Question about mod tools and techniques

[MandelSoft]

And the Swedish signs have been revised too!



Now we only need some new overlays to match the colours. I used the colours from the Swedish Traffic sign norms.

The dutch signage is however close to perfect right now, both "old" and "new" styles:


Best,
MandelSoft

[ScuL]

Good work buddy although the Swedish colours are too dark, I know that you say you've matched them by database but the signs in Sweden are much lighter green in reality than that because they are reflective, I feel that the colours of our overlays are better in representing the actual brightness of the signs.

[MandelSoft]

Well, they are actually not that bright as you suggest with your original shields: https://maps.google.nl/?ll=56.081247,12 ... 8,,1,-2.84

The current green looks a bit too bright and goofy. De-saturated colours often make things look less goofy and more realistic.

Besides, with the higher contrast, I think they are more easy to read for me. Also, the blue on the Swedish signs is still a bit lighter than the blue on the dutch signs. And if you compare them to existing sign sets, the colour isn't that dark at all:





Best,
MandelSoft

[ScuL]

I'm not here to criticise or cause an argument I appreciate the work (especially the splitting and arrows as it saves a lot of time) but the color-definition given by default is a tad too dark for in-game use and that is for a number of reasons.

1) I based the green colour on the background of the overlays on the colour used in official Vägverket PDF documents (the Swedish road administration)
2) Look at this wiki sign and compare the colour of the motorway sign of Sweden vs. Switzerland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... road_signs
Sweden:
Switzerland:
3) Look at this picture to see the standard Swedish reflection foil in action:

4) I am a frequent visitor of Sweden and drive there a lot (as a matter a fact I will drive there again 3 weeks from now) and I know that the signs are reflective and quite bright compared to the colours blue/green that you see in other countries

Probably the reflectiveness of the signs is not correctly represented in the standard colour-code.

I think the best solution to solve this is to make your board colours lighter and our overlay colours slightly darker so you reach a compromise, because I do agree that I scaled them in quite bright.

[MandelSoft]

1) I based the green colour on the background of the overlays on the colour used in official Vägverket PDF documents (the Swedish road administration)

Then how do we come up with different colours? I see just saturated green on your signs while looking at this document, I clearly see another shade of green. (see page 6,7 and 8)

2) Look at this wiki sign and compare the colour of the motorway sign of Sweden vs. Switzerland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... road_signs
<images>

On the same page, I find the same sign integrated in the Swedish border sign. There I find a whole different shade of green:

3) Look at this picture to see the standard Swedish reflection foil in action:

Didn't notice that much when I was in Sweden. And I've driven hundreds of kilometers on the motorways there. It's fresh in my memory, since I've been there last July when carrying a camera. You see it's not that bright green:


Besides, you can change the reflectiveness in the MAT-settings, so what does it matter anyway that I chose a darker shade of green?

4) I am a frequent visitor of Sweden and drive there a lot (as a matter a fact I will drive there again 3 weeks from now) and I know that the signs are reflective and quite bright compared to the colours blue/green that you see in other countries

Heard this authority-argument before, right at page one. I said that the signs at the intersections were wrong and a Swedish friend could back me up on that and you tell me that the guy living in Sweden is wrong. I don't get that. Why would someone LIVING in Sweden know something less by heart than someone who only visits it? To be completely honest and I may be too direct, I think you value too much on your own authority. And it would not be the first time that I have proved you wrong and why I don't seem to get along that good with you, to my regret...

Best,
MandelSoft

[anonymson]

Not the Swedish sign debate again...

Seeing how I am bombarded by Swedish signs on a daily basis, I would say that I have the authority on what they look like. In real life, the green shade looks a bit light, but not very much unless there's direct sunlight being reflected or light from headlights during night. The correct colours can be found here: http://www.transportstyrelsen.se/Vag/Tr ... trationer/ and if you have Photoshop or similar, it has that colour library allowing you to make textures using the exact colours. To make them look good on screen (less watered down), I use #005596 for my blue signs, #00755C for green, #FED300 for yellow and #ED2F38 for red.

Some signs on Wikipedia have the wrong colours or are shown wrong in the browser, such as the motorway sign you showed.

Comparing the colours in MandelSoft's pictures with the colours used by the mod currently, his looks a bit dark (at least in the first picture) while the current ones are way too bright. Trying somewhere inbetween in brightness would probably work best.

[ScuL]

I'm not trying to create conflict I think the sheer matter is that we're both perfectionists with the difference being that you base your perfectionism on theory (ie. the code specified) and I based the perfectionism on perception of the environment. The shades used may well be using the correct colour codes but they appear slightly too dark in game, changing the reflection in MAT files is not going to make them any brighter (unfortunately this is not how the PRISM3D engine works).
(PS don't forget the factor that the PRISM3D engine makes colours darker because it alpha-blends a shadow layer over the colours as well)

I therefore support anonymson's suggestion to make our overlays slightly darker and your board colour slightly lighter to re-create a more true-to-life colour scheme. Then we we can all be satisfied

PS2: making assumptions based on a person living or frequently visiting doesn't necessarily have to say anything. I know Swedes that have hardly ever left Stockholm since they usually go on holidays to Thailand and are therefore completely oblivious of the Danish-style signs used in Halland for example. Even in NL there are people living in areas that hardly travel their own country. Then again taking into account that not everybody is a "roadgeek" and some people don't even take notice in different fonts or shades of colours in signs at all

[MandelSoft]

So, I checked the colours again, and it turns out that they are indeed slightly lighter, especially the green is really brighter now. Is this better?



EDIT: With reworked colour corrected shields:



Also, at some locations, you have useless gantry signs that only sign the thorough direction. Instead of such a huge sign, a smaller sign like this would be a better option:


Best,
MandelSoft

[Nico]

I think this is a good solution. The new one looks very good.

And also these options... brill idea, I think we will update this kind of stuff before we release the bugfix version 1.0x.

[Superdavecan]

Hey MandelSoft, I checked out this thread and now I have a much clearer picture of the fantastic work you are doing. I can't wait for all this stuff to be included in the next version! I've never seen road signs done as well as you've made them.

Specifically regarding some of the sign styles that are in the map right now (not the ones you've been working on), I agree that the text on the bilingual Finnish signs is too small and illegible. Hopefully your new signage system can fix that, so that the text can be made larger so it's at least legible. Also, while we're still on the Finnish signs, in Turku and Helsinki the signs are indeed bilingual, but when the map expands north to include Tampere (I understand it will), the signs should then be in Finnish only, as the Swedish-speaking population in most non-coastal areas is too low, so they don't put up signs in Swedish.

And then thinking of bilingual signs, your new signage system should also work well for bilingual signs in the Brussels Capital Region of Belgium (first French, then Dutch). That's an area that badly needs to be re-worked anyway... perhaps Brussels and Dutch-speaking Belgium is on your list anyway?

I shall join the Swedish sign debate too... while I agree with ScuL about the signs being reflective, and I also think that it's a fair representation of them, I personally find them too bright and find it difficult to read the white text on bright green signs. So I think they need to be darkened a bit... what you've shown in your last post seems to be ideal! They're still a lighter green than usual, and now the text is perfectly legible. The Danish green motorway signs have exactly the same problem though... and just taking a quick look at street view, without taking screenshots, the Swedish and Danish motorway signs seem to be more or less the same shade of green. So perhaps this approach could work for Denmark as well. The only thing that really bothered me about the signs that are already in the map were the legibility issues.

Anyway cool stuff mate!