Icon Update

An icon update from yesterday’s Gray Icons effort…

Left to right: At-Will, Encounter, Daily, Item, Monster, Poison, Hazard.

1. rob, March 12, 2009:

   Those seem pretty clear and, perhaps more importantly scalable. I was thinking that lines might improve the gm, but then I thought about it in 10 point, and well, no, not so much.

   No sword-chucks though. Very disappointing.

   -Rob D.

2. Nick Wedig, March 12, 2009:

   I don’t think that’s the right link in the post: your link goes to one comment on the “Kids and 4e” post, not to the entry on grayscale icons.

3. Jonathan Walton, March 12, 2009:

   Sweet, Fred. As someone who’s currently trying to design their first 4E adventure, there are a few other icons that you might eventually need to do layout for OBE products: icons for the various kinds of terrain (difficult, blocking, challenging, hindering, obscured, and cover). Honestly, I kinda wish there was a “challenging” icon that would also allow you to put some explanatory notes next to in on the appropriate map square, like:

   [ICON]
   ATH 18
   2d6 fire

   i.e. Difficulty 18 Athletics check to move through it or take 2d6 fire damage. Conceivably you could mark an entire section of the map this way with a single notation, in case there’s a, uh, flaming bridge or something.

4. Cam Banks, March 12, 2009:

   You went with the downward pointing triangle I’d suggested! Awesome. Resonates with the shield/encounter suggestion somebody else made.

5. NMcCoy, March 13, 2009:

   On the one hand, I kinda like the circle as a unifying element of the power icons, but on the other hand the displacement from centerline of the “Encounter” triangle’s circle bugs me a bit.

   Hm, how do the power icons look if you put the “keyword diamond” in them? Like so: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/381295/egg_symbols_2.png

   Jonathan Walton: On some of the official WotC maps, a faint triangle in the corner of a square indicates difficult terrain.

6. fred, March 13, 2009:

   Jonathan: Difficult terrain tends to get represented on WOTC’s maps as triangles placed in the center of the map square (though as NMcCoy notes, sometimes it’s not the center).

   Nick: Whup! Thanks!

   NMcCoy: That’s less of a problem than you might think. At-Will, Encounter, and Daily icons NEVER end up on the same line together, so in the conversion I’ve done of the Witch Doctor document to black and white, the centerline displacement doesn’t actually express itself visually at all.

   I dig the ‘keyword diamond’ idea, but given that its size within the icons as displayed will be relatively 7pt or smaller, I’m not sure it’ll express well. I went with circle for simplicity. That’s actually also why I went away from the diamond and went to the triangle for the Encounter power — at screen resolution at least, the diamond tended to look not as different from the circle as I would have liked. The triangle’s profile is much more distinctive.

7. Jonathan Walton, March 13, 2009:

   Fred, NMcoy: Yeah, I know about the difficult terrain triangle, but that’s only one of the 6 different types of terrain. Blocking and hindering are fairly obvious, normally, from the way the map is drawn, but challenging and cover terrain (which seems to be the second two most common types) have nothing. Obscured terrain (mists and stuff) would also seem to be pretty important in The Shroud.

8. NMcCoy, March 13, 2009:

   Here’s a variant of my icons, with the diamond turned into a shield, at small size: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/381295/egg_symbols_3.png

9. NMcCoy, March 13, 2009:

   Added my ideas for “cover” and “obscuring” to the above image.

10. fred, March 13, 2009:

    On my screen, I can’t really make out what they look like — they’re sort of strange black blotches.

11. NMcCoy, March 13, 2009:

    Ack, you’re right – they’re not very clear at all at that scale. The svg is here if you want to dabble with them directly.

12. fred, March 13, 2009:

    I think the map icon project is for another time.