Zerovirus's art - cursors

[Olrox]

the color is already better!
I agree with Zarel that is better to make the move cursor more distinct from a crosshair, and I think that it's worth trying to remove the circle around the arrows. A (very very) little more yellowish tone of green, perhaps only 5% more, would also look nice IMO.
Perhaps changing the double arrows to a single, more pointy one, would look good, maybe it's also worth playing with this a bit

But hey, the quality is very good, I feel very happy to see even more talented persons around the Artwork section! (I can't say too much about the other areas because, for personal health's sake, I've restricted myself to the artistic domain xD )

[Zarel]

ideas.gif

Some of my ideas are along the left. What do you think?

[Per]

Hmm. Animated cursors. If someone can make a mockup set of that, and I'll see what I can do.

[KukY]

for personal health's sake

What kind of health? xD

[Olrox]

What kind of health? xD

Let's say it was to prevent gastritis and such type. But please, let's forget about that: I recognize I was writing way too many sidenotes yesterday.

About the recent cursors, that was about what I was thinking about! the arrows look more proportional now, on the attack cursor, and the move cursor looks more different from a crosshair now, and positioning the outer arrow over the inner one, as well as putting them closer to each other, helped to eliminate the "fast forward" feel
Thinking it over, the color tone is fine, it looked somewhat bluish to me (maybe it was too late and I've been looking at the forum's blue background the whole day ).

Nice work. But... hmm, about the color code, maybe it'll not look good if we really have the neutral actions' cursors grey, but maybe it'd be better to make them yellow, so that the neutral+offensive or neutral+friendly action combos won't look strange? What do you think?

[Zarel]

I tested the modified version of your attack cursor, it looks great.

The move cursor still doesn't look right, though...

Here, let me show you how to mod Warzone and get the cursors in the game. First, you have to have 2.3 beta 9 or newer. Now, place this image:

intfac5.png

into here:

C:\Program Files\Warzone 2100\mods\autoload\newcursors\images\intfac5.png

(assuming you installed Warzone to C:\Program Files\Warzone 2100\; if not, replace that part with wherever you installed it to.)

[Zerovirus]

I made a few more. Not too satisfied with Move-Attack. Maybe change it back to green, but I have a feeling I'm going to be redesigning it completely.

[Zarel]

Well, we could consider changing the "movement" color from green to blue...

[Olrox]

I like those new ones, really, and agree with you that the attack-move doesn't seem that intuitively correct. Maybe changing it to something somilar to the move-unload transport cursor, but with crosshairs in the place of the transport, would look better and more distinct.
About the move cursor, why don't you try changing the doubler arrows with ones similar to the current static pointer cursor (the grey, fourth one from the second column), in green tones? I think that using the same shape, in Zarel's version, would look really good.

I love the shading effects, really! it is simple and yet, impressive. Nicely done!

[XboxJosh]

Ditto on Zarel's blue proposal, I think that would look great, especially since a lot of WZ's interface is blue...

[Zarel]

Made a few minor adjustments. Overall, it's looking awesome.

cursors.png

cursors.psd

I mainly added anti-aliasing, and made the dark parts a little bit lighter. I understand the value of contrast, but since the shapes themselves are important to recognize, it looks better toned down a bit.

Have you done anti-aliasing on pixel art before? It's not too bad. I'm currently using opacities of 0-30-80-100, so if you want to try that... I notice you removed the anti-aliasing from the original cursors - I hope your image editor supports it...

Feel free to tweak my modifications further, by the way... I noticed you haven't touched my changes.

[Zerovirus]

I scoff at your anti aliasing, being a pure pixelartist or whatever

It's best that you should know right now, I do everything on the horribly archaic MS Paint. Really, it can do everything GIMP or PS can, and any bonuses that I might be getting from either of the two in pixeling terms are negated by my familiarity with MS Paint. You should probably wait until we have a set done before you antialiase, because every time I do an edit and save you have to re-antialiase. Sorry. [/horriblyillogicalselfjustification]

I haven't been touching your stuff because, mostly, they're pretty darn good edits. Also, Olrox was initially right- I did put quite a bit of blue tinting into the green pallete, which I could take out and rebalance into a more yellowish green if necessary.

I like contrast, but I suppose you're right on that matter. I'll remember less contrast with the next few.

Any ideas for the moveattack? If not, I'm going to just skip over that for now in favor of better prey. Maybe the demolish structure- I'm not sure whether to keep the current wrecking ball or to make a whole new symbol.

[XboxJosh]

Maybe the demolish structure- I'm not sure whether to keep the current wrecking ball or to make a whole new symbol.

Perhaps a bulldozer? But then we'd have to re-make the 3d model of a wrecking ball....

[Olrox]

I vote for the wrecking ball to be mantained. A bulldozer is mainly used to level terrain, and mostly associated to construction, I think
About the attack-move, didn't you like my idea? :rolleyes:

[Zarel]

I scoff at your anti aliasing, being a pure pixelartist or whatever

Wikipedia notes that pixel art can be and often is anti-aliased. What I do is still pixel art - I don't use any tool other than single-pixel pencil, single-pixel eraser, and eyedropper - it's just "best possible" pixel art. I do anti-aliasing, and I use large palettes for gradients - no dithering.

It's best that you should know right now, I do everything on the horribly archaic MS Paint. Really, it can do everything GIMP or PS can, and any bonuses that I might be getting from either of the two in pixeling terms are negated by my familiarity with MS Paint. You should probably wait until we have a set done before you antialiase, because every time I do an edit and save you have to re-antialiase. Sorry. [/horriblyillogicalselfjustification]

Well, I used to use and love Paint for pixel art. But I use Photoshop now, mostly because of the keyboard shortcuts, the anti-aliasing, the alt+scrolling smooth zoom feature, and the significantly better color chooser, which have their advantages even in pixel art. Oh, and layers, for putting two things on top of each other to compare them easily, such as references (I used a circle reference to anti-alias the "attack" cursor).

You might want to try Paint.NET with automatic anti-aliasing turned off?

I haven't been touching your stuff because, mostly, they're pretty darn good edits. Also, Olrox was initially right- I did put quite a bit of blue tinting into the green pallete, which I could take out and rebalance into a more yellowish green if necessary.

Well, if we do color-swap to blue, that'll be unnecessary... What do you think?

I like contrast, but I suppose you're right on that matter. I'll remember less contrast with the next few.

I'm a "subtlety" kind of guy - I like low saturation and low contrast. Partially because they're the easiest to fix. But these are cursors, so the saturation can go decently high - the current levels are fine.

Any ideas for the moveattack? If not, I'm going to just skip over that for now in favor of better prey.

Olrox's idea sounds workable... We might as well save it for last, though.

Maybe the demolish structure- I'm not sure whether to keep the current wrecking ball or to make a whole new symbol.

I'd probably keep the current wrecking ball, because of the issues XboxJosh mentioned... we'd need to make a new 3D model for it if we changed it too much. Colors can change; shape should stay roughly the same.