UI upscaling test

The Delusionist

The Delusionist

Member
Proof of concept:
A quick attempt to use freely available AI tools to upscale icons in DDO, with results below.

1. Downloaded the png for an icon from the ddowiki:
Archmage-arcaneblast-bolt.png

2. Upscaled image to 144x144 using iloveimg 2024 for free:
Archmage-arcaneblast-bolt-1.png


3. Converted upscaled image to a vector graphic using vectorizer.ai:

4. Uploaded final result as a github gist and linked here as a scalable svg:
ddoSampleIcon.svg

I'm posting this just as a proof of concept for what AI can do, though I have no idea if there is a paid service to batch process the thousands of images that would be needed, and I'm sure an actual artist would need to tune up the final result to meet quality standards. But perhaps editing AI generated vector images to meet those standards would prove faster or less costly than creating new images from scratch?

Please don't use this thread to flame the game or developers, but if this is an avenue that hasn't been discussed yet, perhaps it can open some conversations and lead to faster UI scaling. I am neither a developer nor an artist, and I'm sure there are much more compicated things (like programming scaling in the first place or enabling vector graphic support) that make something like this much more difficult.
 
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A

Arkandor

Member
The simplest upscaling would be making every pixel a square of 2x2 identically colored pixels so the UI would look exactly the same on 4k as it does on 1080p . That doesn't even need new graphic files, and can be simply done by adding "/2" to the code that reads the image to draw it on screen. Prettier graphics that make actual use of the higher resolution are a nice-to-have extra task for much much later, and when the time has come, don't worry, I'm pretty sure SSG not only has Photoshop but also knows how to use macros.

Graphics is not the issue, though. The issue is fitting the visuals to the mouse-click coordinates, those need to be reworked when a 32x32 quickslot icon suddenly is 64x64 in size, and then there needs to be a way to switch to the smaller UI for those that still run the game in 1080p, so the code can't just be adjusted to the new icon size, but needs to scale. Otherwise they also have to start all over again once 8k graphics are a thing.

Basically the old UI approach DDO uses is:
- Windows: Hey game, the user clicked in your window at coordinates 654/321
- Game: Well.. Quickbar 7's top left is at 500/300, thus bottom right is at 820/332 so the click was on that bar at (654-500)/32+1 = Slot #5! - Let's Go!

Meanwhile for most modern UIs it's like:
- Windows: Hey game, the user clicked your object #123
- Game: You heard it, #123 - Do your thing.
- #123: Pew pew pew

The only prudent approach is to build a new, modern, UI from scratch, but that will take a lot of time (=money) for a questionable return - how many people are going to play (and pay for) a 18 years old game because the UI can now be bigger?
 
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