High-Resolution Skill Icons Mod

As many of you are aware, Endrosz extracted the high-resolution images from the sealed deck cards.

I created a texmod that uses these hi-res images instead of the default skill icons. You can really see the difference depending on the size of your skillbar.

Some images (old icons on top, new icons on bottom):











Some of the images were different from the original icons, so I created two versions. The new images have different, high-res versions of the following skills:

* Crude Swing
* Crushing Blow
* Deflect Arrows
* Riposte
* Rush
* Pestilence
* Power Flux
* Visions of Regret
* Maiming Spear

Both mods have slightly different images than the default ones for Vow of Silence and Arcane Conundrum. In all, 1163 skills icons are replaced with these mods. Hence, they are rather large downloads.

High-Res Icons with new images.

High-Res Icons with old images.

I recommend using these mod in conjunction with another texmod that cleans up the area around the skills. The Glazed Interface mod by RavenGT or the Clearskills mod by Shawn the Divine work well.

Thanks to Endrosz for the high-res images. Thanks to Vana for doing the Ritualist skills.
Enjoy!

I'm using this mod now but they skill icons seem very blurry. Each icon needs to be taken into Photoshop and given a good sharpen I feel...

Did you do dervish? the skills look all the same with and without the mod.

The icons look great blown up, but are blurry when they are really shrunk down, I would not be surprised if there's nothing that can be done about this through texmod. (Though if you want small icons, why are you using this? )

It also seems to add up to 10 seconds of waiting as it boots up, probably because TexMod isn't built for such large textures.

If I had the knowledge, I would confidently be able to take each of these large icons into Photoshop, size them down and sharpen them far better than they are now.

I would be willing to do this if I knew how...Joe? How did you do this? I would be willing to help with the graphical side of things.

You should make those very large skill icons 64X64 as the official are that size, so they don't need to be resized (by guild wars) that much and get that blurry thing.

Thanks for the comments.

I tried sharpening the images. It does make them pop more but I felt like they looked too similar to the old icons... One way around the bluriness is to raise your gamma settings. Let me know how this works.

If that doesn't do the trick, the only other option would be what Deadman mentioned: resizing and sharpening. If I get the time, I'll give this a shot sometime next week.

@MrGuildBoi: All professions are included in the texmod, including Dervish. Maybe your game video settings or the size of your skillbar needs to be increased.

@Smurf Minions: Making versions of the mod with different sizes such as 64X64 and 128X128 might be another thing to consider. I'll play around with this sometime next week too.

I just took some of those large icons, resized them to 64x64, applied a 50% standard sharpen in Photoshop and it looks much better than both Joe's version and the default version. Here are a few examples:









As you can see, Joe's icons are often stretched, oversized and blurry. 10 out of 10 for Joe's effort but I don't think they are as good as they could be.

What small version do you all think is best? Mine, Joe's or default?

As i see, the onse from Joe are not being resized any good by GW (they are too big i guess), the one from GW is with a lot less quility and has compression. The ones from deadman still have the good quality and are resized to the size of the originals from GW which is 64x64.

I guess if you do the resized and the sharpening it works wonders

EDIT: I've been trying to resize one to 64x64 and mod it into the game, well it's even worse :P, i guess i got the wrong skill icon that i modded

Try comparing all three with (what looks to be) my skills mod on, rather than just on your edit, with the other two still having that blurry grey crap over them.

If I wanted to nitpick (which I do) I should also point out that there seems to be some leftovers from the skill cards these skills were cropped from. For example on the left side of all the Large images deadman posted, there's a line of whiteish grey something-or-other. Looks like we could afford to take a 250x250 crop tool and just batch crop all the files to remove that.

Hi, I will explain what each version means:

Large = Downloaded from here: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10295191

My resize (64x64) = Same as large icon, all I did was resize this to 64x64 and applied a light sharpen effect.

Joe's = I loaded Guild Wars through Texmod with Joe's High-Res Icons with old images mod loaded. Then I pressed the print screen button, pasted the screenshot into Photoshop, and cropped out the various skills.

Default = Same as above, but I loaded Guild Wars without Texmod.

The line of whiteish grey you were referring to were on the originals so I decided not to remove the mess. Of course, if I was doing this for real, I would tidy the mess up (very easy to do). The blurry grey crap you are talking about is compression, it ruins the icons doesn't it? My version keeps icons looking sharp and crisp with no noticeable compression.

What skills mod are you talking about? I don't use any mods except for the example of showing Joe's icons.

....Wow you totally didn't understand what I was talking about at all. lol.

Ok look. Skill under default guild wars:


Skill under my skills mod:


See the difference? It removes all the grey crap around it (plus the un-needed enchant icons/numbers). That's not "compression" at all.. lol.. It's a texture overlay that gets put over all the skills in the UI. What I'm saying is it's unfair to compare your resize to the other two, because the other two have that ugly grey overlay, giving yours an obvious edge. Although for what it's worth, I still think yours would look better even if the others were screenshotted cleanly.

So that ugly grey overlay is put on by Guild Wars when the game is loaded? If there is a way I could put my icons in the game, I would but I only know how to show you from Photoshop.

Your mod removes the enchantment, hex etc icons which I dislike but I see the grey rubbish is gone. Well if the overlay was removed on the other 2 pictures, the default is still compressed, and Joe's is still very blurry, so like you said, mine would look better.

All I am saying is I would be willing to help Joe or anyone else with this. I want nice looking, crisp icons in my Guild Wars, with the hex/enchantment icon shown.

I could make a version that puts the hex/enchantment icon back on it you want. I just thought after 3 years of playing the game most people would know what the skills on their bars do.
This is all if I have the files kicking around still. I don't remember seeing them recently, so I may just give the whole thing an overhaul from scratch like I've been meaning to.
...Anyway that really has nothing to do with this mod, other than Joe using it, so I'll shut up about it.

Well I've played Guild Wars for 3 years almost, and I haven't played as all the professions yet. Games like Eye of the North adding new skills, I feel it's very important to have these little hex and enchantment signs on the icons, and also numbering too. If you can make an update of your mod to include the enchantment/hex signs and numbering like the default Guild Wars, I would happily use your mod. I added a few examples of your icons to my pictures above. They look good, but look too close to the default versions and I feel mine are better quality. The difference however is minimal in the examples above.

OK. a bit of help here:

1. The default icon format in GW is:

• 56x56 pixels, with
• 4 pixel thick black border, and
• the color black taken to alpha.

2. Joe's icons are looking stretched because the the black border isn't present. 1/16 of the height/width of the image should be given to border so that it fits properly when GW tries to place it.

3. Joe's icons (and 99% of other people's icons too) don't "flash" properly when cast/interrupted/etc. because black was not taken to alpha.

4. Generally speaking, you do NOT want to resize to 64x64 (56x56 plus border) and then sharpen. A-net already did that. The only thing you can hope to accomplish that way is to make a slight improvement by using a better sharpening filter than they did.

5. Instead, what you do want to do is figure out what size the icons are actually displaying on people's screens (take a survey?), pick a common size, and resize to THAT size, and then sharpen. (Or, if you want to get fancy, do several common sizes.) Where you really stand to gain is by keeping some of the extra resolution that a-net lost when they scaled all the way down to 64x64.

6. It seem folks here already know, but just in case, always scale to the size you're going to display at before you sharpen. Otherwise you can just make things look worse.

7. Also, always decompose to LAB before sharpening, sharpen only on the luminosity channel, then recompose. This will prevent your colors from creeping, which is a danger of sharpening without decomposing.

7. On sufficiently high-end systems, you're not going to want any sharpening. Sharpening sacrifices detail to bring out the edges that get lost when the image is scaled way down. If you've got a big enough display that you aren't scaling that far down and aren't losing the edges, you'd want to forego sharpening so that you could keep the detail. One day when I can afford a PC that can display those icons at something close to the original resolution, I'm going to want a mod that does nothing besides dropping them straight off the skill cards into the game (with the border and the black taken to alpha, of course).

Hope that was somewhat helpful.

[edit: Joe, if you've got a .log file that maps the skill names to their image's addresses, I'd really like to see it. You might even be able to convince me to do a class or two.]

Lol, I hate when texmod bugs out when you reminimize and shows a skill icon and covers the whole screen. It showed Empowerment on my screen >.<

Deadman, the sharpened images look really nice. It would make sense, as Chthon pointed out, to get an idea of what size icons most people play with so the images can be resized first and then sharpened.

Chthon, here's a sample of the .log file:
0xADD27637|C:\Documents and Settings\My Documents\Joe\Texmod\Out\Mes Full\GW.EXE_0xADD27637.jpg
0xCD65F16B|C:\Documents and Settings\My Documents\Joe\Texmod\Out\Mes Full\GW.EXE_0xCD65F16B.jpg

The first part of the code references the object (0xADD27637) and the last part references the image to replace it with (GW.EXE_0xCD65F16B.jpg).

The bulk of my time went towards logging all the objects (default icons) in texmod and then matching them up with the high-res ones (not an easy task because the logged icons are terribly fuzzy) and renaming the latter. I suppose (but I don't know for sure) it wouldn't take too long to batch resize and sharpen the images. We could even create a few different sizes so folks could pick the one they like. However, I'm not the wiz at Photoshop that Chthon appears to be... people with better skills than mine could probably turn out a better product.

For example, I have no idea what Chthon means by "Joe's icons (and 99% of other people's icons too) don't "flash" properly when cast/interrupted/etc. because black was not taken to alpha" or what he/she means by "Also, always decompose to LAB before sharpening, sharpen only on the luminosity channel, then recompose. This will prevent your colors from creeping, which is a danger of sharpening without decomposing."

Shawn, a Clearskills version with the hexes and enchants markers left in would be nice. Although, the glazed graphite mod seems to clear up the border around the skills too, so if you can't/don't do it, don't worry.

What people could do to help:
- Suggest 3 or 4 different icon sizes that most players use.
- Prepare some sample images for us to look at, as Deadman has done. Maybe different tweaks to the images might work better for different professions.

I'll upload all the renamed icons and the complete .log file and post the links here when I'm at a faster connection, which should happen tomorrow. That way anybody who wants to can play around with the images. I have a feeling that this can turn into something good if those with good photoshop skills help out or even take the lead on this project.

You can give the replacement file any name you like. For example:
0x84A7CAE3|C:\blah_blah_blah\LifeSiphon.dds
A log file formatted in this way is really nice because other people can pick up your work and go without having to figure out the mapping between files and skills.

I'll write a guide for processing skill icons properly. Stay tuned.[/QUOTE]

In RGB colour mode, the channels you get are Red, Green and Blue. What I think Chthon is talking about is lightness, A, B (LAB) which are the channels consisting in the LAB colour mode. IN LAB mode, you can select the lightness channel to avoid adding more noise. How so? Well when you sharpen something with colour noise, it will add noisey sharpening, so it's best to avoid the colour channel altogether, and just focus on the darks and lights of an image.

What I would do is adjust an icon to how I want it, duplicate it to a new canvas, convert it to LAB colour, select the lightness channel, and apply an unsharp mask over the image (settings would need to be played around with). I would then copy and paste this back onto the RGB canvas, and play around with the opacity meter. How you resize each image, and do this process in a batch, I do not know...

About the resize... Why not just resize all images to 100x100 and then have GW resize it? The reason's Joe's are so blurry was because they were resized from 254x254 right? Well going from 100x100 to 64x64 or whatever, wouldn't look so bad I think.

I don't know understand the "black was not taken to alpha" either. I do know you can create a new channel in the RGB window called alpha... what this does, I do not know. Chthon also mentioned "things don't flash properly"... I don't understand.

This sounds right.

1. You lose data when you shrink the image. If, for example, you're going to display 200x200 in the end, then shrinking to 100x100 and then letting GW blow it up to 200x200 is always going to look a whole lot worse than just resizing to 200x200 in the first place. You never want to go through a step where you resize the image to something smaller than your final display.

2. Resizing at runtime is slow. It costs you FPS. And resizing things to make them bigger at runtime is absolutely killer (except resizing by powers of two). Again, you do not want to be using an image smaller than your final display if you can help it.

3. Image dimensions that are powers of two are good. (In fact, I'm pretty sure some programs won't even save a DDS with non-power-of-2 dimensions.) 100 is not a power of two. Use 128x128 instead.

4. The reasons Joe's are so blurry has nothing to do with the resizing. They look blurry because you didn't use a clearskills mod when you compared them, so the "skill fog" graphic is getting displayed over them. (Clearskills mods replace the "skill fog" graphic with a fully transparent graphic.)
They look stretched/misaligned because Joe forgot that the the outer 1/16 of the image is reserved for a border that's never displayed. The result is that the outer 1/16 of Joe's icons is not getting displayed. (Before you ask, no, I have absolutely no idea why that border is there or what it does. But it needs to be there for the icon to get aligned properly.)

You want to save your icons with the black turned transparent (and the partially black turned partially transparent to the same degree that it's black), like so:

When it gets displayed in game, it gets a black layer behind it, like so:

Why do this? GW has some small lighting effects it performs on the icons sometimes -- for instance, the icon next a foe's cast bar will flash when you interrupt their skill -- that manipulate the two layers separately. The effect doesn't come out quite the same if you've instead given it a solid top layer that blocks the black layer behind it.

I said that black should be "taken to alpha" because the command to do that, at least in GIMP, is named "color to alpha."

Ok, I understand the alpha thing now but about this 100x100 thing. Why would anyone need their skill icons larger than 128x128? I run my GW at 1920x1200, using the small interface option. My icons there are roughly 64x64. I can't imagine doubling that size... the icons would look huge, even on my 24" monitor. Someone with a smaller monitor, would have even less reason to have their icons larger than 128x128.

That grey overlay over the default icons I believe is a bevel. I have used the clearskills mod, but I dislike having my icons looking like that. Perfectly square, no roundness... the default interface for the skillbar looks better in my opinion. Not to mention clearskills has a lack of numbering, lack of enchantment and hex signs too.

Yeah, like I said, it's not really a mod for beginners. I assumed most people would know which number their skills are on without needing to see the number itself. Same with enchantments and hexes. But I don't know, I guess the average pver wouldn't have that degree of familiarity with the skills.
Anyway, I found out that I deleted the .dds files at some point, so if I want to do it I'll have to remake it from scratch. If I'm extremely bored someday, I'll think about it, but it's not like the mod's got a huge following anyway.

1. You'd want icons over 128x128 if you, say, like big beautiful icons. You can adjust the display size any way you like. Some people might size up their skill bar just to enjoy the art. Plus, some of us don't like to read the tiny, tiny font on the small UI (or even the normal UI), and increasing the font size increases the default for the icons too.

2. Scaling down at runtime is better than scaling up. Unless you were really close, like 135x135 or something, scaling down from 256x256 would be better than scaling up from 128x128.

3. This is totally speculation here: Has anyone tried forcing mipmaps for a non-mipmapped image? Does it not crash, and does it use the mipmaps? If so, can you convince it that different images of the appropriate size progression are really mipmaps? If so, we could have our cake and eat it too by faux-mipmapping each icon at every size and sharpening each size as needed. I'll give it a shot tomorrow and see what I get.

4. The rounded corner thing is a different image from the fog overlay. You can make a clearskills mod with rounded corners and no fog if you like. (In fact I did. But you still wouldn't like it because I nixed the enchantment/hex/weapon indicators.)

I purchased Guild Wars a few months after it was released, I am a very experienced player, however I have not played all professions, and I would like the enchantment/hex signs on the skills, especially since I haven't learnt all the Eye of the North skills. It's the same to me as removing the little bar which shows you how much a skill has left before it expires ("I assume most people would know when their skills run out") I know this was added to a game as an update many months ago, but it is a nice feature that I'm sure many people wouldn't want removed. I feel the same about the enchantments/hex sign.

About the numbering, my sister often plays Guild Wars and when I help her, I refer to the skills as "number 1" or "number 5" etc. The absents of numbering isn't a real problem though.

I think the rounded corners are nice, and would like to see this in the clearskills mod along with the enchantment/hex signs.

They aren't quite as blurred as the posted picture, but yes, they do still look quite blurry with clearskills, at least on my GeForce 8800 GS. It's more noticable the smaller the picture is. (E.G. hero skillbar with a "small" interface.) More than just a centering problem.

That's the lack of sharpening. The icons you're used to were really heavily (over-)sharpened by a-net. The tricky thing with sharpening is that you want to do it at the final display resolution. Sharpening an image for 64x64 then blowing it up to, say, 100x100 looks awful.

[Edit:

The guide for how to process skill icons is posted here.

It should tell you everything you need to know to make really good looking skill icons for the mod.]

Sorry for the delay.

As promised, here are the .rar files of the renamed skill icons (so they go along with the .log file).

Derv
Ele
Mes
Monk
Nec
Para
Ranger
Rit
Sin
War

The .log file is here.

There may be duplicate entries for the Rit icons in the .log file. It shouldn't affect anything, but I'll try and clean it up at a later date.

Don't forget to change the path in the .log file to point to wherever you put the icons for each profession.

Thanks for the guide, Chthon. I can't wait to see what people do.

I've started in on the necro icons. I've done the first page, plus a handful of my favorite necro skills/icons, at 128x128 (112x112 + border).

Here is a file with: Barbs, BIP, BotM, BR, Bone Fiend, Contagion, Deathly Swarm, Enfeebling Blood, Envenom Enchatments, Flesh Golem, Malign Intervention, MoP, Masochism, OoU, Plague Sig, Shambling Horror, SS, Vamp Horror, & Well of Blood (2 Versions), plus a log file to go with them. I also included the originals cut directly from the skillsheets if anyone wants to take them to make a 256x256 or 64x64 version.

I'll update the file to include more icons as I finish them.

A few notes:
* I used an edge mask throughout because I'm a nitpicky perfectionist.
* The skill cards for MoP and BIP were clearly blow ups of the in-game icons, so I actually ended up trying to soften and depixelize them as much as sharpen them.
* Well of Blood has 2 versions, the in-game one with the blue "blood" in the well, and one that's just a flip of well of suffering.
* I did some minor pixel editing to fix an obvious error in BotM's icon.

Sample Screenshots:
(My icons are on top, default in-game icons on the bottom.)


A lot of them look noticeably better, but I think the improvment in Shambling Horror just takes the cake.

----------

@ Joe: Can I make a terrible, horrible pain-in-the-ass request? Could you maybe take a look at the format for my log file and see if you can format the big log file in the same way (replacement files are by skill name, order is alphabetical by skill name). That makes it much easier for someone else to pick it up and use it.

Please please PLEASE do a 64x64 version ='{

Or would it look to bad if I used your 128s on my 64 sized bar?

Edit: I actually think mine are 50x50 hah... >.> I use the small interface

Edit2: Or better yet.. isn't there a way to make a sort of "script" for GIMP that runs though your resize/sharpen routine? Then possibly turned into a batch sort of thing?

Cthon, that looks steller

Well i made a little AutoIt script to do it, I don't know if I have the best settings for the filters since you didn't specify but here is what its spitting out



Here is a comparison to yours


And with the border

@ Everyone: Alright, I can probably finish necromancer in a couple of weeks, but we're going to need other people to pick up some classes and make this a team effort!!!

-------------------------------------------------

1. By the time you scale down to 64x64 you've lost 100% of the enhanced resolution you gained by using the skill card pictures. The only thing you can do is compete with a-net's art team to do a better job of sharpening without destroying detail. That's a competition you can win (they did a very bad job on some icons), but the improvement over the in-game icons is going to be very, very small.

2. 128x128 icons on a 64x64 display are going to look like they need sharpened.

3. Did you know that you can adjust the size of you skillbar independent of the rest of the interface? If you want a big, pretty skillbar and small UI elements for everything else, you can do that.

4. Yes, you can write scripts for GIMP. It even has it's own built-in scripting language. Unfortunately, there's two serious limitations to what you can do with the scripts: (1) You've got to stop and look at it to make sure you gave it the right sharpening parameters before you proceed with adding the border and sending the black to alpha. The script has no way of knowing what looks good and what doesn't. (2) You can't possibly do an edge mask via script because the process of accentuating the important edges while minimizing the unimportant ones requires human input. (Though, at 64x64, there's almost no point in even trying an edge mask.)

Yeah, I just realized that on my own this morning when i did some testing ingame.. My icons look a little WORSE than anets at such a small size.

I would be willing to help out doing a profession at all 3 sizes, but I have no idea how I would convert black to alpha inside Photoshop.. this is the step I am stuck with. The only guess I could take is to use Replace Colour, select a black part of the image with the eyedropper tool, adjust the fuzziness, then hit delete...

I can see clearly now!
Wow that is just so much detail that was gone lost and you just get it back in , i'd also to do something if you need me, but i have to go on holiday (with parents) for 3 weeks first, so i will see the progress when i have returned and if you still need some professions, i'll be there to do it

Uh, hi. I made a 112x112 (128x128) set of all Elementalist skills, excluding Intensity, the two Elemental Lords, and the skills that have no hi-res version available.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?jpkmg3v03yc

I haven't used Mediafire before, but everyone else seems to be, so tell me if that doesn't work.

I didn't do much, really. Just tell me if you think I should move on to the ritualist icons, the next set I intended to do. If it's terrible, I won't bother.

Ok,Confused
Which one should I download?(the clearest one)

Since the last update, this isnt working anymore. It would be nice if someone could get after it.