To Floon: Any way you guys are gonna vectorize icons?

[Galahadur]

The icons scale in size horribly in Lotro. Anyway that a vectorization of the graphics is in the works? That way we could scale the graphics up and down without the "blurred" look on them.

Thanks and Pie if you reply.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

The icons scale in size horribly in Lotro. Anyway that a vectorization of the graphics is in the works? That way we could scale the graphics up and down without the "blurred" look on them.

Thanks and Pie if you reply.

We asked them about this a long time ago. The response was no because using Scalable Vector Graphics take to many resources within the client. Turbine is unwilling to accept the performance hit and drop in frame rate.

I do know that SVG engines are used in hand helds like cell phones. I worked on hand held User Interface that made extensive of a third party engine that the company bought. A hand held has all kinds of limitations because of the battery, got to fit in the dinky inside space, limited memory and so.

When you get to a PC with one, two, four gigabytes main memory, a graphic card and commercial power you got a lot more to work with. On the surface holding a cell phone and looking at my desktop it does not seem that would be a problem.

As to why the incorporation of a SVG engine and its use to support the UI is such an issue. I really do not know. They are the experts on their software. The only I can think of. The underlying UI is rather old. The way it is written there is no good way to make it so. Does not want to fit. Does not want to play well.

I've read there is a major rewrite of the UI underway. No ETA for it. It may be like the new moon program. May never get to live due to insufficient resources.

[floon]

The icons scale in size horribly in Lotro. Anyway that a vectorization of the graphics is in the works? That way we could scale the graphics up and down without the "blurred" look on them.

Thanks and Pie if you reply.

We have thousands of icons. Replicating them all as vector graphics would be back-breaking.

Plus we need support for vector graphics in the UI. But before we get around to asking for that support, we look at the massive pile of icons that would need dealing with, and just immediately start drinking heavily until we forget about it.

[starbuckjones]

We have thousands of icons. Replicating them all as vector graphics would be back-breaking.

Plus we need support for vector graphics in the UI. But before we get around to asking for that support, we look at the massive pile of icons that would need dealing with, and just immediately start drinking heavily until we forget about it.

floon quote = magnificent

[speaksoftly]

We have thousands of icons. Replicating them all as vector graphics would be back-breaking.

Plus we need support for vector graphics in the UI. But before we get around to asking for that support, we look at the massive pile of icons that would need dealing with, and just immediately start drinking heavily until we forget about it.

So that means your working on it :P

[Potvin]

We have thousands of icons. Replicating them all as vector graphics would be back-breaking.

Plus we need support for vector graphics in the UI. But before we get around to asking for that support, we look at the massive pile of icons that would need dealing with, and just immediately start drinking heavily until we forget about it.

Epic. I love how you both answer the question directly (generally) but also explain why.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

We have thousands of icons. Replicating them all as vector graphics would be back-breaking.

I had no idea all your existing icons would all have to be changed. This is a lot of work. I think all the artwork I used was plain vanilla JPEGs. There was no cost to switch for the artwork.

It was significant effort for the group, I was in to insert the SVG engine plus switch the UI screens we were implementing to Javascript and XML. The biggest issues: How do we even do this visual effect? Why is not working? Is there is something wrong with the DOM or SVG engine? Or did we foul up the adapters to the hand held hardware?

Your UI already uses some of this functionality. I can not imagine it would be as big an effort (other than the obvious - your screens are so much more complicated than a hand held and you have a lot more pieces of artwork). Plus you have the luxury of a lot of existing support since you are running on PC and you got all those nifty PC based tools instead of something like a cell phone.

[floon]

I had no idea all your existing icons would all have to be changed. This is a lot of work. I think all the artwork I used was plain vanilla JPEGs. There was no cost to switch for the artwork.

There's no procedural way to make 32x32 icons look appreciably better at higher resolution. There would be a lot of meat-macro work involved, which is never a great way to spend time.

[ararax2]

There's no procedural way to make 32x32 icons look appreciably better at higher resolution. There would be a lot of meat-macro work involved, which is never a great way to spend time.

Its when you see two videos for download and you see one is 700 mb and one is 1400 mb...

Sometimes the 1400 mb one is just a copy of the 700 mb one with a different format.

Increased resolution gets you nothing if its just the same base file.

That pretty resolution comes from one of 2 places...

1. floon.

2. resolution pixies.

[Galahadur]

We have thousands of icons. Replicating them all as vector graphics would be back-breaking.

Plus we need support for vector graphics in the UI. But before we get around to asking for that support, we look at the massive pile of icons that would need dealing with, and just immediately start drinking heavily until we forget about it.

You don't need to do them all in one batch. As a suggestion you could change them gradually has you are doing with the Minstrel and Hunter icons.

It certainly won't make them look worst than they already do, when resized.

[BetterOffDead-2]

I would love for vector UI items to be implemented, but at the same time I realize the time and resources that would be needed to accomplish it. I play at 1920x1200 on a 26" monitor, so there are some things in the UI that I would like to make larger, but I can't stand the pixelated look that the stretching causes. I'd still much rather Turbine spend its resources on something more important.

[Yicky]

You don't need to do them all in one batch. As a suggestion you could change them gradually has you are doing with the Minstrel and Hunter icons.

It certainly won't make them look worst than they already do, when resized.

Its taken almost a year to change just those batches that were changed. with all the classes, items, etc, it would take 10 years or more to do all of them

[be0wulfe]

We have thousands of icons. Replicating them all as vector graphics would be back-breaking.

Plus we need support for vector graphics in the UI. But before we get around to asking for that support, we look at the massive pile of icons that would need dealing with, and just immediately start drinking heavily until we forget about it.

Crowdsource vectorizing the icons - obviously not the UI vector gfx code.
And the QC around it.

Yes, yes, I know, crazy talk.

But, honestly, as much as I too would like it, this sounds like a nice to have.

Ahhh, the joys of product development.

[Kuranese]

we look at the massive pile of icons that would need dealing with, and just immediately start drinking heavily until we forget about it.

That's what interns are for.

[Beleg]

Or rabid fans. Let your techie artist fans convert all the icons for you; hold a contest for the best redesign, and I bet you can get them all converted in a few months.

Sort of like farming out the SETI-at-home stuff. Personally, there are quite a few icons I'd like to redesign. But even if we couldn't change the icons, I'd be happy to help convert a few...

I know, it's not a realistic idea at all. Too bad though, scalable graphics would be nice.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

There's no procedural way to make 32x32 icons look appreciably better at higher resolution. There would be a lot of meat-macro work involved, which is never a great way to spend time.

Ahhh. Light goes on. I did not realize your masters are 32x32. Yeah this is a major problem. I am so used to working with high resolution images. They are "ruined" when they are converted to mpegs, jpegs, youtube vides or even television.

All our art work is done in a very large of pixels. It is reduced to the maximum display size prior to insertion into the compressed library similar to your DAT file. We never scale up. It is always scale down.

This way we are not faced with a drinking opportunity when the hardware design team bring out a prototype. Look at all these pixels.

It is not perfect. It is a lot easier to take something bigger like 512x512 convert to a 32x32 and have something that looks good. Expanding a 32x32 16 times does not work well at all.

[FieldMedic]

Floon: The sooner you get started the sooner you'll get it done! :P

I mean really, it's just sub-par for a detailed graphics game to have icons that scale as horribly as this game's do. This thread has generated some interesting ideas on how you (and by you I mean Turbine) can tackle this challenge, I hope you give them some long, good thought.

[llprnzs]

Floon I luv ya but.....

Is your answer whenever anyone asks you to do something. "Sorry that is just too much work.."?
Wont the game eventually die due to the inability to add things to it? or is the game engine and everything fine as is, and it will last for the next few years no problem? I am not saying you do nothing, because we all know that you DO alot, and deffinately pull your weight plus the cubicle next to you...


I was just curious, i see the blanket answer alot.."Sorry that would take to much work"

[DSC]

I was just curious, i see the blanket answer alot.."Sorry that would take to much work"

Sadly, that's really an issue for management, not for any of the people you talk to here. The LotRO team is not exactly gigantic.

[Asperity]

We have thousands of icons. Replicating them all as vector graphics would be back-breaking.

Plus we need support for vector graphics in the UI. But before we get around to asking for that support, we look at the massive pile of icons that would need dealing with, and just immediately start drinking heavily until we forget about it.

Rather disappointed to here this. It makes me wonder what the point was in adding a scalable UI. I was pretty excited when the feature came out as the UI is a tad bit big for my tastes. But the excruciating pain and headaches caused by the fuzzy icons was too much to bear. I have not used the UI scaling feature since.

[Porlock]

That's what interns are for.

Yes, but then you end up with the TARDIS floating around Dereth!


I'm curious what y'all are doing to need scalable icons. I mean, yeah, they're tiny, but unless you're using custom skins, there's no reason you should need higher than 32x32, since they don't stretch at higher resolutions. (Uh, unless you're playing on something higher than 1920x1200, in which case maybe they do? I don't know -- that's what I'm playing at.)

[floon]

I was just curious, i see the blanket answer alot.."Sorry that would take to much work"

Because it's a huge amount of work, and we're already doing a huge amount of stuff. We ask ourselves questions like, "Do we do Mirkwood, or do we redo all the icons?" Because the tradeoffs truly are that big a deal, when you start talking about the quantity of art that lotro deals with.

I say, "too much work" in these threads to let you know that 1) we read these threads, and 2) we're working on other things instead of this thing. Eventually, these threads get 10 pages long with complaints that we should have read all of this and acted on it already!!1! I'd rather let you know that there are a ton of things ahead in line, so you don't get your hopes up.

It's a great idea, but there are a ton of great ideas that we don't have time for.

[jmcmike]

It's a great idea, but there are a ton of great ideas that we don't have time for.

Are you sure we don't work in the same place? This sounds eerily familiar.

[gildhur]

It's a great idea, but there are a ton of great ideas that we don't have time for.

Like boatpants. /nod

[NeoPromethious]

Maybe I'm a minority, but I'd rather have other things looked at first, than having a small boost to icon shiny-ness when being scaled.