[New Default Graphics] - Pickup Kits feedback thread

[L[0ne]R]

I've made new graphics for all of the pickup kits (medkits, grenades, bonuses) which I hope will get included in the next version of Soldat along with the new weapon graphics. I need your opinions and feedback.

Here's a little preview:


What exactly changed:
- Resized all pickup kits' textures to 9x9, which, I believe, is the native size for *x480 resolution in which Soldat renders the map and all the objects on it. This should slightly improve kit rendering and reduce aliasing.
- Redrew each kit from scratch to make them a bit more clear (though they still appear jagged due to low resolution and lack of AA).

Make sure you do the following when using this mod:
- Make a backup of your Soldat folder so you can easily restore original graphics if you want.
- Go to Soldat -> Options, and in the left half of the screen look for a setting called "Bonuses: Frequency". Set it to 5 so you don't have to wait too long for bonus kits to spawn.
- Download the Test Range map as it contains spawns for all kits placed close to each other in an easily viewable area.


v0.1 - first prototype, all icons are 9x9 pixels.
v0.2 - higher resolution icons (16x16), made grenades and vest more vibrant, and completely new berserker kit .

[Bistoufly]

Great job!

[homerofgods]

I'm sorry but I think it looks ugly, it's as if the colors are washed off.
The only one I remotely liked was the flamer

and I think what I liked about it was that it is a square box but has a circle inside with flames in it. So you can only see the flaming icon inside this circle, if you know what I mean..
I think I also might like the 'woodeness' of the box

By the way there might be a problem.
You used 9x9 while the default is 16x16, but I don't see any difference ingame:

[duz]

F11

[L[0ne]R]

F11

I could use a bit more info than that.

[Adam]

should be graphical upgrades, not downgrades.

[Akinaro]

should be graphical upgrades, not downgrades.

+ dont change something that actually work... I have no idea why to change it in the firsts place...

[L[0ne]R]

Why do they need fixing, you ask. The answer is that the originals were made in higher resolution than the game actually renders them in, and lack of anti-aliasing makes it even harder to tell what's shown on the icon. I consider this as something that doesn't work correctly and I want to improve this.

Here's an example:



I'm using medkit here as an example to show how sloppily that texture was made, and how the game blurs and downscales it even further. It's almost unnoticeable in-game because the shape is so simple, I'm just using this example to show the game's effect on image quality. Now take a look at the vest icon. You can barely tell what's shown on it even on the full-sized version. Of course one on the right is not very descriptive either, but you can still kind of tell that it at least looks like a shield of some sort. Also blue color in games is often associated with shields or defense of some sort.

I do have higher-resolution versions (18x18), but as I've said, most of them don't look good in-game because of proper high-resolution support, so I'm saving them for when HD is supported.

.

My plan was to make textures the same size as they are actually rendered in Soldat so the game doesn't downscale them and completely butcher the details. I also want to make it easier for newcomers to understand and remember what some of the icons do based on clearer shapes and color, although until they at least fix anti-aliasing - small objects like these will still look like a pixely mess. I admit I didn't do a great job so far, but that's why I'm relying on your feedback and ideas on how to make it better. So far homerofgods was the only one who actually posted anything of value (I appreciate your support though, Bistoufly ).

I will keep improving them, but I need constructive feedback to make them better.

[Bistoufly]

Well it's actually because of the scaling issue discovery you made that I commented "Great Job"

I don't worry if the design you chose is aligned with my tastes or not. As I mod my own graphics anyway.
But at least now I will have a better base to start with thanks to you.

Also I appreciate the attention to detail and effort you put into this. It's people like you that are the most valuable to this community.
Keep up the great work man! 


btw: homerofgods is using 8x super sampling through his NVIDIA GPU driver.
That's the reason the improvement aren't obvious on his screenshots.

[Akinaro]

I never saw anyone complaining what every bonus box doing, and all your work... is more like searching for an excuse to make somethign after weapons.
 Dont get me wrong, your work with weapons is really good(and sad that we didnt get it in this version) but just dont try to make everyone happy by playing with something that work, and NO ONE said bad thing about it.


beside scaling it in photoshop/GIMP is one thing and watching this graphic in actual game is another thing.
You write about details. In real life scenario(in actual game)you dont give a damn about details.

In such small graphic like bonuses you see overall shape and/or colors, because in actual game i dont see any of those details you made:

Original health and west:


and your graphic:



do you see any details? no. you see white box with red cross and box with some colors, nothing more. So at the end only difference is color of the box...


So you see that its just useless to writing anything value if main idea and work on this bonuses is just unnecessary...

[L[0ne]R]

btw: homerofgods is using 8x super sampling through his NVIDIA GPU driver.
That's the reason the improvement aren't obvious on his screenshots.

Oh I gotta try that. I tried forcing anti-aliasing through NVidia but it didn't appear to work last time I remember. I won't be using these settings to test the mods of course.

.

Also I've discovered that I wasn't completely right about which resolution is better for the icons. As I've said, the way it works is higher-resolution texture is only given space of 9x9 pixels in-game. If texture is larger than 9x9 - you get multiple texture pixels fighting over the same in-game pixel. So if there is, for example, a white pixel and a black pixel beside each other in the texture - they'll both keep flickering in-game. This allows you to perceive more detail, but it also causes annoying flickering and jaggies. But if those multiple pixels are similar in color - the flickering isn't as noticeable but the increase in detail is still there. If any of that makes sense..

Anyway, I'm attaching 16x16 versions of the icons, and a brand new berserker icon which is more inspired by the vanilla one. I also made the colors on grenade and vest icons a bit more vibrant. Give it a try and let me know what you think. (Also changed version numbering to slightly less dumb).

.

...

Nobody was complaining about the sounds, weapons, interface, or a lot of the things in Soldat (heck, some people still believe 1.3 was the best version ever). That is primarily because many people who did complain either didn't know better, didn't care, or quit the game years ago. All who are left are old-timers who are long used to how things are, so of course they won't complain. I care, I know better, and I'm still here, and so I want to take a shot at improving something because there's always room for that. If you think my work sucks - that's fine. But don't tell me that I shouldn't try.

When I was talking about details - I didn't mean every pixel of detail, but just the clarity of the shape shown on the texture. Pretty much what you said - overall shape and/or color, because everything else is unnoticeable during gameplay. Look at the original vest icon on your screenshot, and tell me that there is some kind of shape or defining color. All I see is a blue splurge in the middle, with something brown around it. Someone new to the game will have no idea what it does.

beside scaling it in photoshop/GIMP is one thing and watching this graphic in actual game is another thing.

I can agree on that. This is something I noticed now, after further experimenting with resolution. I've attached higher-resolution icons this time.

[Akinaro]

Nobody was complaining about the sounds, weapons, interface

are you sure about that? no one? really?

Look at the original vest icon on your screenshot, and tell me that there is some kind of shape or defining color. All I see is a blue splurge in the middle, with something brown around it. Someone new to the game will have no idea what it does.

In your version I see bright square that doesnt fit to anything,with some gray spot in the middle. Like I said no matter what you gonna do now, at the end its gonna be just color change in actual game.

To be honest I dont see point of changing medkid and grenades that much, devs could play with some animations for bonuses, like really small flames that come from flamer bonus, and eg. haze/blur effect for predator... I know its more than changing few pixels but this would be real change for game if devs work on some hidden project for soldat :]


And no one said that it suck, its just unnecessary to work on this graphic for now. If overall graphic of soldat gonna be changed its gonna need some work, but for now its like putting new carpet in house during renovation...

[smiluu]

Soldat would look instantly better and sharper with manual anti-aliasing rather than automatic anti-aliasing.

edit: Also, you should avoid using .JPG while presenting small graphics like this.

[L[0ne]R]

Nobody was complaining about the sounds, weapons, interface

are you sure about that? no one? really?

No, Akinaro, not a single person ever-ever said that Soldat is ugly. How can that even be possible? /sarcasm
Of course someone occasionally mentions that Soldat needs better graphics and sound, and I'm sure somewhere some people still do. But nobody really says "I want this, just this part of Soldat to look better, but not that part". Especially in case of bonus kits, which are disabled on most servers so of course there's even fewer people who would care about those.

Bottom line is, just because nobody is complaining doesn't mean it can't be better. Like I said, nothing is perfect. Now whether I can make it better or not - is an entirely different question.

And no one said that it suck, its just unnecessary to work on this graphic for now. If overall graphic of soldat gonna be changed its gonna need some work, but for now its like putting new carpet in house during renovation...

And that's pretty much what I'm doing. To see what people like and don't like, so when the time really comes to truly "renovate" the graphics - I know in which direction I should be headed, and already have something to start with.

[Adam]

there are better modified kits in different mods, so i'd have to say F11 and just use the ones from different mods as default

[Bistoufly]

Don't worry L[0ne]R. Just ignore Akinaro.
He can't be reasoned with.

Even in his lossy jpeg screenshots, he proves your point. Simply zoom a bit on the medkit, and the issue of the red cross being smeared and not centered in vanilla is pretty obvious.

[Akinaro]

Simply zoom a bit on the medkit

facepalm.... really? do you read what you just write?


I dont give a fuck what do you thing about me, I didnt start this, I wrote that i like his work and you are such assholes to start fight without a reason.

I give you a straight point about it, my opinion about this subject. You can live without it, if you dont like it. I have no idea why you(Bistoufly) came here and just get more flames here just because I dont lick loner butt because he doing useless work...

You can ignore me, but you cant ignore that you work on something that doesnt need any work. and you doing this just because you started to modifying other work(weapons) and you are so self-confident that you can make something more here...



Mighty, probably those idiots gonna ban me when they stop licking their butts and start reading what other people think about something, so I think I would stop my work on your project because they just give me another reason why I should not doing anything related to soldat forum... sorry for that.

[Bistoufly]

Watch your tone Akinaro.

Simply zoom a bit on the medkit

facepalm.... really? do you read what you just write?

is it the zooming part bothering you?


if so, consider that zooming is just a mean to scale your screenshot to its in-game size.

[darDar]

Shut up Bistoufly.
You are honestly so annyoing to provocate that fight for no reason. Why would you even say something if he gave a detailed reply about his thoughts ?

You (and others) are fu*ki*g annoying. It is people like you who want me to quit that place forever with your biased kind.

On Topic:

Well, in fact the new kits are a bit sharper. I consider that as a good thing. I really don't care too much about the actual result of the visual quality of the new 'art' for Soldat but I'll just be glad if something will finally happen there, whatever it may be.

[Bistoufly]

Shut up Bistoufly.
You are honestly so annyoing to provocate that fight for no reason. Why would you even say something if he gave a detailed reply about his thoughts ?
You (and others) are fucking annoying. It is people like you who want me to quit that place forever with your biased kind.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯