Just something I started thinking about starting BigWorld after years of not playing Baldur's Gate.
Soooooo many portraits, and it takes ages to sort through them. I wish there was a site that just had them all, with filenames already sorted out, so you could just download the whole lot and then when you play, find an appropriate portrait for a new character easily.
I suppose I play the game differently than most people though, most people probably don't have a use for this, but here's what I came up with in terms of naming conventions:
vwxyzzzzh.bmp
v: MmFf; sex, uppercase/lowercase for BG's portrait sorting.
w: race: H, L, E, G, N, D, O; Human, half-eLf, Elf, Gnome, halfliNg, Dwarf, half-Orc
x: class: B, N, C, D, F, M, P, R, S, T, W, G; Bard, barbariaN, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Sorcerer, Thief, Wizard, Generic
yy: 2 character source code, for portraits from specific artists or attributed sources. IE, if they're from Icewind Dale, use ID.
zzz: 3 numeral code to allow for up to a thousand portraits per source (should be enough, no?).
h: L or S obviously.
For example, a portait of a female human fighter from IWD, the first one listed on the 'site, would get named "FHFID001L.bmp" for the large and "fHFID001S.bmp" for the small. This would all be done server-side, so you could just download the whole pack and be good to go.
Working out how to set up the 2 character source code would be a bit of work (deciding what sources get what codes, along with allowing for assignment of new codes to new sources) but not exceptionally hard I'd think, just tedious.
What to do with portraits that could be many different classes I'm not sure; that's sort of what I had the Generic code for, but a tagging system on the website might be helpful, so you could tag a portrait as being both "fighter" and "paladin", or whatnot. May be way excessive, and wouldn't be helpful once you'd downloaded them, so IDK.
The biggest challenge would be the tedium of going through the entire stock of portraits availible and sorting them/naming them appropriatly...
The advantage of a system like this is if you're looking for a portrait for a new character, you can rapidly narrow your search using the first 3 characters that fit your desired sex/race/class. The codes after the first 3 you generally wouldn't need to pay attention to.
Just my mind ticking over on a long night...
Wishing for a consolidated, organized portait site :-/
Started by
-Iansanity-
, Jun 09 2011 08:21 PM
1 reply to this topic
#2
Cerest
-
- Member
- 157 posts
Posted 10 June 2011 - 01:02 PM
Size needs to be in Large, medium, and small.
If you are looking to replace some portraits of NPCs, Faren for example, you need a 210x330,110x170, and a 38x60.
But in reality it sounds like too much work or too little benefit to make portrait sites...
It may be smarter to just go through deviantart's fantasy section and crop portraits yourself using photoshop or other similiar software.
If you are looking to replace some portraits of NPCs, Faren for example, you need a 210x330,110x170, and a 38x60.
But in reality it sounds like too much work or too little benefit to make portrait sites...
It may be smarter to just go through deviantart's fantasy section and crop portraits yourself using photoshop or other similiar software.
