OpenXcom Forum

OpenXcom => Suggestions => Topic started by: Hythlodaeus on December 23, 2012, 11:11:22 pm

Title: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on December 23, 2012, 11:11:22 pm
When it comes to certain default soldier names, sometimes it's hard to distinguish men from women, which can lead those who like to rename their soldiers to sometimes giving names which are exclusive to the opposite gender. To avoid this, and to make it easier to identify soldiers in general, I would like to propose a simple two-fold solution: either add a gender field, or a character portrait in the soldier stat screen. Here's a quick MSpainted mock up:

(https://www.anonmgur.com/up/7779a0a6e537452a1ccadf399dc54b30.PNG)

And here's the original, in comparison

(https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/358315-x-com-ufo-defense-dos-screenshot-soldier-stats-s.png)
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: luke83 on December 23, 2012, 11:46:43 pm
I like the idea of the portraits , but i think we need a 100 new portraits  so we re not looking at the same 6 every time , any good pixel artist around?
Its there any photo to PIXEL converters around , maybe we could use our real heads.

For now how about a Male or Female Symbol ?


Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on December 24, 2012, 12:23:37 am
I like the idea of the portraits , but i think we need a 100 new portraits  so we re not looking at the same 6 every time , any good pixel artist around?

Well we could post a request for one. The project could use a few graphic upgrades at this point, and given its development stage, it shouldn't be that hard to lure a decent pixel artist. A few good places to post a request would be TIGsource forums, PixelJam forums or the Pixelation community.

For now how about a Male or Female Symbol ?

Does the current font set even have those? If not we'll have to make one.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: luke83 on December 24, 2012, 12:34:46 am
 I don't know about the font, i just though add the picture of a male or female symbol on the same location as you added the unit image.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on December 24, 2012, 01:09:52 am
(https://www.anonmgur.com/up/ebcf82156041994df8e2002ae7993371.PNG)

So something like this? I kinda suck at pixel art, btw. Also, added a little space between the picture frame and the name field, because I think it looks more like a profile card that way.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: 54x on January 04, 2013, 06:29:54 am
Why do partial portrait when you can load the whole thing? We have full character graphics from the battlescape equip screen that we can use.

If we remove the seperate large text and add the numbers to the right of the graph, like so, and squish it down so it only shows values up to 110, we can get something like my attachment, which should have sufficient room to display a full portrait to the right. If that leaves additional space we can eventually put a customise button there to allow you to change hair styles, colour, or armour settings.

I went ahead and removed "OK" in favour of an X button. We're not accepting any changes, so OK is inappropriate in modern interface parlance. I moved the soldier browsing buttons to the top of the frame and added an edit button to make it more obvious that you can rename soldiers.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: pmprog on January 04, 2013, 11:12:06 am
It's only really the head that differs, so using all that space just to draw the same body.

Quote
so OK is inappropriate in modern interface parlance
What? Nearly all my dialogues and options windows have "OK" and "Cancel" on them.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: moriarty on January 04, 2013, 11:45:17 am
I'd rather have just the head there, too. The primary purpose of this screen is giving information, and the full soldier view is more of a distraction, I think.

usually, this screen is accessed from the soldier equip screen anyway, so the full view is just one click away. at least in the battlescape.

as I mentioned somewhere else, in my "vision of a perfect x-com", the stat screen would always be paired with the equip screen, even in the basescape. no matter where you access one or the other, clicking the rank icon (top left) would switch between "stat" and "equip".
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: 54x on January 04, 2013, 11:48:54 am
It's only really the head that differs, so using all that space just to draw the same body.
What? Nearly all my dialogues and options windows have "OK" and "Cancel" on them.

Yes, a dialogue is asking for acknowledgement of an issue or change of settings, so OK is an appropriate response there. The soldiers screen isn't really doing any of that so it shouldn't have an "OK" button- it is presenting you information to review, much like a web browser does. You wouldn't press "OK" to close your web browser. :)

The head will be the main thing that differs, I agree, however if we have customised armour at any point, I'd personally like to be able to view the whole paperdoll. (Plus there's something creepy about disembodied heads) There's actually significant blackspace in my proposed image now I've got my hands on actual paperdolls, so room for a customise bitton, or an equip button, or even some additional information, and for enlargening the axis a bit further.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: moriarty on January 04, 2013, 12:39:40 pm
that mock-up looks rather nice. I think you have a point there. you have convinced me, what about the others?
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: pmprog on January 04, 2013, 01:29:54 pm
Yeah, I quite like that mock up too. Get it modded so I can show it off in the LP :)
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 04, 2013, 01:42:55 pm
That's a very interesting mockup 54x, but personally, I still think the soldier's face should be displayed in the character profile, because it allows for quicker identification, and helps the player to familiarize with the character, even when he/she is behind a heavy suit of armor. Perhaps we can make it so that the profile shows a helmet-less version of the armored suits, kinda like they did in TFTD. It's a character chart after all. Why wouldn't it include the soldier's face by default?

(https://i.imgur.com/WE2UT.gif)
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: moriarty on January 04, 2013, 02:08:59 pm
those helmet-less versions for the equip screen have been done before, and yes, I also think those are way cooler than the original :)

about the "full soldier" vs. "only face" in the equip screen, I'm still not sure. but that mock-up looks so cool, I would really like to see that in the game :)
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 04, 2013, 02:29:52 pm
those helmet-less versions for the equip screen have been done before, and yes, I also think those are way cooler than the original :)

about the "full soldier" vs. "only face" in the equip screen, I'm still not sure. but that mock-up looks so cool, I would really like to see that in the game :)

For me, it boils down too how much condensed information the character profile conveys at once. If all of this is directly accessible to the player in a single screen, not it will only save a lot of time, but it also leaves enough room for advanced soldier customization mods. I think 54x came up with a great concept here, the only downside being that the screen may feel a little too crowded/busy, which might lead to some confusion, especially with the new players. I too get the impression that we're messing with the smoothness and the simplicity of the original design here, which was quite frankly brilliant, in my opinion. But still, this is one of those cases where I believe the quicker access to essential information justifies mutilating the original menu designs.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: moriarty on January 04, 2013, 02:40:41 pm
ah, so your only problem was not being able to see the face. now I understand.

there is one more thing that might become a problem: with the full soldier displayed, the rest is squashed together, which works in english, but the descriptions might be longer in other languages. that would be one real reason for limiting the image to the soldier's head in this view :)
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 04, 2013, 02:56:36 pm
there is one more thing that might become a problem: with the full soldier displayed, the rest is squashed together, which works in english, but the descriptions might be longer in other languages. that would be one real reason for limiting the image to the soldier's head in this view :)

That's a very important point you got there. I completely forgot about it. In that case, a concept like this will require some serious testing with all translations available, in case it goes ahead.

EDIT:


And here's another portrait-only quick draft I came up with, by using some of 54x's wonderful space-saving ideas, but based on moriarty's point regarding sentence length in other languages, thus reverting back to the old full screen bar chart. I used the little pencil icon to replace the "Customize" button and paired it right next to the character photo, because I think it makes little sense to have a customization menu and have separate button for editing the name exclusively. I did enjoy 54x's improved bar numbering system as well, but considering I'm using MSpaint to do these, it would be far too much work for me to edit it all properly at this moment. Although I like it, I still can't shake the feeling it is looking a little too hackish. So please edit away.

(https://www.anonmgur.com/up/3dd7396879faf19ec4805524976ad1a0.png)
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Warboy1982 on January 04, 2013, 09:23:57 pm
one word:

palette.

inventory screens use battlescape palette, not basescape.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 04, 2013, 09:26:21 pm
one word:

palette.

inventory screens use battlescape palette, not basescape.

Does that mean it's impossible to use character portraits in the stat screens?
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Warboy1982 on January 04, 2013, 09:27:59 pm
no, just means we'd need a seperate set of portrait sprites in the basescape palette.

to quote the professor himself "nothing is impossible"
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 04, 2013, 09:29:14 pm
Can that be done in the long run?
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Warboy1982 on January 04, 2013, 09:32:36 pm
yay and nay.

see also: copyright issues with redistributing artwork.

while this game DOES pre-date videogame copyright laws, and the company is no longer in existance, we're still better off to err on the side of caution.

if, however someone were to draw a set of new and unique sprites...
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 04, 2013, 09:38:06 pm
That would imply replacing all soldier faces. But I do believe modified artwork would be legally allowed. Perhaps if the portraits are slightly edited / improved.

Keeping the faces but creating new clothes to replace the coveralls, for instance.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Warboy1982 on January 04, 2013, 09:42:01 pm
you'd have to ask a lawyer to get a definitive answer on that one.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: moriarty on January 04, 2013, 09:43:34 pm
I would say that the character portraits would be generated from the full soldier (equip screen) views... the original files are used for the original soldiers, and any additional soldier that is added would be considered a "mod", so we just have to assume that that wouldn't be a problem.

but the palette problem persists, you are right. I don't know how to circumvent that without implementing true color support first... :(
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 04, 2013, 09:53:46 pm
I do believe modifying the graphics slightly would make it legal (especially considering the openxcom mods site, containing many graphics mods made from edited pieces belonging to the original graphics). I'll try to find out more about this matter. In the meantime, there's nothing stopping us from making more drafts.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Warboy1982 on January 04, 2013, 10:09:24 pm
the difference between the mods and this is: we're providing executable code to access it as well.
mods enjoy the legal grey area that exists in that they require the original executable to use them.

i guess the best way to work this in would be to have it as an "option" ie: we have the code for it in, but disabled by default, and ENABLING it requires the download of a mod that contains the portraits, with a link in the readme or something. perhaps a list of "recommended/official mods"? definitely something to think about for 1.0
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: luke83 on January 04, 2013, 10:34:26 pm
I do believe modifying the graphics slightly would make it legal (especially considering the openxcom mods site, containing many graphics mods made from edited pieces belonging to the original graphics). I'll try to find out more about this matter. In the meantime, there's nothing stopping us from making more drafts.

Mods are a tricky subject , some publishes like User creations some may not, You will notice the MOD site is mine and i have no official links to Openxcom , i am just a FAN so the MODS are more like FanArt. You will also notice we don't offer everything you need to play the game, no mater what you still need a legal copy to play xcom, this should keep me pretty safe ;)

I think Warboy is right,if someone adds the code and by default disables it, Then if someone adds the artwork to my Mod site , its up to the user to Expanded there original game with the Mods.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: moriarty on January 04, 2013, 10:53:24 pm
one word:

palette.

inventory screens use battlescape palette, not basescape.

looking at the basescape palette and the battlescape palette they are actually VERY similar... (see here (https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=PALETTES.DAT)). unfortunately the pckview program does not allow use of that palette (you can't display "basebits" correctly, because those would be using that), so I cannot know for sure, but my guess is that loading the man_XYZ.spk files with the battlescape palettes would work just fine. the only relevant difference is the fifth color group, which is shades of green in the battlescape palette but shades of greyish in the basescape palette, which makes the basebits look weirdly green when loading them with the battlescape palette. but since none of the man_XYZ.spk files contain any shades of green, that shouldn't be a problem, right?

can anybody confirm this?
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Warboy1982 on January 04, 2013, 11:18:35 pm
you're right, for the most part, looking at those palettes, i can tell you that personal armour colours (offset 14) will show up as VERY dark purple.
to my untrained eye, offset 9 looks a lot darker in the battlescape palette, and i'm pretty sure that's a flesh tone.
but assuming we're always using the coveralls look, and we don't mind a "subtle" adjustment to the flesh tone, we might actually be able to pull this off.

there is the problem, however, that any future/replacement inventory screens would have to take both palettes into account.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: LCSand on January 04, 2013, 11:41:57 pm
I do believe modifying the graphics slightly would make it legal (especially considering the openxcom mods site, containing many graphics mods made from edited pieces belonging to the original graphics).
You would be incorrect. Or rather it depends on where you live, as there is no such thing as international copyright law. Each state has his own laws and they can be quite different. But there are some international agreements about it.
A good place to start reading would be this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Trade-Related_Aspects_of_Intellectual_Property_Rights
And of interest especially to you should be this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work

Anyway this has been discussed lots of times, lets not start again.
I just wanted to save you a bit of time.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: moriarty on January 04, 2013, 11:49:42 pm
base palette
(https://www.ufopaedia.org/images/a/a5/2_UnknownPal.Png)



tactical palette
(https://www.ufopaedia.org/images/2/2b/5_BattleScapePal.Png)

differences I notice:

fourth block: green is darker in tactical
fifth block: base greyish, tactical green
eighth block: base brownish, tactical blue
thirteenth block: purple is much lighter in tactical
fourteenth to sixteenth block: completely different

question is: are those blue tones from the eighth (tactical) block used for the personal armor? if yes, that's a problem.
skin colors are probably in 2, 6, 9 and 10, those are identical.
power armor / flying armor colors are probably in 6, that's identical.
I'll just assume that the greens in tactical 5 are plant leaves, grass and the like, while the greyish tones in base 5 are concrete and paint for the top-down base view.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 05, 2013, 12:44:16 am
Why would you want to use personal armor paperdolls in this case either way? What really matters is to identify the soldier, not to show him wearing a suit of armor (although it would be cool to have something like that too). For that a simple cutout of the coveralls paperdolls serves perfectly. Unless you're already thinking armor customization features and mods, which isn't really the point here, anyway.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Warboy1982 on January 05, 2013, 01:16:39 am
look at 9 again, tactical is MUCH darker.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: 54x on January 05, 2013, 02:14:10 am
That's a very interesting mockup 54x, but personally, I still think the soldier's face should be displayed in the character profile, because it allows for quicker identification, and helps the player to familiarize with the character, even when he/she is behind a heavy suit of armor. Perhaps we can make it so that the profile shows a helmet-less version of the armored suits, kinda like they did in TFTD. It's a character chart after all. Why wouldn't it include the soldier's face by default?

(https://i.imgur.com/WE2UT.gif)

I'm working on customisation sprites right now. One of the later phases of that is power and flying armour with visors that lets you see the entire face- this would include on the paperdoll. So you'd still have facial recognition once I can convince someone to code for those sprites, or failing that, once I transfer over my programming skills to C++. :)

ah, so your only problem was not being able to see the face. now I understand.

there is one more thing that might become a problem: with the full soldier displayed, the rest is squashed together, which works in english, but the descriptions might be longer in other languages. that would be one real reason for limiting the image to the soldier's head in this view :)

That's a very good point, however we can always squash the graph up a bit again, and there's additional horizontal room to squash the paperdoll. I can do another mockup if the palette problems aren't an issue- I'm looking into that now, I just have to rebuild the basescape palette in an actual .PAL file first so I can load it over the paperdoll images.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 05, 2013, 02:36:23 am
That's a very good point, however we can always squash the graph up a bit again, and there's additional horizontal room to squash the paperdoll. I can do another mockup if the palette problems aren't an issue- I'm looking into that now, I just have to rebuild the basescape palette in an actual .PAL file first so I can load it over the paperdoll images.

Due to this I kinda switched opinions again, though, so might still be preferable to get the full body paperdoll on the separate customize screen after all. Having lots of readily available information in the same screen is good, but keeping squashing things for the sake of superfluous and purely aesthetic content without measuring the consequences shouldn't really be the way, methinks. A character screen should be concise. The reason why I first suggested this portrait thingy is because it would allow the player to identify individual soldiers easily while keeping most of the original looks intact.

Besides there also this thread (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,830.0.html), which proposes the creation of a stat-accessible equip/customize screen, which would likely work better with what you're trying to do here.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: 54x on January 05, 2013, 02:42:00 am
Yeah, I kinda think you're right. We should probably just have a seperate customise screen and go with the headshot. :)

I'd still really like to see a readout of the base stats versus the improved stats in numbers on that graph, and just display the base stats for psi power. (That way it will be obvious to people that it doesn't improve)

The advantage of that is that we might also have room for additional stats on the character sheet, for instance number of aliens mind controlled and number paniced for psi soldiers? :)
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 05, 2013, 02:49:28 am
I'd still really like to see a readout of the base stats versus the improved stats in numbers on that graph, and just display the base stats for psi power. (That way it will be obvious to people that it doesn't improve)

Yeah, I sort of agree with that too. I really liked the way you improved the stats bars.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: 54x on January 05, 2013, 04:02:55 am
Seeing I think headshots will probably be the way to go and we can save the full paperdoll until we do a customise screen, I've moved the scroll button to either side of the paperdoll, and the edit name button is back next to the close button, leaving us plenty of room for long soldier names up to about 22-23 characters or so. The longest names in the world tend to max out at about 25-30 characters (the longest fullname I know of takes 24 characters including spaces) so I'd say 23 characters should be an acceptable character limit.

I'm still working on that palette to see if it makes sense to load in the armour state of the character in the headshot. (Unfortunately, PSP 15 doesn't have an easy solution for reordering palettes, so I have to copy each colour to the relevant position) If we go with a headshot design I'll also provide a 32x32 headshot for all haircuts with the customisation images I'm doing, so until it's coded don't worry about the headshot images- as long as we can load in a png for them, that will be fine.

I can see two options for doing the character screen this way- either we go back to the original format, and remove twenty pixels from the graph to make a base vs now comparison to the left, or we extend the name area by twenty pixels or so and just move the information to the graph like I did in my paperdoll mockup. Here's graphics for both of them. I personally favour the second one.

(As a bonus, that headshot is for Moriarty's short male haircut)
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: 54x on January 05, 2013, 06:31:05 am
OK, I've cut everything up so that it should be ready for coding. I seem to recall OpenXcom uses a bitmap font that functions off UTF8 for lettering? In which case the symbols below will need to be added. I've attached the bitmaps, and here are their unicode offsets:

U+2640 ♀
U+2642 ♂

I don't know if the small fonts I used for numbers on the bars are included in this text scheme at the moment, as I filched them from the screen background, and they may simply have been part of the image. If they aren't, I've attached a png that can be sliced into the numbers as appropriate, which should be recoloured as necessary from indexes 1 and 3. I used the brightest colour of each colour range for the right-hand numbers, and the fifth-brightest for the left-hand numbers.

Other than the repositioning, attached are the sliced graphics for the two new buttons I've added. As they don't use text they may need to be coded slightly differently, as from what I recall the original engine only allowed buttons of set widths with text attached.

Note that the palette I've used for the background and the small digits file is incomplete- more than half the colours are still jumbled around onto the wrong indexes, and a few valid colours are missing entirely. I still have to finish sorting it out so I can load all the basescape images properly, however the indexes for these two images will play nice with the correct palette.

edit: I still haven't determined if personal armour will look correct in the basescape palette, as it uses group 17, just after three of the smaller groups, and not groups 8 or 9 as we suspected, but that probably means we're okay.

I should also mention that I've included the outlines of the buttons to aid positioning them, and I think the text should be straightforward to position- the main block starts on pixel 3x, 34y, assuming the first pixel is numbered 0. The armourtype starts on 100x, 50y, and the psi training text starts on 100x, 61y.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: hsbckb on January 05, 2013, 06:44:09 am
Simple design is the best. I vote for the second one.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: 54x on January 05, 2013, 09:24:32 am
Yeah, the basescape palette does not work with personal armour, so unless we're able to use multiple palettes on the same screen, then we should just use the unarmoured headshots.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: moriarty on January 05, 2013, 10:23:09 am
hmm, nice, special forces x-com "nightstalker" armor... :D
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Volutar on January 05, 2013, 10:25:26 am
I think "Male" and "Female" are more common and less confusing than signs. Also numbers over bars are not very contrast and thus less preferrable than 1st .
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: moriarty on January 05, 2013, 11:08:20 am
problem with "male" and "female" is that they need to be translated... :) or are they already?

about the numbers on the bars: I actually prefer those because they are unobtrusive and low-contrast. you don't strictly need those numbers, because the bars already contain all the information, they are just there to provide actual numbers. if you really want them, they are visible enough, in my opinion.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: 54x on January 05, 2013, 12:23:14 pm
problem with "male" and "female" is that they need to be translated... :) or are they already?

about the numbers on the bars: I actually prefer those because they are unobtrusive and low-contrast. you don't strictly need those numbers, because the bars already contain all the information, they are just there to provide actual numbers. if you really want them, they are visible enough, in my opinion.

Right. Also, my thinking was that as the base numbers only give you context for the soldier's improvement, (which you can already see well with the bars) they should be low-contrast numbers on the bars themselves, given we don't have any other space available. The actual ability scores will have high contrast against the background as they are placed two pixels to the right of the bars, but will be somewhat smaller text in option 2. This hopefully shouldn't be an issue with how upscaled each pixel is however, so the numbers should be perfectly visible.

If people really want high-contrast numbers, we can always just have the base values in black, too.

Plus, with option 2 we actually have more room for translated text than before, which is pretty cool.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 05, 2013, 02:57:13 pm
I hope you take no offense 54x, but I made another edit based on your latest changes. First I better explain what I thought it was wrong with your latest mockup. I found it easier to make my points directly on the image.

(https://i.imgur.com/ywkXy.jpg)

(Accidentally saved in jpeg, so sorry for the low quality)

Either way, after taking a good look at it, I feel the current stats should be plainly visible, hence why we should keep the original stats column. I do like your base stats at the bottom of each bar (reinforces the idea of base value, and the faded colour conveys the notion that these "belong to the past" and are not so important anymore), though, so I think that's a keeper. Additionally instead of having the current stats at the end of each bar, why not showing the value change instead? Also, at this point, I believe the little pencil icon is now useless because name changing can be handled at the customize menu.

Based on these, here's my latest mockup:

(https://i.imgur.com/vdOs9.png)

Although it reverts back a little to the original, I feel it conveys information more effectively, and adds just the right bits of additional data in a simple and non-busy way. Positioning the scrolling arrows back at the top also means the player doesn't need to move around between scrolling profiles, changing the name, and closing the menu.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Volutar on January 05, 2013, 04:43:12 pm
I like this last one better.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: 54x on January 05, 2013, 05:53:23 pm
Of course I don't take offense. :)

The edit text button is to prompt people that they can rename the soldier, not to customise appearance. Ideally that button should be in any area that is clickable for an editable name, for instance next to the craft name in the craft screen, or the base name. I definitely think it should remain there in terms of indicating how to use the interface, as I never discovered that you could edit names when I played the original game, back before I even had internet access. Perhaps there should be a picture-based customise button too? If it looks silly we can change the customise button, when it's ready to go in, back to being text-based.

Your other points are well-taken, however. I had considered it seemed natural that changing the picture would leave the screen intact but scroll the soldier being referenced, and I dislike interfaces where scrolling buttons are separated from each other by too much distance, but I could go either way on the matter, especially seeing we should be getting either arrow keys or tab and shift-tab to switch soldiers in the long run anyway. However as the number of characters is going to need to be limited to something small enough to fit the top frame, I definitely think that the scrolling buttons shouldn't be up there.

I really like that you added back in the total column and changed the figure to the right to be the lifetime improvement of a stat. That's pretty awesome. So, all in all, a small counterproposal:

Edit: Ah, sorry, you edited in your explanation for moving the arrows up since I last viewed the thread. I considered putting them directly next to each other as well, but it looks very crowded if we do it the easy way and move everything to the left. What might look good though is playing some small amount of musical chairs with the arrows and the picture, which would give us a nice centralised location for it, instead of slightly offset from the right-hand edge. (and thus v3 becomes v4, lol)
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 05, 2013, 06:37:29 pm
I really like that you added back in the total column and changed the figure to the right to be the lifetime improvement of a stat. That's pretty awesome.

Well, to be fair, I wasn't thinking of a lifetime sum of stat improvements, but rather temporary ones. As in, how much it has grown since the end of the last mission. This would show exactly how much exp the soldier has earned after each mission and avoids overly long numbers crowding the graph (image what would be having several +150-ish in every character in a later game phase. Not exactly visually appealing).


EDIT:

Sorry. Just seen your edit. Deleted half of this post in consequence of it. I really like it as it is now (the second picture). Very clever way to reorganize the screen, I must admit. I totally subscribe for that version, as even the screen looks very well balanced right now.

EDIT 2:

And here's a slightly retouched version of mine. I get the feeling the portrait frame looks a bit better when separated. Also added a slight black edge around the picture to stop the light brown from the coveralls to merge with the light purple and gray from the frame. What do you folks think?

(https://i.imgur.com/kbY9B.png)
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: moriarty on January 05, 2013, 07:19:48 pm
I like draft #4, too. Putting the character portrait in the middle balances the screen as well as emphasizing the soldier as a person, so we can grow attached to them :) very nice.

EDIT: Hythlodaeus, yes, I agree, that's even better.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 05, 2013, 09:54:23 pm
(https://i.imgur.com/nTntg.png)

A thinner portrait frame isn't bad looking either, but unfortunately I lack the colouring skills to make it really stand out, although I think I nailed a pretty nice shape. 54x, would you like you take a stab a it? I also moved everything right to the portrait a few pixels to the right, and squashed the armor and customize buttons just a little together, just so I could line up the portrait edge with the graph's 0 number perfectly, in order to get a nice symmetry.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: luke83 on January 05, 2013, 10:27:29 pm
Wow, you guys have been busy, its looking really good, not sure if i prefer the thick or thin picture frame at this point, i would honestly be happy with either  :P
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Daiky on January 05, 2013, 10:43:28 pm
And once we have a higher resolution you can add things like "country of origin", "years in xcom duty", "background story",... :)
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Warboy1982 on January 05, 2013, 11:14:13 pm
@Daiky surely you mean hours or days?
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: pmprog on January 06, 2013, 02:02:08 am
Or minutes if you're in my LP ;)
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: luke83 on January 06, 2013, 02:13:43 am
Or minutes if you're in my LP ;)

Don't feel to bad , i played a Crashed UFO on a Farm map last week, i cleared all the map except within the UFO without any troubles and because i am to Lazy to move all the troops to the UFO door , i tohugh sure i will be able to finish it with 2 troopers , sent them in , the alien did a sneak attack out of the door and killed both. SO i started sending all my troops over to finish him off, needles to say i finished the level with 2 troops and that last Alien ended up with 6 kills :o 

 I really want Group selections like Apocalypse :P
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: 54x on January 06, 2013, 02:24:31 am
(https://i.imgur.com/nTntg.png)

A thinner portrait frame isn't bad looking either, but unfortunately I lack the colouring skills to make it really stand out, although I think I nailed a pretty nice shape. 54x, would you like you take a stab a it? I also moved everything right to the portrait a few pixels to the right, and squashed the armor and customize buttons just a little together, just so I could line up the portrait edge with the graph's 0 number perfectly, in order to get a nice symmetry.

Sure, absolutely. The thinner frame will let us give you your 1px border while keeping the headshots at a pretty logical 32x32 size. If you're keen on having larger corners, we can go with something like this:
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 06, 2013, 02:35:44 am
Hmm... don't get me wrong, but I still prefer my version on this one. I like to have it lined up with the 0 so it gives the illusion of perfectly splitting the screen in two logical parts. I also didn't want to break the continuity of the name box, hence why I separated the portrait and coloured it darker. I just can't seem to find a way to emboss the frame properly though. I also prefer the rectangular shape to the 32x32. Feels more like a real photo.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: 54x on January 06, 2013, 03:02:42 am
Hmm... don't get me wrong, but I still prefer my version on this one. I like to have it lined up with the 0 so it gives the illusion of perfectly splitting the screen in two logical parts. I also didn't want to break the continuity of the name box, hence why I separated the portrait and coloured it darker. I just can't seem to find a way to emboss the frame properly though. I also prefer the rectangular shape to the 32x32. Feels more like a real photo.

Sure we can do both those. The 32x32 portriats will have about 5 pixels of clearance with the male dreads hairstyle, (which I expect to be the largest, as it comes in equal to the male flat top hair style) so we can actually squish them down if we want a rectangular shape instead of just the illusion of one. I've removed the different shading for the top border, so it looks unbroken, but kept the bolded corners so that it looks like we've got a slightly rounded photo area. I've removed all but 1px of clearance from the top, so we have an actual rectangular photo, and bumped down the incapacitation text (ie. psi training, wounded, etc...) so that if it were flicked to the left it would sit nicely between the photo and the graph.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 06, 2013, 03:24:42 am
I guess we will have to let the people decide on this one, because I still favour my version of the portrait at this point ;D. Smoothed the corners on the portrait's edge, and added a Country field on the right side of the screen, while moving the Kills count to the same line of the Missions number.

(https://i.imgur.com/VLNDZ.png)
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: 54x on January 06, 2013, 03:32:01 am
I was thinking we could possibly grab an GPL-friendly flag library if we wanted to do CoO for soldiers at some stage. I definitely like your missions and kills being on the same line though, that makes sense, presuming there's enough space in our longer languages to do that.

 And yeah, I'm actually pretty agnostic on the border, or whether we stretch vertically or squish vertically for a rectangle. If people would do a show of hands I'm happy to go either way.

Thanks for the criticism, I think we ironed out something really good between us! :)

edit: Yeah, famfamfam has great-looking, compact flags from tons of countries that are licensed as public domain that we could use when we can go full-colour.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 06, 2013, 03:57:33 am
I was thinking we could possibly grab an GPL-friendly flag library if we wanted to do CoO for soldiers at some stage. I definitely like your missions and kills being on the same line though, that makes sense, presuming there's enough space in our longer languages to do that.

Yeah, flags would be cool, although some people have some serious problems with their heraldry. It the long run it would be simpler too, because translators wouldn't be forced to add a new line for every language, whenever someone adds a new country to the list. And yes, it might be better to add some space between the missions and the kills fields, as to account for other languages. There should be enough space to manage that easily, though, as we're dealing with single word terms here.

And yeah, I'm actually pretty agnostic on the border, or whether we stretch vertically or squish vertically for a rectangle. If people would do a show of hands I'm happy to go either way.

Thanks for the criticism, I think we ironed out something really good between us! :)

We'll see. We still need approval from the devs themselves in order to get this implemented in the first place, so without their clearance we were likely just wasting our time here. And yeah, it was nice to collaborate with you as well.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Daiky on January 06, 2013, 10:22:45 am
Countries are not that difficult to quickly translate. If you wanted to add soldier background info like in JA2: https://pcmedia.gamespy.com/pc/image/article/121/1219560/00_1330395279.jpg
now, that's something else :)

Also, "gender" shouldn't that be clear from the picture, as it's another field you could remove to make place for more important info.
In OP you said: "either add a gender field, or a character portrait in the soldier stat screen" - in your latest mockup you have added both.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: DiceMaster on January 06, 2013, 12:28:56 pm
Also, "gender" shouldn't that be clear from the picture, as it's another field you could remove to make place for more important info.
In OP you said: "either add a gender field, or a character portrait in the soldier stat screen" - in your latest mockup you have added both.
Daiky is right. Gender is not necessary to show. Also gender icon looks weird.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Volutar on January 06, 2013, 01:13:21 pm
> Gender is not necessary to show.
Yeah, right, and now we have woman scream from Jack.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 06, 2013, 01:44:40 pm
Also, "gender" shouldn't that be clear from the picture, as it's another field you could remove to make place for more important info.
In OP you said: "either add a gender field, or a character portrait in the soldier stat screen" - in your latest mockup you have added both.

I guess, but some character paperdolls can be a little ambiguous as well. Especially considering the later introduction of modded portraits and such. It's really up to you programmers on this matter, I think. Personally, I'd prefer having both.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: moriarty on January 06, 2013, 01:56:01 pm
I'd also opt for "both". character portraits will probably expanded, and there will be those that are ambiguous. and names definitely are already, especially those from regions not your own :)
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Hythlodaeus on January 06, 2013, 09:00:44 pm
(https://i.imgur.com/4FEjF.png)

Here's a slight update to my version, in the meantime. Smoothed out the portrait frame, and added a little theoretical flag in the country field, just to have a small preview of what it may look like. I also thought about what to do with the + stat values at the end of each bar if the value ever crosses the graph's limits. My solution is to add the number inside the bar in a dark blue hue. Just another suggestion for the programmers, in case they feel that implementing something like this is worth the trouble.
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Aldorn on July 22, 2014, 03:11:25 pm
Up...  8)
Title: Re: Character portraits on soldier stat screens, or gender field
Post by: Daedalus on July 22, 2014, 05:24:01 pm
Aye, something like this would be fantastic.