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+--- Thread: Any tips on making map Piece icons? (/Thread-Any-tips-on-making-map-Piece-icons)
Any tips on making map Piece icons? - HwitVlf - 2011-10-26
I'm working on some cliff Pieces and was trying to figure the best way to make icons- meaning the little tile bmps that show up in the editor. Does anyone have tips on how to make those icons so they are easy to comprehend when building maps? I expect Ben would be the expert but any tips would be appreciated.
I think confusing icons was the main problem with Todd's cliff set and also several of the Japanese Piece sets.
Re: Any tips on making map Piece icons? - Verdite - 2011-10-26
The best advice i can give you is to create a map icon according to how your model is facing. So assuming its front face is on the x axis you'd draw a map icon that has a horizontal line. If you are making a corner, go into meta's top view and replicate the angle in your paint/paintshop/gimp suite. I generally try to make different map parts as different and as colourful as possible. For multiple floors i draw numbers on them, so for 2 floors id draw a 2. I can send you my custom icons if you'd like.
Re: Any tips on making map Piece icons? - dmpdesign - 2011-10-26
Its really odd, for me my icons made perfect sense but no one else could understand them :)
I would give advice, but obviously it would be bad lol.
Hmm. Maybe Ill rework some icons and post and see what you guys think.
Re: Any tips on making map Piece icons? - HwitVlf - 2011-10-26
The 'core' cliff Piece icons were clear. It's just that several triangles/corners etc looked similar, especially when they were rotated so I had a hard time telling which piece I needed to build the shape I wanted. I'm going to try to use your cliff set for a certain area in my game so I think reworked icons would be an excellent and fairly easy thing to do.
Ben, a collection of icons would be helpful. I think good icons can make map building go faster.
Re: Any tips on making map Piece icons? - Verdite - 2011-10-27
John ill PM you to 243 of my icons
Re: Any tips on making map Piece icons? - HwitVlf - 2011-10-27
Thanks Ben! Just glancing over them I already see a couple methods that should be useful
Re: Any tips on making map Piece icons? - Verdite - 2011-10-27
They are probably more arty than practical, im working on a new set that i'll hopefully setup similiar to SoM's icon set.
Re: Any tips on making map Piece icons? - Verdite - 2013-07-22
Has anyone any custom icons to share? They are something I need on a regular basis, so any would be welcome.
Feel free to use these!
Re: Any tips on making map Piece icons? - Madison Lastrega - 2013-07-22
the way I make Icons is based on the particular piece I am working on.... I found it easiest to just open any existing icon and edit it and resave a different file name :) like for my earthworth sets... I make them with the same texture samples as the piece for walls and corners I use a black line so when buiding its easy to layout... and for 1x3 or 3x3 I use solid colors and usualy a marking to show its size.... Boy how I love regualr "Paint"
so my pieces are sorta custom with the set...... I would like to release a complete SQS ULTRA edition of SoM once I am done with all my map parts... then my icons will make sence I hope .... bvut making universal icons is hard because every artist is differnt .........ML
Re: Any tips on making map Piece icons? - HwitVlf - 2013-07-25
I've always struggled with icons myself. I made that tool to auto generate 10,000 icons, but they're not really user friendly for small sets. The tool assembles each icon from a set of quarter-icons. In this case, the quarters had numbers 0-9. I could adapt it to use other quarter-icons, but I can't picture that being very useful for making "easy to comprehend" icon sets. If you'd like the et of 10,000 auto generated let me know.