Darken Moved Units
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We can darken units without needing new unit images.
IMO the 'moved' units would appear as a new stack. I think this is particularly useful for transports. Being able to see which transports are fully moved, which ones have one movement left, and those with all remaining would be useful. Namely you could select them properly. That is probably the biggest reason for creating a visual distinction between partially and fully moved units.
Secondarily, the 'fully darkened' might be misleading if a unit can actually still move. It's a UX principle that you should be able to infer state from looking at something, ie: just by looking at something you should be able to figure out how it works. In this case, with the shading, you can tell which units you can and cannot move, and which units you have not moved at all and which you have moved but can still move further. In the case of tanks for example that would probably be beneficial as you get better indication of blitzing, perhaps the same for paratroop bombers.
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@LaFayette Personally, if starting with no maps, I would do this only on a dualism between moved (partially or fully) and unmoved units and would show the moved ones as being completely desaturated (pure grey). However, this cannot be done on most TripleA maps, comprising the ones using the assets, as there are already two players with already fully desaturated units (namely Germans and Neutral).
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@Cernel it's not necessarily a saturation change. In the "HSB" scale, we'd be changing the 'brightness'.
My concern with darkening partially and fully moved units is that it might get confusing. IMO we would want players to learn that fully darkened units cannot be moved unless you undo a move, that would not be true for some units. Noting the exception, I think it becomes less meaningful, the darkening means "Maybe you can move these units". I think that creates some inconsistency, mainly would want it so that you know if a unit is fully darkened you can basically ignore it when looking for more units that need to be moved.
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@LaFayette To be clear, I would desaturate (make grey) (only feasible if the map doesn't already have grey, black or white units) any units that moved of 1 or more spaces (no matter their max movement) except those that loaded onto units of the same power without offloading (yet) and those that were moved as cargo (or both).
However, instead of only desaturated, to be consistent with the assets, they could become "white". After all, "white" is already the colour of the immobile units (factory units and all Neutral ones). But, in this case, it is definitely mandatory an opt-out ability per map on this feature (as it might give very bad results in some of them).
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Darken is not an ideal situation Better have a small aura around or below (or a shadow) the unit that changes. Or maybe there could be a shadow for all units that have moved and those that have not do not have it.
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@Cernel I don't think it makes sense to do per map. Maps should not really be in control of basic game mechanics/play, but instead more able to opt out of rules. Regardless, an item like this would be configurable per play, some players may like it, others not.
@Ondis I think it depends on how some units look when darked, how much detail is lost. I suspect it might make units hard to tell apart in some cases.
The unit outline perhaps make sense to try. all units available to move get an outline, a bright drop-shadow, when moved but not exhausted the shadow is grayed, and when moved completely the outline is removed (or changed to black).
At some point we may need some screenshots to demo how some of these treatments might look to really get a feel of what would work and not. Before then, curious if there are more ideas where we can visually signal which units have movement left and others not.
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@LaFayette I like your idea. I think it would be very helpful, especially in maps with many units.
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"A joyous heart sours with the burden of expectation"
Hepster -
@Hepps Cool rendering, is red enemy units and 'green' is friendly and yellow for air? Just curious for clarification on the color scheme. Second, do you think "aura" colors like that would look good in general (EG: WWII maps?)
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@Hepps I don't like the idea of linking this to a hue (green-yellow-red). I think the hue is already the main element for differentiating ownerships, so I wouldn't use it for this too (talking in general; no problem if it would be a feature off as default that can be enabled per map, since your image itself looks good).
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@LaFayette I think the rendering that Hepps proposed was green for units that have not moved yet, yellow for those with remaining movements, and red for those that have no more movements.
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I kinda feel like red should mean 'in-combat'.
Green + yellow seem good, perhaps gray (?) for units that are not in combat and have finished moving. -
@LaFayette Was really just something I had in my archives... I am purely a visual person and I thought it might spark the creative juices for everyone as to new ideas.
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@Hepps any chance, do you have those 'aura' shadings as transparent gif's?
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Looks good hepps. Kinda the thing I was aiming for.
I don't think it should be overcomplicated. The two states are color/shadow on or off. They correspond to Has movement points left/has not movement points left.And ofcs it should be something you can toggle off and on.
I would rather it be a shadow than a color so as not to be invisible on a background of the same color. -
@LaFayette Of course.
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While my initial design was meant to be based on the 3 colours meaning; Green-full movement, Yellow-movement remaining, Red-movement exhausted.
What I had settled on in my mind was to eliminate the Red-movement exhausted, as with the green and yellow there was more than enough emphasis without having to define the third parameter. Having the spent units have no marker was more than obvious enough.
As you can see I had also experimented with gray scales... and the Black and White worked well if you went to a 2 icon system. But with a gray nation... the gray ring was all but useless.
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@Hepps that looks awesome what map is that?
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@ubernaut Snap shots from Global Dominance.
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@Hepps is that a new one?
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