Iconography

@Oliveriver : thanks for the answer, I will try to do something tonight

@TheCreator : I kind of like the background like that but ok I could give it a try after. Regarding the text font, I don’t think this is the best because it is sometimes difficult to read as the letters are close to each other

@tjwhale : Except the first and the last ones, for me the rest is too much details that I am afraid we get lost with additional objects on the top of it. But smart move :wink:

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I started with the first 5 of the components list, following the example of @Oliveriver: glucose, amino acids, proteins, ammonia and oxygen. Please tell me if the general style is ok or if it is too classical/need more style. For some of them I put several trials for you to decide which might be the best or if I need to think about something more. Don’t pay too much attention to the text front, I will adapt it once I know which one will be used in the game.

Don’t hesitate to be critical, I will gladly welcome any comments/suggestions etc. and I won’t take it personally :wink:

@Oliveriver I have a question regarding the biomes: do you want them also in a circle as your example showed? You would prefer more simplified version or realistic one (for instance the hydrothermal vent is is really nice and not simplified at all compared to your other icons)?

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*font not front :grin:

You can edit your own posts instead of double-posting BTW. There should be a pencil icon in the bottom right of your posts which allows editing.

Nice icons! They look pretty professional.

I’m not sure about some of the designs though - specifically, those which feature text, and those which have more than one main colour. Bear in mind these will be scaled down to just slightly bigger than this emoji :slight_smile: in some places, at which point small details become difficult to make out and players will mostly be reliant on general shape and colour. I love the protein and oxygen icons, and the second amino acids icon (the one with various shades of pink) would work really well without the text in my opinion. Not sure about any of the ammonia icons though.

About the biomes, my thought is restricting them to a circle would be best, but it could be another shape if you’d prefer. The biome icons will generally be displayed larger than those for compounds, so yes they should have more detail. It’s your choice for how realistic they are, but I think sticking to vector drawings would be best.

Awesome. I love the icons you made. Especially the 4th and 5th (and 3rd) nitrogen one. May I ask why there is a Nike shoe to the top right, though?

That said, while all the designs look great, could you try making each icon in an analogous color scheme with the colors dulled down? Usually making sure that each RGB component is at least 100 does the job.

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That would be a slab of meat.

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It seems so obvious in retrospect…

Since we’re on the topic of icons, it might be useful to make the icons the same color as the compound clouds they refer to.

Hey! I had time to work a bit on the icons again. The problem is that I can t try the game as I only have a mac … So I can’t see the compound clouds color. What we could do though is that I could send the vectorial version of my drawing and then someone else can take care of the color homogenising, what do you think?

I also got an idea for all the gaseous components: we could decide on a color for each and use the oxygen icon variating the color (I did it just to show you what it could be). I also redesigned the slack of meat as it was apparently taken for a nike shoe :wink:
Regarding the color of carbon dioxide, I think grey might be more appropriate than dark blue (and like this we could more easily differentiate it from the purple of the nitrogen)
I also thought about a new representation for gaseous compounds (represented for oxygen)

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These actually look really good right now, although a porterhouse might be a more recognizable slab of meat to use, The rest look great. I really like the sugar cube for glucose.

Like that?

Yeah, that looks great, good job in these btw. If I may ask, what does the bone represent?

It was the suggestion of Oliveriver for the calcium

Hm, i like it, a bone or tooth is perfect

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I started to work on the Biomes, tell me if I am on the right path or if I need to think/draw differently :slight_smile:

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I love the shallows one. The hydrothermal vent one is a bit hard to make out though, lets see what the others think before making changes.

I tried looking through the code to find where compound colours are defined, but I got a bit lost. @TheCreator any chance you could give the hexadecimal or RGB colours for each?

While giving all gaseous compounds the same icon looks nice, I don’t think it’s a good idea since it will remove a lot of the distinctiveness we want to give each icon. Similarly, those which are just a bunch of circles will need to be different enough to others to make it clear at a glance which is which. I believe carbon dioxide is already in the code as dark blue (someone correct me if not), but nothing has been decided for nitrogen yet.

As for the icons themselves:

  • The protein one is absolutely perfect. Awesome work on that.
  • Same with calcium.
  • The flame works well for hydrogen, I like it.
  • I prefer the third of the oxygen icons, but they’re all good.
  • Water is good but could use some more detail (maybe not though, that’s just my opinion).
  • Carbon dioxide works but could be more interesting.
  • I like the amino acids one but be careful it stays distinct from all the other circle-heavy icons.
  • Neither of the glucose icons seem right to me. For one thing the backing circle should be closer to white than grey. A sugar cube could work but the positioning of it seems a bit…off. That might just be me.
  • I still have problems with the ammonia icons. In particular the blue atom breaks the colour consistency. I think the fourth one (with one big, textless nitrogen atom) would work if the blue was change to a different shade of yellow.
  • Any of the ATP icons could work but they all look a bit rough. I don’t think the 3D works on the lightning bolt.
  • If you’re changing oxygen to the second or third option, the nitrogen concept could work.

As for the biomes, I agree shallow ocean is great but hydrothermal vent needs work. If you didn’t know it was a vent you wouldn’t know it by looking at it. It looks more like a patchwork quilt.

Huh, I wrote this message 12 hours ago, guess it didn’t send:

Shallow ocean is good, as are all the icons. I’m not quite sure I like the slab of meat for protein. It’s not a bad icon, I just don’t think its very intuitive. We’re in the cell stage and meat is more of a multicellular formation. I liked the polypeptide chain you had before more. For the hydrothermal vent I’d suggest making it less “puzzle-y”. If the bottom right part was one whole piece, I think it would look a lot better.

Also, should we start voting on icons yet? The second one for ammonia and third one for oxygen are just perfect in my opinion.

Here are the colors:
Glucose: 150, 170, 180
Oxygen: 60, 160, 180
CO2: 20, 50, 100
Ammonia: 255, 220, 50
Amino acids: 255, 150, 200

I do like the protein icon, despite the fact that its meat and we’re in the microbe stage. Maybe a flexing arm would work too. As for the Calcium, I think a tooth would be better than a bone. Other than that I have to agree with @TheCreator about the oxygen and amino acids. I do like @Oliveriver’s ATP and glucose icons the best right now, even if they weren’t made for actual use.

Thanks a lot for the comments, I will try to improve that in the next week then :slight_smile:

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