Premium Ranks

@Psymon, yes I know what you meant and that is on the next stage. The shadow behind the tab was to allow us to see the gold outline on light backgrounds and also to reduce the optical illusions as much as possible. I decided to break the remake down into stages so as to eliminate one problem at a time and to unify the decisions of colours, tones & effects for best results, so that we could get some nice ranks and colours that can be added to easily in the future with peace of mind that we exhausted all avenues finding the best set up for D12. (Edit) Also, now that we know what single tabs look like on the site, I agree that we should go for the more vibrant colours rather than the deep rich colours due to lack of distinction from black.

Bit late probably, but I agree with using shadows (on the image, not by the browser).

And... I have a suggestion: 2 stars & 2 bars = Field Marshal = 6000 points required. Just because 6k seems such an important goal! (for few people only though) I don't want to discuss it now, but maybe could be smart to leave an empty spot in the image in case an additional rank will be required in the future.

[quote]Also, is 47 X 28px total size of each tab still okay for the game screen?[/quote] This is way bigger than what we currently have. 41x20 is what we currently have. Changes as significant as yours would require us to pretty much redo quite a bit of the layout.

Oh dear! I waited and waited for a response then went ahead and made them. Are you saying that the current images are 41X20 or the placeholders? Because, I see a lot of surplus area around the ranks on the Game Page and assumed that they could afford an outer shadow. Won't the placeholder (frame / row) autosize? I was basing the clearance from the game screen which I got as a 31px height between the bevel effect graphic horizontal separators. (I wrote it as 31mm by mistake) [img]http://www.the-inkstore.co.uk/map_resources/ranks/game-screen-rank.jpg[/img] Well here's the sprite I made for now anyway. It includes the suggested Field Marshal rank (2 stars + 2 bars) in case it is decided to add this in the future. This has separator lines around it so as not to be plotted by mistake. @Psymon, I already had a shadow on the gold rank insignias (White Ranks), which was giving a blurred effect so I strengthened the gold and removed the shadow completely and to me it looks more distinguishable. [img]http://www.the-inkstore.co.uk/map_resources/ranks/New-rank-sprite-17-2-16.png[/img] The overall crop size of each rank tab is 47X28px and the start point is X=0 Y=0 Gaps are 4px vertical and horizontal, with "Banned" as the exception.

I also mesured the pixels and they seem to fit without problem. The best to understand how they look would be to see them in place. (It is also the only way to receive a real feedback!)

Nope, sorry Aero it doesn't work, at least not for the game lobby, coz icons would overlay each other at that size: [img]http://i1354.photobucket.com/albums/q700/Photo_Bishop/cut_zpsdwsrquix.jpg[/img] Unless can be done a different version without shadow for game lobbies and profile page. (?) Since in fact there's no need of shadow on dark backgrounds.

Yes, it seems that's the only compromise to be able to suit all situations on the site.... one with shadow and one without.... but, would this cause more coding to tell the Lobbies to only use the plotted ranks of "insignia2"? The Game window in the Lobby is also a dark background and would not require the shadow anyway. I need a concise reply from the programmers. Will the shadow version work in the Game Screen (47X28px)? Could we use 2 versions, to be able to use non shadowed ranks (39X20) in the Lobby Game windows and the Player Profile? If all of this is not possible, I can crop the shadow height back to 20px, which will then show a shadow only horizontally & in the vertical space of the contour. p.s. if 2 versions would be okay, I can make the new colours (non shadowed) sit exactly where they were in the "insignia" sprite.

[quote=aeronautic]Will the shadow version work in the Game Screen (47X28px)?[/quote] It will not work in any place it is being used right now without changing the css code behind it, which means we have to revisit literally every place insignia appear right now. With changes though, we could probably fix every place, but it would take an hour or maybe even more to make those changes. I really think that hour can be spend elsewhere in a better way. [quote=aeronautic]Could we use 2 versions, to be able to use non shadowed ranks (39X20) in the Lobby Game windows and the Player Profile?[/quote] We could, but I don't want to. Don't overthink this. Keep it simple.

Thanks for the feedback Cireon. I fully understand that recoding is not a welcome thing since the rewrite and on-going issues. However, I am about 40+ hours into the graphics and arrangements for the ranks, so I'd like the invested time to be worth while, only when you have time of course. I think that the shadowed ranks are the way forward for best look and colour contrast "across the card" and because you only want one Insignia version, I think eventually it will be worthwhile coding to suit the new ranks. Considering a few things... Looking at the Game Windows in the lobbies, I assume that if there were for example 9 players in a game, you would have to scroll to see the 8 waiting players ranks and names? If so, then the new shadowed ranks will work okay there. [b][i](Edit), I just checked a 9p game with 7p waiting in the LT lobby and it uses 2 columns, so my assumption was not correct. However, the available space is ample.[/i][/b] I assume that the allocated space in the Game screen can allow for a 28px image height, due to there currently being 31px of available height. (please bear in mind that although the image has a 4px shadow, only 2 pixels are really visible to the naked eye, the rest is blend so as not to look like a solid outline, so it won't look like it's been squeezed into the area). There doesn't appear to be any restriction to the rank height on the players profile, apart from distance from the avatar. There looks to be just the right amount of space for a 4px shadow on the Player Ranks & Who's Online pages. There seems to be even more space on the Upgrades page. I won't do anymore on these for now, until the programmers decide if/when they can code the css to accommodate them. (Perhaps Stratosphere fancies doing this as a pet project ;) ) To change anything now would cost me a lot more time and so I will only change something if a unanimous decision is made and it won't cause unnecessary rework. Perhaps someone could Bump this in a month or two?

I can change the premium ranks, that's fine. Like you, I think shadows MIGHT improve things a lot. So yes, I at least want this to happen, and I can do it just fine. Problem is of course, this weekend I'm busy...

@aero: yes, it is definitely possible to accommodate them. It's just that everything assumes a certain insignia size right now, and to position it nice and centred, we have to manually set all the margins and paddings and what not, and these have to be changed everywhere if the height changes. Arguably, we should just put the height in a sass variable and calculate it everywhere, then in the future you could change it however often you like. As you can see, Matty can possibly make some time for it. I most definitely cannot until some time in March :|

Shadow or not I love the color selection you went with Aero being brighter. I think that could be done now with or without the shadows, at a minimum Blue needs to be changed, you can't tell at all it's blue in most cases.

I guess the programmers won't have any time to implement the shadowed ranks any time soon. Is it worth me making a set without shadow, using the new colours and setting them to the current sprite? Please bear in mind that this will take a few hours to do and must be worth the invested time, if you are planning to implement the new shadowed ranks soon, I would rather wait.

Currently I have 4 things that I want to do soon: - The d12 list. - A layout thing. - Premium ranks. - And something for the moderator tools that Hoodlum requested. If nothing weird happends I will have the d12 list done this weekend, then it's one of the other three, depends on what I feel like doing. Maybe Cireon helps out with one of them too. So yeah, I won't have it done next week, but in a month I should. I don't know yet how much to change it is exactly, but it should be doable in one or two days at the most I'd say. It depends on you whether or not you think a month is soon enough :)