Icons.

Post by **Dave** » December 3rd, 2003, 5:58 pm

methinks wrote:I'm almost certain that in Windows it is sufficient to inlude an icon named NAME.ico to have NAME.exe "wearing" the icon NAME.ico
You can make NAME.ico hidden so there wouldn't be two icons of the same appearance. I'm not sure but probably in Windows you can attach icon to binary file, in sense include it in it.

Okay, and what format does .ico use? How does one create a .ico file from a png?

David

Post by **ettin** » December 3rd, 2003, 6:26 pm

Okay, and what format does .ico use? How does one create a .ico file from a png?

With xpm2wico (first export from PNG to XPM with The Gimp) or png2ico.

azlan · Post by **azlan** » December 10th, 2003, 9:27 am

I have made some chages to the icons.. Should look better when porting to "ico" and whatever mac uses...

Look at em here...

Sithrandel · Post by **Sithrandel** » December 16th, 2003, 11:18 am

OK... hand up... I admit it... my fault for being too busy at work

... and I do feel annoyed with myself for not keeping track, anyway...

I hadn't realised that the Icon discussions had reached the point where the icon was going to be hard-coded into the program.

This raises a number of issues, some mainly for me, others more general:

1. On the Mac is is not done to set the icon programmatically unless for UI purposes, e.g. Photoshop displays a progress bar at the bottom of the Photoshop icon in the doc so I can see how it is doing loading that 360Mb image without having to switch to it. Whilst useful in illustrating the progress to someone who has been a bit busy, I'm not sure that it should be general behaviour. One of the things I have done on the Mac is ensure as Mac-like behaviour of bundles, frameworks, data, icons, etc to make the program seem as professional as possible.

2. If this is indeed the icon which has to be used, is there any chance of a 128x128 with alpha?

3. Also is there anyway of updating it to make it look a little more modern? e.g. less flat / square? The Mac made a push (for good or ill) for more 3D looking icons about c.10 years ago. Whilst snatching the Konrad / Li'Sar / Del icons from the speech dialogs wasn't the snazziest of icon it did provide something big enough and with a less flat look to it.

I have updated versiontracker for now and might do a quick fix to make the icon more consistent this time before doing a proper update for the next version.

azlan · Post by **azlan** » December 17th, 2003, 9:12 am

I can give you 500x500 icons if you like..

Sithrandel · Post by **Sithrandel** » December 17th, 2003, 9:33 am

500 x 500 with alpha would be nice.

What would be excellent, however, would be a more 3-D look to them. e.g. wavy scroll or book with pages turning. Main thing is more 'realistic' and not square. My concern is trying to fit it in with the Mac look and make it feel modern and dynamic (which it is!!!).

First, the icons I've been using:

now an example of typical mac icons:

As you can see the present icon does not really fit in well, so would look less polished. Given the huge amount of effort which has been put into the game I don't want to reduce opinions before they've opened it. Of course, different platforms can have different versions of the icon though there should definitely be a core look-and-feel to it. The icon should fit in more with the platform (like the menus and window in windowed mode).

BTW my problem from yesterday was the chameleon where the icon changed when run which would lead to confusion. I am a strong believer in UI and always remember the epiphany when I finally understood with Chris Crawford's words in the manual of Eastern Front '41 on the Atari 800 [now, is anyone old enough to pic up on that one]. So sorry if the previous post was a little sharp, which it does look now

azlan · Post by **azlan** » December 17th, 2003, 10:01 am

I'm thinking of making the icons alittle nicer...
But.. I dont have so much time until after Xmas... Lots ot test in school and stuff...

But later on i thought of making some icons(for test) in a 3D program(like Blender, i like Max better but since i dont run windows its alittle hard..

)...

Lysander · Post by **Lysander** » December 17th, 2003, 10:18 am

You want the Wesnoth icons to look as three dimensional as the iCab icon? I'm sure it's no problem!

Sithrandel · Post by **Sithrandel** » December 17th, 2003, 10:25 am

[re azlan] Sounds wonderful

Any efforts you can make in that direction would be _really_ appreciated.

[re Lysander] Doesn't have to be 3-D. The iCab icon is not square and has a dynamic and lively feel to it (especially as it is beta and so "not finished"

). 3D or photographic does tend to be the norm (Mac icons are 24bit btw). The iCab works though some in a similar vein don't. "All" I'm asking for is one which works well when cosying up to the other icons

azlan · Post by **azlan** » December 17th, 2003, 10:25 am

lol!!

Sithrandel · Post by **Sithrandel** » December 17th, 2003, 10:36 am

Just realised... what are the general limits on other icons on the other platforms? Re size and colour depth? We don't want azlan designing a wonder because I'm throwing a tantrum only to find they don't look good on other platforms.

azlan · Post by **azlan** » December 17th, 2003, 10:42 am

I'm not so good at MacOSx.. But i think that Mac icons have like an mac format.. Like Win have Ico(that suck by the way) so its like comparing gif and jpg.. As soon as you convert a picture/icon to another format there is always a problem... Like loss of colors, it gets blurry, and some other things..
Kan you like upload a dump of how the icon look on mac so i can have a look??

Sithrandel · Post by **Sithrandel** » December 17th, 2003, 10:51 am

Icons on the Mac are 24bit lossless-compressed so there is no loss of quality on conversion. In addition to that all Mac icons are comprised of a family of images ranging from 128 to 16x16. The icons can be viewed in any size from 16x16 to 128x128 (103x103 anyone?). The operating system scales the images but switches between sizes are required, as when you get to smaller sizes then often hand-tweaking yields a better representation than automatic scaling. So the family is

16x16 with 1-bit mask i.e. transparent or not

32x32 with 1-bit mask, i.e. transparent or not

48x48 with 1-bit mask, i.e. transparent or not

128x128 with full 8-bit alpha channel, i.e. 256 levels of transparency for that gradual fading effect

Sithrandel · Post by **Sithrandel** » December 17th, 2003, 10:57 am

Ok... if this helps, screenshot of the Mac Icon Composer:

These are then placed into an icns file which is then embedded into the application bundle.

Post by **Dave** » December 17th, 2003, 4:01 pm

Sithrandel wrote:Just realised... what are the general limits on other icons on the other platforms? Re size and colour depth? We don't want azlan designing a wonder because I'm throwing a tantrum only to find they don't look good on other platforms.

The limits under Windows are certainly rather dismal. I believe 8-bit colour depth is what's used, and the icons are fairly small...

David

The Battle for Wesnoth Forums

Icons.

Updated icons..

Bigger icons..

3D icons..

lol..

Hmm..