Topic Distinguishable icons for buldings
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In Response to Matthias
I'm with fungiform here. I agree that our circular, unordered building menu sure is hard to read. But I think these symbols are extremely out of any style. Also, it's not always clear what building they represent. How would you distinguish between windmill and wind generator? How would the one for the forge look? What icon can convey that I'm about to build a steam machine for producing energy? What about player creations?
And, seriously: What's the first one? Pickaxe? Tools Workshop would be my guess. Here's the problem with that:
It requires additional mental effort to link an icon to its building. Of course you can do it, you thought of them - and, assuming I was right with my guess - I can do it too, because I know how the pickaxe looks, and I know that something like the tools Workshop exists, and I know that the pickaxe can be build in a tools workshop.
Now, if I was a new player, I'd assume that was some "mine" building like in WC3 or Settlers.
What I conclude is that this particular icon is a much worse cue than the building itself, in any situation: I can't see the tools and anvil from the model, and I even get misleading ideas about it being directly liked to mining.
I like the idea of sorting and categorizing menu contents. This way, I can infer useful information even when confronted with new buildings, player creations or even the absence of buildings in one glance. "Oh, there are 45877 new buildings in plutos new Scenario - but there's one building for producing energy. I'll start out with that." We should look into that further at some point.
Also, I rather had this topic in a seperate thread - newcomers wouldn't find it here, I think. Can you move it?
And, seriously: What's the first one? Pickaxe? Tools Workshop would be my guess. Here's the problem with that:
It requires additional mental effort to link an icon to its building. Of course you can do it, you thought of them - and, assuming I was right with my guess - I can do it too, because I know how the pickaxe looks, and I know that something like the tools Workshop exists, and I know that the pickaxe can be build in a tools workshop.
Now, if I was a new player, I'd assume that was some "mine" building like in WC3 or Settlers.
What I conclude is that this particular icon is a much worse cue than the building itself, in any situation: I can't see the tools and anvil from the model, and I even get misleading ideas about it being directly liked to mining.
I like the idea of sorting and categorizing menu contents. This way, I can infer useful information even when confronted with new buildings, player creations or even the absence of buildings in one glance. "Oh, there are 45877 new buildings in plutos new Scenario - but there's one building for producing energy. I'll start out with that." We should look into that further at some point.
Also, I rather had this topic in a seperate thread - newcomers wouldn't find it here, I think. Can you move it?
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