Help us make new/better editor images!

[Serpentine]

Why hello there editor.

 

Since we're going to be replacing these images, I thought I'd try to get a feel for what people that work with them all the day feel.

 

At the moment there are a lot of editor images which are non-specific and somewhat crap. I've ripped apart my material generator script to try to make this easy for people to edit/adjust, In the hopes that we can make better images - and most importantly - allow them to be automatically generated so that in the future they're always up-to-date.

 

While the script is more or less done in regards to what I set out up - it may be of value for editors who have trouble with colorblindness or just want to make some other changes.

 

The script produces both the actual images (correctly named and placed in a folder, so that you can replace things easily), as well as an atlas of the individual images, like this (this has been reduced to 256 colour, so they actually look better ):

 

 

Want to help?

• The script does not know about all of the textual editor images - Help by adding them. It's not all that hard, just open the script in an editor and look at the defined materials.
  
• If you come up with new patterns or schemes which stay within the expectation of existing mappers, let me know!
  
• A few of the materials I'm not too sure about, so check over them.
  

Script - Includes some fonts.

To use the script you'll need Python and Python Imaging Library.

 

Once run the images will be output to a directory, in the same directory that you rand the script from.

 

[updated 1 April 2012]

[Springheel]

I'd like to add a pitch to try and keep them at least vaguely similar to the colour scheme that already exists...mappers have been working with these for years and I know I'd personally find it very jarring to have to relearn colours for things if suddenly clip stopped being red, paths stopped being purple, etc.

[Serpentine]

Yeah, I tried to keep these as close to the current ones, but things like the visportal and triggers - the VP texture we currently use is kinda wtf, and my attempt is not exactly amazing. I've always just hated the trigger textures brown!

 

At the same time, it's also nice if people can customize their editor if they feel the need - specially people with colour blindness and similar.

[Melan]

Yes, I am in agreement with Springheel. If it is for legal reasons, I will understand, but they ought to be at least similar.

 

And I know this makes me Nitpick Extraordinaire, but those fonts don't look right... better choose something more "mechanical", more "computery"

[Springheel]

Couldn't we just keep them exactly the same but use a TDM font? Can colours be copyright?

[SiyahParsomen]

I agree too.

Couldn't we just keep them exactly the same but use a TDM font? Can colours be copyright?

 

Just to guarantee it, we can change the color very slightly and mappers don't feel the difference.

[ungoliant]

i kind of like the editor image colors as they are... feels familiar. If its just a font issue, i suppose I don't mind too much. As for helping, 80% of that post went right over my head.

[Serpentine]

Font can be changed, however PIL's font handing is incredishit. So sometimes 'bad things happen'. I will see what I can do to make them nicer, consolab might look quite a bit better, chunkier.

 

As for colours, the images are gpl3 for the most part. But most of them are terribly small and crap. I want uniformity and an easy way to keep things updated. I intend to keep them close to the old ones, don't worry - once again.

[Tels]

While I agree keeping the overall base color scheme, we can at least try to make them colorblind-safe from the go. The green-text-on-red would be the first candiate - and it also looks horrible for a non-color blind person. At least use "yellow-on-green"!

 

Since most people don't have a color-blind person at hand (*checks closet* Nope, I don't have.), hre is a webpage that lets you check how a color-blind person sees things:

 

http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckImage.php

 

If you are lucky, this link will still work:

 

http://vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckImage.php?&img1=uploads%2Fvc_qbsoc1_orig.jpg&img2=uploads%2Fvc_qbsoc1_sim.jpg&simType=deuteranope&imageCached=vc_qbsoc1_orig.jpg&imEngIP=vischeck.homeip.net

[Tels]

Another remark: I guess these should be better distributed with DR? Having them in TDM means we would carrier dead weight like the PDA images (there is no PDA in TDM).

[Baddcog]

I don't mind dots for visportal but I'd say stick to the same colors if you can, that texture is kind of a shit storm of pixels with purple text.

 

Is that supposed to be 'no drop'? Not familiar with it.

 

I wouldn't mind seeing different color font for groupings. Why have a red with green on every clip? Sometimes the tex aren't aligned well and who cares about clips textures anyway. So the words can be all stretched and hard to read. So seeing green smear on red, you can't tell them apart. But if one is green on red and one is white on red you really don't have to read them.

 

As long as all clips are red base, triggers are brown base...

[New Horizon]

Didn't deadite give us a link to all of their custom replacement images for the doom 3 editor?

[Bikerdude]

I'd like to add a pitch to try and keep them at least vaguely similar to the colour scheme that already exists...mappers have been working with these for years

Agreed, but one suggestion is to add a different coloured square where we have the same editor image for different textures, aka nodraw solid and the like - see attached,

 

it also looks horrible for a non-color blind person. At least use "yellow-on-green"!

+1, as the current scheme has always hurt my eyes :-)

[nbohr1more]

Aren't loud garish images a good thing when you are trying to distinguish your own brushes from clip, nodraw, (etc)?

 

I'd like to see an in-editor shot before spouting any opinions on these changes.

[deadite4]

Didn't deadite give us a link to all of their custom replacement images for the doom 3 editor?

 

Yep

[New Horizon]

Yep

 

Thought so. No need to reinvent the wheel then. Why can't we use those folks?

[Serpentine]

Because the code was already written and I want something which can be used to keep the images up-to-date and allow adjustments to be made if a mapper wants it - this in not entirely about TDM itself.

 

Since I was moving and updating the materials themselves, no wasted time since it was just copy/paste and doodling some numbers... also the Hexen versions look nothing like the d3 ones, and have a lot of aliasing (but thanks for the offer d4 ).

 

btw, d4 - I'd look at anything using black/flat and a few other images, they are most likely things that are meant to use the internal images (i,e _black, _flat) - might find other mistakes with those materials.

 

Lastly, I watched an ep of Lone Gunmen - since I'm all out of X-Files. So check the atlas image at the top of the post, changed some things - think they look a fair bit better, way more readable. Font issue addressed.

[jaxa]

So could I take the script and just replace it with as many 128x128 icon images that I can draw?

[New Horizon]

If we're not going to use the Hexen ones, I don't mind going through and creating new versions that are similar to those posted above.

[Serpentine]

They're already done, that's what the script does - files are created and named correctly. Just need to pop them into the folder and it's all done. The large image is just an overview which it makes at the same time.

 

And yeah, the Hexen ones are not on the cards.

 

Updated the script with a new font (included), as well as as converted the data to a dictionary, making is very easy to edit - See here

 

Pretty much just need to add the weather and various other more TDM specific abstract ones.

[jaxa]

Is this what you're looking for or no?

 

[Serpentine]

Is this what you're looking for or no?

Nah, just looking for the actual 'names' and material names of other editor images (i.e ones which are commonly used for water, portal skies etc). Which could be added to that basic set (those are the ones specified in TDM/d3 source - for the most part).Just trying to keep the set as close to the current ones as possible.

[jaxa]

lol

[Baddcog]

the problem with images, like those ladders esp, is that ladders tend to be really skinny anyway, so you won't see the whole image, you'd probably just see a vertical tile of the middle, which would look like a ladder, but you wouldn't see which kind.

 

 

Clip is great because in the editor you see: Red=Clip. But if we do different font colors like I suggested you'd see a quick

 

Red/White tex(smear, whatever)= Player Clip

Red/yellow text/smear = Monster Clip.

 

I never align any of these textures, waste of time. So if they are smeared, squashed, rotated, scaled bad i don't care. I just want to see a distinct color

[Bikerdude]

What ever gets done, i would still like some variation on the multitude of nodraw textures, as its impossible to tell which nodraw is used on a given brush.