Never Sink
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Delve: Beam and Icon Strategy
🕑 Added 2018-08-31 11:12:07 +0000 UTC I wanted to give you guys a preview of how I'm implementing beams and icons in the filter.First of all filterblade is fully equipped to allow modifying and applying them. So if you want to get rid of the icons/sounds go to filterblade->style.
We had to rework the UI a bit to allow changing them, but I think it should be just as easy to use.
Now.
Icons come in 6 shapes and 6 colors and 3 sizes. I've done my best to polish, test and apply them in a way that won't clutter your screen, but at the same time won't make you miss anything.
So what should get an Icon? After a lot of thinking this is my answer: "things you'd want to return to, if you missed them".
Would you turn around for a chaos or fusing. I think most players will answer this question with yes. So basically most items that have a dropsound, now also have an icon.
The shape of icons is used to signalize what kind of items dropped. The color on the other hand is descriptive of the value of the items.
After checking out the icons, I've found the white icon to be much more... grey. It wasn't suiting to work in a similar way to how I use the grey bordercolor. That's why the color/value progression is the following one:
White (noteworthy) -> Yellow (valuable) -> Red (very valuable)
However, there's 2 more colors: blue and brown.
Brown is simply the color I use for random uniques, instead of white. I think it looks better and more distinct if a lot of stuff dropped at the same time.
Blue is a special color: It's the color of "Maybe valuable". Things like unique gold amulets, certain shaper items, identified mod-filtered items get this color.
As for shapes, the distribution is simple:
- Circle: currency - high purity (orbs, 6sockets)
- Square: map
- Star: unique
- Triangle: low purity currency - divination cards, quality gems, things that require quite a bit of extra work
- Diamond: Shaper items and some expensive crafting bases
Important exception: ALL top value items have a large red star. Now this is not tribute to lenin-marxistic teachings. I simply don't want to instantly spoil the fun. Is it a unique? Is it an exalted orb? Maybe it's even a mirror!?!?
I tend to only use small or large sizes of icons to make the contrasts stronger.
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Beams:
The beaming strategy is different and similar at the same time. Beams look really bad, if there's a *lot* of them at the same time. It looks like a laser grid. On top of that I don't want them to obscure vision.
So what's the strategy?
In fact it's nearly the same, but if the item drops in high quantities (such as divination cards can drop from a diviner box) their beam is "temporary". It looks pretty cool, but doesn't obscure the screen.
The progression is also white->yellow->red and blue beams indicate possibly valuable items.
I'm still sitting in the train and typing on my surface (that's why I'm writing patreon posts, instead of programming on stream).
I hope to be home soon and get things really going.
What do you think about my highlighting strategy?
Best Regards,
NeverSink
