Buff icons: remove the circle, let the shape out.

So let's talk about buff icons. You know them: circles, with a symbol in the middle and a color. Usually I think they're actually taken from the icon for the corresponding power.

Problem is, these things get kind of hard to read. At 100% gui size, they're 22px across, scaled down to about 2/3 of the original 32px size. The color of the icon is generally similar to the color of the circle (though not always - Empathy for instance uses grey to almost purple on green). And the most prominent contour that each icon has is not the shape of the icon itself but the shape of the token it's on: a circle.

What I propose is to remove the circles, to make the shape of the icon the most prominent contour.

Let me give you an example.



This is [Super Reflexes.Focused Fighting], with and without the circle. See how it's a bit easier to make out the shape of the one without the circle? That's what I'm aiming at. There are usually a couple dozen of these on the screen at a time. Making it easier to tell at a glance the shape, and thus the nature, of the buff makes checking your buffs - and those of others - faster.

EDIT



Here's those same two images, both shrunk to fit in a 22x22 space. (I suspect that the actual game may use a hand-tuned small image for this, but I don't have that kind of ability nor the likely-vector-graphics originals)

I think that'd just make them smaller and harder to spot.

Smaller, well... a little bit. As you can see on the shrunk ones (which are actually my intended size for the new icons), the only pixel loss is on the limbs of the icon; indeed I occasionally get a very strange illusion where the right one appears bigger.

As for harder to see, well... I can see where you're coming from. There's a lot of madness happening behind it. One of the people I IRC with complained about the +perception proc icon making him think he had dead pixels, and the circle certainly protects the icon from visual noise a bit. But in my experience the circle itself tends to contribute to the visual noise. When I glance at my buffs bar I don't see 'shield' and 'running foot' and so forth - I see 'circle' and 'circle', and that's problematic.

Perhaps a 1px black border would keep shape better but still give a good offset from the "real world". I'll have to look into that.

Eh. I don't think that'd really be an improvement. I could see losing *those* a bit more easily in the mess that buff bars become. And losing the circle - especially if you dump non-symbol background color - could be much worse for some icons (Clear Mind/Clarity/Enforced Morale, for instance, or Hold/Immobilize which would become a sliver.)

Now, altering them so there's more contrast between the icon and the background, or adding a more visible border if you have trouble seeing it? That I could see.

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