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On portraits

SacredNymSacredNym Member Posts: 13
in The Road to v2.0
So one change I've found that seems to have flown under the radar of most people is how custom portraits are handled. It used to be that the scroller showed only the default portraits while the custom button showed two lists so we could pick a separate small portrait for the party list, and large portrait for the character sheet.

In the 2.0 beta, all the portraits are in the scroller, making it a pain in the ass to scroll past the great volumes of custom portraits I have installed (and really, who doesn't? I don't want my character stealing the appearance of someone else in the game), and we now can't pick a separate small portrait, which is a pain in the ass since a lot of portraits (IWD's a re a great example) are designed to be full body shots on the character sheet, with a close up on the party list. Now we have to chose between the full body shot in both places, where in the party list you're just going to look like a stick honestly, or the close up, which is going to be blurry and/or pixelated as all hell on the character sheet. There's no right answer.

Can we please have the handling of custom portraits reverted. This change is terrible. I can find silver lining and reasoning behind every single other UI change in 2.0, but this is bordering on punishing players for using custom portraits and I can't understand why you want to do that.
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Comments

  • MessiMessi Member Posts: 738
    I like it, but I understand it could be a pain if you got tons of custom pics. You could just create a new folder for them though and put the pics you aren't currently using there.
  • FlashburnFlashburn Member Posts: 1,847
    Hasn't flown under the radar to me. In the beta, all it seems to do is resize the Large version of a custom portrait to be used in the record screen and right side-bar. I made a feature request to be able to independently select which portraits you can use for the Large, Medium, and Small sizes for your character.

    I know that this change messes up a lot of my custom portraits, and its another unnecessary change from v1.3 which handled custom portraits far better. Its a running theme that v1.3 handled a lot of things better...
  • BillyYankBillyYank Member Posts: 2,768
    That doesn't sound good. I really didn't like the custom portrait chooser, scrolling through my huge lists of portraits was a pain, especially for the small portrait. Could someone post a screenshot of what it looks like now?

    I would really hate to lose separate large and small portraits, I almost always use full or half body poses for the large pic and full face or bust for the small one. When I use photographs, I'll usually use completely different pictures for the small and large portraits.

    I hate to say it, but this is probably the one place where breaking immersion is justified. The most efficient way to pick a portrait is the OS's standard file open dialog. You can view the files as large icons, filter them by name, etc.
  • KamigoroshiKamigoroshi Member Posts: 5,870
    BillyYank said:

    Could someone post a screenshot of what it looks like now?

    image
    When clicking on the "custom" button.
    image
  • FlashburnFlashburn Member Posts: 1,847
    BillyYank said:

    You have to click through them one-by-one? Oh, that's not good.

    This is my BG1 portrait folder, notice the number of items, that's over 800 individual portraits

    Yes... It will only display the Large and Small versions of custom portraits now, so you'll have to click the arrow twice to move on to another portrait since it upscales the small one to use as the Large version, which makes it look like garbage. :unamused:

    Here's some examples. You will move to the very end of your custom portraits folder (so going from Z->A instead of A->Z) by clicking the left arrow when the portrait menu comes up.
    [spoiler=Click to the left for the Small version, and...]image [/spoiler]

    [spoiler=Click left again for the proper Large version]image [/spoiler]

    And here's how it will look in-game if you select the Large version. It simply downscales it to fit into the record screen and right side-bar. But I wanted to use the properly-sized Small version!
    [spoiler=somebody at Beamdog thought this was a good idea, yes, lets screw over people that like using custom portraits]image [/spoiler]

    I should revise my previous summary of the beta. One step forward, four steps back.
  • FlashburnFlashburn Member Posts: 1,847
    I should probably use a better example. All my dwarf portraits are handsome no matter what. :wink:

    [spoiler=small character creation portrait]image [/spoiler]

    [spoiler=large character creation portrait]image [/spoiler]

    [spoiler=record screen and right sidebar]image [/spoiler]
  • KilivitzKilivitz Member Posts: 1,459
    What they're really doing is punishing people who like to use full-body shots as portraits. GO BACK TO IWD YOU HEATHENS

    I'm kidding, okay?

    To be perfectly honest, if we're opening the door to major UI revisions, I'd take a shot at the portrait selection screen. Cycling through them is fine and all, but something like the NWN screen would be much better.

    The problem is, anything other than the previous "big boring filename list" method is impractical for selecting different large and small portraits at once.
  • SilverstarSilverstar Member Posts: 2,207
    edited March 2016
    Me no like. I prefer the possibility of separate small/large portrait that we've always had.

    Come to think of it, have they finally fixed the blurryness caused by the auto-resizing feature 1.3 added, which didn't really remove the necessity of separate files anyway?

    EDIT: I have found a way around this issue. Characters saved and/or created before 2.0 retain their separate portrait selections. But having 2 installations of the game merely for such a thing is silly. And eventually you might lose the pre-2.0 install for whatever reason and then that's that. I guess EEKeeper will still allow us to mess with the portraits too when it updates, but really, should we have to resort to these things?
  • AdulAdul Member Posts: 2,002
    My first two feature requests on Redmine after I first downloaded the beta was to 1) let us have the list back and 2) let us pick separate large/small portraits. Not a fan of this change.
  • XKalXKal Member Posts: 58
    edited March 2016
    Yeah, not a fan of this change either. Aside from everything else, you've now left a big "Custom" button on-screen which has no purpose except to pop up a dialogue box.

    (Also, on a total tangent, if you're going to leave the red selector in (even though it meshes very poorly with the rest of the UI elements), please extend it further to the left, so it doesn't align so closely with the first letter of text in that row (as seen in the char creation abilities screen and the last image from @Flashburn ))
  • DanathionDanathion Member Posts: 173
    I just tried the beta today, went to make a character and couldn't select a small portrait! it saddened me...had to make a different character.
  • PeccaPecca Member Posts: 2,215
    Small portraits can still be assigned via modding tools. I agree this is a huge step back.
  • BillyYankBillyYank Member Posts: 2,768
    Has any of the beta testers added this to Redmine?
  • PeccaPecca Member Posts: 2,215
    BillyYank said:

    Has any of the beta testers added this to Redmine?

    Yes. http://redmine.beamdog.com/issues/20446
  • BillyYankBillyYank Member Posts: 2,768
    I also added a request to make a more graphical and searchable portrait selector:

    http://redmine.beamdog.com/issues/21643
  • BillyYankBillyYank Member Posts: 2,768
    edited March 2016
    That's not that far off from what I proposed in my feature request. I hadn't thought of using the HLA screen, but that makes a lot of sense.

    For your #3, I rather see it look for smaller portraits based on the large portrait's name as a default instead of scaling the large portrait. I'd still like the button to choose a different small portrait.
    Edit: But instead of taking us to the old screen, just change the filter on your modified HLA screen to show the small size portraits and change the title at the top to "Smaller portrait".
  • SacredNymSacredNym Member Posts: 13
    subtledoctor said:

    Oh my god, NOOOOOOO!! What are you people talking about? The old separate menus for custom portraits were AWFUL.

    It's not good, true, but having to click through portraits one by one, no matter how many there actually are, is far worse. It's bad for the default portraits and forcing any number of custom portraits to use it makes it far worse. And this is Baldur's Gate where by and large players are only going to do this for one character. I shudder to think how terrible it will be when this inevitably gets applied to Icewind Dale.
    subtledoctor said:


    1) Re-purpose the HLA screen for portraits. 25 shown at a time, with a scroll bar so you can easily go through a hundred or more without breaking a sweat. Click the tiny thumbnail on the left, and full-size version appears on the right (wher the HAL description normally goes). That would be better, no? Okay, here's another idea:

    2) Only show portraits with filenames designating them as 'large' in this menu. Simple apply some logic and hide anything else. Seriously. Why? Well, here's the third idea:

    Combining these two ideas would be the best situation. Neverwinter Nights is the only of these games that got portrait selection screens right and that's basically what this combination of suggestions becomes.
  • ThelsThels Member Posts: 1,422
    edited March 2016
    Could easily do a mix of both. Have the custom portraits be included in the main window, so you can flip through them along with the default portraits, which is convenient for new players that simply added 1 or 2 portraits, and then also have a button to pick custom portraits the old fashioned way.

    Though it should ignore all portraits ending on M or S, if there is a portrait of the same name ending on L. Then, if you pick a portrait ending on L, and there are portraits of the same name ending on M or S, it should automatically use these for the smaller pictures. If there are no portraits of the same name ending on M or S, or if the chosen portrait doesn't end on L, it should simply downscale the chosen portrait.
  • mashedtatersmashedtaters Member Posts: 2,266
    edited March 2016
    I don't like the inability to use separate small and large portraits, for sure. But i like how the new portrait is so much larger on the character screen, that always bugged me big time, coming from playing IWD2. I could never figure out why we even had "large" portraits if they were never seen during gameplay, only during selection! Edit: I guess I was wrong, we are still using the freaking medium portraits. It was an optical delusion. (Hate!)

    I think @subtledoctor may be on to something. I like his idea. It seems to be in line with what the devs were trying to accomplish while at the same time still allowing us to choose 2 separate portraits.

    @BillyYank @SacredNym I promise I don't mean anything offensive by this, I'm just curious: why do you need so many unused portraits in your portraits folder? I prefer to choose which ones I'm going to use outside of the game and then cycle them in and out. I have them all organized by race, gender, hair color, and potential class.
  • mashedtatersmashedtaters Member Posts: 2,266
    Off topic: does anyone know of a good mod that makes it possible to view the large version portraits (not medium) on the character screen?
  • FlashburnFlashburn Member Posts: 1,847
    edited March 2016
    http://support.baldursgate.com/issues/20992#change-122319

    "Large is now used for the character sheet, and medium for the sidebar. Small is unused."

    Filed as Not an Issue

    EDIT: ok I guess it wasnt the image, it was just the forum software wigging out

    Post edited by Flashburn on
  • FrecheFreche Member Posts: 473
    Still having to click past each and every image is not a great approach for those with a lot of custom portraits.
    The good thing about how it worked was you could open up the portait folder, see many portraits at the same time decide on one, go back in game and scroll down to the filename you wanted. It was really easy.
  • BillyYankBillyYank Member Posts: 2,768
    mashedtaters said:
     @BillyYank @SacredNym I promise I don't mean anything offensive by this, I'm just curious: why do you need so many unused portraits in your portraits folder? I prefer to choose which ones I'm going to use outside of the game and then cycle them in and out. I have them all organized by race, gender, hair color, and potential class.
    I've actually been thinking of doing something like this for a while. I just started in on my IWD portraits directory and I came across a problem with this approach. The portraits for a current game aren't added to the save files, they're always read from the portraits folder. So if you keep a lot save games, you're still going to need to keep a lot of portraits. Especially on IWD where you often have 6 portraits per game.
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