--+ Introduction +--
Most of the WHDLoad Game icons are in the NewIcons format, where the OldIcon
image sizes of them are typically 8x8 or 5x5 pixels big. The reason for this
is to make the icons open quicker on the Workbench screen, which actually is
a good idea (but as with all good ideas, someone just had to go overkill and
introduce 1x1 pixel icons as well).
This concept works just fine as long as the Amiga uses a newer icon.library
and/or the NewIcons patch. But if this isn't installed, all the user can see
on screen are those pesky little icons, where especially the 1 pixel ones are
extra annoying since they may appear as invisible, and will also cause OS2.x
Amigas to crash.
The solution is of course to replace all of those tiny icons with some bigger
ones, but since doing this by hand can be a rather tedious task, I decided to
make some scripts that takes care of everything. Basically, the scripts scans
through the given directory, and may then replace the images of all the icons
which has the following characteristics:
- Project icons with WHDLoad as default tool
- Project icons with MultiView as default tool
- Drawer icons
By default, only icons with a width of 10 pixels or less will be processed,
but it is however possible to override this, so that ALL icons that matches
the types mentioned above gets handled. Another thing is that the NewIcon
images of ALL icons found will be killed/removed (this is optional).
Have in mind that it's only the icon _images_ that gets replaced, all other
icon data (like ToolTypes) will remain the same.
--+ The Scripts +--
This distribution includes the following scripts:
RepIcons - Main script for replacing (tiny) WHDLoad related icons. It also
uses another script called WRepScript for doing its job.
SetOptions - Allows the user to choose if NewIcon images should be removed
(killed) by RepIcons script, and whether or not only tiny icon
images shall be replaced (Force Copy).
RIconCopy - Simple requester based script for copying icon images from one
icon to another. First you select the Source icon (FROM), then
the Destination icon (TO).
--+ Requirements +--
Any Amiga with Kickstart 2.04 or higher.
Some WHDLoad games installed (obviously :-)
The scripts uses the ProcessIcon and IconCopy commands, which is already
included. They can also be found on Aminet under:
util/wb/ProcessIcon.lha
util/cli/iconcopy.lha
--+ Installation +--
Just copy the WHDLoad-TinyIconFix drawer to wherever you like on your system.
Although it shouldn't really be required, it may still be a good idea to copy
the ProcessIcon and IconCopy executables to the C drawer of your boot partit-
ion. They are both quite handy to have.
--+ Using RepIcons +--
Here is a more detailed explenation over how to use the RepIcons script for
replacing (tiny) WHDLoad related icons:
1. First thing to do is to make sure that some reference icons is present on
the Ram disk. RepIcons will look for these icons, and will only replace icon
images if they can be found. You can find some example icons in the included
Icons drawer. Just drag & drop the ones you want to use, then rename them.
Basically, make sure that one or more of the following icons is present:
Ram:WHDLoad.info
Ram:WReadMe.info
Ram:WDrawer.info
2. Next thing to do is deciding what should happen to the NewIcon images
that's present in the icons (kill or ignore), and whether or not only tiny
OldIcon images (width <= 10 pixels) should be replaced. Use the SetOptions
script for configuring this.
3. Finally start the RepIcons script, and choose your Games drawer/partition.
RepIcons will now scan through this directory, where all icons that matches
the given parameters will be processed. For icons with WHDLoad as the default
tool, the icon images might be replaced by the ones in Ram:WHDLoad.info for
example. While RepIcons is running, it will give some information about what
it's currently doing. Here every skipped icon is represented by a single dot
on the "Skipped:" line.
4. While making the scripts, my thought was to make them do everything auto-
matically with minimal of work needed to be done afterwards. But if you want
to be picky, you can after RepIcons is finished, go over all WHDLoad icons
and move & snapshot all those that seems to be a bit out of place.
--+ Icons and Palettes +--
As previously mentioned, there are some example icons included in the Icons
drawer that can be used as reference icons with RepIcons. Here the Joystick
and Smiley icons are meant as replacements for WHDLoad icons. When I created
them, I wasn't sure of what width to use, but after examening the icons of
all games installed on one of my Amigas, it turned out that the average width
was 93 pixels, so that's what I ended up with using. How many colors these
icons use is indicated by the file names, where 4C means 4 Colors and 8C is
8 Colors.
If you decide to go for one of the 8 color icons, you may need to change the
palette so that it looks correct. This can easily be done by clicking one of
the icons in the Palettes drawer. For making the change permanent, start the
Prefs/Palette program and then click Save.
Please feel free to do whatever you like with these icons and palettes,
there are no restrictions involved.
For more info about WHDLoad-TinyIconFix and other stuff I have made, check
out my website at: www.rhz1.com
In addition, there is also my Amiga911 Maker project related website, which
can be found here: www.amiga911maker.site11.com
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