Icons for Inventory System

[Domarius]

I don't see what the big deal is about "doing more work" to make icons. Like Spring said, it's basically jus taking a screenshot of the model. If the FM author has already spent hours making a new model of something, I don't think they're going to be daunted by taking a screenshot of it for the inventory.

I've been thinking the same thing.

[PinkDot]

Icons have advantage of artistic possibilities over models - because they don't have to look exactly like model does - you can customize them according to your needs. That surely won't be the first thing that people start doing after the mod is released, but I'm pretty sure that after years, people will want to play with such esthetic things of second importance. For example for my mission in dromed I was going to use 2 colour icons instead of models.

[Springheel]

It sounds like the only problems people have had with the icons is that they can't spin, and that they take a while to make. Seems to me that the latter isn't very significant, especially compared with what would have to be done to get models even partially working. The not spinning is unfortunate, but surely there's some other effect we can use to make the icons more 'interesting' while cycling through? I think a nice subtle fade effect, or something like what Gil did, would be fine, personally.

[sparhawk]

There were other issues as well. Models are more versatile, but well. The only real issue IMO is the skinnning.

[Springheel]

What other issues were there? Nobody mentioned any in this thread.

 

And how are models more versatile? It seems quite the opposite to me. You have to manually scale them, they won't show skins, they can't be semi-transparent, you can't add any special materials to them, etc..., all of which you can do to icons.

[sparhawk]

This is plain ridiculous and I think you are only arguing now for the arguments sake. There are a lot of things that you can also not do with icons, so there a pro's and con's for both of them. Hearing you , one could think that icons would be the ultimate saviour of gameplay, so I wonder why game engines don't still use 2D sprites, instead of 3D models.

 

I wont discuss this anymore because it's pointless. We can't do SOME things with icons and we can't do SOME things with models and that's about it. As I already said several times, the only REAL showstopper for using models is that we currently can't use skins there as well. The other points you mentioned are just peanuts.

[Springheel]

This is plain ridiculous and I think you are only arguing now for the arguments sake. I wont discuss this anymore because it's pointless.

 

Well, ok, but I was being serious. Switching from models to icons at this point requires time and effort, so I was trying to do a cost/benefit analysis. So far, I've only seen those two benefits I listed. Perhaps there are others, but I haven't found them mentioned anywhere.