Mega New Elk WIP
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@beelee Ok dude, check this out hehe
Just because I was like a gpu masochist last night and trying to see if I could run GIMP more intensively while the Machine beats up on itself in 10 round games.
What I wanted to do was clean up the unit graphic fields so that they will display nicely with Flag view On > Large. Mostly this meant just sorta noodling the field by like a couple pixels in either direction depending on the unit shape or its standard orientation. Goal was just to get the puck to look a bit better for that presentation. Should be pretty clean I think for players who like that look.
I started with Japan and USA just to see if I could get something cooking
It will end up looking more like this under that view... I still need to resize the USA subs, cruisers and transport etc, but gives a sense for where I was aiming. Basically for some beefier naval or ground units I just reduced the scale by a couple pixels and shifted a little till it would display to one side or the other rather than like behind the tank or battleship Should be able to see more of the flag at a glance once I dial em all up.
So just to get a little more of roundel to show behind the units at a glance. Should help I think in differentiate the units by nation if peeps need a quick survey or like to play more zoomed when multi national units are grouped together.
For the place optimal I think would be 96x62 to avoid clips, and so the overflow is ok with the slight extension of the fields. Some of the clips we see on occasion I think may just place overlaps, or where the place juts up against a tile division like from the base/relief tiles maybe. Not entirely sure, but it looks pretty good even with the current place, so that was the goal.
Probably will take a few days to do em all the factions, but then at least we'll have an easy option for that from the view tab
Should work for the UHDs as well I think, or if using the vanilla Flag roundels instead of the more elliptical ones. I'm trying to key it off the oval though since those give me a little more play in the width.
Just started in on Germany and USSR, I'll attached the unit folder zip once I get them all sorted
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@black_elk said in Mega New Elk WIP:
Should work for the UHDs as well I think,
F yea ! I don't use the flags myself but most of the other UHD/Boxes guys do. They'd totally dig it
I wish i woulda kept the ones you did when we were first doing UHD but ...
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@beelee I ran into a kink with the battle view menus. Using the method I was trying it's possible to extend the width of the canvas to the right pretty far so that the puck will offset. This won't show clipping if the player is attacker, but will if they are the defender, since it changes the orientation on screen it will clip. We don't really have a way to flip orientation on the fly, so I think that may be a bust. Like it looks ok on the map view, but in the battle window sorta janky.
The large flag display draws more centered and behind the unit, so it needs a bit deeper of an offset, the small flag uses the very tiny images which have the design more for the stats screen.
My initially plan was to double the canvas (only width since height will clip beyond the current, which is right at the ceiling) but the width is a little more flexible. To me if it clips at the stern that doesn't look too bad, but nobody likes a nose clip hehe. Sorta the issue with the tiny flags I think. Another possibility might something like redesign of the small flag to do something similar but those paint in front of the unit rather than behind which looks a bit off to me. Might have to backburner it for now till I can find a better solution. I tried a few different variants. Allies to me looked better this way I think for the unit orientation there.
I'll try to get it figured one of these days. BIMP doesn't work with the new GIMP 3.0 so I think I need to find a different solution, otherwise it was relatively simple to just expand all the canvases at once by some set amount say 100px or whatever. But then when units flips to defender position that will do a clip depending on the orientation of the unit, so sorta only really works right on the map view and not as well in the battle screen. Unit purchase/Notes still looks fine, it will just crop out the extra canvas, but battle menu has a different visual and that tight ceiling
ps. yeah not sure it's going to work. Probably the best I could do is provide a separate unit set that has them drawn on, but then those will also display in the battle screen, unlike if using the flags on/off option. In order to look decent the pucks sorta all have to be at the same height I think otherwise when they're on the overflow, it'll look weird with the pucks jumping up and down. Something like this I guess, but I had to those all manually which takes a while. Probably will have to table it until I get some kinda big burst of energy or can find a decent Bimp alternative to do it all as a batch thing, but even there I think it has to adjust per unit type depending on how wide the canvas can go, or where it crowds. I think it's more visually appealing if using these that they tuck up by the units but needs a pretty wide canvas to be serviceable for everything all at the same height. Anyhow I got through USA so might just bang it out at some point but for now I think the national tints will have to do.
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ps. here's another option. I think I prefer this if going for a roundel style visualization...
Compared to the oval flag design feels a bit cleaner to me.
I'd just have to do something in that style for each faction, plus tech or optional variants. It doesn't take too long, but I think the key is to have them all on the same height line so when they line up the roundels all basically look identical in terms of their relative position on the canvas
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some tech types and such, done up in the same way.
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Here's a basic for USA
and then here's a basic for Japan
depending on whether you're viewing these on the the computer or the phone for the images attached on the boards, you may see what I mean about how the present in rows or columns with the roundel on the line at the same height. I think if all units had the same width like 98px it could be made to look consistent for either, but I think the height is the main one since that's the presentation for the unit overflows. I think mainly just looks best if it's at the bottom left or right, depending on which direction the units are facing.
Italians
Soviets
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Here's some Brits
Then finally here's a quick set for the Germans with the same vibe going on...
For the current UHD which have a mixed orientation, the roundels for these would bunch up, with units are facing different directions and roundels on different. It's not too bad, but I think it may look nicer if I extend the field for all the units and then try to just get the roundel on the same side for all the units of a given faction. I think it would be a rectangle for the place at 54x98 since that's what the widest ships are at right now. That may give enough room to put the roundel on either side, even if the units are flipped to face opposite direction like the Germans/Anzac currently display.
I will put them all together in a single zip when I'm finished with all the factions and the tech alts, then if anyone wants to use those for the UHDs they can just do like a quick swap to get the more traditional roundels. Probably easier than trying to get the on/off flag thing to work.
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ps. I haven't finished France and such yet, but here's a quick couple screens to show how it scales out. Even on the big one down to the normal mapviews 50% and out, I can still make them out reasonably well.
What I'd like to do for the units is to put a little more canvas so the unit number doesn't hit into the roundel. Or at least for the nations that have white in the roundel, since that can make it harder to make out the stack numbers say telling a if the roundel is tucked in too close. The number tends to position slightly lower and offset to the left.
It gives a pretty nice read though and isn't too distracting in the battle menu I don't think. Mainly the important thing is just to have all the roundels on the same side for the unit facing. If doing a roundel visual I would probably go all facing the same direction by team, as this will prevent the roundels from crowding when multinational stacks are on the same line, battle menu or overflow placement. If the canvas is large enough on either side though it's not too bad to do a mixed orientation. Just as long as they're not right on top each other seems to be fairly decent. I think I will do a sharpening pass like 5-10% for units upscaled to 120% since otherwise it kicks up a bit of blur, like on the purchase screen if playing at 1440p, but that should be easy to do once I have everything positioned on the canvas.
I think it looks kinda cool to have the Flag Puck oval in deep perspective for the Capital main map display, but then the more circular motif for the units on the board. Gives a nice little splash of color and makes it a bit easier to spot units at a glance. When I put them together I'll just do it for everything that I have that way it will be easy to swap for units with no flags, depending on player preference.
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@black_elk
In map.properties
units.counter.offset.width=30
units.counter.offset.height=60These control where the stack counter numbers appear.
So no need for more canvas.
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@beelee Yeah that's a P-51. I wanted to use it for their default fighter initially, just cause it's pretty badass with the style points there, but it really doesn't come online until 42/3 for the X prototypes. Similar to the Brit Spit fighter, I chose a design more in profile with the fuel tanks for the LRA types so it would be easy to spot. I use the term 'make' pretty lightly, I think that was like a Revell model. I'm partial to the stuff they had in the 80s the cool boxes like model kit bashing hehe. Similar to some of the extra tanks and such, I think sometimes the later designs are more iconic, but the 40/41 start date recommended something a little earlier. We have that graphic in the GCD, comes online sorta midgame to endgame.
I used the standard roundel for USA here, since it's more familiar from OOB. Sorta same deal for all the factions favoring the cardboard from the boxes. By 42 the red dot in the center of the Star roundel was removed in favor of a design blue and white, then with the yellow ring towards the end of the year Torch operation. Bars with the red outline were added in 43, then later in that year the red was dropped in favor of blue again for the outline, which is the one I associate most like with the Hollywood movies. The current design still in use is largely similar to that one, it just features a thin red stripe in the middle now, but that's more like postwar or pushing up into Korean era conflict. We also have a P-38 Lightning and a few others. Sometimes I used the method of doing a lighter tint color for tech advances, just to fill in the gaps.
@TheDog Oh cool! I forgot we had a way to shift the counter number for the stacks. That should help then, cause most units are more like 68-84px wide only the larger/fatter ships really need the 98px max on that.
I wonder is there a similar property we can set for the large/small flag display offset? Because unlike the puck in deep perspective the standard roundel can just paint into a corner and probably would look largely identical to me adding them into the graphic.
Flags on/off would be optimal, since that's a view tab setting and because when the units display in the battle view menu or the notes or purchase screen would display just the unit graphic in those UI windows. Also I think it has to be a universal like from top/bottom left or center for both sides, rather than alternating by side or attack/defender orientation. I think flips are similar right now, where I can set a flip in the map props, but then it just applies to everything instead of by nation/team. For me the circular roundel is just more appealing if we're going to see the motif repeated for all units, it's also easier to flip that than a national banner.
Also a problem I feel with using national banners is that when a flag displays at a unit's feet, to me that looks like it's laying on the ground, or like sinking into the ocean, about to get run over by tank tracks etc. Whereas the circular design is a bit more abstract so I think it just looks a bit cleaner if it's going to present beneath the unit, rather than above the unit, or somewhere at their knees or whatever. Plus just looks more familiar to me from like Iron Blitz for the callback hehe. Sorta always my goal, just to find something a bit more Iron Blitz-y for tripleA hehe
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Here's the full set for Italy with all the tech stuff. I did a version of the commanders there at 54px, with like a 5-10% percent sharpening and some tweaks to the chroma. Seemed to hold up alright. Just to show how it would look and what the space would be, doing them for each faction.
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Here's another reason why it would be advantageous to use the Flags on/off, if we could get them to orient dynamically by team/nation
Because it is possible to tell TripleA to draw the units at set dimensions, the game can transform the graphics to display within a square, even when the graphics provided have a different aspect. This will simply stretch or compress the images. This looks pretty decent generally, but not so much if the graphic includes geometric shapes, as these will compress or go oblong.
If the additional information of the roundel flag is added in after that transformation, with an offset, it will end up looking much cleaner. As opposed to a drawn on circular roundels becoming an oval, if that makes sense.
Here's a quick example of what I mean using the set from the post above...
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ps. To experiment with the flag display, here is a quick roundel set at 20px.
Right now flag display small will work for the map display in the corner of the unit canvas, but the stats menus are also keyed for an image with that label by 12px so it may clip in the menu if doing it that way. But basically you can see what I mean. If all units were facing the same direction I suppose it would be less of an issue, but they often face each other in which case it would be nice to have the roundel alternate or flip on the fly. I'm not sure that's possible in the current, but we have graphics at least.
ps. here are the rest and some alts
pps. Here is a zip with all those flag roundels together. I moved the others to a subfolder called vertical flags. I think this is more expedient than doing the drawn on roundel thing. I will still comb over the units and check the canvases for sizing but it's just way easier I think to use these for that. It has the substitutions for size small made to the labels...
Looks like so...
Soviet Engineer
and Rachel Weisz
