Use this one!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yiseytp05t52q7r/Fury%20Pyro.zip?dl=0

The .vmt's and .vtf's you need are in the materials folder. The .png is just for your personal reference, so you can see what the icon looks like.

Seems like a bunch of missions have dragon's fury Pyros in them, and every mission has their own icon.

Of course, this isn't mandatory to have in your mission; I just think it looks nice and that more missions should use it. Let's try to keep some sort of standards with our icons!

EDIT: Updated the link with a new version of the icon, with less artifacting/compression.

Some people probably are going to want to use the Gas Passer and may need some custom icons for it. There's the ones that Jakapoa used for Spyware Shipping and then there's these ones that I made for Shiverpeak.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/av5z8lyku66lp2z/gascan_preview.png?dl=0
If you wanna use them, here's a download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u7l3mgw4ru1x3ah/gascanboys.zip?dl=1

Oh that looks waaaaay better.

That looks awesome, thanks for sharing!

Speaking about the Dragon's Fury icons, would you be okay with me taking the icons and editting them up? I have a couple of custom Dragon's Fury Pyros that would need a custom icon.

I wouldn't mind at all. In fact, if you want some help making the custom icons, I'd be happy to assist with that as well.

What's the best program to use for creating robot icons and, if it isn't self-explanatory, how does one get started with it? Also, what's the general opinion on using others' icons? For now, I've just been using whatever's made it into my hud folders. Is this acceptable or frowned upon and, if the former, should I look around to find where they came from to credit them?

I've just used the Paint.net plugin[nemesis.thewavelength.net] and either doing a hackjob of existing classicons or trying to make my own icons (they vary a lot in quality but the gas can icons are arguably the best ones I've done)
As to the icon thing, it depends on the person who made the icons and their opinion about it. The IG icons are up for grabs in my eyes but the Dragon's Fury icons that Swordstone made are a different story.

Originally posted by Sntr:

I've just used the Paint.net plugin[nemesis.thewavelength.net] and either doing a hackjob of existing classicons or trying to make my own icons (they vary a lot in quality but the gas can icons are arguably the best ones I've done)

This is an industrial painting service's website. Thanks anyway, though.

what the fuck steam replaced my link with a paint service website
http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?p=50

For making icons, this is the write-up I made.

Originally posted by ATG Jakapoa:

Making custom icons is a two-step process. Now, there are probably multiple ways to do this, but I'll give you the method I use. I don't know how much you know, so here's the full lecture.

I use four programs in the process:

1. https://www.dotpdn.com/files/paint.net.4.0.19.install.zip, to edit the icons.
   
2. GCFScape[nemesis.thewavelength.net], which can open and extract vpk files.
   
3. http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?p=50, which allows paint.net to open, edit, ans save vtf files.
   
4. VTFEdit[nemesis.thewavelength.net], which allows me to edit vmt files

You can use GCFScape to open the directory vpks inside of the tf folder, where you can find the stock icons and their vmt files. Just a list for quick reference:

• Icons can de found in tf2_textures_dir.vpk, in the hud folder.
  
• The vmt files for the icons can be found in tf2_misc_dir.vpk, in materials/hud

To start, I recemend extracting an icon and it's vmt file. You can use them as a starting point.
Next, let's open it in paint.net. All icons are 64x64, and have a transparent background. You can now make whatever icon you need.

When creating your icon, try to convey either what the bot is or what the bot can do. This will help the player understand what the bot will be like.

To help make the process easier, you can use existing hud files in the game (located in tf2_textures_dir.vpk), or try downscaling desired images from the tf2 wiki. Or... you know.... be creative and doodle it. Just remember to keep it 64x64 with transparency.

Save you image with an appropriate name. The file must start with "leaderboard_class", followed by the name of the class, followed by your description. For example, a custom icon for a scout that uses the crit-a-cola could be named "leaderboard_class_scout_cola.vtf". Optionally, you could do "leaderboard_class_scout_jaka_cola.vtf". The added "jaka" helps to stop conflicting icon names. But please use something other than "jaka"

After you finish making you icon, open up the vmt file you downloaded. It should look something like this:

"UnlitGeneric" { "$baseTexture" "hud\leaderboard_class_scout" "$vertexcolor" 1 "$no_fullbright" 1 "$ignorez" 1 "%keywords" "tf" "$translucent" 1 }

The only part you need to worry about right now is the $baseTexture field. That field tells that game what icon it should use for this bot. In there, replace the "leaderboard_class_scout" with the name of your icon. Do not remove the "hud\" filepath. The cola example from earlier would look something like this:

"UnlitGeneric" { "$baseTexture" "hud\leaderboard_class_scout_jaka_cola" "$vertexcolor" 1 "$no_fullbright" 1 "$ignorez" 1 "%keywords" "tf" "$translucent" 1 }

Save the vmt file with the exact same name as what you named the icon. Now, make an exact copy of the vmt file you just made, and add "_giant" to the end of it. This will help stop conflicting wave icons.

You can now use the name of the icon you just created in the IconClass field of your popfile. Use the name of the vmt file. The cola example would look like

ClassIcon scout_jaka_cola

Here's what my cola example looks like in the end: https://i.imgur.com/rBqyx6x.png

To test what they look like in game, do the following.

1. Make a folder structure that looks like this:
   myicons\materials\hud
2. Place your icons in the hud folder.
   
3. Go to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Team Fortress 2\bin", or wherever your teamfortress directiory is loacted. Make sure you are in the first folder (it should have a lot of crap in it).
   
4. Go to the bottom of the folder and you should see something called "vpk.exe".
   
5. Drag the whole folder you just created onto vpk.exe. This should create a vpk of the folders in wherever the folders where.
   
6. Place that vpk in your custom folder (tf\custom).
   
7. Load a mission that uses that bot icon

I think that's everything....

As for other's icons, I prefer to use the closest pre-existing icon, since I don't like to have duplicates/variations of the same icon. For example, 13 seperate caber icons exist.[i.imgur.com] Out of those:

• 6 of them are just of the caber, styled differently.
  
• 2 of them are just of the caber, but fliped horizontaly.
  
• 2 of them depict the same action, and are almost identitcal.
  
• 2 of them are exactly the same, but pallet swaped.
  
• 1 icon is actually unique.

If you can find an icon that accurately depicts your bot, then I'd use it. And I don't think I've ever seen anyone get upset over icon borrowing.

Over the past couple weeks on the server, there has been some conversation about when it's better to just use the default robot icon over a custom one for non-stock robots. There hasn't appeared to be any consensus, though, so I figured we could collect everyone's opinions on the matter here.

Personally, I don't have a problem with every custom robot having a custom icon, but I can see the problems with it. Ideally, every used icon would have be stylized instead of just a scaled down image of a weapon or something. Additionally, some sub-icons are too small to make out easily (eg. the cross-hair on the DH icon) or are vague/non-intuitive (eg. a lightning bolt). Overall, I'd say use custom icons if you can find/make a good one; otherwise, just use the closest you can find or a Valve icon because we'll know what the robot is once it spawns.

Other thoughts?

The most common scenario when you should just stick to stock bot icons is if your custom bot doesn't have any functional difference from a stock bot template. For example, if your custom bot is really just a regular heavy but with a football helmet, you should just give it a normal heavy icon; giving it a custom icon in this case would just clutter the wave bar and cause confusion, besides also causing players to download extra icons for no reason.

In my opinion, the only time you should be using custom icons is if your bot is either A. very functionally different from stock bot templates (for example, a gas can pyro, a base jumper-air strike soldier, or a kritzkrieg medic) or B. a major boss robot. Using stock icons for these can lead to players being unfairly surprised by bots they had no way of knowing were coming. The point of the wave bar is to let you know what's coming; you shouldn't be just finding out that a pyro uses the dragon's fury after it's already spawned.

In these cases, you should use a stylized icon that fits other bot icons. Instead of just using a scaled-down picture of a weapon, use a more creative picture of a projectile or something that still conveys what the bot is. I'm tooting my own horn here, but I think my dragon's fury icon[www.dropbox.com] is a good example of that.

In the special case of major boss robots, it's more of a grey area, but the convention is to use a stylized picture of the boss' hat as an icon. To avoid confusion, this hat should be one that is clearly recognizable as belonging to that class. An icon of a BMOC is confusing, because any class could be wearing it; a Brigade Helm immediately tells you you're seeing a Pyro boss.

By "stylized", I mean these icons should also fit the style of other bot icons. That means keeping a relatively simple palette, having a visible black outline of at least 2px, and setting up your editing software so that the icon does not come out compressed.

There are a lot of different rules and thoughts regarding icons, but the 2 general rules everyone agrees with are:

If people know (or can reasonably infer) what the bot is, the icon is fine.
If people are misled by a bot icon (expecting X but saw Y instead), the icon needs changing.