Improve visuals for piping inputs and outputs

[Saturnus]

Here's a suggestion on how a filter output could look. Outputs are still square pegs that needs to find round holed inputs but turning the filtered output to a rhombus makes it abundantly clear that this is different from the pass-through output.

[Zarquan]

I like the idea that pointy shapes are outputs. It would make it easier to identify while zoomed out.  It would also make it easier to examine the ventilation system as a whole and would be friendlier to color blind people (I assume, I am not colorblind)

[Saturnus]

10 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

I like the idea that pointy shapes are outputs. It would make it easier to identify while zoomed out.  It would also make it easier to examine the ventilation system as a whole and would be friendlier to color blind people (I assume, I am not colorblind)

I'm not colour blind either but over Christmas I was struck by a case of conjunctivitis (pink eye) so I had to set my laptop to lowest possible light setting (it's a AMOLED display laptop so no background lighting). This made it very tricky to spot the difference between inputs and outputs when zooming out a bit. That combined with the constant inundation of questions relating to connecting inputs and outputs on the ONI discord made me think that it should and could be improved.  

[Oozinator]

Not bad, what about:
 

[Saturnus]

1 minute ago, Oozinator said:

That's still using the same outline shape for inputs and outputs. No real difference to clarity when it's all circles instead of squares. At least in my opinion. And I wasn't about to change the graphical design as a whole just slightly tweaking it.

[Oozinator]

Just now, Saturnus said:

 And I wasn't about to change the graphical design as a whole just slightly tweaking it.

Me too, but i wanted to enter the "make Saturnus happy with some fancy icons" challenge..
^^

[AileTheAlien]

On 1/24/2018 at 4:37 AM, Saturnus said:

Yes. You've missed the point.

Actually I didn't miss the point, but saw no actual improvement to understandibility with square vs circles, etc. (I had an earlier reply on this, but I'm redoing it.) If you're trying to improve the clarity of the symbols when zoomed out, that indeed would be accomplished with squares, circles, etc. However, your new icons make the arrows harder to see, since they must be smaller to fit inside of those new shapes. The arrows are also the things, which actually have a visual correspondence to the pipes and fluids. i.e. The arrow points out of the box, like the fluid comes out of the pipe, or it's pointing into the box like fluid coming into the pipe. Circles, squares, and diamonds have no correspondence at all that I can see, to pipes or to fluids. So @Oozinator's icons might not be as visible from afar, but keep the visual correspondece intact.

[Saturnus]

9 minutes ago, AileTheAlien said:

Actually I didn't miss the point, but saw no actual improvement to understandibility with square vs circles, etc. (I had an earlier reply on this, but I'm redoing it.) If you're trying to improve the clarity of the symbols when zoomed out, that indeed would be accomplished with squares, circles, etc. However, your new icons make the arrows harder to see, since they must be smaller to fit inside of those new shapes. The arrows are also the things, which actually have a visual correspondence to the pipes and fluids. i.e. The arrow points out of the box, like the fluid comes out of the pipe, or it's pointing into the box like fluid coming into the pipe. Circles, squares, and diamonds have no correspondence at all that I can see, to pipes or to fluids. So @Oozinator's icons might not be as visible from afar, but keep the visual correspondece intact.

There's no reason you couldn't do both. Improve the clarity of the arrows by simplifying it like @Oozinator above and have squares and circles that are much easier to distinguish when zoomed out. But the suggestion I made was specifically to tell inputs and outputs apart more easily, that was it really. And to that end, using different outline shapes is a very good tool.

Once you've learned that square pegs go in round holes, as outputs and inputs respectively, you wouldn't have to zoom in at all again to debug a big layout.

[The Plum Gate]

The issue I have is in trying to differentiate what icon belongs to what ( building element ) when there are multiple bridges in close proximity. This leads to a problem where I wish the icons lined up with the object in question ( where they weren't always up or down, etc ). Or at least partially render a lightened version of such things in said overlays to make them more noticeable. Perhaps that feature could have area focus similar to the effect the pointer has on the tile grid when in the power overlay.

This is an issue of polish really. I hope they tweak it slightly. I'm in favor of using both color and shape. Variability here; I think the buildings could also implement one general set of shapes while inline elements another. Therefore, both of these could be quite useful. Circles on floor bound buildings and squares on inline elements or visa versa. I like both.

knowing when you've attache and outlet of a bridge to the inlet of a building could be solved the same way that they solved multiple requirements not being met on building using the 'crowding' iconography.

On 1/25/2018 at 12:21 PM, Oozinator said:

Not bad, what about:
 

 

On 1/25/2018 at 11:38 AM, Saturnus said:

..apologies, but I'm not going to attempt to mash these together in an example of visual 'crowding'. If you know what I mean, you know what I mean.

[Ricordis]

And to complete the confusion: Who thought it would make sense the INput should be in the bottom while the OUTput is somewhere above?

For me this is super counter-intuitive.