Does anyone else here think that the graphics on IVAN are eye-strainingly small, especially given the amount of detail put into them?

Enlarging the graphics files themselves is easy enough, but the needs to know what to do with them. Has anyone puzzled this out, made a variant that has a more zoomed-in look?

There would be a lot of work.

Use windows Magnifying (spelling?) glass

Yes, I agree they are too small, but unfortunately there's not much we can do about it, since I'm pretty sure the game sets each pixel's color, we'd not only have to enlarge the graphics but edit the code as well

I swear, it said magnifying spell just now.

The devs had plans improving IVAN graphics from 16x16px to 32x32px, but then the development stalled. I don't know if this would have made the tiles bigger or smoother.

From what I know of the graphics files, IVAN takes a 16x16 square (the position of which is defined in the script), and dyes what appears to be the greenish parts a certain colour (e.g. the material it is made of). The colour is set in the script files (Material). There are also some colours that are left alone or treated differently by the script (e.g. the yellow on the weird vacuum cleaner backpack).
So the only problem we'd come up against whilst trying to do this is making the IVAN engine look for a 32x32 square instead of a 16x16 one. And of course, we'd have to make the new graphics .

EDIT: Oh yes, one more problem. Making the new graphics using that strange palette the IVAN graphics use is going to be a pain in the arse.

Not necessarly. 1, you draw a sword in black-gray-white, and 2, you put a greenish translucent layer over it. Finding the correct graytints en green/alpha shouldn't be that hard.

I bet it's a skill you learn pretty damn quick too.

I believe that for every item the image that needs to be found is hardcoded with the given upper left pixel too, or something like that. Hard, not really, but extremely tedious.

Not very tedious. One can just zoom in the graphics, replacing each pixel by 2x2, taking care that no pixel color get changed. Then you can edit the pixels manually to provide real 32x32 graphics. BitmapPos in the script file needs be updated, but you need not even multiply the numbers by two, simply replacing "16" by "16*2" does the trick. If you know how to use the "sed" tool, or something like that, you can do it automatically. However, I suppose that making IVAN engine work with 32x32 would be much more work.

As for the original question:

Have you tried playing full screen? I think the icons are of good size when using full screen. If not playing full screen, you can reduce the screen resolution. I also suggest using my boundary mod (either one included in the newest IVAN3D, or the standalone version for IVAN 0.50), it makes the graphics clearer.

Oh, so it's only one script file? Then it's manageable.

There are several files, but you do similar operation on all of them, I think.

Oh, well yeah, like you said, the sed command could be helpful.

I once tried to enlarge the graphics, with no success (but I only tried quick and dirty hacks).
You have to edit a lot of code, and some arithmetics that could be a little dark in the corners (due to the lack of detailed comments in some parts of the code).
But I'm pretty sure it could be done