PDA redesign + animations

[lorathor]

Hey there guys!

So, to get work done I'll take some time the next days to write down a little Guide for the artist that all of
us get some general infos about the artstyle and design what fits the best. With this we're able to access a
overall fitting style without getting out of bounds to much and avoid overwoking.

Also I'll update some of the sprite to-do lists where everyone can check and get to the next task without
3 people working one the same thing over and over again. With this I'll hope we can progress a bit faster.
And please, post, post, post. As much as you can. I really like to enjoy your art and really have fun looking at them.

You can always send me a msg or chat with me. Skype, Steam, Forum - always Lorathor as a username

And god damn, have some fun


With that, here have some PDA redesigns and animations:
(All pictures zoomed to 2xPixelRatio)



First row: PDA Design 1
Colordesign 1; Turned off, pen and cartridge taken out,
Colordesign 1; Engineering PDA with department cartridge and colored display
Colordesign 1; Janitor PDA with department cartridge and colored display
Colordesign 2; Captains PDA with department cartridge, Standart display color and department case-color

Second row: PDA Design 2
Colordesign 1; Turned off, pen and cartridge taken out,
Colordesign 1; Engineering PDA with department cartridge and colored display
Colordesign 1; Security PDA with department cartridge and colored display
Colordesign 2; Virology PDA with department cartridge, Standart display color and department case-color

Third row: PDA Design 3
Colordesign 1; Turned off, pen and cartridge taken out,
Colordesign 2; Engineering PDA, turned off, pen and cartridge taken out
Colordesign 1; Engineering PDA with department cartridge and colored display
Colordesign 1; Research PDA with department cartridge and colored display
Colordesign 2; Medical PDA with department cartridge, Standart display color and department case-color

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[Par]

What I like:

In design 1, the sort of flat pad on the bottom is really nice, since you can have department patterns on it. The item placement also make more sense(Pens, cartridge, etc)
2: I love the shape. It think it's original and handy as well. It looks solidly built as well. This is my favorite design.
3: it's handy. Small, easy to carry around, not too big. The roll-out screen is very original.

In general: They're great! I love the artstyle. I like the department patters and think that they really should be implemented in a similar fashion.

What I dislike:

1: The shape feels wrong. Having a large bit on the bottom doesn't feel natural. I also dislike the way the screen connects to the bottom.
2: It could be a tiny bit taller.
3. It's slightly unrealistic. Considering PDA's can be built, having the roll-out technology will mean that either it will be more difficult for a player to build, or that we skip that and make the glass bendable. Not realistic.

In general: The screen shimmer really gets me for some reason. I dislike the light shining on the screen, as it takes attention away from the info on-screen. I would go insane if my PDA would animate a shimmer every few seconds. Also, having light reflection on glass would either make other glass objects inconsistent, or requiring reflection of their own.

Suggestions: Assuming we are implementing these as-is, I believe that design 1 would be great for command staff, because the fancy trim and stripes on the bottom would show the position of its carrier. Design 2 would be great for standard crew, as it is robustly built and still has space for use. Design 3 would be good for civilian crew because it is light, compact, and do not require much features.

Could you try making a mix of 1 and 2? Have a place for department decorations on a shape like 2's.


Great work!

[Nullbear]

Oct 20, 2014 23:37:00 GMT lorathor said:

Hey there guys!
Third row: PDA Design 1

You mean 3?
Also, fixed your image link here at the end for you.

I'm loving these designs. But i have a few things to note for you.
- PDA's will be intended to be more of a personal item, rather than an item given to every employee for their work in their department. It'll cost say 50-300 credits.
- The cartridges will be similar to how they already are, they're player-made software packages, And they are intended to be compatible with a number of particular devices, not just pda's, so they should follow a uniform shape and size.
- The corporation will still of course distribute department-contextual software cartridges of course, but they'll only be able to be used by those who have access to a pda, or other device.
- On buildstation, i don't think there is ever actually going to be a captain role. At least, not with the first corporation (BCI) but with others, its possible.

And par, as for the rollout tech, It could be still implemented, Just a slightly more expensive material. PDA's are expected to be a higher end technology, and not something the crew should be able to slap together without the tools and materials for it, So i dont think its unrealistic.

As for the glass shimmer, I'm a little on the fence here. I like it, But i would have to make it less frequent (Rather than a constant loop, just an animation that plays every few minutes or so.) The unread messages are great, though.

The bit where par was talking about the glass reflection, i think it would be fine to have it implemented on all glass surfaces, Its not too much extra work.

[maxinatorx]

All of these are really great. The only thing that's been bothering me,and I'm really nitpicking here, is that the rollout model has a pen inside,which doesn't seem to fit inside if you turn it off? The glass reflection is great and shouldn't be too much of a problem as the icon is not where's you'll be reading your messages and stuff.

[Par]

Oct 21, 2014 0:47:36 GMT maxinatorx said:

All of these are really great. The only thing that's been bothering me,and I'm really nitpicking here, is that the rollout model has a pen inside,which doesn't seem to fit inside if you turn it off? The glass reflection is great and shouldn't be too much of a problem as the icon is not where's you'll be reading your messages and stuff.

Bluespace magic.

[Nullbear]

bluespace containors can definately be a thing... But not for 150 credit pdas...

[Nullbear]

Solution, A second, Smaller, pen. About the size of a pencil nearing death.

[lorathor]

These color designs for the pda (captain, medical, engi) were just a test to try out where there could be the indicator for a special-role-pda. Of course, the animation of the turned off pda will be less frequent, right now it's just to show off. My opinion about the reflection / lighting on the display is that we need to obtain the best realistic look without loosing the futuristic style. Sure, when you break it down to a minimum work and best readability but then it would look like every other grade C type game - nothing special. With every role and department pda I can adjust the reflection so that every pda with different color has the same reflection brightness.

If I'm home I'll fiddle around a little bit to get one smaller, more robust PA. I really like the idea of having a roll out and extendable pda. If it's really something you need to buy at a high cost and they are fairly rare, you just want to make sure nobody is hearing when you get a message or just turn it off to small it down (just for the feels)

Edit: sure, your right, realistically spoken, then pen hast do be on a different position where it makes more sense as a pen that large. Maybe I rearrange the position to its side. But keep in mind, we can't stick at a overall to much realistic way cause than the whole things has to be quite different. As said above, we need to get to the middle between a real, futuristic and imaginary, best readable look.

Also I'm going to make a Standart uniform cartridge where we can stick to.

[Nullbear]

PDA's will be inexpensive enough that any crewmember can buy one, Useful enough that any crewmember SHOULD buy one, but expensive and useful enough that crewmembers take care of it, and don't enjoy the idea of having to replace theirs.

Could you do a "cracked" screen for busted PDA's?

I plan for many of the electronics and stuff, to be done backwards in terms of design. What i mean by this, is to design the electronics/devices first, And then from there, design the components its made up of.

PDA's, For example, Would be mostly a battery, an outer casing, a console screen, and a circuit board: where most of the actual components would be.

[lorathor]

I'll care about the crack. And that's a good idea and not that much effort to build it up from the beginning of the sprinting (the components). In my case, every device I build up just follows the same procedure and layer from bottom to top: pen and cartridge, case, department color, screen off, screen on, reflections. With this I'm able to change every layer as my desired look without touching the other details

Edit: and sure, it's easy to add multiple components like circuit boards, battery's or whatever which are under the casing layers. Of course this is only useful for sprinting purpose

[Nullbear]

Yeah, Thats a good process. A few of the spriters here use the icon editor built into DM, and arent able to use layers and such. My suggestion is to use outside software, preferably with layer compatibility. It doesnt take that long to convert it to a dmi, but it takes a lot longer to turn a dmi into something more detailed.

[spheretech]

I use aseprite, a decent program. And I think I have a much older version from back when it was free if anyone wants it.

[lorathor]

Ok, this is a quick reply and sketch while at work
This is only rough and explaining the components of the PDA (The final design could be something else)



1. Only the case itself
2. Added mainboard / circuitboad / interior electrical parts
3. Added small battery at the bottom right
4. Added display and screwed together
5. Pen and cartridge inserted, turned off
6. PDA turned on and funtional
7. Showing possible cartridge and pen layout

As mentioned: this is only a quick explanaition about how he parts may work, the final design is far from finished.

[Nullbear]

Hmm... My idea was that the casing would go second, with the board first. I feel like this would make things a bit easier to sprite and code in the long haul.

I say this because, the pda board would be the most identifying aspect, and would be the most vague looking object. Different circuit boards could look the same. The outer casing would look different, depending on the board. Similar to that, could the console screen also be before the casing? This would make it easier to have the different models.

If you make an aluminum casing that already looks a certain way, then you add a different control board, it would be unrealistic to suddenly change the way the casing looks.

And then for the battery, would it be preferable to have it as an early/late step near the beginning, so that people would be able to replace it themselves if needed?

[lorathor]

Of course you can change the way where which specific component has to be put together.
Casing - board - display ; board - display - casing ; board - casing - display. Doesn't matter.
Spriting-wise spoken it's no different at all but coding-wise, I don't know.
Do you want to handle it that way that let's say the casing comes first and then the mainboard, you
code it that every sprite is overlaying or do you need for every step another sprite ?

[Nullbear]

I dont need to code every sprite as overlaying the component before it. If you put the aluminum casing last, I can just tell it to put the aluminum casing underneath of the others.

My reason for this is because, What if two VERY different objects call for an aluminum casing in the first step. Then they next call for their respective boards. They would both look like the pda in the first step, but then they would suddenly change into the other object.

[lorathor]

Ah ok, so there is no difference between the casings in it's "raw-status" ?
So the board decides to where the casing changes to ?

Wouldn't it be a bit nicer to have a range of casings, let's say pda, spectrometer, radio, ect. which only can be put together with
their respective mainboards ?

[Nullbear]

If it worked that way, We would have to make a bunch of different casings, that are useless except for that assembly. The way i have it planned, there is only one casing (of any material), and it works in any assembly.

[Hate9]

Hey, we could even make different types of casings for the same device, like EMP-proof ones!

[kukeke11]

Oct 20, 2014 23:54:23 GMT Par said:

What I dislike:

1: The shape feels wrong. Having a large bit on the bottom doesn't feel natural. I also dislike the way the screen connects to the bottom.
2: It could be a tiny bit taller.
3. It's slightly unrealistic. Considering PDA's can be built, having the roll-out technology will mean that either it will be more difficult for a player to build, or that we skip that and make the glass bendable. Not realistic.

feels natural since it will hold you know the hardware there.. also settingup a singularity core doesn't seem realistic as well XD

[Nullbear]

Oct 21, 2014 22:10:56 GMT Hate9 said:

Hey, we could even make different types of casings for the same device, like EMP-proof ones!

yep! Or extremely heavy ones that emit radiation. <_< or that are coated in a film of bioengineered virus that contaminates anyone who touches it...

[Hate9]

Or one that copies people's fingerprints, and sends the fingerprint data to a specific person.

[lorathor]

Updated and changed the PDA's a little bit and also added 2 new designs.



I tried to build in all your wishes, hopefully I get nearer
Design 1-3 basically stayed the same.
In Design 4 and 5 I also added a ID-Card slot. First row is turned off, ID card, cartridge and pen taken out. The second one is on with department color in the display. Third one is another department. Alternate color schemes differ from the color painted onto the case itself and the display has a uniform blueish-style. Of course this pattern isn't fixed and may be changed.

Design 5 is a more robust one with rubber-edges, maybe for cargo, engi or other working personel. I don't know anymore who mentioned this but yeah, here it is