Make better icons

[Robert Ancell]

Make better icons because I did them and they look rubbish.

[Michal Predotka (mpredotka)]

I'll give it a try.

[Johannah Sprinz (neothethird)]

Love the bug description

[Michal Predotka (mpredotka)]

I made 3 images for tents and 3 for trees. I think it could be nice if they show up at random. I also made a new app icon according (more or less) to design guidelines for Ubuntu app icons. The app icon is in png format in few different sizes.

Please let me know what you think :)

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Thanks Michal!

I've put these icons in lp:~robert-ancell/tents/icons-mivoligo and attached some screenshots. You can test by doing 'make run' from that branch. The first screenshot is the resolution that they show on my MX4 (though that has a higher pixel density than my laptop) and the second a more appropriate size on my laptop.

I think the second screenshot shows the icons are a bit too detailed when you shrink them down (see bug 1656498). It's hard to distinguish between a tree and a tent. Either make the icons more symbolic or consider making a simpler icon for low resolutions.

I really liked the idea of randomizing the images, but in practise it makes the puzzle much harder to solve. I find you need to easily scan the field to count the number of tents/trees. By the icons being different this is harder. I think we could either:
- Make the tree / tent icons more similar to each other so it looks slightly different (more organic) but still easy to scan.
- Make the randomization a theming option and use a single icon for each by default.

I like the app icon much better than mine, though you might want to consider:
- The tent again is a bit detailed at the size the icon shows, so you might want to consider making it a bit larger / or simpler.
- Not sure if the design guidelines have changed but you could consider a more origami style. I'll post an idea I had of where the fold lines could go.

[Michal Predotka (mpredotka)]

Thanks for testing. :)

- I noticed the tree-1.svg does not show up as intended. I will fix that.

- to fix the issue with images looking "pixelated" we can use "sourceSize.width".

- to fix the problem with images visibility at small size we should not use:

anchors.fill: parent
anchors.margins: units.gu(1)

because units.gu(1) at some point could be bigger than the width of the image.
Instead we can drop the "anchors.margin" and go with:

anchors.centerIn: parent
sourceSize.width: parent.width * 0.8

That way the image will always take the same percentage of the grid cell width.

- I agree it is harder to scan the playing field with random images. I'll try to use the one color for all trees (green) and one for tents (not sure which one yet).

- In the app icon I actually used origami folds in the way they suppose to resemble folds on a map or grid cells in the game :) I guess it's not that obvious. I'll try to play with your idea.

[Michal Predotka (mpredotka)]

This is how it looks with all trees green and size changes mentioned before. No changes in tents color yet.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

I've uploaded the main icon/tree-1/tent-1 combination - it looks much better than it did, thanks!

We can update them again if you can get the randomization working well / if you can produce even better stuff.

[Michal Predotka (mpredotka)]

Thanks :)

Now I think it would be good idea to use 1 kind of tree with 1 kind of tent for 1 playground as you proposed before, and randomize them each time. So it'd be 9 combinations with 3 trees and 3 tents. That way the game would be less boring visually.