Spiral Knights - Colorblind frustration (PVP teams, PVE

Colorblind frustration (PVP teams, PVE - updated 2014!)

16 replies [Last post]

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 22:48

Tenkii

Original Text:

In PVP, I was wondering if the [what I hear is] Cyan color (usually paired up vs Red) can be changed to something... more distinguishable from white, if that makes sense?

It's not really much of a problem elsewhere, but in lockdown, I can not tell the difference between a cyan-captured area and a neutral area.

Can we replace that or just have a red-blue colorblind mode (blue = friendly, red = enemy)?

Edit 2014:
Ideas (all designed for you!)
I'm a little more knowledgable now than I was before. Let's not change the colors directly since that'd mean coming up with entirely new color skins.

Replace uncaptured (neutral point) colors with gray (for example, #E3E3E3)
The main usability issue here is that for Lockdown, cyan and [white] look very very similar. It's difficult to tell between a point that belongs to cyan team and a point that is neutral-colored.

This is probably the easiest and most direct fix to any of the colorblind issues in Lockdown.
Add a "red-blue" mode for colorblind players
More comprehensive, and probably is most involved: Add a checkbox to Video settings to enable colorblind mode
- Pick two existing colorblind-safe options (for example, blue and red), and force the player's team to show up as blue and the enemy team to show up as red. Alternatively, team 1 can always be blue and team 2 can always be red.
  It might not be an issue in FFA (for example, Blast Network), so we might just limit it to team games.
- Next to the team name display (ex: Team 1) add a "[color]" with it, so the players in this mode know which team is which. (ex: "Yellow team" is team 1, even if it shows up as blue.
  For example:
  "Team 1 [Aquamarine]"
  "Team 2 [Red]"
- If the neutral point fix isn't implemented for all players, then implement it for this mode.
- Change the "enemy bomb" color so it shows up separately from the player "red".
  For example, red bombs on a red capture point are barely detectable. Not so much of a pressing issue, since if they're already the same color, the issue
  then must happen for everyone else.
- Face crystals for info (PVE).
  Yellow and Green crystals are a little difficult to tell apart. How about adding info over those to show which colors you're about to pick up? I figure if we go with a colorblind video mode, it might as well affect the entire game.

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 23:37

Hexzyle

Sounds like a good idea +1

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 23:53

Severage

Very solid idea. +1.

~Sev

Wed, 02/01/2012 - 03:20

Hexzyle

Alternatively, you could ask

Alternatively, you could ask OOO permission to download altered code with different colours in them, causing all games to always be [TeamColourA] - White - [TeamColourB], instead of all this randomised colour stuff, where both [TeamColourA] and [TeamColourB] are discernable from eachother and from white for a person who is colourblind.

Wed, 02/01/2012 - 10:18

Sirenblue

And Team Logos. The Arcade already generates a heckload of logos. Why not on control points?

Wed, 02/01/2012 - 11:36

Culture

Yes!

This please.
> Can we replace that or just have a red-blue colorblind mode (blue = friendly, red = enemy)?

I'm not even colorblind, but randomly assigning colors is such a bad idea. It gets confusing having to adjust from game to game. I think there is a reason why other games like BattleField always use consistent colors no matter what team you are on.

Thu, 04/12/2012 - 09:54

Tenkii

well, it's been a few months but...

I am still mad at games like this:
http://i.imgur.com/zy39F.jpg

I can NOT look at the map and distinguish between points that are free and points that belong to white or cyan or whatever the hell my team color is.

>:[

Can't we have an option that turns all colors to red/blue and label the team names by their actual color?
There's even space on the UI for something like

Team 1
(Cyan)

So even if the colors are displayed as red/blue, we'll still be able to relate when other people say things like "Go green!", we'll be able to look and see
Team 1
(Green)

and know they're talking about my team.

Thu, 04/12/2012 - 14:15

Serell

Yes

That is all that needs to be said
+1

Thu, 04/12/2012 - 14:23

Skold-The-Drac

Agree

+1, most of what I'd say is already here so yeah.

Thu, 04/12/2012 - 19:41

Hexzyle

@Seiran

Bumpin again.

I'll have a look at the files and see if I can organise some sort of workaround for you until this is implemented. I hope OOO doesn't own my [butt] for sayin' this. It's for a good cause, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

Thu, 04/12/2012 - 20:59

#10

Tenkii

An anecdote. (BUMP LOL)

I was trying SK out on my dad's desktop, and I found out he uses a program called F.lux to fade the monitor screen at certain times of day. Well, at night, it did some kind of yellowish tint, and it made the two colors distinguishable for me. This is a similar effect to playing puzzle fighter with 3d glasses lol.

>__> regardless of that anecdote, that should not be the solution here lol.

Thu, 04/12/2012 - 22:42

#11

Schattentag

@Seiran's anecdote

...lol.

Anyway, this idea makes a lot of sense. Sometimes it's hard for me to quickly and easily tell what color things are, especially with cyan. A wonderful example is having cyan on Frostbite - it's really freaking hard to tell sometimes. Granted, Frostbite's kind of a silly map in the first place, but the point still stands.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 17:15

#12

Culture

Again

I use F.lux too! Really helps with eyestrain in low light.

This still needs to be implemented. Just the other day I zoomed up to a control point, and began vigorously swatting the pink-teamed Guardian chilling there. On wait... I'm pink this game. /derp. My excuse? Last game the other side was pink. Oh well.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 17:25

#13

Xylka-Mkii

+1 Colorblind mode is needed,

Colorblind mode is needed, and should be quite easy on OOO side.

Wed, 12/11/2013 - 16:27

#14

Tenkii

bro bump

I did a search to see if someone had made a thread about this, and unsurprisingly, it was me a year ago lo0l

Seriously though, I still can't tell when (cyan?) team owns a capture point.

Further anecdote: I probably picked cyan as my user color because I thought it was the 'white' colored option for knights.

Really, if the reason you can't change it is that you can't (at this point) change the player color values, I noticed the color pairings are always the same, meaning that it's predefined somewhere that "RED" team should be paired up with "CYAN" team. Just reuse another color, like blue. :|

That's the 5 minute approach.
If you want to spend an hour, then maybe change the LD minimap to use codified colors (that is, a 'friendly', 'neutral', and 'enemy') instead of directly using team colors.
Maybe a little more than an hour, could even use icons, to accomodate for all color issues altogether.

Thu, 12/12/2013 - 07:42

#15

Neueragon

+ ∞

I agree, i am red-green weak (i can still distinguish red and green with high saturation) and cyan is basically white for me, while I also cant distinguish other colours as well.
I thought I picked blue for my personal colour, but guess what, after about 1.5 year I find out "no, it isnt, its purplish". I like that when you buy colour changes, it tells you the name, which could easily be added as a mouseover-text in the character creation.

Mon, 07/21/2014 - 13:54

#16

Tenkii

I'm with Seiran here.

Bump, because hey, it's 2014!

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Colorblind frustration (PVP teams, PVE - updated 2014!)