Character Portrait Icon Shows More Information

[Moonracer]

The blank silhouette character portraits in the lower center of the HUD could be used to quickly show a lot of information.

I'm thinking of small icons that would show up in certain locations on each portrait to provide information on the entire squad.
for example:
-A drop of blood would indicate that character is bleeding
-A (bone?) would indicate high limb damage

Another type of information might be an icon that shows up to indicate a character with high skill in something. Like a first aid cross if their medical skill reaches a certain level.

[Blxz]

Another type of information might be an icon that shows up to indicate a character with high skill in something. Like a first aid cross if their medical skill reaches a certain level.

Your other suggestions are good. But the part I quoted above I think could be doe even better if you simply had customizable portraits. Either able to import them from an external folder that you have pre-prepared (such as my sexy bearded face) as well as some stock ones.

But yeah, blood drops and a bone or something would be two great, simple icons that would help out management without too much clutter.

[Santaissick]

Icon from high skills might get confusing since one of my guys has 50+ in almost everything. Super guys like that would have 20 different icons on their portrait when all skills are implemented. One would be unable to see the portrait behind all the icons.

Some customized icons (like one for warrior, medic, katana, heavy, range,...) would be good to ease the handling of troops.

[Moonracer]

haha, you are right about the main skills cluttering things. I guess at best you could simplify them into Combat, Medical and Science(building/research type skills) proficiency. Not sure if there are any other skill "classes" in the game (or planned).

Right now if I higher an NPC with medical or engineering skills I name them appropriately so I remember later.

[Brandenfascher]

I think it would be better to have control of what icons show up by having the game allow you to choose the icons for a character. This would especially be useful for characters in training; Just pick what icons you want showing up.

[PnzrNorm]

Resurrecting this thread since the title is relevant, and it combines several similar threads together under one topic.

+1 to Chris sharing his thoughts on the planned GUI re-skin
+1 to appending customizable icons (either player-created or from a list) to portraits

For this request, its likely already somewhere in the plans to make portraits show more info., but I think it would be cool to allow mods which alter the display, position, etc. of the HUD and other GUI elements.
If you've played SW:TOR, there is a HUD Interface Editor feature that allows players to customize the entire display to suit their needs.
This would take plenty of pressure off Chris as only the basics of the GUI re-skin would need to be implemented, and the players can decide what to do from there.

Another cool idea regarding portraits is to have visual indicators, or icons, whenever your chars are Idle, similar to other RTS-style games that allow cycling through idle worker units.
There is a thread that touches on this amongst other topics located here:
http://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... ait#p16849

I pulled this thread out from all the others since it has relevance to the character portrait discussion, but I also posted ideas there regarding notifications while keeping the planned GUI re-skin in mind.

Here is another thread regarding portrait icons to notify when a char falls below a certain health threshold:
http://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... con#p31445