It's announcement time!

As pretty much all of you know, we're currently working on a project to replace all of our old style icons with new ones across all of our sites. This is a massive undertaking given that, at the time of this writing, there are a total of 69,415 items with icons that need to be replaced. So far, 21,572 of those icons have been made, many of which were with your help (thanks!) which puts us at 31.08% of our goal. This is where you come in.

While we certainly appreciate the help we've gotten so far, there is still a ton of work to do. To that end, we figured we'd make things a bit more interesting and give you a little motivation to donate your time. So, we're turning this into a contest! Here are the details:

The contest will run until all icons have been completed and is open to anyone who can show us that they're up to the challenge. This means submitting a couple of samples in this thread using the format below. Those who pass this test will be invited via PM and granted access to the systems required to participate. There is no entry deadline (short of the end of the contest) but the sooner people get involved, the faster we can be up and running.


The above code will produce the following:

Mage

So, now that you know how to enter, let's talk about why you should want to (besides helping out the site, of course)! I said that it's a contest so of course there will be prizes. First, everyone who participates will be awarded a participation badge (). The top three participants will be awarded special badges for 3rd (), 2nd () and 1st () place. These awards will be permanently attached to your account as a thank you for your efforts! Also, as a bit of a bonus, you'll get a first-hand look at the new version of all of our sites that we've been working on for the last couple of months since you'll be using that interface to submit your icons!

But wait, there's more! If you call within the next 10 minutes... The first place badge also comes with a real-world prize - a (yet undetermined) newly released video game that comes out towards the end of the competition! More details will follow as the we near completion of the project.

So, with all of that out of the away, let's get to the specifics. New icons no longer require any of the border or text, just the main image in the center, as shown below. This image needs to be exactly 148x125, saved as a PNG (we will allow animated GIF icons in the future but for simplicity's sake, we're limiting submissions to PNGs for now - get in touch with me if you'd like to make an animated icon and we'll work something out), and on a transparent background (unless the image takes up the entire icon, of course). Additionally, sprites should not be enlarged beyond 2x their original size. 2x is fine (and often necessary to fill these larger icons) but anything more than that distorts the image too much.

Here is the part you'd be submitting for the above sample icon:


Like I said above, entrance into this contest is only allowed with your successful submission of sample work. The templates for posting the icons for all three sites (there are no "sound" icons so a tSoR template isn't necessary) are provided below:

Sprites:

Models:

Textures:

We haven't created the BB code for the large preview icons on tMR yet but when created, you'll be able to post them as follows:

And for reference, the image requirements for tMR large icons is as follows:
750x650, PNG (see above for animated GIF exceptions), transparent background (again, see above for exceptions).

And of course, just to encourage some friendly competition, we're making the current status of the project visible to everyone at the following address:

http://www.vg-resource.com/icon-stats.php

You can use this to track your own progress as well as that of your competitors (or just to see how things are going, if you're interested). And don't worry, Dazz has a major head start because he was submitting icons to test the system but he isn't actually a part of the contest. That being said, there will be a bonus badge (which hasn't been created yet) awarded to anyone who manages to beat him by project end.

So, on that note, let the contest begin and thank you all in advance for your continued assistance in getting everything up and running!

So, if I am understanding this correctly, we just need to create an image using the sprites from a sheet to a specified size with transparency and put them in that code?

Depending on who the submitter of the model was, making an icon and a preview for tMR can be quite a pain, especially relative to the process for making an icon for tSR. Do you take this in consideration for the contest?

The icons I've already submitted probably show that I'm up for this, but here are some participation samples anyway:

Aang (Battle)

Aang (Cutscenes)

Appa

Zuko (Cutscenes)

Spider 1

Wolf

Faces

Unfortunately I don't think I'll have enough time to make as many icons as I'd like to, but I'll try make as many as I can all the same. Good luck to everyone!

Every contribution, big or small, will help.

(06-01-2014, 07:57 PM)psychospacecow Wrote: So, if I am understanding this correctly, we just need to create an image using the sprites from a sheet to a specified size with transparency and put them in that code?

That is in order to be eligible - after that, you need to create the image and upload it directly the site using a browse button we'll add on each sheet's icon.

The icon has to represent the sheet in question, and be to the same "style" as the other icons made for that game.

i dunno if this is helping/derailing/whatever but perhaps some of the more pure icons could be automated? i know that there are several scripting gurus here so tell me if this is feasible or stupid

1. take old icon as input


2. overlay empty icon over it


3. compare the two and if pixel 1 is the same (± ~2 R/G/B units) in both, output black. If different, output white. continue to pixel 2 until all 12305 pixel have been compared


4. disregard the top 31 pixels and use the b/w image as an alpha channel for the original icon


5. If the width/height of the output sprite ≤ (148||125) / 2 then double its size with linear interpolation. if too big, keep as it is.


6. overlay the sprite to the new bounds and fetch the title from the sheet info and queue it to a dummy approval site where all the ready icons go


7. run the script on every goddamn icon and manually approve each the next morning



probably some other arguments could be added to weed out the false positives but i dunno

edit: i mean there's like a billion icons, i could imagine some automation would help

To some degree this is something I've been manually doing as I go anyway. There are a huge number of icons that this simply won't work on though, and it's actually going to be easier to just simply go in and do it all manually.

Your double size point brings up a number of problems too - while it's possible to double size some things on some games, it's not always possible on everything. You double that size on only some things, and you get a messy page. Something we already have on tSR, and that I'm trying to look to fix with this new system. There are already a few which have slipped through which don't follow the style of the rest in the game, but they're easy enough to replace that it isn't too big a deal once I notice it.

You'll notice that I've already made some 700 icons in a single day - this is through batch scripting sheets by setting up macro keys that duplicate the layer, delete the old layer (required for transparency), crop, delete top left colour, trim all empty pixels, set canvas size to icon size, and then save. The only manual part is selecting the sprite to make into an icon.
For things like backgrounds that take up the whole icon size, I've got it set to simply crop and save, and I set the selection tool to a set size of 148x125.
I then have these attached to F keys, along with some other handy things that I sometimes use.

It's a good idea, but it can leave a lot of problems that can only be fixed by human intervention, and probably cause more work overall. A tool to trim sprites from icons though could be handy, as there are some which are of use still and I myself have even used.

I decided to take a whirl at this.

Blocks & Backgrounds

jesuschristhowhorrifying.jpg

Blocks & Backgrounds

Looks better.

Looks good SJB - mind making a couple more just to make sure it's all good? I'm sure you'll be fine, just always good to pick on anything that might cause a problem early on, you know?

after a bit of soul searching and help from Dazz I came up with this.

Reznor

Amazing Flying Hammer Bros.

Eggplant Man

Blargg

Broozer

Sledge Bros.

Goombas

Tryclyde and Cobrat

Okay, I complied up some larger sheet icons from at least half of my NES sheets. As much as I like contributing sheets to the site, making these larger icons wasn't fun, at least for me.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ycg4okcmupsuqg...0Icons.zip

Pete forgot to mention something:

We don't want icons to be larger than 2x the normal sprite size. Any larger than that and it looks really bad. 2X is really the best option, because it still demonstrates the sprite's small size while also showing details. Once you hit 3-4x, you actually don't really register how small the sprite is.


edit: Please also take into account that many icons have already been made. This can, and very likely does, include some of the icons you make.

Well I don't feel like making any more renovated icons for the time being since I mentioned making new icons from existing sheets provided no entertainment, even if it's as simple as just taking the icons already on the site and upsizing them. Most of them are 2x, so they could be used; but as for others that are resized from already being 2x or something that one of you guys already made, well I dunno how to say it.

Besides I'm interested in seeing the icons you come up with for sheets from other users, especially mine.

(06-02-2014, 02:28 PM)Superjustinbros Wrote: Well I don't feel like making any more renovated icons for the time being since I mentioned making new icons from existing sheets provided no entertainment, even if it's as simple as just taking the icons already on the site and upsizing them. Most of them are 2x, so they could be used; but as for others that are resized from already being 2x or something that one of you guys already made, well I dunno how to say it.

Besides I'm interested in seeing the icons you come up with for sheets from other users, especially mine.

No worries. It's certainly not for everyone but we appreciate your giving it a shot regardless! You'll be able to see all of the new icons once they're ready and we launch the new version of the site.