Fwurg

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I have observed that only a handful of factions are currently using a faction logo or emblem. And those that do have a logo have a logo with lots of small details and are all kinds of shapes and dimensions. This is a bit problematic, as I wanted to show faction identification on the galaxy map.

When I discussed this with admin, it was suggested that everyone just pick two colours, which would then be used to identify their faction on the map, and in other tools that need identifying. I found this suggestion interesting, but only two colours is a tad dull. Since I have some experience with blazonry (mainly due to the pyBlazon server), I decided to go ahead and write a small blazonry interpreter.

The idea is that people construct a recognizable and unique logo for their faction. This logo will then be used by the galaxy map (and possibly other tools), and could be used as the 'official' faction logo when no other logo is used (this still requires saving the image and uploading it to the wiki though). Since using a bitmap editing tool to create logo's is a lot of work (and it is difficult to get a logo looking good when it is really small) you can just write down your logo as if painting it.

Currently I only have a blazonry preview at http://tempest.student.utwente.nl/~brend/fwurg/blazonry. If you can spare some time, play around with it for a bit and try to get a logo that you would really like for your faction.

You can post logo's to the forum the same way I do with all links in this post -- you can share your creations with everyone. And if you happen upon any bugs please tell me, and don't hesitate to ask questions are advice about how to get your logo to work.

Tool interface
The tool consists of a single input bar and three black circles. You type your logo description in the input bar, and if it is correct the three circles are updated with the logo. If something goes wrong, the tool will tell you what went wrong.

The large and medium circle are just there to get a good look at your logo at different sizes. The smallest circle is the exact size of a system on the galaxy map. If your logo looks good there, it will probably look good on the map as well.

Logo descriptions
The tool allows you to use simple language to describe the logo. You describe your logo as if you were painting it on a large circle. First off you tell the tool what treatment (a colour or pattern of colours) to use for the background, then you add extra overlays with different treatments.

The simplest example is Green. This just paints the whole circle green.

You can get fancy with Party per pale green and gold. The 'party per' part of this logo tells the tool to split the background in two parts and paint them green and gold. The 'pale' is the direction of the split. You can also split per fess, per bend, per bend sinister, per cross, per saltire, per chevron, per chevron inverted, and per quarter.

On top of the background you put one or more ordinaries or charges. Like Or a bend gules, which is a golden circle, with a red line from top-left to bottom-right. You can apply any kind of treatment you like to a charge or ordinary, Or a bend party per fess vert and gules for example, splits the diagonal line in two, and paints the top green and the bottom red. You can have fun with the following other ordinaries and charges: cross, fess, pale, saltire, chevron, pall, bordure, roundel, annulet. You can stick multiple ordinaries on top of each Vert a fess gules and an annulet or.

You've probably noticed how most of these things sound quite old. This is because I did not think up new names for the divisions, ordinaries and charges. The most common old colours can be used: Or, Sable, Gules, Azure, Vert, Purpure, and Argent. But, you can also use their new names: Gold, Black, Red, Blue, Green, Purple, Silver, but also these new ones: White, Yellow, and Orange. If that's not enough colours for you, try using hexadecimal notation #ff00ff, or even rgb(128,255,255).

The last thing you might want to know is a special circular addition to traditional blazonry. If you tell the tool a 'party per', charge or ordinary you can append a rotation to it. Compare Or a chevron gules and Or a chevron inverted gules. The following rotations are understood: sinister (sinister rotates 90 degrees counter-clockwise), inverted (inverted rotates 180 degrees), 45cw (any number directly followed by cw turns the number of degrees clockwise), and 45ccw (any number directly followed by ccw turns the number of degrees counter-clockwise).

Now you can go and do some weird shit.

Add logo to wiki
Once you have a faction logo you're happy with, store it on the wiki. Edit your faction's page and add the logo description in the data entry of your faction. For example "Logo: Vert a saltire Gules".

If you have a # in your logo description, the wiki needs you to change this to \# when writing it down on the wiki.

Syntax
This section is meant for other technically minded people, but might help you while figuring out what to tell to the tool. This grammar is not in any normal form, but can probably be read without to much difficulty.

Code: Select all

(logo):
   (treatment) (ordinaries)

(treatment):
   (color)
   Party per (divisor) (rotation)? (treatment) and (treatment)

(ordinaries):
   [a|an] (ordinary) (rotation)? (treatment) [and [a|an] (ordinary) (rotation)? (treatment)]*

(color):
   or, sable, gules, azure, vert, purpure, argent, proper
   gold, black, red, blue, green, purple, silver, white, yellow, green, orange, transparent
   #ff0000, etc.
   rgb(123,123,123), etc.

(divisor):
   pale, fess, bend, cross, saltire, chevron, quarter

(ordinary):
   cross, fess, pale, bend, saltire, chevron, pall, bordure, roundel, annulet

(rotation):
   sinister, inverted
   45cw, 45ccw, etc.


EDIT: Updated grammar.

[The Lifebringer Clans]

Oh god, this is going to eat up all my working time today, isn't it? Trying to build a recognizable tree, I got these instead:
A sun
A cog, maybe for Techno Zaibatsu?
A... thing. I think I like this one. I might rotate it and/or mess with the colors. better, maybe It's not so nice in the big view, but I like how the small thingie looks.

This blazonry thing is way too much fun to fiddle with.

[Mercury]

This is excessively cool ^_^

It also immediately raises all sorts of cool feature request:

For example, can we get Barry, Paly, and Bendy? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variation_of_the_field) - if you can do for example barry of ten argent and gules, you could more easily make non centred divisions.

Also, how about Lines of Division (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_%28heraldry%29) - it'd make trees or flames a lot easier!

Regardless of whether or not its possible, this is already awesome ^_^

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I was afraid of those would come up as feature requests Although both features would add greatly to the expressiveness of the tool, I'm not sure whether the amount of work involved is worth the time. The small details will probably not look as good in the smallest displays (i.e. the galaxy map).

This tool was not meant as a replacement for faction images, it was meant as a way to get a recognizable small logo that can be used on the galaxy map and such. As such I think it best to avoid allowing all kinds of small details, and just encourage people to add an actual faction image to the wiki.

Another issue is the current integration of the tool. I'm working on getting the logo's into the galaxy map, this is easy because the map is already SVG. But the logo's are difficult to use on the wiki or on the forum because they are not rendered on the server.

If people are really happy with their logo, and want to use it on the wiki as well, I might be able to create some kind of converter that allows you to set the Logo on the wiki, and then use the converter to create a PNG which can be modified by hand, and uploaded as the actual logo.

(We might use a very small version of the faction image the same way we use the , and ; maybe this would be an incentive for people to create a logo -- it would look awesome in listings and in the Union overview page.)

[Mercury]

I made this attempt at a tree.

Perhaps it wouldn't be so difficult to add a half-pale to the set, as well as a pale at a quarter from each side? Those probably aren't too hard to add and allow you to construct shapes a little more easily. If its too difficult, no problem of course - I figured it might be easy to add variations on the shapes already in there.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

Hmm. A half pale could probably be constructed already by somehting like Or a pale party per fess or and sable. But I agree that this is just an emulation of the real thing.

As for the tree: large tree, and small tree. (The order of the charges matters. They are painted on top of each other.)

Adding extra charges or field division isn't that hard, but making them parameterized requires a change in the parser. So I could easily make a pale. Maybe a can get away with just adding the 'proper' color -- it's just a color that is transparent... What about that? (It does have some weird implications though, it would only be useful as the first treatment of a party, unless I rewrite quitte some code)

[The Lifebringer Clans]

A transparent color would definitely help. It might make some descriptions smaller. Also, thanks for all the trees! I quite like my abstract thingies, though, so I'll probably stick with those.

You can make so much stuff with this editor, this thing will keep me entertained for hours.

[Mercury]

Transparent would fix the issue most definitely

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I implemented the transparant color: 'proper' or 'transparent'. See this example.

Take care: this color has some weird behaviour. You can only use it as the 'most significant' color, meaning it should be the first color in a 'party per (divisor) (first treatment) and (second treatment)'.

Also: check out Galaxy Map β2. It has logo's now.

EDIT: Just realized you can make a Proper a cross or to get a transparent logo background.

[The Lifebringer Clans]

So cool. Expect my logo to change approximately 284761 times in the coming week. ;>_>

My current emblem For safe keeping. Remunzia can have the trees.

Ring It has a nice 3Dish effect in the smallest version.

[Mercury]

Cool ring ^_^

I noticed some peculiar behaviour between colour as in party per X and turning Y degrees.

Specifically, the party per X has a constant colour devision (one colour on top, the other at the bottom for example). This colour shift does not rotate with the rest of the image. For example:

not turned
turned

Combined with the limitation on transparency, this means you can only make the top half of a pale transparent, but never the bottom half.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

It is actually possible to turen a party division as well: red a pale party per fess inverted or and vert, or red a pale party per fess 120cw proper and vert.

So:
not turned
turned

[Mercury]

Thanks! That helps a lot in making designs

[Mercury]

All NPC worlds now have a listed logo!

[RemcoSwenker]

I now have this code as a logo.

Code: Select all

red a bordure yellow and a cross red and a saltire red and a annulet yellow

but for some reason its not updating the url.

but i would like to put a red 5 pointed star in it but I don't know how that would work.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

but for some reason its not updating the url.

What exactly do you mean by that?

A 5 pointed star would normally by a charge, but I currently do not support any charges other than the ones currently listed. This is mostly due to me not wanting to implement a custom charge for someone's logo.

[Mercury]

W4tch my l33t bl4zonry sk1llz!!!111one!

0MG w1th r1ng l33t!!!

[Veolian Commonwealth]

Damn -- leetness acknowledged.

[RemcoSwenker]

0MG w1th r1ng l33t!!!

I claims that one as my new emblem.
edit:You are worthy of jedi celestia admin

[Veolian Commonwealth]

The blazonry tool now supports PNG exports. You could upload the 300x300 export as a faction logo if you want to use your small logo as a big logo as well.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

The blazonry tool is updated with:

• A new charge: ring
• Translations: gauche, droite and simple numbers -0.167. This also works on party per.