New spell icons - a comment

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johnwax
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Joined: Wed Oct 17, 2018 8:09 pm

New spell icons - a comment

Post by johnwax »

The new spell icons are great looking and the ability to assign or change from the spellbook or spell maker is good. Having said that, however, the new icons are not all that useful. Icons are useful only for spells that have duration (e.g. levitate, water breath, attribute enhancements when held etc) so that you can keep track of that duration in your HUD. You nevers see the icon for spells that act immediately (recall, open, most damage spells, etgc). So, all immediate spells could have the same vanilla icon and you would never know the difference.

So, the new icons are really great for the few duration spells you can make or buy. There is , however, no current way (that I know of) to assign or change to a new icon for 'when held' spell enchantments on items. Most of the icons in your HUID are attribute enchantments when held. Will it be possible to assign or change icons for magic items in the future?

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Interkarma
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Re: New spell icons - a comment

Post by Interkarma »

For non-duration spells, the user is still free to allocate whatever icon they like. This is still visible in spellbook and could be useful in future UI mods that show icon along with with spell name.

The current icon implementation was added so people could take advantage of VMBlast's icons sooner. That's why they're still labelled as "test" icons for now. This feature was built out quickly and should still be considered in a preview state.

Future enhancements are planned to allow icon pack creators to assign suggested icons for spells and effects as part of the icon pack metadata. This would change how magic items display icons, as a suggested bespoke icon would be selected above a classic icon when one is defined. No input is needed from player, this is part of the artist's discretion when designing their icon pack.

Currently there's no UI method to change spell icons on magic items either in classic or in DFU. This could also change in future. This would be particularly useful when user has multiple icon packs installed and would like to select a specific icon for their favourite magic items.

So short answer is yes. But there's no time-frame on these enhancements for now. :)

johnwax
Posts: 116
Joined: Wed Oct 17, 2018 8:09 pm

Re: New spell icons - a comment

Post by johnwax »

Sounds good and thanks! Future artists maybe should give more weight to form vs function rather than just neat looking whatsis symbols - e.g. winged feet for levitate, hooded figure for chameleon, eeye for identify, etc. Thanks again===

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Jay_H
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Re: New spell icons - a comment

Post by Jay_H »

VMBlast actually started in that direction, and then preferred to stick with the abstract type Daggerfall originally uses. You can read the discussion here.

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