test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Console Icon Art Revamp!
crypticttc
Member Posts: 30 Cryptic Developer
Hey everyone! We wanted to give you all a heads up that there are some art changes incoming for certain console item icons in STO. After Legacy of Romulus shipped, we had a little breathing room to take a look at some of the UI art aspects that we had always wanted to improve upon. CaptainGeko mentioned that he has always thought that the icons for the various Science, Engineering and Tactical console items that provide your ships with passive buffs did not represent their item as best as they could. We felt that these items could benefit from some higher resolution icons that better represented Star Trek technology, which has a very definite style established through dozens of amazing props, sets and technical manuals.
Aside from reconsidering their visual style, we also realized they had limited utility as actual icons. Unlike other consoles, these items do not have an associated power icon that denotes their function; their bonuses are purely passive, and the only visual interaction the player has with them is through the item icon. We decided that it was time to give them a refresh with a couple goals in mind:
Goal 1: Introduce a visual language into these console icons to make it easier to understand at a glance what bonuses that icon grants and what systems they affect.
Goal 2: Recreate the artwork based on established props and drawings from classic Star Trek publications, like the TNG and DS9 tech manual, to make these items feel more appropriately "Star Trek" for those who are interested in Treknobabble.
With that in mind, please reference the linked images to see Old vs. New, along with a reminder of what each console does. You'll notice that I've grouped them together to demonstrate similar function, and hopefully you will be able to start to learn the visual language of these new icons quickly.
The most clear example of this new language is the items which give bonuses to certain weapon energy or torpedo types - they are now all color coded to the energy type they buff. Items that buff shields will have a shield bubble on them and all of the items that buff a science skill will have a little skill bar featured on them somewhere. We've also color coded the console icon backgrounds so it's very clear whether something is a tactical (red), engineering (yellow) or science console (blue).
Tactical Consoles
Engineering Consoles
Science Consoles
Finally, we also snuck in a shuffle to warp core icons to add a bit more variety and make them more canon friendly. You can see the change in the image linked below, but basically we've added an icon based on the Defiant's warp core and assigned it to the "hyper injection" warp core item, which is the core that gives you a speed buff. This felt better to us than having the Sovereign core there - so the Sovereign core icon has been transferred to the "field stabilizing" warp core, which has a buff to shields. Finally, the Galaxy style core has been moved to the default/standard issue core that comes with a new starship. We've also added a new icon for standard issue singularity cores, though all the existing singularity core icons remain the same.
Warp Core Icon Changes
These should all go live in the next week or two, but I wanted to give you a heads up that they were coming. Ultimately we hope that these changes improve the STO experience by adding a little extra "Star Trek" to the art of managing your ships and items.
Aside from reconsidering their visual style, we also realized they had limited utility as actual icons. Unlike other consoles, these items do not have an associated power icon that denotes their function; their bonuses are purely passive, and the only visual interaction the player has with them is through the item icon. We decided that it was time to give them a refresh with a couple goals in mind:
Goal 1: Introduce a visual language into these console icons to make it easier to understand at a glance what bonuses that icon grants and what systems they affect.
Goal 2: Recreate the artwork based on established props and drawings from classic Star Trek publications, like the TNG and DS9 tech manual, to make these items feel more appropriately "Star Trek" for those who are interested in Treknobabble.
With that in mind, please reference the linked images to see Old vs. New, along with a reminder of what each console does. You'll notice that I've grouped them together to demonstrate similar function, and hopefully you will be able to start to learn the visual language of these new icons quickly.
The most clear example of this new language is the items which give bonuses to certain weapon energy or torpedo types - they are now all color coded to the energy type they buff. Items that buff shields will have a shield bubble on them and all of the items that buff a science skill will have a little skill bar featured on them somewhere. We've also color coded the console icon backgrounds so it's very clear whether something is a tactical (red), engineering (yellow) or science console (blue).
Tactical Consoles
Engineering Consoles
Science Consoles
Finally, we also snuck in a shuffle to warp core icons to add a bit more variety and make them more canon friendly. You can see the change in the image linked below, but basically we've added an icon based on the Defiant's warp core and assigned it to the "hyper injection" warp core item, which is the core that gives you a speed buff. This felt better to us than having the Sovereign core there - so the Sovereign core icon has been transferred to the "field stabilizing" warp core, which has a buff to shields. Finally, the Galaxy style core has been moved to the default/standard issue core that comes with a new starship. We've also added a new icon for standard issue singularity cores, though all the existing singularity core icons remain the same.
Warp Core Icon Changes
These should all go live in the next week or two, but I wanted to give you a heads up that they were coming. Ultimately we hope that these changes improve the STO experience by adding a little extra "Star Trek" to the art of managing your ships and items.
Star Trek Online - Starship Artist, former UI Artist
@Cryptic_TTC on Twitter
@Cryptic_TTC on Twitter
Post edited by crypticttc on
0
Comments
A couple of questions though:
1-Are there plans to do something similar with some of the older universal consoles?
2-On the Enhanced Neutronium, It may just be me, but when I looked at the small addons to the new icon to represent the differences, it looks a little off, unless I look really close to it.
Does anyone want to dig through canon and find the references for all these new icons? lol!
EDIT: I would argue that almost all the armor icons looks practically the same now.
EDIT 2: What I mean by "looks practically the same now", I mean that the devil is now in the details of the icon rather than having a quick visual reference (gold vs. silver vs. "rock black/gray" of what's now the old icons, for example).
I can see clear distinct differences on the "Hull Plating" Engineering Consoles. I would possibly agree on the similarity for the "Alloy" Engineering Consoles.
In any case, the new icons are a major improvement of the original artwork. I hope new icons are forthcoming for the older "Universal" consoles, as well as various consumables. Batteries could easily do with being matched with the new "Power Level Booster" console icons.
For one, I liked the old icons for the energy weapons consoles, it gave each its own character. All the new ones being the same device seems to take away from each console.
The Structural Integrity Field Console doesn't have that "look indicates function" aspect you talked of. It looks like a torpedo with a diagnostic console attached. Maybe take the new Alloy/Ship Superstructure icon, and add a shield like glow to the frame (because that's what the SIF does; add strength and durability to the ship's hull far beyond what its material is capable of. You don't think that a ship's hull can naturally withstand blasts from weapons that can level a city in one shot, do you?).
The Science consoles, I can't really say anything about. Things like Probes, Flow Caps, Power insulators all look good and indicate what they do, but its hard to place what looks like a countermeasure system or an inertial dampener.
Oh, also, the Energy Type Specific Armors, perhaps you could have color coded armor segments for each type it resists? (Pha/Dis armor could have equally Orange and Red Segments; Pla/Tet/Pol/AP could have Teal, Blue, Purple, and Red segments)
Thoughts?
Still really nice icons I loved them
i liked my galaxy class looking core were it was, making it default is sort of insulting to the core with the most raw power in the franchise. the sovereign core might have been taller, and with multiple tubes been more efficient, but the total volume the core displaces is quite a bit less then a galaxys. makes sense, a sovereign is less then half a galxay's volume, and big power drawers like phaser arrays are a fraction of the size the galaxy has. the defiant had a big core for its size of ship, but its still a VERY tiny power plant.
this is more of the newest introduced thing is the best way of thinking so many fans, and the devs have about everything in star trek. no cannon federation ship, other then the nebula, was even in the galaxy's league even tactically. not the defiant, not the sovereign, not the prometheus, none of them. its stats in game are absurd in light of that.
well, anyway, the defiant tiny core would make more sense as an underpowered stock core. or a weapons power core, but there seems to be resistance to that, for good reason. how about one of the cores, say the sovereign core, being a core that instead of boosting a specific power level, has a lot more skill bonuses instead?
how about general shield, deflectors, and impulse engines too? a combat engine icon could look like a conne refit or excelsior vent, stranded like the main engine on a galaxy, and hyper like a sovereign impulse engine. for deflectors, a galaxy, intrepid, soverign, ambasidor/connie/excelcior look fo those types would be cool. shields you could get creative with. like a bridge display of shields status like shown in star trek 2, 6 and nemisis.
From a producer's perspective, I can understand in trying to dumb down the game to appease the lowest common denominator, especially in an oversaturated gaming industry where racing to the bottom of the IQ chart is the only way to stay in business. But from a Star Trek fan's perspective, I can't in good conscience endorse simplifying the artwork as such.
In particular, the energy weapon icons make my soul hurt. The game once more categorizes weapons by color alone with little distinction they came from different ways of invention and innovation. Phasers are orange, disruptors are green, plasma is cyan, tetryon is blue, polaron is purple, antiproton is red. One of the things I enjoy about the current artwork is that they exemplify truly alien technology. Polaron technology is different from phaser technology. The 'props' of the icon art truly portray the different energies as coming from different worlds with different ways of thinking.
This outside-the-box thinking is what makes Star Trek... well, Star Trek. The Dominion created polaron weapons through an entirely different culture than the Federation created phasers, but through these new icons... it simply makes every energy weapon type appear as if it was created in one singular factory instead of alien places where one faction came up with the idea of killing people with polaron particles instead of nadion particles and went a completely different way of developing said technology.
This generic 'energy weapon' artwork is just that... generic. And Star Trek technology is anything but generic, especially when it comes to completely different technologies developed independantly from one another by completely different cultures and societies.
You had might as well just stop calling weapons "Polaron" or "Tetryon" and refer to it as "Blue Energy" and "Purple Energy" if you want to make it 'easier to understand' for the lowest common denominator that plays the game.
While I don't disagree this new artwork overhaul achieves the goal of simplifying and watering down Star Trek technology, I do disagree with the language that this makes it 'more' Star Trek instead of less.
I don't see extremely diverse alien technology represented in the artwork, I see the same energy weapons (and projectile weapons) being given different colors, and nothing more. And less diversity is not only less Star Trek, it's less Cryptic Studios.
Edit: New art updates provided later on in the thread has addressed my concerns. Diversity is shown once more within the art while making it more easily recognizable as belonging to a 'family' of consoles.
also found here (Blinking tubes without function)
I like them. My honest feedback would be that the Engineering Alloy (Armor) icons look too similar to each other. Unlike the vast majority of the rest of the icons (across the board); I'd have trouble differentiating what is what on those from a visual glance at them.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
The only ones I'm not too fond of are the new armor console images. It's mostly an aesthetic thing... I just don't like the pictures chosen to represent "armor". Also, it'll be trickier to determine which-console-blocks-what by sight (I suppose we'll eventually learn the colors, but they're harder to see at this time).
This might be a little off topic, but any reason why we have so many alloys? Same job: Energy and Kinetic resistance... Why not just have Neutronium be the ONE general damage resistance console for all levels? (Or rather, I always preferred the name Polyduranium... better sounding for something that covers many things...)
It was always weird when leveling up to try and find a Mark VIII Victorium only to realize there's no such thing, then to try and figure out the name of the new Tier's alloy. What a pain. Whereas, I could keep looking for the next Mark Monotanium Alloy console at each level, no problem.
Anyway, in general, this all sounds great, and I look forward to the changes.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
I do like how the energy-type consoles have little details that make them different, but it'd be nice if they had more of a difference, say on the level that the actual weapon models do. So instead of just the glow color, material type, and beam icon detailing, maybe they'd have different degrees of 'bulbosity' or 'rectilinear-ness' to the overall silhouette. Kind of like how the engineering power level boosters have the appropriate colors and icons, but also have somewhat different shapes.
The all-damage armors are a little hard to tell apart. I like the ship skeleton shape, but it lets the background yellow kind of overwhelm the subtler color differences on the actual spars themselves.
Overall, great job!
Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
It's like you're inside my head. This would be awesome!
Great work as always, Thomas! The new icons are beautiful.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
The main advantage of having all that stuff look so massively different from each other (something that I failed to notice in the Romulan consoles until now, due to their similarities) is that you don't need to mouse over the icon to read just what you're dealing with, and can instead figure out exactly what it is without focusing too much on what color detail A is, or what pattern detail B is in. :P
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Plus the new icons half of em look identical to to other new ones with barely any changes to differentiate between them.
I mean look at the new engineering ones in row2 of the eng icon table thomas posted. There barely any differences unless you really look. This imo is bad you shouldnt "really" need to study them in detail to know the difference. So yeah i would not be a fan of this at all. At least the old icons which did look somewhat similar had a nice distinguishable thick color to indicate a difference in quality at least.
If your gona do new icons they should all look vastly different from each other so one never looks "like" somit else. Otherwise if you have a bunch of eng consoles that look identical which ones on ur powertray do you click on cos i mean u dont know which is which cos there identical ud have to lose precious time hovering over to see what the thing is before u click it if ur in a important tactical situation. Which is just not really on now is it.
Visually there nicer i guess tho some look a bit worse, there needs to be serious attention to alot of them tho so there not identical to others even if there similar in function.
I mean look at the 2nd row of eng consoles all the alloys. They all look the same and all have yellow glow light on em. You could have at least colored the yellow light to red blue green whatever to differentiate them a bit there and different web lookin icons maybe too but even the light might have been enough tho i personally would want the image to change for each of em to be more unique like.
Personally for me right now the icons u made look prettier but not more functional at all and would require a learning curve which imo is far too late in the game to bother with. There needs to be more work in diversifying them all more before i consider them ready to be used by me personally at least. Bit more work sure but meh i do photoshop stuff like u thomas and its not that bad doing icons so hopefully ull have the time do make them alot less identical for a range of consoles at least my hope is.
Holy pile of ... those or sexy icons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Liking them for the most part.
Here's some thoughts and suggestions:
The tactical ones, at least for the energy and torp types are spot on I think, very clear what each boosts (colour and mini icon) whilst all looking similar to define similar boost function.
The generic weapon types consoles are kind of non descript and unless learned, don't really tell me what they're for at a glance. Perhaps for energy manifold show multiple beams (possibly of various colours) splaying out (like from a prism). Do similar for pre fire but with energy (cannon) bolts, etc for yield chamber with torps and and geometry with mines.
That way, at a glance you can tell the type of weapons they boost and the multi color outputs signifies they work across all damage types?
Engineering ones.
I have to agree that the plating types are too hard to distinguish from each other. They've multicolour facings that in some cases look too similar.
Looking and thinking harder I see the colours signify what energy type it protects against. Which is a neat idea. But maybe make the colours stronger and not so 'watercoloury'? You've 'chevrons' on those icons plating, maybe make each chevron a strong color of the energy type(s) it protects against? Would make it more well defined.
The general damage ones are ok I guess but the spherical structure in the icons are too thin to pickup on the details much to tell them apart. Maybe have less (or partial) rings for lower ranks and more concentric rings for higher?
Monotanium imo needs completely different look to the plating. It has a very different function and should look like it's different.
Misc ones are good. I especially like the force field and EPS ones.
Science ones, look pretty good. Nothing to suggest there really. I like that power insulators *cough*halon system*cough* is finally changing to suit it's function
But I don't care as I don't use armor! Weeeeeeeee!
Kirk's Protege.
I'll be sad that I won't get to see the science console icons, though, since I've got a full set of threat-modifying consoles.
The other issue is the weapon consoles- as someone said, before they all had their own character, now they're seven different shades of the exact same art. You couldn't have at least done some shape variation to them?
The torpedo consoles are worse, because the only means to differentiate them from eachother now are the teensy tiny little symbol- they're all yellow, and all identical except for that symbol. No way I'm going to be able to identify it at a glance.
The rest of the consoles look good, but I think you need to sit down and have each weapon console/torpedo console have its own shape. They can still be like, vaguely cylindrical, but they need to be visually distinct in grayscale.
If you desaturate the picture, and at a glance (a glance, not spending a minute trying to find the minute differences) can't tell the difference, then you need to go back to (literally) the drawing board.
Also the 'current' versions support colour blind people. These new versions tell those people to TRIBBLE off and don't play your game.
The energy weapon consoles are of identical design and only color coded. Antiproton and Phaser colors are -especially with the red background- nearly unrecognizable and will seem identical at a quick glimpse. The same applies to some degree to the other consoles - a relative matte green-tourquise-blue-purple is not enough.
Suggestion: Vibrant, glowing colors. A glowing, deep red for AP vs a bright glowing orange for phasers (and so on) would outline the differences more obviously, and gave them a slightly more aggressive character, matching their tactical nature.
Projectile weapon consoles are even worse. Even less color coded difference, instead a tiny icon within the small icon. Worst are Tricobalt, Transphasic and Chroniton: the colors are (nearly) identical, only the tiny icon within the icon shows their specialization - at least if you're running the game with upscaled interface. I don't think anyone will see much/any difference e.g. in 1920x1200 with 1.0 interface scale.
Suggestion: New, clearly different colors for two of the three named icons. Alter/revert the colors of the tiny icon within the icon for every torpedo console, replacing the black background with the color code of the console (generating a bigger color coded area in the center of the icon). Adjust overall color code with more vibrancy, the same way as for energy weapon consoles.
Electroceramic and Ablative are color wise to close together. (The monotanium variants are also nearly identical, but the fleet vs regular overlay will fix that issue)
Suggestion: Change the colors of either Electroceramic or ablative armor icon for more distinction.
:cool:
Not exactly sure if the more default warp core look of the old field stabilizing / new standard issue icon justifies the upcoming confusion with the new field stabilizing icon being identical with the old hyper injection.
Suggestion: Let Hyper Injecton keep it's old icon and assign the new HI to be standard issue icon. This way established icons keep their place while standard issue now has its own unique icon.
The new consoles don't look bad, but the only difference between different tactical consoles is the COLOR.
I makes sense that consoles of a certain kind/group like damage type booster consoles look similar but it also has drawbacks. Now all damage types more or less look alike, and even if you are not color blind you must look closely to differentiate them.
Engineering armor consoles look absolutely identical, not very memorable.
What I totally don't get is the NEED to change the look of these consoles. To be honest the new ones don't look better than the old ones. The new ones all look alike in an attempt to improve functionality but sorry, no.
But what does it matter, seems this is coming no matter what I or others say.
why are you fixing something that is not broken?
-Or assorted other glitches.
Seems pointless, old graphics look better, more distinguishable.
-But whatever...
...expectations always getting lower.
Thanks anyways...
Deceiver's Lair Fleet
Right now most of the proposed icon changes look almost the same with the only distinguishing factor being color. Here's the problem: I'm shade blind. That means that while I see some color, the color that I do see is often wrong. I have extreme difficulty distinguishing colors from one another.
Right now I have no problem figuring out what I have on my ship and in my inventory/bank at a glance. Each icon is different enough that I have no issues with that. Your new icons are so similar that I won't be able to tell anything of what I have without going through them one by one to see their tool tips. I can barely make out the color differences right now on your larger presentation, I can only shudder at the thought of having to look at those in game on their smaller size. It's probably going to be worse for those of us who are completely color blind. This is going to make the inventory system significantly more difficult for people like myself to use.
Instead of just going by solely a color based system, you need to have differences in the icons themselves. For example during the beta test of FFXIV they used a color coded system to identify the strength of mobs. Those of us who can't deal well with color brought this up and they actually changed it for us. They kept the color coded system, but added in greatly different icons for each as well. This was awesome for us.
I would also like to submit the old Klingon UI as an example of this. Back then the old KDF UI had Red for friendlies and Orange/Yellow for enemies. I remember a good deal of us had trouble distinguishing the differences and ended up not being able to play KDF because of it. Heck even people who saw color properly had trouble with it. Not only did you guys change the colors based on that feedback, but now there's some nice icons to properly differentiate enemy types. I would ask that you do that here as well.
To be fair though, I have no problems with you guys wanting to update the icons to newer ones that better reflect Trek tech. That's very cool that you guys want to give attention to the details like that. But I have to ask that you please consider changing the icons to be a bit more different than each other and not solely based on color coding alone. I see some other posters commenting on the similarities as well and I'm assuming that they can see color properly, so changing this up a bit would benefit more than just those of us who have problems in this area.
Edit: The science consoles look fine though. It's more of the tac and eng consoles that are the problem.
Mine Trap Supporter