Higher quality icons

Kirkor

I have already mentioned it somewhere on this forum, but not on request topic.
There are many icons in the game which has low quality and I know that they can be much better:
1) Item icons on inventory screen - they are very blurry. But when you "pick" them up, they become sharp and high quality... Make it so they are ALWAYS high quality.
2) Spell Icons - they are very low quality, if you compare them to the original ones. Could you make them better quality?
3) Item pictures on item description screen - There are many missing pictures. And these, which doesn't missing are of very low quality. Would be nice to have them at least of the quality of the original ones.

Dee

The bams are a lot like the animations; we don't have the source art for them, so any "improvements" would require a complete redraw.

bigdogchris

@Kirkor

For #1, I know what you're saying about the quality. The "picked up" is significantly higher quality. Why can't those be downsized, then overwrite the "equiped" icon bams? That wouldn't require any "new" art.

For #3, if you know of items that are missing the icons in the descriptions, I believe @Avenger_teambg was working on identifying the ones to be fixed. Maybe PM him the list.

Dr_Atomic

I really think the spell icons need to be reworked, however...they simply look awful and betoken a lack of polish, really.

agris

@bigdogchris has a great point with his #1 there.

trinit

btw, spell icons look very good on my 1920x1080 monitor if i play bg:ee on 1280x720 resolution. when i switch to bg:ee 1920x1080 they start to look distorted and "blurry".

problem is that in both scenarios they occupy the same amount of space on-screen in both resolutions. so, is there a way to override this?

Dr_Atomic

I believe they look fine (if tiny) if you turn off UI scaling, but with scaling on, it becomes obvious that they're tiny bitmaps stretched to fit a much higher resolution.

They need to be done at a higher resolution, if not by Beamdog, then by modders. (IIRC, One Pixel Productions added new spell icons, so it's not unheard of)

Zeckul

The spell icons definitely should be re-drawn. They look just plain terrible and communicate very little information. The way Icewind Dale 2 did it with color codes was awesome. For the record, Icewind Dale 2 was developed in under a year, so I don't think this is asking for too much.

http://lparchive.org/Icewind-Dale-2/Update 41/36-30.jpg

agris

To each their own, I personally dislike the IWD2 style icons and much prefer the archaic looking drawings in BG/BG2. That being said, these low res icons are an eyesore, and it could easily be fixed. Everytime you pick up a spell scroll, the icon for that spell is enlarged to the same size as in the spellbook. The differece is, the icon on the spell scroll doesn't look like shit. Oh, and the icon is an alpha blended image overlaid onto the scroll-parchment background, so they really could just use those in the spellbook.

ajwz

Aosaw said:

The bams are a lot like the animations; we don't have the source art for them, so any "improvements" would require a complete redraw.

You could totally redraw them though
I mean, even I could do that. I don't think redrawing the source art for spell and item icons would be an especially epic undertaking?

Gawdzilla

Agreed, the spell book icons look dreadful. The original icons had such character, the runes at a glance telling you what the spell did. It fit other flavor in the game -- the books, item descriptions, etc.

Now, the icons just don't have any life to them. I have to squint to make sure what I'm clicking on.

Beamdog had to prioritize issues to get the game out the door, of course! But pushing players away from such a key part of the game --like the magic system-- won't bring in new fans.

Version: Feb 22, 2013 Game Update 7