Well, i am not a 2D artist but i had made for the main factions the following logos. I don't know whether they can fit into the heraldry idea, but if you feel you can have any use or get any idea from them feel free. And forgive me for the use of the English language:)

Faction: Alliance (CIS). The stars around a circle means that there exists some unity between their members and equality. The fact that all stars are the same and have same distances means that although their members are different, they are equal and also independent each other. They have strong bond, but the "outsiders" can clearly have relations with one, but not with an other.

Faction: Federation. There's only one star inside the double Phoenix. This means the formation is seen as a complete and one unity from outsiders and the members act as one always. The independence amongst the members is limited but not the freedom. The outsiders also cannot have different policies between members and members must always act to outsiders as whole. The protection between the members is global and extremely strong, and that's depicted with the double phoenix.

Faction: Independent. There's  one star only that depicts the singleness and "loneness" of the faction. The independent means uniqueness too and it is depicted with the bird with open wings that projects also the idea of freedom and acting/being viewed alone.

Faction: None. There's only one star which means the faction of a star system concept. The black circle with the spokes means that there exists nothing actually (the faction)  (that's why in the middle, and the spokes means that where-ever we approach this we finally find nothing), like a black hole :).

Faction: Unknown. There's only one star which means the faction of a star system concept. The question mark means that there exists something (the faction) and intrigues the player  to discover:), but currently is unknown.

Faction: Empire. There are some stars above a crown - the symbol of the Emperor. Obviously, we are talking about an Empire (or the Empire :)). The number of stars means that the Empire projects itself in all 4 dimensions (space and time - it's here to last).

Well, they may be a bit childish:) or crude but use them if/as you wish.

Dionisis

here's a link to a mod for the game Victoria 2, I post it becasue it has an excellent random flag generator to make new flags for the random nations it creates.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?546055-Victoria-II-Random-World-Generator!

and a youtube link about the mod

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMaiDifFlTE

i guess you dont really see it in the vid, but the mod makes some nice looking flags out of random parts.

what image size should the pieces be? I love the layered hereldic idea. I'd suggest maybe 3 different sized components, tiny (stars) medium (crown) and large (background field). If you only had 9 different compenents, 3 tiny, 3 medium, and 3 large, you would have, what, maybe 888 unique combinations. wait that math is totally wrong, but you get the idea, the components will add up expotentially.

[attachment=1552:comsmallstar.jpg]

here's the medium star, I gave it both a background colour of magenta as a "zero-colour" if banners go the route of being a bitmap, and also an alpha channel, if people want to use alpha channels (I'm personally against it, and think that 256 colours are enough for anybody. this example is 32x32 pixels

[attachment=1553:commedlaural.jpg][attachment=1554:commedcrown.jpg]

2 medium compenents, each 64x64 pixels. also with megenta and an alpha channel

2 background fields, very simple, but enough if anyone wants to test it

[attachment=1555:comlargeredwhite.jpg][attachment=1557:comlargebluewhite.jpg]

put all together randomly it should look something like this. [attachment=1558:example.jpg]

Well, I made up some requirements:

- All images need to be 256x256px (I don't think they will be shown larger than this, usually smaller)

- Alpha channel for transparency (use .png)

- Three layers seems reasonable. One for background and two for foreground elements

- If we want to colorize the elements at runtime, they should be grayscale. Feel free to ignore this for now 🙂

I'll add one requirement: careful on the high-detail, as they will be scaled down in a lot of places. If it becomes a problem (no idea yet, haven't implemented anything) then we can look it allowing low-res variants.

Robn makes a good point,

a good rule of thumb when making game art is to never make any line or detail less than 3 pixels wide or so, because if texture map is 1024 pixels square, and you've got say the name of the ship written in the texture map in lines 3 pixels wide, what will happen when the texture gets reduced (for whatever reason, like when it gets smaller on the screenspace as the camera moves away) those tiny less than 3 lines wide details will get lost. Either there will be a shimmer effect, where the details show up only half the time, or they get lost completly.

But if people stick to thicker lines, the texture should render down well and detail not get lost, or "soupy". (soupy means the image gets lost and looks more like stuff floating in soup than, say, the hull of a spaceship)

does .png support alpha channels? because my photoshop says it can't?

.png format supports alpha channel. I am using Paint.NET and i am doing it in it - i don't know how you do it in PhotoShop, but usually you specify a threshold in RGB and whatever is below that you erase it with lasso and that creates the transparent part of the image.

@DerrickMoore

Historically Photoshops support for PNG is a little lacking, just like Paint.NETs is for 32bit BMP files :/

Your best bet is to save it as TGA or 32bit BMP (from Photoshop) and then convert to PNG using Paint.NET or GIMP.

This is a good idea.

hey thanks, I thought I was going a little mad there for a bit.

Made this little doo-hickey in photoshop kinda-of a banner tool kit. Everything is adjustable colors shading, you can add or delete components, etc. I added some homemade icons of a star and ringworld as an examples of placement. Hope it's useful.

Updated:

 Photoshop layers now include labels, added more custom images with additional options.

Here is the v2 photoshop file:   http://www.mediafire.com/?e8jy2r13yuwtlvf

Here's the start of a .rar file full of banner icons. It's been updated. [attachment=1571:pcom.rar]

and here are a couple example of what can be made by combing 2 of the Cc-components with the B-background sets. The last 2 have been colorized from the grey-scale

[attachment=1569:example02.jpg][attachment=1568:example01.jpg][attachment=1572:example03.jpg][attachment=1573:example04.jpg]

so each banner is made of 3 images, a background named here something like Bblack01.tga and 2 other grey-scale components layered one on top of the other. The components are named "c"(for component) then something like "L" for laurel, "W" for wheel,c"D" for dagger, "P" for planet or "S" for skull, then one or two variants named "01" or "02". each image component is greyscaoe and 256 b256 pixels

If there's any interest, I can expand what I've got so far and fill out the rest of the alphabet, also more variants can be added easily later. I should mention that the files in the .rar are all targa at the moment. i'm having some difficulty making an alpha channel in a .png. but i've got gimp and paintnet now, so I'll figure it out and convert them all.

This looks really promising! I keep mentioning that I'm working on an experimental factions mod, but I'm working on an experimental factions mod. It'll have different building sets and station variants for the different factions. I was thinking of putting a medallion model on various places on the spaceports but didn't have the heraldry. I'd like to pinch some of your designs and give you credit if that's OK. Meanwhile, I'm gonna wait for your conversion and keep on doing what I'm doing.

Certainly, feel free to do anything with anything I post here. They are not my designs, the UN came up with that laurel and globe thing, and that skull is off Captain Jack's flag, a pirate from 300 years ago.

Edit: Update v4  Whipped up a couple more spacey knight's helmet's as one of the top square options, to evoke a more heraldic effect.

v4 is here: http://www.mediafire.com/?fimntes5r87scgb

Edit: Tweaked things a bit and added some more image and flag options.

V5 available here:   http://www.mediafire.com/?ei8dingxfyk1oep

Updated: Some bronze helmets added and a few more flag options.

V6 available here:   http://www.mediafire.com/?zr8d94y2z7ihdgn

yet another update:

 

V8 available here: http://www.mediafire.com/?jv9cw5pexb66to2

 

Using real flags can add a lot of diversity to the mix.

 

 

V8.1 available here: http://www.mediafire.com/?ghjavbc3zch5sqy

Some new helmet variations I'm toying with 🙂

4 main layers (Top wireframe and 3 facets) Facets can be pre-made or individually generated (each with there own 3 or 4 layers) Once generated, they can be combined together with the other 2 generated facets into one completed image. (in a pinch 4 layers could be reduced to 3 by combining a color facet with the Top edge cover)

Although I think having more layers will always add more flexibility to customization options.

example to above image:

Imagining using each system's ID number as the source seed input to insure originality upon generating the individual insignia required per system.

The Top edge cover layer placed in correct position on the 256x256 grid:

The 3 background masks and their placement within the 256x256 grid:

Edit:

  After looking over the new faction map, I believe NPC factions should predominantly hold to their map specific colors for all 3 backgrounds. To more easily distinguish apart factions that have similar colors will likely require at least one of the facets to be some alternate color. Either that or a rethink of the existing faction color designations will have to occur.

The other possibility is to always (at least) designate the top helm facet for that color. 

I did this just to get a better grasp of the specific faction colors used on the map. (funky buttons)

Edit: Some more thoughts on Left and right facet background colors.

These left and/or right facets could be used to denote a "known" A.I. faction alliance(s) & could possibly be made to dynamically change color should those alliances change.