Arena construction site: Gold icon vs. Iron icon

[BeniH]

When building an Arena, the not satisfied icons of the required Gold looks like the same as iron.
This way, it is not obvious at the first glance, that gold is needed.

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

You're thinking about the Arena for barbarians right?

Well the tooltip will display "Gold" if you hover your cursor over it, but you do have a point.

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

That said, I do like the new ingots that were added to represent the metals. Does anyone have any suggestions how to better separate the two?

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Well, I don't really know whether this problem is justifying to give up the uniformity,
but we could of course use the alternative ingot design that I had prepared at the time
for one of the ingots, to give each one a discernable shape.

[BeniH (beni-hallinger)]

I for one would suggest to just mirror the image horizantally, so gold just "views" to the left.
This way, the ingot (which is nice btw!) could stay the same.

Another option (or also additional, which would be awesome!) would be to give the greyed-out gold ingot some "golden" touch.

[Venatrix (elisabeth)]

Well, if I remember right, in Settlers I iron was not an ingot but a H-steel. That maybe looks a bit strange, when the carriers carry it, but it would make a big diffenrence, that would definitely be seen even when greyed out.

[Nicolai Hähnle (nha)]

Mirror image is not a good solution. What is the meaning of left to right vs. right to left in relation to gold vs. iron? It is not intuitive. New players (including you) wouldn't be able to tell what is what anyway, the learning process would not be removed.

[BeniH (beni-hallinger)]

Hello, mirroring has indeed no relation to the materials.
Compared to the current solution it however helps with a learning curve.
Currently you can only tell the needed material by a mouse-over and not directly from the image, so currently there is nothing to be learned except that you need to put the mouse over to reveal text; the icon itself carries no additional information over "some metal".

However with a mirrored image, the player can learn which side means what metal, so one can, after realizing that fact, gain the detail information from the image ("ahh left sided menas gold!") which saves time later on.

As stated above from Astuur, an alternative design for the finished-gold ressource (ie ingot) should be different from the finished gold design when greyed out.
One solution is a different ingot shape for steel since most people have ingots in mind when talking about things like gold and silver. The H-steel for iron would therefore be a good idea, however i do not know Astuurs alternative ingot design. Maybe its enogh to just swap the ingot stacking, so for steel the ingots could be stacked with the long side up. A H-shape would be better tough since it is very more specifiable and not so easily confused.

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

I agree mirror images are not a good solution, since a player would still have to look it up the first time. In the current situation iron and gold look almost identical, but the user can learn which is used by checking the mouse-over or by observing which is delievered to the arena. With mirror images, the player need to check which metal is shown which way (or any of the steps above) the first time. I think this would change very little, and the player would still need to check which metal is used.

I thought a bit about what you mentioned about stacking. What about showing iron in a pyramid with three ingots? That would make the representations distinct enough to tell them apart. Also, iron is less rare than gold (in the real world), so it would make sense to have more of it. However, there may be a few problems with this:
1. Three objects are shown to represent one. Might be confusing.
2. How would it look when carriers are transporting it?
What do others think about this?

Another idea would be to have some sort of stamps on the metals to tell them apart (Fe, Au?), but I doubt these would be shown when the metals are grayed out by the dialog, so we're back to square one.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Unfortunately the Fe Au idea won't work.
Otherwise I'd have voted for it.
Those ingots are only 5 pixels in height and 8 pixels in length - there is no way that
any letters can be displayed within that kind of space.
The same is true for stacking ingots, they'de be mere featureless dots, if we
can not increase their size significantly.
I'll give it a try, just to make sure, but I have not much hope.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

If we change only the menu.pngs, it might work, but we must then
accept a different look from the ware in the game....
They are bigger.....

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Added "Au" and "Fe" to the side of the ingots.
Making it look like it was engraved on the ingots themselves,
did not work. It became unreadable.
I also had the same trouble when trying to antialias.
Exchanged menu.png only for both ingots.
Fortunately the characters _are displayed_ (if alpha channel is adapted)
even with the greyed out pictures, albeit a bit pale.
Will that do?
(see attached screenshot)

[David Allwicher (aber)]

What about the idea of using some sort of „beam“ for the iron icon?

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

Remodeling the iron ingot into a beam should be doable I think, by only rechading it a little. Perhaps you could give it a try as well.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

For the idea with the Fe an Au letters, I now have an antialiased version.
This will work to discern iron from gold, but it's not very elegant.

As for a beam, I initially had one.
A sort of rectangle with rounded corners, but the idea was dropped in favour
of a common design for both gold and iron ingots...
I will look for it, but is wasn't very good.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Here is the menu.png for old beam type iron "ingot"
Too close to marble stones?

[BeniH (beni-hallinger)]

If you just cut something away from both sides, we would have a nearly perfect H-Steel....

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

What I see fitting would be in the proportions of the iron ingot for keeping consistency, but shaded to look like a H-beam. currently, the lettering variants are ok, but I think we can do better. ;)

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

http://img2.tradeee.com/photo/51713486/Steel_H_beam.jpg <- this is a h-beam. I think our icon should have it on its "feet"

[BeniH (beni-hallinger)]

Great!

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Alexa -- there was an H beam with Settlers.
I always found it very odd and totally out of place.
An H-Beam is an industrial product .... wrong time, wrong atmosphere, wrong environment.

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

I can see your point... But lettering with chemical element symbols is just as out of place - while international, they aren't really intuitively understandable for all age groups... Are there any other universally understandable shapes iron can come in? All I can think of is already a product on their own.

[Venatrix (elisabeth)]

@Astuur: I know and I always thought it looked a bit strange to see the carriers transport an h-beam, but everyone who sees it knows immediately that’s iron. And that’s the point where looking for, don’t we?

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

Another point is that for gold ingot is the natural shape. everybody have seen a gold ingot. However I have never encountered an iron ingot. Not in real life and not in fiction. Silver maybe... even lead ingots but not ever iron. Closest thing ive ever seen to an iron ingot was a 3 ton slab on extreme machines show on discovery :D. All Iron I have seen has come as bars, beams or pipes. So an iron ingot is rather alien concept too.

[BeniH (beni-hallinger)]

How about an ironweight, something like:
http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-old-cast-iron-weight-image5930534
or http://www.shutterstock.com/subscribe.mhtml
or http://www.dreamstime.com/item.php?imageid=10167365

[BeniH (beni-hallinger)]

(of course iconified, but just for illustration)

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

hmm... its a weight... can be made of anything really... But the above gave me an idea. How about converting that iron ingot to a slab? A bit flatter and wider so they have a shape difference?

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

http://globalmetcorp.com/images/big/SLABS.jpg <- something like this?

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

Ok, the Au/Fe wasn't really a proper suggestion. It was more to mention something that could have worked, but probably wouldn't. I thought a bit more about it, and as Alexia mentions, it might not be that intuitive to everyone.

I also think the H-beams look to out of place. My first association is the large beams used in the construction of skyscrapers, which isn't really all that "Widelandsy".

BeniH has a nice suggestion about iron weight, but I'm a bit unsure how easy it is to understand what it is. (no offence)

I think Astuur's beams are the best suggestion so far, and with a bit of tweaking I think they could be great.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

I am running out of ideas - sort of.
Just for the fun of it and OT: There _are_ historical iron ingots.
Look for "bog iron" (ger.'Raseneisenstein")
Since in former times people couldn't smelt iron to have it really fluid, and cast iron was not yet invented, they were hammered from a plastical mass that came from the smelting process.
This hammering also purified the iron.
Alas -- this does not help us. The forms of historical iron ingots differed from region to region, and besides
no modern player would recognise them for what they are supposed to be :)

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

how about converting that ingot into a slab?

[Chuck Wilder (chuckw20)]

I don't know if this will help or muddy the waters, but the immediate product of smelting iron ore is something that we in the US commonly call "pig iron". (I believe that is what Astuur was also referring to as "bog iron" (ger. 'Raseneisenstein'.)
Here is a link to an image of some iron "pigs": http://www.bluecomex.com/images/pigiron2.jpg Note the similarity to ingots in this case, but this is certainly not the only shape pig iron could take. It is basically at the whim of the smelter. In primitive smelting, the molten metal is emptied into a bed of sand that has been fashioned with a channel that directs the liquid metal to one or more pits designed to receive it and allow it to cool and solidify into shapes that can be handled easily.
Modern steel, of course, is delivered for manufacturing in a variety of shapes: rods, slabs, bars and rolls. For WL though, I think the more primitive form is appropriate. The ware is iron and not steel after all. ;)
One other possible image to depict iron could be a horseshoe or even a cast iron skillet, but again those are finished products and imply more manufacturing (smithing) beyond smelting.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Yep, Chuck... that's what I had in mind - it is a sort of ingot - at least I did not know any more approriate word for it in english.
Bog iron is different. It's a mineral that you dig from the earth in sour soil and is the raw material for the most ancient smelting processes know.

The only other idea that i can think of atm is to try and add some rusty patches to our beautiful stainless iron ingots after all. This may help to illustrate one characteristic where the metals differ - corrosion.

[BeniH (beni-hallinger)]

Hm, i dont think that rust patches are obviously enough, most probably they would be recognized as just transparency stuff from the background. After all, we are talking about the greyed-out version of the item, the item itself is not the problem.

What sounds good to me is the following:
- shape of the ingot: Making the edges softer, so it looks more like if the melt was carried out in sand like explained above.
- make iron ingot surface unpolished
- make gold ingot polished (add some shiny brights on surface)

We then have a good distinction (round and raw iron ingot vs. polished and finished gold ingot) while remaining consistent in the "ingot"-idea which sounds good to me. Also, when transported by the carriers, it will not make any problem. and above all, the problem of this bug report is fixed since the round and more raw form of the greyed-out iron ingot would be recognizable different from the sharply edged gold-ingot.
Problem solved :)

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

The rusty patches are not visible when the iron is greyed out.
I don't know how to change this... sorry

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

Making iron a rounder&rougher pat of metal may help... Id like to see a variant of that.

[Venatrix (elisabeth)]

I had another idea about a different shape, though I’m not sure by myself, if it is good: What about (cannon) balls? They’re always made of iron and should be recognizable. I just have the feeling, that they don’t fit into Widelands like the h-beams. So just another suggestion.

[BeniH (beni-hallinger)]

+ its another finished product like the iron weight...
Modifying the ingot should be the better option, i think.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Slabs will clearly show the difference to ingots. Good!
But is this the shape that everybody immediately associates with iron?
I will give it a try all the same :)

[BeniH (beni-hallinger)]

Wehre are the pics for the current iron ingot (normal+greyed out) located?

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Found no way to do a good texture with so little pixels ....

@BeniH: widelands/tribes/[tribe]/iron/menu.png (hidden). Greyed out is done within the program somehow.

[BeniH (beni-hallinger)]

Ok, i tried to make the gold more shiny, but failed. Im definitely not an art artist...

What i had in mind was something like that: http://goldbarren.biz/images/goldbarren-500g.jpg

Maybe Gold could also be symbolized as coin?

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

My initial attempt when ingots were introduced was a bit more "shiny"
and it was for the coarse looking surface of ChuckW's models that most
people (including myself) preferred his.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Tried some "slablike" thing, but a rougher surface and rounder
corners dont really show.
This is the menu.png -- idle.png is much worse.

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

Slab should have sharper corners. Slab I think sort of works...

[BeniH (beni-hallinger)]

Yes, it is really easily distinguishable from gold. Looks like a good solution to me. Maybe add some rust particles, but not as outstanding as above but more subtile.

[BeniH (beni-hallinger)]

Well, maybe not a good idea. Forget about it and leave the slab as it is now.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Well, if you all really are so fond ot the slab (ger. Bramme) idea I'm obvoiusly in the minority,
and will not protest.
But I must try one last time, because I can see not much advantage in there:

It is different from a gold ingot, true.
It _does not_ transport any obvious "iron" quality by itsself.
Most players will not know what it is.
It is again an industrial product.
It usually weighs about 15 tons which seems a bit much to carry around even for our workers.
It does not have a pleasant look -- in fact, I'd say it's downright ugly :)

I'd go for a Chuck's rounded things, if only I could make it clearly different from the gold ingots
at that scale.
I will try one more time.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

New design:
A semi-cylinder. (to have a different shape)
New is the idea to use transparent holes within the pattern to simulate roughness.
This may not work for the idle.png - but there we don't have the problem with the identification,
because they are never greyed out.
I have also used a different conversion and resizing algorhythm.
One of these changes has led to the advantage, that these holes are shown even in the greyed out version, contrary to
holes made from black color.

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

Well... it in no way tells me that its iron... but its different shape than gold. Its a bit too silvery tho. Iron doesnt stay silvery for long...

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

I have made something out of Chuck's pigiron.
I think it should have some degree of reflection to hint at "metal" at least.
Black maybe closer to the truth, but makes it harder to identify.
I also gave up trying to add rust -- it will bring more questions than clarity.
Have done the idle.png, too to see if it works.
I think the shape is not bad, texture could be clearer - but. but at least it does not look
polished.

[Chuck Wilder (chuckw20)]

Nice rendering of the pig iron, Astuur! However, I fear that many may confuse it for stone.

I asked myself with what form of iron did/do smiths work most often. I believe iron bars, not slabs, rods or even ingots (pigs) were/are most often the starting point in tool, weapon and hardware smithing. Here again, though, any depiction of a metal bar or bars does not "scream" iron.

So, at the expense of some historic realism, I suggest the possible use of a nicely rendered realistic version of a cartoon "1 Ton" weight like this image http://dir.coolclips.com/clipart/150/vgjm/tf05069/CoolClips_busi0854.jpg (i.e. a hexahedron with four trapezoidal sides, a square top and bottom and a ring on top. It needn't bear any labeling.

I can't speak for others, but I invariably think "iron" when I see one of these. :) Just another suggestion.

[Chuck Wilder (chuckw20)]

Oh my! It appears as though I have taken us full circle. This 1 Ton weight looks remarkaby like a big, square INGOT with a handle!!

(I warned you I might muddy the waters.) ;)

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Hoping desperately that we may never need lead in this game :)

OKay, Personally I have reached a conclusion:
There is no way to have an "iron" representation that would transport the association immediately for everybody, is historically correct, and fits the WL world.

I accept, that our "iron ingot" needlessly complicates matters by having the same shape as gold and so being
indistinguishable when greyed out. That ought to be changed.

If any newcomer then stumbles across an unknown greyed-out shape, that he cannot recognize and at the same time lacks the intuition to mouse over that thing, or the smartness to identify the shape in the running game or the stock diplay,he will simply have to play on for several more minutes, until growing experience finally will point him to the right conclusions. Period.

So ... let's choose any design that is sufficiently different from the gold ingot and any other ware -- and that's it.

What say you?

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

I say aye and "vote" for slab.

[SirVer (sirver)]

Just for historical reason: s2 had the same problem. They represent iron by an anvil, which is something that needed learning but was easily recognizable.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

I tried the slab (that thingy I did), but it's far to dark in the stock display agains a dark background.
My personal favouriite would still be Chiuck's iron ingots, but atm I am trying to make the slab usuable.

Alexa, any idea how the idle.png should be sized, if we're going with the slab?
Should it give an "overloaded" impression, given the fact, that your avarage slab weighs 15 to, or
would you rather have it downsized to ingot size?

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

slab is a made thing, so it can be any size... I think it should be a little bit bigger than the ingot, but not too much. I think it can be a bit lighter than your initial tries. It could also have a perspective similar to the ingot, but Im not sure how that would look.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Next round.
How is that
Hotspot for Idle.png is not yet adjusted.

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

Hmm... Looks cool. Specially the stack at the flag:)

[BeniH (beni-hallinger)]

Looks all nice, but its true, its not easily recognizable as iron.
The second pig-iron (the hole one) looked best to me so far, but i agree that i would wanted it to be a bit less shiny.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

For the hotspot "7 9" seems good (see attachment).

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

So here are the files:
Menu.png, idle.png, conf
(Slab variant)

Since Alexia seems determined to use the slabs form, that concludes my work with this.

There are no other files, since I have edited those small files directly. No alpha channel either.

Checking out finally of what Ixprefect might have called another bikeshed discussion :)

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

I think the hotspot could be a little bit more twoards the center.... However, thats easy to adjust. But please let me know how you want to be credited...

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Haha, "Astuur made the slab....."
C'mon Alexia, what a joke!
Whatever you do --- including not mentioning it at all -- is fine with me :)
Do as you feel
That goes for the Winterland stones too, if you want them -- and for everything else.
Have you taken a look at my boulders?
You have not commented on that so far.

[Chuck Wilder (chuckw20)]

@Astuur #64:
Someone who has worked as hard and with such dedication as you have on this and other graphical contributions to WL deserves to be included and recognized in our Developers list of Graphicians. With that intent, I think Alexia was asking if you wished us to include your name along with your member ID in the list.

Fine job on the new iron image.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Hi Chuck, (I like the idea of you lurking here :) )
I think I understood what Alexia was asking.

I'm not after fame in this matter, and I feel
these are ridiculously small and pathetic contributions
compared to others' efforts -- and this ain't "work"
not to mention "hard" :)

So, friends, do whatever you feel.

I don't even know what a member ID is.
Do I have one?

Let's keep this to the point here,
Please PM me if this topic needs more talking about.

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

Exactly what Chuck said. Plus, its customary to list the author in the commit message for keeping track who contributed what. I can use Astuur, but if you have some other name/id you wish to be used, please let me know.

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

also, please point me in direction of the forum thread about your boulders.

[BeniH (beni-hallinger)]

Hello,
just wanted to give some feddback on this after playing some time now.
I dont think the iron/gold ingot issue is a big one and maybe its indeed better to stay with the current ingot design. Personally i think its easier to see that its iron with the current ingot, the slab is even more confusing i think; so we are swapping a small issue (gold vs iron in greyed out version) with a bigger one (slab in the entire world.)

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Hehe, I always thought by myself, that all-in-all this may not be worth changing, because
we could not come up with a really convincing solution.
So yes, I agree with you and suggest to stay with Chuck's iron ingot version.

But it's Alexia's final decision.
She seems to be quite fond of the slab.

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

Yes, I like the slab... but I dont belive in change for simply changing something... Astuur, can you attach your slab graphics to this issue so we can revisit it should the need arise?

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

Sure.
Done - Idle.png can be made out of this (menu.png), but I will keep also keep it.

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

well, placed it here for convenience

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

While it did generate a lot of discussion, I'm undecided whether we should change it or not. (I do like the slab though, but I don't know what makes the most sense of that and the ingot) The best thing would probably leave it like it is for now, and revisit it later, if someone thinks it should change, or we see lots of players struggling with this issue.

Re: Astuur #66
Don' be too hard on yourself! :)
Widelands currently has close to 6000 revisions, small or large, which together forms one awesome game. It could be argued that any one of those revisions are small and insignificant, but as a whole they are a lot more than minor changes to textfiles and some new images.

Btw, I assume the member ID is the launchpad ID, which you will see on your profile page (just click on your username to get there). It will be shown both under user information, and in the address bar (prefixed by ~)

[BeniH (beni-hallinger)]

I agree with keeping it. Sorry for opening this discussion, but so it is discussed.
Mainly i opened it because i thought that it may help someone, and indeed i think the discussion brought up some points.

And this way it is clearly visible why the idea was abandoned for now.

Said that, it is really not that issue it firstly looked like to me.

WL is my current favorite, i just opened a game with my wife :)

[Astuur (wolfsteinmetz)]

@BeniH: I also consider it an advantage that we have discussed all alternatives and tried out some.
So, even if we now agree on not changing the ingots, it was worthwhile.

Do we have to take precautions to save this report in order to have it readily available for later?

[Alexia Death (alexiade)]

All reports are kept indefinitely as far as I know, so no i dont think we need to do anything special. Ive changed the status to opinion.

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

I am not sure exactly when it happened, but the iron ingots were replaced with slabs a while back. Was the original file uploaded to the media repository as well?

[SirVer (sirver)]

Released in build17-rc1.