Player's guide cover remake (WIP)

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 8:48 am

I really like the current manual cover in terms of layout, but it bothers me that the JPEG compression is so ramped up. This is the first thing that players opening the manual will see, and it's much too lossy in my opinion.

Instead of complaining about it, I decided to try my hand at re-making the manual cover from scratch. Here's what I have so far:

I started with the original screenshot as a background so there is minimal loss, and added in the text in and so forth. Not sure if I like that blue glow around "Player's guide" but I'd like to keep that effect, maybe just change the color.

The cropping on the "vega strike" logo at the top is a hack job, I admit. It's very difficult to seperate from the grey halo thing surrounding it, since the halo is the same color as the lettering in some places. If I could get a hi-rez copy of the logo without that halo thing somewhere, it would be awesome.

I've also changed the subtitle from "3D OPENGL SPACEFLIGHT SIMULATOR" to "An Open-Source Spaceflight Simulator". I feel that it's more important to emphasize the open-source nature of this project than to state it uses OpenGL.

Secondly, I've got a question about fonts. Right now i'm using courier new, which is probably a proprietary microsoft font since it came pre-installed on my windows machine. Are we limited to using non-proprietary fonts?

Please, any feedback would be welcome! Please keep in mind that this is a work in progress, though.

Silverain · Post by **Silverain** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 11:55 pm

If you can improve the cover, then PLEASE do so - Any improvements are welcome. I only ask that file sizes are kept as low as possible - both for storage, my uploading and file size of the final manual versions.

Suggestions:

Maybe use capitalised font (all caps) for the lettering of the title (and slightly smaller font size?). The glow is nice, but maybe a different colour to offset against the background?

I can forward the logo I did, but it was just a GIMPed version from the gallery, with transparent background and deleted gray.

How about 'Open Sourced 3D Spaceflight Simulator' or capitalised 'OPEN SOURCED 3D SPACEFLIGHT SIMULATOR'

For the fonts, I have no idea!

I will hopefully be getting back to the manual soon, to incorporate Shark's changes and update for all the CVS changes.

P.S. Check out Shark's alternative cover in his download html (somewhere on the forums).

Post by **hellcatv** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:22 am

Silverain: I'd really like to change the keybindings for the 0.4.3 or 0.5.0 release (whichever comes first) I think they could be a lot more intuitive... like the privateer remake has done...

maybe I'm wrong but there could be improvements

Post by **dandandaman** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:59 am

hellcatv wrote:maybe I'm wrong but there could be improvements

I strongly agree. What we have now is the leftovers of years of adding the next key in the largest free space on teh keyboard.

Dan.a

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 4:11 am

Silverain wrote:If you can improve the cover, then PLEASE do so - Any improvements are welcome. I only ask that file sizes are kept as low as possible - both for storage, my uploading and file size of the final manual versions.

My primary purpose is to improve the image quality- as I said, the image looks way too lossy. A higher quality JPEG means a larger file. The old cover is 66.75 KB, and mine in its current state (100% JPEG quality) is at 314.2 KB. I can try lowering the quality (thus lowering the file size) a little bit, but anywhere past 85% and the whole point of this excerize is essentialy nullified IMO.

The manual file right now is at 1.26 MB. I'm not sure how much adding on a higher-quality cover would boost this, but I can't imagine it would be by very much.

Silverain wrote:Maybe use capitalised font (all caps) for the lettering of the title (and slightly smaller font size?). The glow is nice, but maybe a different colour to offset against the background?

Personally, I think that it looks fine without being in ALL CAPS, but I can try it if I have the time.
And yeah, I'm not too pleased with the glow color. I was trying to match the vegastrike logo's color, but it didnt turn out as i'd hoped. I'll play with the color a little and see if I can get it to look nicer.

Silverain wrote:How about 'Open Sourced 3D Spaceflight Simulator' or capitalised 'OPEN SOURCED 3D SPACEFLIGHT SIMULATOR'

Nah, "open sourced" sounds like a typo. I've heard the term used casually before, but it doesn't belong on a manual cover IMO.

silverain wrote:P.S. Check out Shark's alternative cover in his download html (somewhere on the forums).

This one?
Oh, how cool! I wasn't aware that anyone had made an HTML version of the manual. Personally, I think that HTML is the way to go, and a much more intuitive choice since it's meant to be read on a computer. It's much easier to browse than a PDF, doesn't take half an hour to open up, and can contain better navigation controls.

And check out the unzipped file size- only 1.05 MB for the whole thing!
I'd be inclined to package this one with the next release. HTML is much easier for contributors to modify- you can do it with a text editor, no acrobat needed.

The only thing that PDF's have over HTML in my book is layout preservation- they look the same on every system. If care is taken to use valid HTML in the manual though, the problems with HTML display are minimized.

As to Shark's cover page, I like his style. It's simple, direct, and classy. I prefer the other screenshot as a background, though- it's more visually striking, and the composition is better.

hellcatv wrote: I'd really like to change the keybindings for the 0.4.3 or 0.5.0 release (whichever comes first) I think they could be a lot more intuitive... like the privateer remake has done...

Agreed. This might throw off some longtime VS-philes though, so perhaps we could offer up an alternate config file that contains the old bindings as well. This way, users could simply rename the file(s) to switch back if needed, which should ease the questions/complaints up a little.

Silverain · Post by **Silverain** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 5:16 am

hellcatv wrote:Silverain: I'd really like to change the keybindings for the 0.4.3 or 0.5.0 release (whichever comes first) I think they could be a lot more intuitive... like the privateer remake has done...

maybe I'm wrong but there could be improvements

I'm not stopping you!

Or anyone else - I'm just pulling out the keys from the config keybindings. If you change them, the manual will get updated to suit.

Just needs someone to sit and work out ergonomics.

@Halleck,

Well size is as size does. If it's 314kb that's what it is. I just want to avoid pics as large as the rest of the manual size e.g. 1Mb etc.

Oops - how about 'OPEN SOURCE 3D SPACEFLIGHT SIMULATOR' or lower case inc (just add the 3D?). Yes, sounds better.

Yes, that looks like Shark's file. We can switch to html if everyone would prefer. My one request is that pages print evenly onto paper. Why? Because while some are happy to switch between the game and the manual, others like to have it printed to read (

) or to refer to without interfering with their game. Which begs the problem that everyone around the world uses different sized paper (letter, A4 etc).

I prefer the other screenshot as a background, though- it's more visually striking, and the composition is better.

So did a few others which was why I went with it.

Agreed. This might throw off some longtime VS-philes though, so perhaps we could offer up an alternate config file that contains the old bindings as well. This way, users could simply rename the file(s) to switch back if needed, which should ease the questions/complaints up a little.

Go to the wiki manual - there's a section on keyboard bindings. We can put up alternative bindings there if we want.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:36 am

Silverain wrote:@Halleck,

Well size is as size does. If it's 314kb that's what it is. I just want to avoid pics as large as the rest of the manual size e.g. 1Mb etc.

Well then, it won't get any bigger- that's a full quality JPEG.

Silverain wrote:Yes, that looks like Shark's file. We can switch to html if everyone would prefer. My one request is that pages print evenly onto paper. Why? Because while some are happy to switch between the game and the manual, others like to have it printed to read ( ) or to refer to without interfering with their game. Which begs the problem that everyone around the world uses different sized paper (letter, A4 etc).

You can achieve this by using CSS- offer up one style sheet for screen display and a seperate one for printing.

Another route would is to offer both an HTML and PDF version. If someone has an easy converter this is doable, but having to maintain two documents seperately is a waste of effort.

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 6:57 pm

Don't think that i redo things here, but i recently tried to clean up (background, reflection, font) the manual logo myself (mainly to learn GIMP some more).

Maybe this can be used?

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... ot_016.jpg
(source file in Gimp-xcf is available)

Pontiac

Silverain · Post by **Silverain** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:54 pm

Interesting take pontiac. I think changing the font colour might work better on your logo though - not sure.

I've honestly been holding off worrying about the cover since the talk of redesigning the logos anyway.

EDIT as to learning GIMP, I still can't figure out how to do a straight line.

Ari Rahikkala · Post by **Ari Rahikkala** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 1:02 am

Oh, you should hardly worry about that

.

Silverain · Post by **Silverain** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 2:58 am

Thanks,

Could never find anything that mentioned the Shift key.

Post by **hellcatv** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 3:17 am

oh really? I thought the shift thing was that joystick on your right that changed gears.
Thanks for circling it for me guys

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:09 pm

Silverain wrote:Interesting take pontiac. I think changing the font colour might work better on your logo though - not sure.

Yeah, i'm not quite satisfied with it myslef. I tried to make their gradient similar to the logo, but haven't played with it enough

EDIT as to learning GIMP, I still can't figure out how to do a straight line.

Already answered, but you don't have to worry, the Gimp-ppl say this is one of the most-asked question. I didn't know this myself a long time.
Now I use draw-after-selections/paths and Gfig (or how it's called) alot though

Pontiac

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 6:28 am

I don't think i'm going to finish this myself due to the current deliberation about a logo, but I've posted the zipped XCF file if anyone feels so inclined to work with it in GIMP.

Silverain · Post by **Silverain** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 8:21 am

Thanks

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 9:25 am

Just reposting this post here

pontiac wrote:Ok, i've put up the source file (GIMP xcf packed up into a tar.bz2 ~2.6MB):
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/users ... cf.tar.bz2
Kinda bloated since i'm just playing around with it, but everything needed is in there.

I also put an example of what i had in mind for the locations/computerscreens into the talk section.

Pontiac awayyyy..

Shark · Post by **Shark** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 8:12 pm

Halleck wrote:This one?
Oh, how cool! I wasn't aware that anyone had made an HTML version of the manual. Personally, I think that HTML is the way to go, and a much more intuitive choice since it's meant to be read on a computer. It's much easier to browse than a PDF, doesn't take half an hour to open up, and can contain better navigation controls.

I should have mentioned this earlier (due to all the current logo design discussion), but I was thinking about adding a yellow thunderbolt behind the text "Vega Strike". It would be a fat bolt with two zags... I tried drawing it, but couldn't pull it off. Can't think of an example. The Flash (comic book character) maybe?