Author Topic: Grapics and user frendliness  (Read 4525 times)

Offline ashton15

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Grapics and user frendliness
« on: March 21, 2010, 04:42:05 PM »
It doesn't ever have appeared to been looked at but has anyone thought about the grapics in DB3? I mean plain circles battling it out don't make the most engaging desktop display. I know it's easy to get engaged but from a newcomers point of view the simple graphics look like they came from a long way back especially when compared to the cutting edge photo realistic graphics today.

Now obviously you don't want to overload the graphics but there are lots of little things which could make a huge diffrence:

Dynamic shell and slime edges

Lets say you have some shell, to represent this a grey(or any colour really) line forms inside your cell, the more shell you have the thicker this line grows. The same for slime except this line is on the outside so the two don't overlap. this would also be a practical indicator as well as looking good.

Cell fill

Setting a semi-transparent fill for each darwinbot would be good as well, they look surreal when transparent but looking completely opague probably wouldn't look good either

Background

A customizable background colour which gradients light colour through to dark colour in pond mode, also a good indicator for the sun bieng down. Compliments semi-transparent fill also

Distinguishing

Finally it would be good if diffrent bot species could be more individualized. Rather than the squiggles inside set manually (not great in my opinion) designs could be set in the DNA even if the things are as simple as three circles, a triangle or a cross they are all definitle more eye pleasing than the default squiggles. You could even have things like cilia for distinctive bots or little spikes and mitrochondria (which could show as speckles).



Finally I'd suggest all of the above should be toggleable for performance over grapics for thoose who desire it.
« Last Edit: March 21, 2010, 04:42:59 PM by ashton15 »

Offline Numsgil

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Grapics and user frendliness
« Reply #1 on: March 21, 2010, 04:52:11 PM »
Quote from: ashton15
It doesn't ever have appeared to been looked at but has anyone thought about the grapics in DB3? I mean plain circles battling it out don't make the most engaging desktop display. I know it's easy to get engaged but from a newcomers point of view the simple graphics look like they came from a long way back especially when compared to the cutting edge photo realistic graphics today.

Now obviously you don't want to overload the graphics but there are lots of little things which could make a huge diffrence:

Dynamic shell and slime edges

Lets say you have some shell, to represent this a grey(or any colour really) line forms inside your cell, the more shell you have the thicker this line grows. The same for slime except this line is on the outside so the two don't overlap. this would also be a practical indicator as well as looking good.

Cell fill

Setting a semi-transparent fill for each darwinbot would be good as well, they look surreal when transparent but looking completely opague probably wouldn't look good either

Background

A customizable background colour which gradients light colour through to dark colour in pond mode, also a good indicator for the sun bieng down. Compliments semi-transparent fill also

Distinguishing

Finally it would be good if diffrent bot species could be more individualized. Rather than the squiggles inside set manually (not great in my opinion) designs could be set in the DNA even if the things are as simple as three circles, a triangle or a cross they are all definitle more eye pleasing than the default squiggles. You could even have things like cilia for distinctive bots or little spikes and mitrochondria (which could show as speckles).



Finally I'd suggest all of the above should be toggleable for performance over grapics for thoose who desire it.

Yes, I've thought about the first three.  They're all good ideas.

I hadn't thought about the fourth one, but that's good too

Offline bacillus

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« Reply #2 on: March 22, 2010, 12:06:33 AM »
I can think of a dozen ways to tie those in with cell specialization...
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
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Offline ashton15

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« Reply #3 on: March 22, 2010, 10:54:19 PM »
I didn't make this specifcally for this thread but here's a graphic example, it's not the best. But hey, I guess it looks better than DB2. As another idea for DB3:

Conditionals cost a fair ammount of eenrgy in long bots, for complex multibots however the majority of code is specific to a certain bot type and is completly irelevant to some cells yet they are still charged for it. Would it be possible to have a variable called bottype which does no charge when used in conditionals?

That probably isn't correct but something along those lines?
« Last Edit: March 22, 2010, 11:00:22 PM by ashton15 »

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #4 on: March 23, 2010, 12:35:19 PM »
Yeah, that's more or less the art style I think I'm aiming for.

Offline Houshalter

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« Reply #5 on: March 23, 2010, 03:36:30 PM »
Just a question, what are those giant jellyfish things?

Offline ashton15

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« Reply #6 on: March 23, 2010, 04:54:22 PM »
Quote from: Houshalter
Just a question, what are those giant jellyfish things?

Some kind of cilia-propelled self replicating blob of protien . Don't know really... lets just say what animal_cicumfrigans might possibly look like in DB3
« Last Edit: March 23, 2010, 04:54:31 PM by ashton15 »

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #7 on: March 23, 2010, 05:03:17 PM »
I'm curious what it's from.  Is it something you put together in photoshop?  A screen shot from another game?

Offline ashton15

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« Reply #8 on: March 23, 2010, 05:14:29 PM »
Quote from: Numsgil
I'm curious what it's from.  Is it something you put together in photoshop?  A screen shot from another game?

I used to make games in Flash for this website called Newgrounds which is an OOP program, anyways I took a break came back to it after Adobe brought it and I'm a bit lost with the code now they've compltely changed though I'm familiar with the drawing tools which have been improved, It's actually a very good drawing program for cartoon style things. Used by most professional animators and developers only second to aftereffects and anything beyond that is for Hollywood, it uses inverse kinematics by the way for things like ragdoll charachter animation (I think that's what it's called) which work in a similar way to what I believe hinges will be like in DB3. Anyways sorry for waffling.
« Last Edit: March 23, 2010, 05:21:50 PM by ashton15 »

Offline Houshalter

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« Reply #9 on: March 23, 2010, 06:49:49 PM »
I use Gimp for my image processing stuff. Why? Because its free

Offline ashton15

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« Reply #10 on: March 24, 2010, 12:01:36 PM »
Quote from: Houshalter
I use Gimp for my image processing stuff. Why? Because its free

Anything is free if you know the right people *taps nose*
« Last Edit: March 24, 2010, 12:01:53 PM by ashton15 »