User talk:LordBiro/Archive/Weapon icons

More icons?
I was looking at Category:Weapon upgrades and it struck me how useless it was. The tables in weapon upgrade are pretty ugly, but I'm not sure how to make them suck less. Rather than headers like "axe grip" I think a weapon icon would be best. Combined with the red X icon we have and maybe a green check icon (I have no clue if we have something like that already), a lot of the columns could be slimmed to the width of the icons used. Any thoughts or willingness or iconify? --Fyren 23:17, 8 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Hey Fyren, I'm not 100% sure what you envisage. I think it would be quite straightforward to produce some icons for each weapon, as for each upgrade that might be a little trickier. Looking at weapon upgrade, every upgrade is sectioned off into prefix and suffix, which would make things a lot easier. You could have one "axe icon" in prefix and one identical "axe icon" in suffix.


 * I'll give it some thought Fyren and see if I can sort out some pretty weapon icons.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 05:46, 9 October 2006 (CDT)


 * The point is to remove a ton of the empty space and make them prettier and to pave the way for redirection of articles like Of Enchanting and Axe Grip to weapon upgrade. Just icons for weapons, not each upgrade, would be needed since the data is already split into a prefix table and a suffix table.  So "axe grip" and "axe haft" would get replaced by an axe icon.  All the data in those columns are either "x" or " " to denote whether such an upgrade exists, so [[Image:NA-icon-small.png]] and a checkmark could replace them.  --Fyren 06:04, 9 October 2006 (CDT)


 * I'm not really sure what style to go for at this point, but I've uploaded a kind of first draft.




 * What do you think? Are they all distinguishable?  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 15:43, 9 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Me likes. :) The only problem I see is with the spear and the staff. Maybe make the spear head a little larger and lose the head of the staff altogether (as in Bo Staff, plainest staff possible)? Other than that I would make the daggers a little smaller and would remove the spike from the head of the hammer, but that's just me. :) --84-175 (talk) 15:52, 9 October 2006 (CDT)


 * I don't think it's a good idea to base the staff on the Bo Staff. It's basically just a rectangle :/ I based it on the Holy Staff. If that's not apparent then I should maybe alter it a bit, but I thought that the Holy Staff is the most easily distinguishable of all the staves that I've seen. When I see it I think "staff".


 * I can appreciate you wanting the daggers smaller, I just made them the same size as the others because it fit the icon. I'm not sure what you mean by removing the spikes from the hammer... Could you be a bit more specific?  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 16:58, 9 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Good draft, I like them too! Just more opinions here from someone with little to no icon-making tallents of his own:
 * It looks like the current spear design is based on the sun spear; I think the brass or crenellated are simpler spear designs that would be more easilly recognised in sillouette. I agree that a holy staff is the more recognisable staff design.
 * For the daggers, the current crossed design reminds me a lot of the crossed sword design for prophecy mission/bonus. I think that uncrossing them and making them smaller, as well as removing or shrinking the bar above the handle, would make them more recognisable.  --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:05, 9 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Great stuff again! The daggers could be smaller and the spearhead a bit larger, but I like the current staff version. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 08:45, 10 October 2006 (CDT)


 * These look nice, I would recommend three things:
 * 1) Make two versions of each icon, each version highlights a different "end" of the weapon. I know that the tables are separate, but it would not hurt to have both graphics on. i.e. a version with the axe haft bright and grip dark and vice versa.
 * 2) The spear is fine, the staff should be changed to something like a Jeweled Staff (the lower art) that is more easily distinguishable from a spear.
 * 3) Daggers hould be made smaller, also perhapd make them pointing down and make the angle less than 90 degrees bewteen them.
 * --Karlos 09:16, 10 October 2006 (CDT)


 * I meant the top end of the hammer's handle that's sticking out of the hammer's head. It's just a little visual thing and I don't think it matters much. I understand that the daggers should match the other icons in size. I find Barek's idea of uncrossing them very good. How about two daggers side by side, diagonally (like so: //)? That way the daggers could be smaller while keeping the overall size of the icon. My point with using the Bo staff is: There should be only one icon that resembels "a long stick that's slightly thicker at one end". The snake headed Jeweled Staff, as suggested by Karlos, would be a good alternative. --84-175 (talk) 16:02, 10 October 2006 (CDT)

Sorry it's taken me a while to reply to this. Unfortunately I've been busy with some other things recently. Regarding the daggers, I have no problem making them smaller. I'll experiment with some different positions, but I do quite like having them crossed.


 * I suggest to model the dagger icon after Sai or Kris Daggers, maybe Korambits. They all have typical and unique dagger shapes and might not be easily confused with other weapon types. I'd say you could leave the dagger icon size as it is, because the relation of handle size to blade size should make it clear that the icon depicts a short-bladed weapon. I would also leave them crossed, because that mirrors the assassin's profession icon.


 * Regarding the axe: I would make the curving of the blade more pronounced, because of the small size it could be confused with a hammer at a passing glance. Or maybe take an axe with asymmetrical head, like Crude Axe or Gothic Axe

I'm not sure that having a light and dark section makes sense. If I was making an icon for the axe blade, would the blade be light or dark? I think an opaque/translucent combination would be better, but even then, this would not work very well. You would not easily be able to notice if I made the bow string translucent, or even transparent. What part of the staff would I make opaque to indicate "staff wrapping"? Just everything other than the head? Does that accurately describe what the wrapping is? Would making the dagger handles transparent be noticeable? I don't think that trying to highlight different sections of the weapon would be well communicated through an icon of this size.

The hammer is based on the Foehammer. I think the little bit at the top looks fine. If a lot of people agree that it's out of place I'll move it.

I don't think the Bo Staff is interesting enough (it's just a stick) and I don't think the Jeweled Staff is staff-like enough. The double head makes it look very unusual, and personally if I were to see the outline of the staff I would not think "that's a staff", I would think "what the hell is that?". It looks like some sort of deformed fork :P If anyone has another suggestion for a staff I would consider it, but personally I think that the Holy Staff is one of the most recognisable (and staff-like) staffs in the game.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 17:11, 13 October 2006 (CDT)


 * I like the hammer and staff as they are. Like you said, highlighting the parts would not work well on some of the icons. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 02:51, 14 October 2006 (CDT)