Issues with item icons

[Andrea C.]

Apologies as I haven't read through the whole thread, so someone else might have pointed these out already.

It is worth noting two things: the first is that when Erephine signed off 1PP to Beamdog very early in the development of the Enhanced Editions, Beamdog implemented it wholesale rather than look at individual components. This means all icons Erephine touched up were implemented even though Beamdog's initial plan was to match the aesthetics of the originals (I remember Cameron Tofer saying this explicitly in Beamdog's private beta forum ahead of BG:EE's release.) Whether restoring the original graphics from BG1 is something for EEFP is of course debatable. It may look like a feature more so than a bug fix. I do however believe there are grounds for its inclusion in EEFP if we take Beamdog's original intent to match the aesthetics of the originals at heart (the main reason 1PP was wanted in the first place, and I believe this was mentioned by Trent Oster, were the paperdolls because those from the original BG2 looked terrible.)

The second thing relates to icons from SoD and perhaps a few from the rest of the Enhanced Editions. Some are either too big (the elemental ring thing from SoD) or too small (Bealoth's unique ring.) This is something I believe is definitely worth correcting in EEFP (I reported the bug to Beamdog too.)

Edited April 20, 2022 by Andrea C.

[Lava]

Not sure if that's exactly what you needed @Sam., but here it is.

robes.zip

[Sam.]

On 4/20/2022 at 4:47 AM, Andrea C. said:

Whether restoring the original graphics from BG1 is something for EEFP is of course debatable. It may look like a feature more so than a bug fix.

That isn't necessarily the plan for EEFP, but it'll probably be an option in a mod.  After some internal debate, I figured to hell with trying to draw fuzzy lines between what did and didn't count as an issue and just do them all, going in chronological order with the game's releases as later games often included large portions of the item icon BAMs from the previous games verbatim.  I guarantee no timeline on completion.  I've been slowed down by a particularly couple of weeks IRL.

 

On 4/20/2022 at 4:47 AM, Andrea C. said:

The second thing relates to icons from SoD and perhaps a few from the rest of the Enhanced Editions. Some are either too big (the elemental ring thing from SoD) or too small (Bealoth's unique ring.) This is something I believe is definitely worth correcting in EEFP (I reported the bug to Beamdog too.)

I'm keeping this in mind, but haven't gotten that far yet.  Do you have an exhaustive list?

 

On 4/20/2022 at 7:57 AM, Lava said:

Not sure if that's exactly what you needed @Sam., but here it is.

These are fantastic and exactly what I was hoping for, thank you!  I'm also struggling with removing the shadow form IMISC59 (TotSC) if you're willing to continue helping?

[Lava]

@Sam.

The problem with that icon is that... I don't know where the "rubbish ends" and where "shadow begins". That's what I've got, but I'm not entirely happy....

Edited May 1, 2022 by Lava

[Sam.]

10 hours ago, Lava said:

@Sam.

The problem with that icon is that... I don't know where the "rubbish ends" and where "shadow begins". That's what I've got, but I'm not entirely happy....

Thanks, but that looks like the small icon, which supposedly didn't have a shadow to begin with.  What I was trying to ask for was the shadow removed from the large icon so that it matches (comparatively speaking) the small icon.  I played around with it myself again today until I had something I'm happy with.  I'll keep plodding along, but I'm sure there will be more that give me trouble.

 

IMISC70 is an interesting case.  It's the only item icon I've processed so far where the small icon distinctively and undeniably has a shadow.  Keep it or remove it?  I'm inclined to call it an oversight and remove it, but decided to poll the audience.

[Lava]

2 minutes ago, Sam. said:

Thanks, but that looks like the small icon, which supposedly didn't have a shadow to begin with.  What I was trying to ask for was the shadow removed from the large icon so that it matches (comparatively speaking) the small icon.  I played around with it myself again today until I had something I'm happy with.  I'll keep plodding along, but I'm sure there will be more that give me trouble.

But that is the "large icon" - it has 31x29 px and I didn't see any greater version of that icon. Not in EE, at least, and I don't have the old TotSC anymore.

[Sam.]

3 hours ago, Lava said:

3 hours ago, Sam. said:

Thanks, but that looks like the small icon, which supposedly didn't have a shadow to begin with.  What I was trying to ask for was the shadow removed from the large icon so that it matches (comparatively speaking) the small icon.  I played around with it myself again today until I had something I'm happy with.  I'll keep plodding along, but I'm sure there will be more that give me trouble.

But that is the "large icon" - it has 31x29 px and I didn't see any greater version of that icon. Not in EE, at least, and I don't have the old TotSC anymore.

You must have a different version of the game than I analyzed.  For future reference, you can just snatch them from here instead of extracting them yourself if that's easier.

[Lava]

Here's the metal thing #2, but again, not super happy with it.

[Sam.]

Here's another one:  ISHLD17.  The icon is corrupt in the classic games (large icon only has right half, small icon only has bottom left quarter), but in the EEs it suffers from significant posterization.  Anyone care to clean it up?
 

 

[argent77]

6 hours ago, Sam. said:

Here's another one:  ISHLD17.  The icon is corrupt in the classic games (large icon only has right half, small icon only has bottom left quarter), but in the EEs it suffers from significant posterization.  Anyone care to clean it up?

That one has already been restored by the 1pp mod (ishld17.bam).

[Andrea C.]

On 5/1/2022 at 12:42 AM, Sam. said:

I'm keeping this in mind, but haven't gotten that far yet.  Do you have an exhaustive list?

Apologies for the delay.

I originally reported this to Beamdog here.

A brute-force icon dump from the classics into the EE override seems to fix the issue for the majority of the item icons, although it is admittedly a very inelegant solution (though not quite as inelegant as having icons vary wildly in their relative size for no apparent reason.)

You once wrote a script that would fill the in-game inventory with all items for the purpose of testing icons in the Enhanced Editions. Using it should make it immediately apparent which icons are unduly big or small; I unfortunately do not have a full list handy

[lefreut]

I don't know if it's the right place to post this, but the BG2EE Conjure Lesser Fire Elemental scroll icon (scrl6x) colors seems off compared to the same icon in BGEE/SoD or to the other Conjure scrolls.

[Sam.]

On 5/3/2022 at 3:35 AM, argent77 said:

That one has already been restored by the 1pp mod (ishld17.bam).

Thanks!  I hadn't considered 1pp being an intermediate source between the originals and the corrupted EEs, but I should have.  I'll factor this into my process.

 

On 5/16/2022 at 1:36 PM, lefreut said:

I don't know if it's the right place to post this, but the BG2EE Conjure Lesser Fire Elemental scroll icon (scrl6x) colors seems off compared to the same icon in BGEE/SoD or to the other Conjure scrolls.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the best place for it.  I'll keep it it mind.

 

I've finished processing the BAMs from oBG1 (TotSC).  Attached is a thrown together test mod that lets you compare the various options.  The first component has three options:  1) the EEs use the large icon with no shadow for the "small icon", 2) the EEs use the original small icon for the "small icon", 3) the EEs use the original small icon resized at 200% for the "small icon".  Of these, I personally prefer #2.  If anyone wants to see #3 at some other scaling factor (like 150%), that can be easily done.  The second component creates items using the aforementioned icons, and adds them to a custom bag of holding.  CLUA in the item "psitmbag" to easily test them in-game.  Whatever the community consensus is based on these is how I'll proceed going forward.  The shadow offsets I have used for these BAMs are the most frequently used offsets and size I computed for the oBG1 item icons.  I can provide more details upon request.

TestNewItemIcons.rar

Edit:  If you find anything I've ducked up, please let me know!

Edited May 19, 2022 by Sam.

[Andrea C.]

How about using AI scaling for the icons, rather than just resizing them? The latter is bound to make them overly pixelated but AI scaling should make them look spiffy.

The only problem is that when I last looked into it, I could not find a way to feed the icons to a scaler in batch. It had to be done one by one, which would have been vexing.

@Leiluwhat did you use to upscale game areas? Does it allow for batch processing of multiple items at the same time?

[Sam.]

6 hours ago, Andrea C. said:

How about using AI scaling for the icons, rather than just resizing them? The latter is bound to make them overly pixelated but AI scaling should make them look spiffy.

The only problem is that when I last looked into it, I could not find a way to feed the icons to a scaler in batch. It had to be done one by one, which would have been vexing.

@Leiluwhat did you use to upscale game areas? Does it allow for batch processing of multiple items at the same time?

Handling anti-aliasing with the background color may be non-trivial.  How does the AI scaler handle transparency?