Eye of the Beholder Textures [Released]

[Mithloraite]

Very cool - much improved over the pointlessly ruined EOBIII versions.

If I'm playing a game, then my party will highly likely be made up from a selection of these faces: ...

Thanks a lot!

I can see there is a score of 5 (out of your 15 favorite) characters that I changed a bit already. The Golden girl in that iron crown is OK now I suppose.

The Dwarf was a crux in what regards the background color. Dark violet (used in EoB-1) is not possible in EoB-3 and lighter violet doesn't suit the character. Is dark blue OK?
(The face is OK I suppose and more like EoB-1, in EoB-3 version some lines were erased.)

As for old (EoB1-2) NPC faces in EoB-3, I also thought of using them as playable characters.
Your story suggests that Tyrra, perhaps, might need some restoration. In EoB-III. As some people do take these portraits into their game. And particularly Tyrra was badly changed in EoB-3...

So countering this effect might be a good idea.

P.S.
Other characters out of these 15 were pretty lucky in EoB-III. They had nearly no changes. Which is good

[Enjay]

The Dwarf was a crux in what regards the background color. Dark violet (used in EoB-1) is not possible in EoB-3 and lighter violet doesn't suit the character. Is dark blue OK?

Yes, if violet isn't possible, dark blue would be a suitable replacement IMO.

[CBM]

Cool. Didn't notice this texture pack before, but it looks nice

[Mithloraite]

The Dwarf was a crux in what regards the background color. Dark violet (used in EoB-1) is not possible in EoB-3 and lighter violet doesn't suit the character. Is dark blue OK?

Yes, if violet isn't possible, dark blue would be a suitable replacement IMO.

Well the dark blue was not quite too dark... Was OK when on white screen background like forums but in-game... Had to make it one grade darker. (Also I took the liberty to make his helm 1 pixel too high. Corrected.)
The dwarf looks like this now:

https://i.imgur.com/cI3iR2q.png

Is that OK?

Also I added these three other characters, the famous "Ranger/Knight" portrait (in EoB-3 it had one front eye dimmed) and two girls who had poor face lines (streaks of pixels hanging vertically down).
Also corrected the neck and shoulders of this green kimono girl.

The Golden Neth Lady is even better now, has smooth pixels now like the best EoB portraits.

https://i.imgur.com/efJLl6v.png

(vanilla EoB-3 version is like chaos of pixels in comparison, also has ultra narrow eyes.)

The link to downloading new Version 6_24 (24 portraits) is here:

https://www.old-games.ru/forum/threads/ ... st-1656277


BTW, I noticed in EoB-3 Anya IS changed.

Her shoulder is less exposed, the kind of change we saw in other EoB-3 female characters.

So this EoB-3 "edit/censor" work touched even the NPC portraits.

[Enjay]

Is that OK?

Yes, it looks great to me - as do your other edits.

Interesting info too. Thanks for keeping up with this.

[Mithloraite]

Is that OK?

Yes, it looks great to me - as do your other edits.

Interesting info too. Thanks for keeping up with this.

About Anya, this is not just the info. I took it to heart and acted upon it. The unwanted "changes" in her portrait were even more numerous.
In EotB-III,
Three bad features spoiled her hair: the length is cut in half, it doesn't form great spikes and instead of one steel ring (on top of her head) it is held with 2 baubles that unbalance the picture.
Three drawbacks with the face: very narrow "slits" for eyes, very pale eyebrows (nearly unseen instead of the original dark and blocky eyebrows) and much bigger mouth...
Three drawbacks with her body: very small, puny shoulder (in EoB-1 she was 2-nd strong NPC to Dwarven Prince and had mighty shoulders), the neck is also thin, finally, too big head vs. her body in general. As the body was re-drawn in EoB-3, the head being the same size as in EoB-1.
Very unfitting body - unlike the one she had in EoB-1.
Problem number 10: the armor is wrong and boring. Incorrect small body AND incorrect armor!

Well, I have fixed it all.
I worked over ver. 7_27 of the portraits, same download page, there is no .RES file but all portrsaits are there for downdoad, .bmp and .bin files, as "ver. 7_27 final test.zip".
As I remember you use 32 bit .RES file so for you a 16-bit .RES is not needed in any case.

You are certainly welcome to look at better Anya!

As usual this .bin could be converted to 32-bit or so I hope

P.S.
The Gruffy Dwarf character might be looking straight ahead... Not to the left side of him. His eyes are a mystery as in EoB-1 (and 2) he had nearly no eyes... As some of these portraits were made with small screens + EGA/CGA low-res modes in mind...
But EoB-III has no EGA/CGA mode, so eyes become a must!

[Enjay]

Very nice, very nice indeed. I know that she is just a postage stamp sized picture and some pre-rolled stats with no real personality or anything in the game but something about Anya in EOB makes her one of my favourite game NPCs.

[Mithloraite]

Very nice, very nice indeed. I know that she is just a postage stamp sized picture and some pre-rolled stats with no real personality or anything in the game but something about Anya in EOB makes her one of my favourite game NPCs.

I might not be ready for the perfect reply but I have grasped something about her.
Her original "screen time" was small but the artist's -idea- about her IS big!

Whoever created her has painted just "what he wanted"... Very solid image and character.

(was it Mr.Hewitt? His blog is here
Joseph B. Hewitt IV
http://working-as-designed.blogspot.com ... press.html

For a small "episodic" character (uhuh, a stamp-like picture with little to no bio) he included _all_ good and fun features he could dream of.

Perhaps he felt free to do it just for such character, not for the main characters defined by other game authors/designers or company high-ups.

What I know, she is -number one- in originality, really.
Even her posturing is like pictures by Brom from DarkSun, NO other portrait in the game with such peculiar posturing.
(Brom is famous for his "always posturing" characters.)

(though I admit I had to move her picture 1 pixel to the right. In EoB-1 it was too tilted to the left side. But only by 1 pixel ).

All is peculiar about her. Long, super-spiky red hair go perfectly with violet background. The steel ring to hold the hair, the collar-and-breastplate armor are all unique.
Even the face and the body/posture is unique.

One-of-a-kind character!

As for words, she says just enough. "I am a warrior".
Some of her appearance is that of barbarians, red hair go well here. It all fits...

Actually, thanks a lot. It was you who brought my attention to Anya. All her 10 features that were spoiled and/or removed by EoB-III "artist" are in fact really great! It was my good thing to do to return it.

btw.
the first real long sword found by the party belonged to Anya.

A little sum-up: she looks just ~super cool~!
Like no one.

P.S.
At last I have finished and made public Portraits version 7_27, on EAB and Old-Games_ru.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=100055&page=3

providing some screenshots.

[Mithloraite]

Very nice, very nice indeed. I know that she is just a postage stamp sized picture and some pre-rolled stats with no real personality or anything in the game but something about Anya in EOB makes her one of my favourite game NPCs.

Hello! I hope you are well!
Long story short, I expanded that EoB-III Portrait Patch to 36 portraits and I admit I still missed certain fine points about that Gruffy Dwarf and Anya in ver. 7.
So, changed a lot of things for the best in Ver. 8 Completely returned some EoB-1 designs instead of tinkering with EoB-3 newer images. Published it all on EAB forums, portrait files are for download. - And EYE.RES (DOS) ready file. Here,

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=151 ... stcount=46

[Enjay]

Very nice, very nice indeed. Great work.
Looking at the comparisons just drives home how badly they messed up with EOBIII - and for no good reason that I can tell.

[Mithloraite]

Very nice, very nice indeed. Great work.
Looking at the comparisons just drives home how badly they messed up with EOBIII - and for no good reason that I can tell.

Thanks! Now I'm starting to feel it looks OK.
As I studied "the enemy" for quite some time I got ideas about their reasons/plans. There was 26 male portraits and 18 female (with 3 of these being "unisex"). So, 44 PC portraits. In EoB-3 real change (70% or more) happened to 10. Only 10! (7 male, 3 female.)
Some 10 portraits didn't change at all. All others (24) were just spoiled in some way without -much- repainting. Mainly by (but not limited to!) dimming their eyes. When I look at those 10 really changed/repainted by EoB-3 "designer", the goal seems clear: to repaint the portraits as "realistic" pixel art and not cartoonish or even anime style that was in EoB-1.

So they used dimmer colors (including backgrounds) and dimmed (or completely blackened!) the eyes for most portraits.
Too bad it made characters look dead or dull - and still not realistic.

Not to mention they obviously dropped the -serious- attempt with this plan at 10 portraits.
Resulting just in a mess.

Beside such bad "realism" the other reason was censorship. Bare shoulders, armpits, parts of chest or form-fitting garments were removed/repainted.
It's also very bad as this "artist" while doing so made poor female characters look terrible. Like that Violet girl.

So, no skill and poor or impossible goals were driving EoB-3 portrait "team". The result (which we know too well) was inevitable.

BTW,
should I experiment and assemble EYE.RES G.O.G. 32-bit version with these Ver. 8 portraits?

[Enjay]

Everything that you said makes sense.

The artwork was, IMO, also symptomatic of everything else that went wrong with the game. Despite its more expansive setting, I thought that it failed gameplay-wise (or at least didn't live up to EoB 1&2) and somehow a potentially interesting storyline felt dull too. But the worst part (which I've probably said already) was the horrible performance of the engine. EoB 1&2 ran beautifully and even my old 286 played EoB without any issues. By the time I got EoB 3, I was running a faster machine but it choked all the time. Any "surprise" that you were about to face an enemy was ruined because the game stuttered and stalled, and an egg-timer appeared while the resources for it loaded. It was unplayable. The game actually didn't even reach what I would consider to be good performance after I upgraded to a pretty decent machine for the time (a 486 dx2 66Mhz if I recall correctly). Even with that, the egg time would keep appearing but the game was at least playable.

There were, of course, some high points too. I always really liked the look of these guys:


But the overall impression of EoB 3, especially for someone who was such a huge, obsessive fan of the first two, was one of overall disappointment. Almost 30 years later, I'm still a bit bitter about it.

I've probably already said much of the above.

should I experiment and assemble EYE.RES G.O.G. 32-bit version with these Ver. 8 portraits?

Sounds like a good idea to me.