Non-spell icons

[Pazyryk]

I'm just opening this thread for now since someone PMed me about action icons.

I'll come back and make a detailed outline of all icon types we need. Everyone who's played knows that most new stuff in the mod (techs, policies, promotions, etc.) uses recycled icons.

 

[Civitar]

Hi Paz! Here are the first icons:
First we have the Mage's Tower improvement and unit action (I just cut out the middle tower of the French Chateau and made icons from it):

Now an actual new icon, the Lead Charge unit action (I moved the Warrior's limbs and body around to make him look like he's charging):

Don't make an atlas out of these, I'll assemble an atlas in all the sizes when all of the icons are finished. Also I should mention that any "painted icons" such as units, buildings, or techs are out of the question for now - I just cannot make a decent one of those icons.

 

[Pazyryk]

Looks great!

I may be having a brain fart, but these need to be square don't they? Both Actions and Builds are inset into a frame that is a round-cornered square. Or really, I think they aren't any shape at all ... but instead go to full transparency outside the specific shape. (I can't look now, but that's my memory of action icons.)

I've been organizing all my icon (and font icon) atlases so that each has a "master file" at size 256. Then I have a system worked out to quickly generate whatever sizes are needed from that. I'm happy if you do that work for me, but I want to make sure I get the 256 file at some point.

 

[bouncymischa]

Looks great!

I may be having a brain fart, but these need to be square don't they? Both Actions and Builds are inset into a frame that is a round-cornered square. Or really, I think they aren't any shape at all ... but instead go to full transparency outside the specific shape. (I can't look now, but that's my memory of action icons.)

I've been organizing all my icon (and font icon) atlases so that each has a "master file" at size 256. Then I have a system worked out to quickly generate whatever sizes are needed from that. I'm happy if you do that work for me, but I want to make sure I get the 256 file at some point.

I think the circular icon gets used in the Civilopedia and for UI images and such, while most of the action icons and on the map (like when the AI recommends you build a certain improvement) use an 'alpha'-like icon where it's just the icon on a transparent background. I remember messing around with the positioning of my Laboratory graphic in the atlas so it appeared best in the action icon...

 

[Civitar]

Yeah, the round-cornered square is inserted by the game... I can make a 256 atlas in png or dds with no trouble once all the icons are done.

 

[Civitar]

Here's another icon, for the Great Bombarde. I stole the barrel from a civil war icon.

I wanted to do this because I love Great Bombardes... and seeing them look the same as Bombards was saddening.
Pazyryk, if I manage to figure out how to make decent-looking original icons for units, how would you feel about race icons? So elf warriors have a different icon from human warriors?

 

[Doopliss]

Taking a try at a couple of techs (Reanimation and Tracking), basically Magic: the Gathering cards with the textures muted and slightly more vibrant colours. Not sure how much of a problem that is - I know FfH got away with it on a few occasions, but I don't know how much that counts for in the world of copyright law. I don't really know any public domain places to find source images, I'm afraid.

 

[Doopliss]

I made Adept/Disciple specialists and a pile of flag icons for units old, new and yet unmade. Help yourself to any you like - they don't exactly have a unified style, unfortunately.

Appropriate units:

Spoiler :

Row 1: Heaven's Guard, Angel, Archangel, Apocalypse Horseman, Cataphracts, Dragon
Row 2: Abyssal Creatures, Type 1 Demon, Type 2 Demon, Archdemon, Assorted Drakes, Giant Spider
Row 3: Great Bombard, Griffons, Hobgoblins, Kraken, Leviathan, Major Spirit
Row 4: Ogres, Assorted Scorpions, Skeletons, Slaves, Storm Giant, Tree-Ent
Row 5: Vampires, Werewolves, Alpha Werewolf, Wolves, Zombies

Also, some suggestions for existing art assets:

Spoiler :

Marksmen: English Longbowman
Equites: Companion Cavalry
Bowed Cavalry: Hun Horse Archer
War Elephants: Indian War Elephant
Trackers/Rangers: Shoshone Pathfinder/Iroquoian Mohawk Warrior
Clibanarii (or, y'know, Cataphracts): Byzantine Cataphract
Fallen Priest: Kris Swordsman flag rather than Great Prophet flag?

 

[Civitar]

I assembled a list of Éa units matched to base game icons:

Spoiler :

• Warriors - Warrior
• Light Infantry - Spearman
• Medium Infantry - Swordsman
• Heavy Infantry - Legion
• Immortals - Longswordsman
• Archers - Archer
• Bowmen - Babylonian Bowman (or Composite Bowman if you want to stick to G&K/BNW icons)
• Marksmen - Longbowman
• Crossbowmen - Crossbowman
• Arquebusiers - Musketman
• Chariots - Hittite War Chariot
• Horsemen - Horseman
• Equites - Companion Cavalry
• Armored Cavalry - Knight
• Cataphracts - Cataphract
• Clibanarii - Lancer (about time this icon was seen as a good thing)
• Chariot Archers - Chariot Archer
• Horse Archers - Horse Archer
• Bowed Cavalry - an icon that comes with the base game that I can't for the life of me figure out what unit it is (it's an archer riding the Companion Cavalry's horse, basically)
• Sagitarii - Keshik
• Catapults/Fire Catapults - Catapult
• Ballistae - Ballista
• Trebuchets/Fire Trebuchets - Trebuchet
• Cannons - Cannon
• Great Bombarde - the icon I provided in a previous post
• Scouts - Mohawk Warrior
• Trackers - Pathfinder
• Rangers - Scout
• Mounted Elephants - Naresuan's Elephant
• War Elephants - African Forest Elephant
• Mûmakil - icon needed!
• Biremes - icon needed! (some of Janboruta's look promising)
• Triremes - Trireme
• Quinqueremes - Quinquereme
• Caravels - Caravel
• Dromons - Dromon
• Carracks - Sea Beggar
• Galleons - Frigate (or maybe the Pirate Ship from the SpainInca DLC, but that looks like it's sinking)
• Ironclads - Ironclad

For the most part this list should also be good for the unit's graphics, but that, as we know, is a bit trickier.
Wodhann and Janboruta both have a good variety of unit icons you could check out, both in their mods and in their workshops.
I have a couple of unit flags/strategic view icons for the animals, namely: wolf, using the wolf flag from Faerun; warg, using a civ icon by Wodhann (Krazjen's Witcher civ); and lion, using the icon for Stormwind from World of Warcraft. If you want to see them I can post them here.
I do like a lot of the flags Doopliss posted though. Are you all right with me using them for Warhammer Doopliss?
Finally, Paz, look in the Graphics Modpacks subforum - Kwadjh made a bunch of good icons in there, most of which I am using for WHFB, and many of which are good for some of your buildings and GP, maybe some units even. And they are good for techs too. My avatar is an example of one of his icons.

 

[Doopliss]

Absolutely, help yourself. Let me know if any of them look weird in-game.

 

[Pazyryk]

Thanks! These all look great. I can use them easily if you either:

1. Upload a master 256 icon size atlas
2. #1 plus already reduced ready-to-use dds files

@Civitar, thanks for organizing those. It's just what I needed and don't seem to have time for.

If anyone wants to help actually entering these in tables (not just Civtar but anyone), the current table (most recent development build) can always be found at the GitHub repository. The unit icons would be found in Ea/CoreTables/Units.sql. The sql files could be opened and modified in any text editor. However, the tabbing for aligning columns was done in ModBuddy, so anywhere else might be a challenge to get columns lined up in a way that is readable.

As usual, I can do all of this myself (except make units) but all help is very much appreciated and speeds mod development a great deal.

 

[Doopliss]

I'll have basically no computer access for 4 days or so, but I'll make them a bit more digestible then. Somehow I got it into my head that unit flags were only 32x32, so I don't actually have larger versions.

Also, does "These all" include the techs? I stumbled on the credits thread/art permission guide after making them and figured they wouldn't be permissible.

 

[Civitar]

@Doopliss: Unit flags are only 32x32 as an atlas, but you also need individual 128x128 files (with mipmaps! very important) for every one to go in the strategic view. But I can do those from the flags you provided.

 

[Pazyryk]

I assembled a list of Éa units matched to base game icons:

Spoiler :

• Warriors - Warrior
• Light Infantry - Spearman
• Medium Infantry - Swordsman
• Heavy Infantry - Legion
• Immortals - Longswordsman
• Archers - Archer
• Bowmen - Babylonian Bowman (or Composite Bowman if you want to stick to G&K/BNW icons)
• Marksmen - Longbowman
• Crossbowmen - Crossbowman
• Arquebusiers - Musketman
• Chariots - Hittite War Chariot
• Horsemen - Horseman
• Equites - Companion Cavalry
• Armored Cavalry - Knight
• Cataphracts - Cataphract
• Clibanarii - Lancer (about time this icon was seen as a good thing)
• Chariot Archers - Chariot Archer
• Horse Archers - Horse Archer
• Bowed Cavalry - an icon that comes with the base game that I can't for the life of me figure out what unit it is (it's an archer riding the Companion Cavalry's horse, basically)
• Sagitarii - Keshik
• Catapults/Fire Catapults - Catapult
• Ballistae - Ballista
• Trebuchets/Fire Trebuchets - Trebuchet
• Cannons - Cannon
• Great Bombarde - the icon I provided in a previous post
• Scouts - Mohawk Warrior
• Trackers - Pathfinder
• Rangers - Scout
• Mounted Elephants - Naresuan's Elephant
• War Elephants - African Forest Elephant
• Mûmakil - icon needed!
• Biremes - icon needed! (some of Janboruta's look promising)
• Triremes - Trireme
• Quinqueremes - Quinquereme
• Caravels - Caravel
• Dromons - Dromon
• Carracks - Sea Beggar
• Galleons - Frigate (or maybe the Pirate Ship from the SpainInca DLC, but that looks like it's sinking)
• Ironclads - Ironclad

Working through this list right now. Can someone please tell me the IconAtlas, PortraitIndex, UnitFlagAtlas, and UnitFlagIconOffset for the two units Sea Beggar and Hittite War Chariot? It's likely the icons are present in an a common atlas, but I don't have the DLC table data to look these up.

 

[Civitar]

Sea Beggar is Gods & Kings, it's not particularly recognizable though. The IconAtlas is EXPANSION_UNIT_ATLAS_1, PortraitIndex is 12, UnitFlagAtlas is EXPANSION_UNIT_FLAG_ATLAS and UnitFlagIconOffset is 12.
You'll have the same trouble with the HWC icon as with anything else pertaining to it I think.

 

[Doopliss]

Alright, having once again completely failed to grasp the basics of Civ modding I'm going to need some step-by-step help on the unit flags, because I won't be able to run tests myself. Is all this right?
-Create individual 128x128 images for the unit flags, using white for most of it and grayscale for shaded bits (just white/transparency?).
-Grab the 256x256 atlas from Spell Icons and shrink it to 25%, pasting the icons in as appropriate.
-Use the shrunk circles more-or-less as frames and shrink the unit flags further so they aren't massively bigger than the surrounding icon? Those viewing ports are tiny at 32x32.
-Hide the white viewing circles (keep them and have white-on-white icons?)
-Boot them up in GIMP so I can follow the tutorial flags more closely on what exact settings are required for the DDS save.

Sorry for the inconvenience - you can probably see why I've just been dumping unformated PSDs in the past.

 

[Civitar]

@Doopliss: This is how I do it, from observing base game flags and mods like Faerun and Anno Domini.

• SV Icon (used in the unit's art defines, so being a unit maker I tend to give it a bit too much importance, but for the sleekness of the mod you should include it): Create a 128x128 image with the flag in the middle. Two layers, both with the same icon, but the lower one (for shading) should be slightly offset down and left (about 3 pixels IIRC - try 5 if 3 looks to thin). Then the upper icon should be pure red and the lower layer pure green. Ensure that except for the icons both layers are fully transparent! Then merge down and export to BC2/DXT3 .dds with mipmaps. Each icon gets a separate file named sv_unitname.
• Unit Flag: This is just an ordinary icon atlas, so each icon is 32x32 and pure white, with transparency all around!

If you don't actually know what I'm talking about with icon atlas and BC2/DXT3, I can do this with no problem. In fact, it may just be best if I do it, then you try and match my results. You OK with that?

 

[Doopliss]

Yeah, that would probably be best, thanks. Or you can just post the PSD files and I'll try to emulate it next time.

 

[Civitar]

I'll need bigger images of those unitflags to start from, however. They'd look horrendous at 128x128, though they look fine at the current size...
EDIT: Probably better if you emailed them to me at civtar@alpenwolf.com.

 

[Doopliss]

Everything's remade in 128x128, but I couldn't get through to your e-mail address (civtar or civitar). Seems I haven't had the best results with technology lately.

I'll leave the rest in your capable hands.