Thoughts on the current system

Saktoth: The icons are good, but i think the circle background gets in the way of the role marker, which is THE MOST important data by far. Knowing where your arty and raiders are is more important than knowing where your vechs and kbots are (but since everything uses the circle, this doesnt convey much either). The circle is just getting in the way of conveying useful information, i seriously think it should be removed and the role icons perhaps made more robust. There also doesnt seem to be a unique icon for scouts (jeffy/flea) as well as raiders. One is needed!

Google Frog: I found that without the circle background icons tend to be hard to spot. The circle isn't very big and the unittype can easily be seen.

Saktoth's Proposed Icon System

The shape of an icon dictates unit type.

• Static: Square.
• Air: Equilateral Triangle.
• Mobile: Circle.

If we delineate by chassis (IMO, no need):

• Hover: Flat-bottomed Circle.
• Vech: 2 Wheels (circles) on bottom of Circle.
• Bot: Circle.
• Crawler: Circle with 3 legs (triangles).
• Ship: Down facing Trapezoid with curved bottom and top (IE, Circle with two chinks out of the sides).

A shape or symbol inside that dictates role/class.

• Scout/Recon/Surveillance: Eye. (Or three little wheels for convention?)
• Raider: Right facing Isosceles Triangle.
• Assault: Tall square (Or Diamond for convention?).
• Riot: Starburst.
• Skirmisher: Horizontal bar/Arrow.
• Artillery: Twin Diagonal Lines.
• Anti-air: Upward Arrow (Or an Arc, for convention).
• Constructor: Construction stripe pattern (Or the M for convention?)
• Energy: Lightning Bolt.
• Mex: Pickaxe? Hole?
• Special/Uncategrized: Large Black Dot. Transports, Shields, etc.

Air also uses this icon scheme. Bombers use Assault, gunships Raider, fighters Anti-Air, etc. Statics do too. LLT Raider, Defender Skirmisher, Anti-swarm Riot, HLT Assault (all in boxes, of course)... dunno about these two though.

Other than their classes, some units get unique icons:

• Crawly Bombs: Starburst (Smaller than riot, no circle around it)
• Nuke Launcher: Radioactive Symbol.
• Nuke Launcher: Radioactive Symbol Inside a shield (Not with a partially covering shield as current).

Im not sure that its ideal. Feel free to edit it. Its my proposal but you're all free to make suggestions and edits (or your own proposals).

KR's system (the current): Saktoth: Major problems here are that there are several arbitrary distinctions (Assault Kbots given their own icon, but no other classes. Long range missiles and techyons given their own icon for weapon type, not for role). It gets points in some areas fro being visually representative though (radars, nukes).

Google Frog: I think Saktoths proposed icon system looks good. I've attached an incomplete icon system with most of the movetypes and classes but they haven't been combined yet.

T2 gunships could have the antiswarm icon.

Scout/Recon/Surveillance would have to be an eye because wheels is a movetype. Air has scouts but no wheeels.

I think there should be an emp and cloaking additional icon that can be added on top of the basic icon but I can't think of what they would look like. For example a zeus would be assult+kbot+emp and a panther raider+veh+emp.

IMO all movetype icons are vital except veh and bot. Veh and bot are useful but not vital because they convery information about slope tolerance and turnspeed but can go in the same area.

Licho: for skirmishers I auggest double pointing horizontal arrow (signaling its movement style). For factories i suggest "static" frame (square) with chassis/movetype symbol in the middle.

For cloaking etc icons, its easy to add those "subicons" to buildicons in menu, but not sure if we can do it for real map icons on map, it would be too much.

Saktoth: Great work Google. I think its already a bit crowded, cloaking/jumping sub-icons might be difficult.

The Raider triangle should point the other direction ('forwards').

The constructors strip pattern should fill the whole icon, as a pattern not an overlay.

IMO AA and shield are too similiar. Assault and generic are too similiar.

Radar probably should be a little more stylised, perhaps ditch the base.

Some skirmishers arent actually useful in the skirmishing 'cavalry archer' movement pattern, perhaps we should re-name the role but there are a lot of skirmishers which are just ranged support (IE 'regular archer', this is totally fine and a good role).

Im not sure about using black shapes, and the size of the shapes themselves. Perhaps they should poke out of the edges a little more rather than being completely contained. In IW i find the internal icon gets lost, as often you just see the profile of the icon. If the internal icon pokes over the edges a little this might help.

Since the profile of the icon is so important, do we really need to distinquish between Air, Land and Sea constructors, for example? Perhaps some units should just get one icon, rather than a generic icon then a sub-icon. An example like this would be the old stlye 'M' constructor (very unique) or the special air icons (each unique and pictorial).

Google Frog: I see your point about the shape so the role icons are now larger. Also they are no longer completely black and the gradient is pointing inwards to give it more contrast.

The shield icon looks a bit strange and blends in with the curve of the background. It will probably need redoing.

I think the con strips are too close together, I'll redo them later. Maybe constructors should have the old M.

If all jumping units are going to be kbots jumpers could have a background icon. Like the spiders get their own icon, jumping bots is a movetype and I think it is important that this is displayed.

Google Frog: I've manually combined the constructor icons.

There's an icon for most of the unit classes though I'm not sure what to do for scouting. I think an eye would be either too small to see or too large to see the unit type due to it's circular shape.

Jumpjet movetype icon added.

I think factory icons should be the con_static icon behind the blank movetype icon of the type of units the factory produces.

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Licho asked me to upload the icon stuff i made, since the computer crash and a reinstall of spring my customicons.tdf and the fitting lua file is gone, but i still have the XFC file and my little html file where i tried to explain the icon stuff i wanted to make, so i just uploaded it here, if its not good to just put my crappy english text into this side here plz flame me for that. i use very small pixelsizes for the icons to have them sharp and clean in the zoom out view (when pressing TABulator) and on the minimap. maybe someone can use it somehow, i liked the idea to identify every unit on the minimap when you use the icons for a while, and when you use them not that long you can at least see that its a submarine, a artillerie or an airplane / gunship. AnniXa?

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Google Frog: I'ved changed the oval movtype background for a circle so that raider and skirm poke out the sides this makes them a lot more distinguishable. The circle has a thin edge so the class icon is more visible. Screenshot of land icons :  http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/61/screen042tf2.jpg the icons have lost a bit in the screenshot and uploading but ingame they are easily visible.

Imo air is too different to land to have the same icon sceme. It i very important that the difference between air and ground can be seen very quickly. There are a few definite classes; bomber, fighter, gunship, scout and we already have most of these icons. The only things that needs adding is heavy gunship, area bomber, transport and aircon.