New Interface

[Tzar]

Roman Culture

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Barbarian Culture

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Carthaginian Culture

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Greek Culture

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Egyptian Culture

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Eastern Culture

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Nomad Culture

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[The Sloth]

This looks great, especially the egyptian one. The greek one looks a bit angled (the army/town/agents indicators), and the motive could be a bit more visible.

[cherryfunk]

Tzar, can you remove the bricks in the upper right on the Greek interface so it's clear, like the Egyptian one?

[tone]

Great stuff. Keep going!

[rory o'kane]

I think it was generally agreed that the Roman one should be mostly black and white marble (see Commodus's imperial palace in Gladiator for the look i was after). The Greek and Egyptian ones are EXCELLENT, though, as Sloth says, the motif/scene in the central panel of the Greek interface could be made more visible...

[dvk901]

I think we'll let Tzar design his own stuff. This is original, excellent quality work, and I've not seen an interface anywhere that looks better.

The screen in the center of the Greek interface is perfect guys...it's unobtrusive and clouded enough that no one is going to say it's 'too busy'. That's one thing I like about the Egyptian interface as well, there is a ton of detail, but it doesn't rip your eyes out trying to see anything else.

The Greek one kinda reminds me of the one Lusted had in TE. I always liked it.

[cherryfunk]

I think we'll let Tzar design his own stuff. This is original, excellent quality work, and I've not seen an interface anywhere that looks better.

The screen in the center of the Greek interface is perfect guys...it's unobtrusive and clouded enough that no one is going to say it's 'too busy'. That's one thing I like about the Egyptian interface as well, there is a ton of detail, but it doesn't rip your eyes out trying to see anything else.

The Greek one kinda reminds me of the one Lusted had in TE. I always liked it.

Compare the clean, easy-to-read Egyptian one to the Greek one.

An interface that impedes the communication of information it is designed to convey is not perfect. Furthermore, pacco agrees with me, and he's the graphical master!

That said, the bricks do give it a nice feel -- but it's too dark, and the bricks are too well defined. If they could be muted a bit, and the background lightened a bit (more like the Egyptian) it would be perfect....

[dvk901]

Compare the clean, easy-to-read Egyptian one to the Greek one.

An interface that impedes the communication of information it is designed to convey is not perfect. Furthermore, pacco agrees with me, and he's the graphical master!

That said, the bricks do give it a nice feel -- but it's too dark, and the bricks are too well defined. If they could be muted a bit, and the background lightened a bit (more like the Egyptian) it would be perfect....

Ok, that's fine. But first it's "the shading is too dark (which impedes easy reading in YOUR opinion)", and then this evolves into "the bricks are too well defined".

What I am saying is:

"Maybe"....it's a bit dark, but should be shaded to keep the 3D effect.
"I disagree"....because I can read it just fine.
"The bricks are too well defined as opposed to what?" Do they also impede reading? I disagree.
Do they look bad, out of place, somehow wrong? I disagree.

Thus, it is MY opinion that it is 'perfect'....(because I'm not going to quibble over a bit of shading if Tzar doesn't want to bother changing it)... and the bricks actually give it a nice 'Greek architectural touch'....something lacking in most 'plain jane' interfaces.

The Egyptian also looks characteristic of Egyptian architecture. They built walls of sandstone and plastered them over so they were flat, and then painted symbols and stories on them. Their art also lacked in realistic depictions and 3D effects. It was often 'flat'. So in my opinion, one literally speaks to the player: This is Greek. The other, Egyptian, in being more flat. Tzar apparently has a good handle on this, so I said it was perfect.

I don't care if Pacco agrees with you, I expressed my opinion as you did yours.

[Keravnos]

You have on the Egyptian, queen Nefertiti, which was dead for approx. 1500 years or so prior to the Ptolemaioi taking over.

Ptolemaic Egypt was a hybrid, a greek civilisation WITH Egyptian elements true, but a hybrid no less. In your thread, it is pure Egyptian.

I think we should intonate that nature, as it would bring forth the Ptolemaics, not just do a "Mummy returns" skin.

Will update this post for more pics.

Ptolemaios I in his Hellenic statue,


Ptolemaios I in his Aigyptian statue,


http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Bios/P...hilopator.html

This guy was King/Pharaoh during the beginning of RS II.

Ptolemaios IV in a depiction crowning Homer along with his wife,


Ptolemaios IV name in hieroglyphic,


Rosetta stone would be the ideal text to use. The absolutely ideal text, as this is the reason we can read Egyptian hieroglyphic today. This stone found by Napoleon's army had a text in all 3 languages, Egyptian hieroglyphic, Ancient Greek and the common egyptian all in one. The ideal would be to crop a couple of lines from each both Egyptian and Greek and place them where you now have the Hieroglyphic text.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._Stone_BW.jpeg

and
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Im...etta_Stone.JPG

Another idea would be to use both the Hellenic image of Ptolemaios and its Egyptian counterpart somehow to denote how the same man would be presented to the peoples of Egypt. Hellenes (this included Hebrews, who were considered as Hellenes by law), Katoikoi aka Galatians, Thraikians, anyone merc but not Egyptian) and native Egyptians.

Make the UI a fusion of cultures, which is what the Ptolemaioi were.

[swhunter]

Yes those are much better.
Greatwork!
rep!

[pacco]

Awesome!

Tzar, can you remove the bricks in the upper right on the Greek interface so it's clear, like the Egyptian one?

Agreed.

[Tzar]

Ok
@cherry and pacco
I can remove those bricks, but I made one beginners mistake, I forget to save it in as .psd (to have all layers). So that would need to wait until I don't finish Romans (I'm working on them now)

@rory o'kane and The Sloth
The central peace must be like dvk said "unobtrusive", because when you have buildings icons on it and background colors are very strong or dark looks like crap.

[rory o'kane]

that's no problem at all - any chance of making the Roman interface look like scrolls on a dark marble table or somesuch - the emperor's desk, if you will.

[cherryfunk]

Tzar obviously has good instincts... let's see what he comes up with... (then we can rip it apart Kidding!)

[rory o'kane]

absolutely, i just have this idea in my head, but can't actually make it....

[Legio]

Awesome work tzar!

[cherryfunk]

I kinda agree with Keravnos, Nefertiti does feel a bit out of place; otherwise the Egyptian interface looks fantastic though...

[Tzar]

I didn't work on the buttons, that would come in the end. Please feel welcome to post any ideas and pictures to be used for buttons.

@Keravnos
I'm working on the Roman culture now and it's harder to do because it was quite similar with Greeks but again different and if we add Egyptian on the way you think should be made we will have 3 very similar interfaces.

[dvk901]

There are two things we could do to make Keravnos observation apparent...and neither of them has anything to do with the Interface. The picture of Queen Nefertiti is MY doing from the RS1.5 part of the Interface.....the file that displays what you see in the buttons has nothing to do with the file that creates the Interface structure.

The second thing is the 'family member portraits'....which, I have observed, anyway....should likely be all Greek. Although the Ptolemies and Greeks adapted many things, were called Pharoahs, and even depicted themselves as such, it was probably more 'ceremonial' regarding 'things of state'....like playing 'God save the Queen' or something.

So I think if we changed those two things it would be even 'perfecter'. LOL

(I will change the portraits immediately, while I'm thinking of it.)

Edit:

There, Egyptians now have Greek character portraits:

[cherryfunk]

Good catch, dvk, that's one thing that always bugged me -- a leftover from the awful vanilla Ptolemites...