My thoughts on the new style icons

[Data]

The definition and rendering of them is great, but, they are “over” defined, too sharp, too detailed, they look good outside of game but can be eye confusing looking at a mass of them in a chest or inventory, they seem too “shiny” when they don’t really need to be “that” shiny

 

Perhaps it’s the way the game reduces/shrinks them when mouse is not over them, it tries keeps the sharpness unnecessarily, which takes away the quality of them, and creates they eye confusion in trying to work out what’s what, they need in a way being simpler to see

 

I'm not saying make them totally dumbed down to be as basic as 80’s/90’ Nintendo style gfx,

 

But to just make them obvious to what they are supposed to be without over doing the detail due to the way they are shown in game or originally rendered

 

It looks like the “light source” that defines the icons was positioned to close and “over brights” the image/render

 

I've been re-making game icons, freely for another multiplayer game since 2009, a game which a lot of people haven’t heard of, called Freelancer, a space trading game, been doing this for years, but anyway…

 

My process is I think very similar to how 7 Days to Die icons are made

 

Mine are 3d rendered in a high resolution, at 256x256 72dpi, and then shrank down to 128x128, the game by design reshrinks them to 64x64 72dpi, and it does a bad job as the original coding can just destroy an image

 

So I need to make sure and balance that when it does that they look just as good or as a close match to my original design

 

I then test how they look in game and if they look over done as I call them I re-render changing things slightly so they don’t lose quality, I then go back and retest and repeat

 

The things I've learnt is when creating icons that look good in their original size, can get over complicated looking when reduced to in game coded size,

 

For example the creator/designer “knows” what they should look like and mentally “sees” them, but to some others that didn’t take part in the design, doesn’t, and can just see a mess of sharpened bright pixels

 

I’ll show an example of what I mean, hopefully it’s understood

 

My renders of remakes for in game commodities called “engine components” and “luxury consumer goods”

 

Followed underneath with 7 Days to Die in game over the top lighting and detailed icons

 

 

Notice on the smaller 64x64 images, the left ones are harsher using sharpness reduction, than the right ones that use smoothing reduction

 

Also, I don’t make too many rendered details, e.g. lots of wires and bits and pieces to make the image, because I know that when reduced to 64x64 it will be hard to see

 

I'm wondering that it’s down to how 7 Days to Die coding that shows the 160x160 icons in a way that creates the over detailed images, but it’s also down to the original design that affects that because of the over the top “shiny” parts of each image

 

Now don’t get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm better at doing this, it’s a constructive criticism, hopefully that the icon makers/creators/designers can see and understand

[SickPuppy]

I think they're too big, some nearly touching the edge of square. And some don't look right, the arrows looks more like a spear than an arrow, need to be smaller and see the feathers. And the parts icons aren't distinguishable from each other, military parts, steel parts, sledgehammer parts, etc.

 

I get what you're saying with the sharpness but generally most of em look good.

[pApA^LeGBa]

They sure are nice if you have a big monitor. Like 34" and more. On a 24" they are pretty annoying tbh. At least some of them.

[Sakurambo]

Damn you

now i had to dust off my copy of Freelancer

i spent hundreds of hours on that game, never found a space game that suck me in like that one

[Jeraal]

To me, they went overboard with things I don't really look at until it's time to craft something. Detailed weapons and tools, sure, they are on the toolbar to be seen constantly. High detail shiny clumps of lead, why?

[Data]

Damn you

now i had to dust off my copy of Freelancer

i spent hundreds of hours on that game, never found a space game that suck me in like that one

 

Unfortunately you won’t be able to see my 100’s of new icons in the original release of freelancer, I make them for a mod called Discovery, I haven’t released them yet, not until I've remade them all

 

But going back to what legba said, they are nice if you have a big monitor, which also makes me think that the ingame coding changes how 7 Days to Die icons are shown in game to different people

 

Could it be that the renders/icons are made but changes to peoples screen resolutions, and not a definite method?

[Xtrakicking]

I must say I like them. I thought I would hate them, but I actually like them. If I were to nitpick, I'd have to agree with the statement about the arrows and the weapons/armor parts.

[guardianangelmp]

I honestly liked the icons from a17.4 better because they weren't so overly shiney and the icons didn't look like a picture that was taken with a fish lense.

 

I agree that it seems they tried to put too much detail and shine in the icons, but also some of the icons seem like they are trying to get too much 3d perspective out of it.....it looks unnatural.