Author Topic: Beta Test: Radar icons  (Read 16034 times)

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Offline Yarn

  • 210
I should say that the radar icons actually do scale with the radar gauge, at least for the 2D radar. (I'm not sure how it is with the 3D radar since I almost never use it; I find that it makes it difficult to tell whether a ship is in front of or behind me.) However, the 640x480 HUD (which is used with resolutions smaller than 1024x600) uses a smaller radar gauge than the 1024x768 HUD, making the icons take up more space.
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"Freespace is very tired.  It is shutting down to get some rest."
--strings.tbl, entry 178

 

Offline jr2

  • The Mail Man
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I find that it makes it difficult to tell whether a ship is in front of or behind me


I usually pitch and yaw just a smidgen; as soon as I catch the radar contact I want moving out from in front of the center (i.e., becoming visible), then I can put it back and know where it is.  Usually works pretty good.

 

Offline BirdofPrey

  • 28
  • Help! I see GIMP in my sleep
I should say that the radar icons actually do scale with the radar gauge, at least for the 2D radar. (I'm not sure how it is with the 3D radar since I almost never use it; I find that it makes it difficult to tell whether a ship is in front of or behind me.) However, the 640x480 HUD (which is used with resolutions smaller than 1024x600) uses a smaller radar gauge than the 1024x768 HUD, making the icons take up more space.
Coulda have swore they weren't scaling much between resolutions, but, yes, I did notice a huge jump when I went into smaller resolutions.  My capital icon was crossing an entire side arc sticking out the side and into the front.

the 3D radar seems to want to render all the icons at about the same horizontal resolution which makes the longer icons for large ships appear tiny compared to the square fighter and bomber (etc.) icons.

I find that it makes it difficult to tell whether a ship is in front of or behind me


I usually pitch and yaw just a smidgen; as soon as I catch the radar contact I want moving out from in front of the center (i.e., becoming visible), then I can put it back and know where it is.  Usually works pretty good.
Yeah parallax is somewhat useful, but it's unfortunate we lose the distance lines when going from blips to icons.
The Great War ended 30 years ago.
Our elders tell stories of a glorious civilization; of people with myths of humanity everlasting, who hurled themselves into the void of space with no fear.

In testing: Radar Icons

 

Offline BirdofPrey

  • 28
  • Help! I see GIMP in my sleep
The only way to "fix" it would be to make the engine use a separate icon for "freighter docked with container" instead of rendering both as separate radar contacts; there's no way to do what you want solely by changing radar icons.
Question:
Right now I am using RGBA .png's
If I were to use indexed images, would it be possible to have one color on the palette not render but instead represent a dock point by the engine, and then if two objects are listed as being docked, have the icons aligned on the dockpoint of each?  Then two docked ships/cargo wouldn't shift around relative to each other.

====
In other news who has had a chance to try these out, and what did you think?
The Great War ended 30 years ago.
Our elders tell stories of a glorious civilization; of people with myths of humanity everlasting, who hurled themselves into the void of space with no fear.

In testing: Radar Icons

  

Offline BirdofPrey

  • 28
  • Help! I see GIMP in my sleep
Re: Beta Test: Radar icons
Just wanted to give a quick update.

I updated the .vp
Some antialiasing fixes, and I changed the generic freighter icon to more closely match the Chronos.


On a side note, I was thinking of adding an icon for the subspace nodes.
As far as I know subspace nodes don't have an entry themselves in the ships table, but an invisible navbouy is usually left at the center.  There's a few types of navbouy in the table, so I was wondering two things:
1. which navbouy is it
2. if I change the entry for that type to a subspace node radar icon, are there any missions where it is going to show up erroneously?  (I know, for instance, the first proper FS1 mission has a navbouy in it, but it seems to be visible.)
The Great War ended 30 years ago.
Our elders tell stories of a glorious civilization; of people with myths of humanity everlasting, who hurled themselves into the void of space with no fear.

In testing: Radar Icons