Icon of Arbiter (updated)

[RonnyDeWinter]

Arbiter is great, but admit it, the yellow smiley icon is simply ugly as hell. Just look at the world ranking......it looks like the majority got their records playing minesweeper, but some got their records playing with yellow lego or something. It just looks so insanely ugly and unofficial.

Can't we change the icon, so at least it looks a little more like a yellow mine and thereby make it look more official than the current one? If I or someone else designs a new Arbiter icon (still yellow off course) that everyone likes, do you think it should be used in the ranking?

[EWQMinesweeper]

no way!!!!!!

[Tommy]

What is wrong with it? I never thought it was ugly... Actually I kinda like the idea to take the smiley as an icon. It's almost more "typical" of the game than a mine to me of course that's a matter of taste though.

Nah, I'd say that to avoid confusion, the icon on the website should always be the icon displayed in the rankings.

[KamilSaper]

I also don't really like Arbiter's icon, but it hasn't changed for many years and I don't see any point in changing But definitely Viennasweeper's icon should change I think

[EWQMinesweeper]

vsweep icon mustn't be changed either!!!!

[RonnyDeWinter]

I also agree that the Vienna icon is strange as well.......I've looked all over the internet once to find anything closely related to either Vienna or minesweeper and matched even remotely the VSweeper red/yellow cloud of dots, but I really couldn't find anything that matched. However as 16x16 tiny icon it looks a little mysterious, which I like, so eventhough it doesn't look like anything recognizable it's fine by me.

(and the one that made the MX icon was lazy, lol)

Anyway, it's clear that people want to stick to the smiley face of Arbiter, so I'll respect that. Not that I ever felt that the smiley or Arbiter really looked like a minesweeper smiley face.......however, the 16x16 icon is so clearly incorrectly scaled down from the orignal (making the circle and lines bolder and more rough than the real minesweeper smiley face) that it could really benefit from a more manual rescaling to make it look more professional. ?

If I have time this week, I'll try to rescale the 16x16 Arbiter icon better to make it look more professional, but without changing the recognizable characteristics of the orginal. After that we can vote to see if it's any better of not.

[RonnyDeWinter]

Ok, I've re-painted a new 14x14 Arbiter icon pixel by pixel... (please remind me next time that even drawing 196 pixels takes a shit load of time and I shouldn't be bothered again. )

Since you guys seemed to be pretty found of the original I minimized the amount of changes to making the black lines less rough and tick, removing the orginal blur and adding a 3D effect to make it fit better with the other icons in the ranking.

Your votes and comments please, whether it's any better or not?

(For the artistically challenged among you: The left side is made with the old Arbiter icon..........the right side is made with the modified Arbiter icon )

[RonnyDeWinter]

(In case Damien wants to use it, see attachement)

[NYMIKE]

I agree that yellow icon is ugly, and imo Vienna has the best looking icon or perhaps it's cause it has so few players (though it's popularity is on the rise as I'm writing this).

[KamilSaper]

New icon looks better

[EWQMinesweeper]

definetely current icon

[RonnyDeWinter]

definetely current icon

A reason why would be useful, because I seriously don't see any downsides to the brushed up new design, besides that I maybe need to make the edge a little rounder as finishing touch.

[thefinerminer]

The Arbiter icon is not pretty because the image is forced smaller on the ranking (this makes it less clean). It looks like Ronny has just reproduced the Arbiter icon so it is clear at a smaller size. Looks good.

The ugly MSX icon was made by me, because the smiley face and mines are the same as some Microsoft versions. I tried to put MSX as the icon but I used Paint and it could not fit 3 letters at the resolution needed. So it is just MX until someone makes something better!

[EWQMinesweeper]

the original arbiter icon has only 1 tone of yellow...

[RonnyDeWinter]

I've improved the previous design and tried to match everyones demands a little better.

- I matched the color palette closer to the original 16x16
- rounded the edges
- reduced the 3D effect to reduce the 'tones' of yellow

It's not a masterpiece off course due to the very limited artistic freedom, but at least it's still an improvement.

old and new

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14x14 new (transparent)

arbiter-smiley7.gif (950 Bytes) Viewed 13984 times

revision 3

arbiter-revision3.jpg (156.76 KiB) Viewed 13971 times

Your new votes please (if you don't have forum right, please vote on the guestbook)

[EWQMinesweeper]

better now...but why a 3d effect on a 2d logo?

[RonnyDeWinter]

Mainly to let it blend in a little better between the other minesweeper icons

[KamilSaper]

looks nice

[joni]

i like the idea with brushing up the arbiter icon as the old one that is there now is way too blurred. There is sth with the "smile" of the new one that doesn't really appeal me though.

If you look at the original icon (in big format on the "about" page) the smiley is in quite good mood. He seems pleased.
The old 16x16 icon retains some kind of roundness of the "lips" but the blurr gives the smiley a melanconic look (as if it's reminiscing the player's golden days gone by when the record was done )
The new icon's lip line is way too sharp... it gives you a feeling that the smiley is worried/thinking about sth... and this doesn't really seem to fit to me. I know that there's not much room in a 16x16 pixels, but i would definitely want to see some roundness in that smile.

Btw looking at arbiter's icons i noticed by chance that the icon when arbiter is minimized as "tray icon" is stylistically different from the others (the one on the taskbar and the one on top of the Minesweeper Arbiter window are minimised versions of the one in the about page, but not this one). i don't know if it's windows which resizes it in a different way, or if Rilian has designed that too but here it comes and i really like it:

arbiter_tray.JPG (3.64 KiB) Viewed 13936 times

[RonnyDeWinter]

Very good point, it should look more 'satisfied' now.

Before

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After

arbiter-smiley8.gif (949 Bytes) Viewed 13912 times

arbiter-revision4.jpg (158.71 KiB) Viewed 13894 times

[EWQMinesweeper]

but the original arbiter icon is 2D!

just like the yellow MS smilie it resembles

[RonnyDeWinter]

That's one request I'm not going to give in too any further, cause I already removed most of the 3D effect on your demand. It's a redesign to make it fit nicer into the worldranking and it's not a rescale like you are requesting......the only reason it now looks so much like the old unscaled icon is because it would have given no chance of being used had I changed it more. (If it was up to me, it may not even be a smiley any longer after the redesign. )

BTW, the arbiter icon and the winmine smiley don't even look alike (other then being round, yellow and flat). Personally I never even noticed they were supposed to be related because all the differences.

[KamilSaper]

The problem of icons would be solved if Damien removed them all from the world ranking

[EWQMinesweeper]

@kamil: i'm a bit worried about how you use to define things...

@ronny: round, yellow, flat and a smilie - there is nothing else...

besides that i atm don't mind the current ranking icon, even sort of like it, i want to suggest that this kind of stuff should only be up to all arbiter players, those who have done their highscores on arbiter...so lets ask them if they want 2d or 3d

[KamilSaper]

3D