Helpy icon cache

Helpy stores captured item icons under %LOCALAPPDATA%\RuneSchema\HELPY\runtime\saved\cache\item-icons. Settings > Icon cache provides Clean Icon Cache and Open cache folder in both simple and advanced modes. The link opens Windows File Explorer for manual management. Close Helpy/the game before manually removing files; visible icons can otherwise be captured again while browsing. Cache cleanup does not remove mods, settings, saves, recipes or journal progress.

Dump / export cached icons saves the compatible captured cache as a portable .rsmk-icons file; Import icon cache restores matching pictures. An export does not capture every texture in the game. Normal browsing tries the compatible local disk thumbnail before submitting a native capture request. Missing or invalid thumbnails fall back to the game's capture pipeline and are saved for later use when persistence is enabled. No all-assets scan runs at startup.

Both cache operations and Full scan game catalogue have live progress and cancel controls. Export separates discovery, content verification, pixel validation, writing and final publication. Source hashing reports MB as chunks are read; writing reports icons and bytes. Unknown totals/final publication use an animated bar rather than a fabricated percentage. A successful export only finishes after the final file is published; cancellation preserves an existing destination and removes the partial file.

Build from the main menu

Build registered icon cache is an explicit capture job, separate from exporting pictures that are already cached. It can use the existing front-end renderer at the main menu or the active world renderer; it does not open a gameplay world, create a character, or modify a save. If no stable renderer or registered source identity is available, the job waits and reports that state. The normal spawn/icon service must be enabled (the default). A dedicated headless runtime cannot capture GPU thumbnails; compatible pack import/export remains available.

Choose All registered sources or one source before building/exporting. The source grouping shares Recipes' station asset-root classifier:

• core: ordinary /Game and /Engine assets.
• mods/<folder>: declared managed-mod ownership, /Game/Mods/<folder> or /Game/RuneSchema/<folder> content, including known schema-created assets.
• plugins/<mount>: other plugin/GameFeature content roots without a declared managed-mod owner.

This is virtual-path/declaration grouping, not a per-asset physical PAK-container locator. Shared mounts retain conservative compatibility checks. References to core icons do not relabel all core content as belonging to the referencing mod. Native plugin/GameFeature container files and descriptors participate in source comparison when present; packed features also depend on their game containers.

Discovery is time-sliced and bounded: loaded registered DataAsset icon references plus mounted UI/icon texture metadata. It does not force-load every item/recipe/actor or extract every art texture. Capture reuses compatible disk pixels first and fills missing entries through the native renderer. Progress shows discovery, source verification and capture, with cache-hit/captured/failed counts and cancellation. Completed thumbnails survive cancellation. Source changes stop the batch instead of mixing generations. Increase the disk limit or select a smaller source if the discovered batch exceeds the configured limit.

For an optional ColorsOfMoney download, choose mods/colorsofmoney, build, review any failures, then dump/export. The suggested filename is colorsofmoney.rsmk-icons. Physical cache pixels remain deduplicated; the source-filtered attachment is a pack file, not a duplicated raw mod folder. Imported packs preserve source labels for later filtered exports.

The full scan has its own native stage/entry counters and a separate cancellation action; cancelling it does not cancel a delivery or journey. It discovers and classifies catalogue entries, not every possible texture. Full asset loading requires explicit acknowledgment. Settings prevents starting a scan and a cache import/export simultaneously. Completed captured icons can be exported without forcing another catalogue scan.

Source comparison

New captures are grouped by content source and source fingerprint. The native core publishes copied source metadata only after successful registry auditing; the desktop UI does not infer installed items from disk-cache contents. Native item-to-icon references can introduce a separate icon source, inheriting the item source's contributing owners. Such icons wait for the updated manifest instead of exhausting capture retries while the comparison is pending.

The filesystem-only comparison worker checks the storefront lane, game binary and content metadata, and the contributing managed mod files. Small authored files include a content hash. Disabled/unregistered managed mod folders are not scanned. Shared mounts combine contributing owners conservatively. Unrelated RuneSchema/Helpy loader changes do not invalidate every native icon. File size and modification time are used for large binary/container files; this is cache coherency, not a cryptographic integrity or mod-registration check.

Icons remain demand-cached as visible content is browsed. The cache-file count is not the number of items, recipes, or available game/mod textures. No full asset load or GPU render sweep occurs at launch. Old flat cache files are not trusted across the layout change; they can be removed with the cleanup control. Existing stale source generations remain bounded by the global cache limit.

Advanced mode exposes the disk limit (default 200 MB). Turning persistence off uses item-icons-live for session-only captures. Cleanup validates the exact cache targets and refuses redirected/junction trees. Cached pixels are installed only from the expected per-icon path and never create catalogue entries or prove that a mod's content registered successfully.

Optional shared icon packs

Settings > Icon cache has Import icon pack and Export icon pack. Players can also drop one .rsmk-icons file onto the RSMK window or detached Item Bay. Unpack ZIP downloads first. Keep icon persistence enabled; the configured disk limit still applies. An import that would exceed that limit asks you to increase it or clean old generations first. Clean Icon Cache is disabled while a pack operation is running; do not manually delete the cache during an operation.

For authors: build a selected registered source or browse its items, then Export. Only captured, indexed icons for currently registered sources are exported; this does not render every game texture or force-load every asset. Older thumbnails acquire their export index when browsed again. Share the resulting file as an optional download alongside the actual mod. The pack contains canonical icon paths, source fingerprints and raw thumbnails, not your install paths, scripts, items, settings or saves. It is not a replacement for the mod or PAK.

Imports check SHA-256 content identities rather than another PC's installation path, storefront binary or file timestamps. Game content and contributing mod files must match; missing or changed sources are skipped independently. Shared mounts and game-container changes invalidate conservatively. Compatible pixel files are rekeyed into the player's own source cache. Only the live catalogue can supply items; a pack cannot register, unlock or enable anything.

The first explicit import/export may take time to hash game containers. This runs on a cancellable filesystem worker, not the game/render thread. Local file-size/timestamp memoization reuses those content hashes for later pack operations. Normal launch keeps the existing lightweight source comparison; it does not hash all large containers. A progress indicator and result show imported/skipped counts. Workers are cancelled/joined before DLL unload.

The version-1 format is RSIPACK1, a bounded JSON manifest and consecutive RSI3 pixel blobs with per-icon SHA-256. It permits at most 32,768 icons, 256x256 pixels per icon, an 8 MiB manifest and a 512 MiB total file. All blobs validate before the first icon is published. It does not extract arbitrary archive filenames; cache targets are generated locally and links/junctions are rejected. These checks prevent malformed packs from writing outside the cache, not from containing unattractive or intentionally misleading pictures. Download packs from authors you trust.

Validation boundary

Automated fixtures cover source-local invalidation, unchanged-source reuse, disabled-source exclusion, malformed manifests, cross-source dependencies, disk reuse without a native capture, unknown-source waiting, wrong-path rejection, and cleanup target containment. Standalone previews and DLL lifecycle checks are not evidence that every live mod icon renders correctly; an in-game browse/restart check remains necessary before making that claim. The menu-cache candidate additionally tests path/source grouping, source-filtered export/import label retention, plugin-container invalidation and menu-independent control state. Its end-to-end main-menu batch capture still needs live acceptance.