Post by: bvanevery on February 24, 2018, 08:54:18 PM
Post by: Buster's Uncle on February 24, 2018, 09:53:36 PM
There IS an AAR writer badge, which I'm reminded to go award you now.
Post by: bvanevery on February 24, 2018, 10:10:24 PM
Post by: bvanevery on February 24, 2018, 10:12:21 PM
Post by: Buster's Uncle on February 24, 2018, 10:47:27 PM
Hmm. I don't want it to be too easy to get a new award badge, or it's worth nothing. On the other hand, it's very good when free forum goodies like that make at least one person happy. On the gripping hand, you've figured out the technical requirements for that kind of thing and mastered a bit of GIMP, so if you designed and made the badge yourself, it would cost me only the effort of installing and assigning it. (I'm used to having to do that sort of thing myself, and often get put through numerous drafts and a lot of time. I don't always feel like it when it comes up.)
Ball's in your court, I guess.
Post by: bvanevery on February 25, 2018, 02:54:28 AM
As for easiness of getting a badge, can't say there's anything to worry about. Surely if I can get a badge for one AAR post, the understatement of the year in my case, I can get one for spending vastly more time on Chairman Yang's eyes. Unless there's some desire to have rarity and exclusivity for some specific activity, like making badges. Can't imagine why that would be.
Plus it took me 1 year to figure out that badges even exist. That alone keeps it from being easy to get badges.
I am thinking it should be some kind of "website art assets" badge. Your Smilie badge is a very specific kind of art asset. I should probably make something more generally applicable, but it might still have some specificity like "Small Artwork Badge" or "Icons Badge" or something along those lines. Makes me think of the Nanominiaturization tech, which unfortunately has a stupid logo.
BTW, on the subject of finding an excuse to use the good logos from the game, I would highly recommend you give Doctrine:Loyalty badges to people for some reason. Like if they're still active in any forum after X number of months or a year or something?
Industrial Automation has a really cool logo. Unfortunately with too much detail to make a good 20x20 badge I think. But if you had some excuse to hand out IA icons to people I think that would be great.
Unfortunately none of the tech icons are leaping out at me as a good basis for solving the original problem, so it's back to the drawing board.
I'm now looking at icons used in paint or photo editing programs. An icon of an artist's palette could work, for instance.
Nothing from SMAC is really jumping out as inspiring. In fact, I'm realizing that the Visual Arts as a cultural process, are not mentioned in the game at all. Literature, sure, plenty of quotes from old books and imagined books. But this future has no painters or photographers. Maybe not filmmakers or videographers either, although it does have news broadcasters. You've got Yang's reference to "successive frames of a watchvid" and Morgan TV Live Interview.
Well I guess we do have The Virtual World. That's the closest I can get to some kind of "visuals". I'm doubting that any still frames from that video have something in the 20x20 size that would be useful and recognizable, but I'll contemplate.
A Propagandist badge, controlling people's visual realities through iconography, might be thematically in keeping with the game.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on February 25, 2018, 04:47:44 AM
Post by: bvanevery on February 25, 2018, 02:15:13 PM
For the original "art assets" problem I posed, I've had a brainchild: a "Salvager" award. This would be for someone who goes into the game's art assets and reclaims them for use on the website somehow. Like the PIC icon I made out of Chairman Yang's eyes. I'm not sure if "Salvager" is the right name. "Archaeologist" might be better. "Scrapper" is a related term.
For the icon itself, I looked at the Alien Artifact. However, unit artwork in general is too large to use for 20x20.
BTW does anyone know what "Baron-Krypto Space-Puppy" is about? I found him in icons.pcx.
spacepuppy |
I extracted a minerals icon from newicons.pcx. This suggests a different award name: "Asset Miner".
mineral20x20 |
Seems like the Police fist would be useful for something, but I'm not sure what. Took it from socwin.pcx.
policefist |
Ok, since I couldn't find any other applicable game art, I'm going with the "Asset Miner" idea. Here it is with a different background. I'm not sure how one does transparent backgrounds. I can go up that learning curve if it is helpful. Would also like to come up with a short tagline for what an "Asset Miner" is. Although in a pinch, one could instead have the award be tagged as "Miner of Art Assets" and leave it to the community to explain to someone what the heck that means. Not ideal but I'm having trouble compressing the idea down to a simple tagline.
assetminer20x20 |
mineral20x20 |
newicons |
Quote
My advice would be to use the Select By Color option to select the color you want to make transparent. If it is a single indexed color, instead of various shades of it, you can set the threshold parameter to 0 - otherwise, experiment with the Threshold and select by controls until you mark all parts of the image you want transparent. After that,just perform Edit->Cut (don't forget to add an Alpha channel to your layer before doing that Layer->Transparency->Add Alpha Channel), and export your image as a GIF file. You won't need to convert to RGB and back to indexed mode if you just want to add alpha, and choose this method - it should work with the image in Indexed Mode.So here finally is a mineral done right. Just need to wordsmith what to call it.
mineralalpha20x20 |
Post by: Buster's Uncle on March 07, 2018, 10:28:04 PM
Post by: bvanevery on March 08, 2018, 03:02:54 AM
I will think about what a "Badge Maker" badge would look like. I think it should look really "badgy" somehow. Not a mineral.
Minerals are used for production. Don't know if that helps brainstorming. Too many minerals cause eco-damage.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on March 08, 2018, 04:06:13 AM
Post by: bvanevery on March 08, 2018, 04:33:30 AM
Post by: bvanevery on March 25, 2018, 03:22:58 AM
Deirdreye |
Hmm. Not completely wrong but not completely right. maybe someone else has a better eyeball.
Miriameye |
Post by: Buster's Uncle on March 25, 2018, 03:25:02 AM
Post by: bvanevery on March 25, 2018, 03:52:41 AM
Talenteye |
I'm not having good luck with the eyeball approach anyways though. Doesn't seem to be enough surrounding context to make sense of this as a "Talent's eye". I suppose I could try sampling the smaller portrait artwork.
Telepath |
Let's see if a face does any better. As an image, yes, but doesn't really mean anything. Good icon, but for what?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on March 25, 2018, 04:04:00 AM
Post by: bvanevery on March 25, 2018, 04:27:39 AM
Post by: Buster's Uncle on March 25, 2018, 04:33:53 AM
Sculpture could be about touch I guess. Cooking is art for taste - I literally did tell Buster that a few months ago; she said something about cake decorating, and I was no, I mean there is, or can/should be an art to preparing food, ask any high-level chef.
Don't want to think about smell art...
Post by: bvanevery on March 25, 2018, 05:18:39 AM
Post by: Geo on March 25, 2018, 11:15:25 AM
Sculpture could be about touch I guess.
Someone's been reading Niven again? :P
Post by: Buster's Uncle on March 25, 2018, 12:01:46 PM
Music, b; music.
We could always go with some clip art of a paint brush - but that would suck twice, thrice over. We'll work something out.
Post by: Geo on March 25, 2018, 12:06:02 PM
Post by: Buster's Uncle on March 25, 2018, 12:16:03 PM
Geo, run, do not walk and profile>Group Membership >Writer>join. You'll want a look at - well, the whole thread for The Billion-Year Backup System in Writers' Workshop. ;nod Rusty knows his Niven stuff.
Post by: Geo on March 28, 2018, 03:02:51 PM
Post by: Buster's Uncle on March 28, 2018, 04:47:28 PM