus are examples of objects that basically function as semi-interactive backgrounds to the scene, so I've made them big, just as most larger capships. Also in some cases, I've decided to make an icon slightly bigger if the ship serves some important function - hence why support ship icon is larger, as you are looking for it pretty often and I suppose it should stand out a bit.
If you've got suggestions for roughly which icons should be rescaled, please do tell. Do you think fighters need shrinking or it's more about large ships?
Also, regarding destroyer icons - the same case is both for Shivan and Vasudan ones. I've just decided that it would be better to distinguish between the races instead of being precise with ship classes. After all, there's no icons for the Demon and Typhon, at least ones that I know of, and breaking immersion for FS1 doesn't get too much attention from me as I kinda expect the majority of the players to have played FS2 before or not paying large attention to what exactly is on the radar icons. Besides, FSPort currently uses its own set of icons from what I know and that probably won't change until it gets updated to cooperate with new MVPS packaging.
Of course, if anyone would be willing to make some of the missing icons, that would be really appreciated, and quickly integrated. Remember, I've just snatched the readily available icons and configured them for MVPS.
@FrikgFeek:
I actually remember going through most of resolutions up to 1080p and checking if the 2D radar doesn't get whacky with the icons. Results - it seems like the radar gauge in MVPS-4.0.0 (FSO 19.0.0-RC1) always takes up the same amount of pixels, even if at 1024x768 the HUD looks gigantic and slightly obstructive. So the size of 2D radar icons relative to the radar size doesn't change. I didn't check that for resolutions beyond 1080p (got no bigger monitor), but I think it's rather credible to assume that majority of players will use 1080p or smaller resolution. I even remember talking about that in the Discord.
Of course if you know how this will act in bigger resolutions and how (if at all) is this behaviour fixable, I'd happily accept the info, or even someone just slapping it into the table file (for the sake of me being unable to try the results in action... and my laziness :P).
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Do you have a full list of what you're missing/wanting?
I think I still have my old workflow around here somewhere, but my actual .vp files seem to be gone.
Also if you want to go with different icons for Vasudan and Shivan fighters and bombers, I have icons for every fighter in FS1 so could replace the generics with an Apollo, Anubis and Scorpion icon
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Hey, thanks for coming by! :P
Well, for now I'm wondering what is going to become of this "repack" as there doesn't seem to be many people using this at all and for it to work properly, there would be some changes in the radar code needed, as mentioned by several people outside of this topic. One that FrikgFeek mentioned here, having the icons actually scale together with the 2D radar would eliminate one major issue and coming from myself, it would be nice to see the radar icons becoming smaller with the object's distance from the player. Maybe also some "Radar icon override" SEXP to accompany that?
As for the icons themselves, I think that compared to the current MediaVPs set the only icon missing is the radar-drydock (for the Ganymede), but that isn't used anywhere in the retail FS2 campaign. Well, an icon for jump nodes might be useful too.
This matter provokes the question of how should these icons be realised: should they be differentiating between ship applications, for example light fighter/heavy fighter/light bomber/heavy bomber, or should each ship class get one icon? I think this is worth discussing, at least in the anticipation of the moment when radar gets upgraded...
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Well, for now I'm wondering what is going to become of this "repack" as there doesn't seem to be many people using this at all and for it to work properly, there would be some changes in the radar code needed, as mentioned by several people outside of this topic. One that FrikgFeek mentioned here, having the icons actually scale together with the 2D radar would eliminate one major issue and coming from myself, it would be nice to see the radar icons becoming smaller with the object's distance from the player. Maybe also some "Radar icon override" SEXP to accompany that?
Ah yes, UI code improvements to scale better with resolution. Those have been stuck in committee as long as I've been around.
As for stuff getting used or not, I don't know how often stuff gets used that isn't explicitly packed in with the MVPs or one of the mods.
As for the icons themselves, I think that compared to the current MediaVPs set the only icon missing is the radar-drydock (for the Ganymede), but that isn't used anywhere in the retail FS2 campaign. Well, an icon for jump nodes might be useful too.
I might have skipped that because it's not used, but I can make one once I know what it's supposed to look like. I do have an icon for the FS1 jump node (not the FS2 one, but I can make one of those too), but never figured out what entity to attach it to (iirc there's 3-4 nav beacons, and the jump point is one of them)
This matter provokes the question of how should these icons be realised: should they be differentiating between ship applications, for example light fighter/heavy fighter/light bomber/heavy bomber, or should each ship class get one icon? I think this is worth discussing, at least in the anticipation of the moment when radar gets upgraded...
That I couldn't say. I'm not sure how good separating light/heavy fighters and bombers would be since most bombers are medium/heavy and few fighters are. I do kind of like the idea of separating based on faction.
I never finished, but I did start on making a unique icon for every ship, but arguments have been made that could make the radar too busy.
edit: old topic for perusal https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=89098
Much of the same thing discussed. HUD needs to scale for these to work better etc.
[attachment eaten by a Shivan]