Simple items

You can suggest something different, or use the reference. I was not a fan of the green-yellowish color on placeholder one, but it's hard to come up with something else (which means, good luck with all the other weapons! hehe). All the other current ones so far make sense because they're either based on trail color or projectile itself. Maybe start from the placeholder color and see how far you can make it more yellow until it starts to become hard to differentiate it from the orange from RL?

Colors: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php...0#pid42210

I think as the target is the HC competitive crowd, it'd be good to give them the conventional color sheme, that is around since Quake3 Arena.

Well, I thought we could try them in game before changing too much, here they are in TGA format 256x256:

http://ompldr.org/vZWMwZw/test.zip

Some of them are miss scaled but this is just for trying them out :-)

Thanks K__.

I re-exported a few of them to fix scale issues and such (most of them were too small, shards we too big) and renamed to correct filenames.

For people that want to test, if using git, they're in nifrek/simpleitems

If using autobuild: http://ompldr.org/vZWNuZw/z-simpleitems20120615.pk3

My comments:

Health items look good up close but the white circle is too thin, it disappears quite quickly as you move away from them. I'd say they could be twice as thick, assuming you don't feel like it messes with the style you had for them.

Same for ammo icons tho not as bad, the square might need to be slightly thicker. The rocket ammo could use some "filling" inside the explosion icon so it blurs better when seeing them from away.

Nex is way too thin, becomes almost invisible when you move away Not sure how to fix that one, maybe just thicker beam might work but as Chryyz said, it looks like a stick because the smaller details around the beam disappear rather quickly as you move away from it.

Overall the rest looks good in my opinion, I have no other suggestions for now. Later it might be worth adding some sort of drop shadow (not too strong) around them because we have some very bright maps where the items become hard to see on bright background. But don't worry about this for now, could be the finishing touch to do once all designs are set in stone (and I or somebody else can take care of that if you're tired of working on simpleitems by then hehe).

EDIT:
Also I'm thinking it might be worth using 512x512 instead of 256x256, it generally looks fine but I'm using fov 120, at 90 they get a bit aliased when upclose. But it doesn't matter for now, just a thought for later. BTW I can take care of exporting, you can just post a link to source files from now on if you want, I don't mind saving you the trouble.

Just a thought, has anyone tried to make the actual guns simple? Meaning you use the shape of the gun in 1 solid color, and then use a darker hue to add shading/details? I'm just wondering how that would look.

@W4RP1G, probably better to keep discussions here on simpleitems, but in a way it sounds like gl_picmip to me (without _world). Unless you mean using an actual sprite/icon, but weapons use player/team colors and are animated anyway, I don't know much about the code but I think this would probably need be a completely different feature than simpleitems.

No, I'm talking about simple items. For example, the current simple item for the nex is a nex beam. But instead use the actual nex, but a sprite with simple colors.

Also, do I have to do anything to use that pk3? I put it in the autobuild data folder and it doesn't change the stock simple items.

Using actual weapon sprite would not be simple enough IMO, they would look all the same unless very upclose (other than color).

As for the pk3, hmm not sure, it should work but try unpacking it in data folder, maybe you already have earlier simpleitems unpacked somehow?

I tried unpacking it, and I can't find any conflicting folders. Could it be because the new simple items are in tga format? Does this work for you?

I don't use autobuild so I can't try directly, but tga should make no difference it should use those in any case, normally anything unpacked overrides what is in pk3s.

Did unpacking create data/models/items and data/models/weapons ? If yes, I have no clue what is the problem, sorry Maybe somebody else has an idea?

Yeah the folders are correct. Oh well, guess I'll just wait til they are included in autobuild.

Oh wait, unpacking creates models/weapons and models/items.

As I see in data.pk3, all simple items have .iqm and .skin files. This pack contains .tga files. Thrown those unpacked folders into data.pk3 and no dice.

NO, DON'T
Don't ever put in or delete anything from official Xonotic pk3 files! It's easy to forget about it, and if you cause any bug from that, you'll never ever be able to know why the hell something is b0rk3d.

What C.Brutail said.

Type this into the Xonotic console:
which models/items/a_shells_simple.tga

See what path you get from that.

What C.Brutail said.

Type this into the Xonotic console:
which models/items/a_shells_simple.tga

See what path you get from that.

I get package z-simpleitems20120615.pk3, yet in-game I still see the the original simple items and placeholders.

That's crazy. Do you get the same pk3 for the file a_shells_simple.iqm_0.skin too?

In the meantime concepts for rest of set.

Top row: mine layer, arc cannon, rifle, tag seeker, fireball
Middle row: tuba, minsta, hook, port-o-launch
Bottom row: jet pack, fuel, fuel regeneration

Warning: EXTREME crudeness! I didn't even bother to pick colors.

Didn't bother with hlac.

BTW laser is placable too (eg. campgrounds_beta4), no idea how to visualize it.

That's crazy. Do you get the same pk3 for the file a_shells_simple.iqm_0.skin too?

well no, that would be odd if i did. That file is not in that package, it's in the rsync-data.pk3.

Btw, just to clarify how those files are used:

The .iqm files are the models (just a plane)
The .skin files tells the engine which texture (.tga) to use on the models (.iqm)
The .tga files are the actual icons.

The .iqm and .skin files require no changes when just changing the icons.

The reason this is using .skin files is to make it easier if we were to implement in code the possibility to switch between multiple simpleitems sets. Only one model for multiple "skins".

Wait, does autobuild use compressed textures to .dds? If so, could it be the reason? Ie: is it possible .dds will override even textures that are outside pk3s?

Wait, does autobuild use compressed textures to .dds? If so, could it be the reason? Ie: is it possible .dds will override even textures that are outside pk3s?

Yup. I deleted the nex_simple.dds and now it works.

Edit: Ok I tried them out and these are my thoughts

*All of the health pickups look the too similar. The mega health looks like a 25 health at a glance.

*The 25 health and health shard are identical at a distance because the white ring disappears.

*The health color does not pop out. I played on stormkeep, and the health did not stand out, especially in the lower corridor where there was lava under the floor.

*Nifreks point about the nex disappearing at a distance is valid.

*The armor is fine, though I'd prefer the giant M on the mega be a numerical value instead. Also, I like the original shards that has a numerical value above them.

*The crylink icon just seems like a different color hagar icon. Kinda suggests that it should be more of a rapid fire weapon than anything. I have no suggestion on how to it should be.

*The mortar icon could be bigger

I will remake everything after metaltown, got an idea to make all items much easier to see and better looking!

Oh, if dds priority is the issue, here's how you can fix it, nifrek: Just have an empty .dds file at the right path (next to the .tga). By empty I mean completely empty, not even a linebreak. That way, the engine will discard the file from the original data pk3 when loading this new pk3 and use the tga instead.

Screenshots



http://ompldr.org/vZWVpNA/xonotic20120619212538-00.jpg

http://ompldr.org/vZWVpNw/xonotic20120619213258-00.jpg

http://ompldr.org/vZWVpOA/xonotic20120619213308-00.jpg

They are harder to spot than the default models tbh. And colors should be discriminating, e.g. health shouldn't be the same color as mortar. Rather rocket ammo for example should be similar to mortar and rl.