Colour Blind Mode

[Hyperion]

Just a thought...wondered if a mod could be made for colour blinded people to be able to play defcon? Shouldnt be too hard if symbols can be edited into unit designs...as im sure everyone will agree defcon is a very colour orientated game

[Rogviler]

Heh, I thought your post was going to be that a mod should be made that makes all units and nukes colorless (like grey or white), and presumably removes the player name from the mouseover on said units and nukes also... That would be interresting.

But I agree, it is very color oriented. I'm not sure how you would make it so each color had different symbols. That's the only thing I wish, that there wasn't so many things that were global (affecting every unit or every color). Would be a lot more interresting for modding.

So are we talking hearts, stars, clovers, and moons?

-Rog

[Hyperion]

Possibly, possibly, inside each ship or in the centre of a fleet/unit...it would be difficult indeed...especially for aerial units but i think a valid challenge for someone out there with a good imagination.

[NukeLord]

xander did something about this a while ago:

Different Unit Shapes (about halfway down the page)

I'm sure there's a better thread about it than that one but i can't find it right now

[Masaq]

Don't forget that it's very rare for people to be completely colourblind. Most folks with it (myself included) are only completely colourblind in one spectrum (red/green, for example) or may be just colourdeficient. I can see that a field of grass is green, and a London bus Red, for example. I do however perceive shades and tones of colours differently- I struggle to distinguish between the Yellow and Orange colours in Defcon, as a good example. I work around it by working just from the names- I take a few seconds at start of a game to click on Teritories to see who's where, and then during battles if I'm struggling to distinguish specific player units I just leave the mouse over them until the rollover popup tells me whose they are.

[Hyperion]

Don't forget that it's very rare for people to be completely colourblind. Most folks with it (myself included) are only completely colourblind in one spectrum (red/green, for example) or may be just colourdeficient. I can see that a field of grass is green, and a London bus Red, for example. I do however perceive shades and tones of colours differently- I struggle to distinguish between the Yellow and Orange colours in Defcon, as a good example. I work around it by working just from the names- I take a few seconds at start of a game to click on Teritories to see who's where, and then during battles if I'm struggling to distinguish specific player units I just leave the mouse over them until the rollover popup tells me whose they are.

Yes yes but there still a minority and it was just an idea i've read through some of that Xander thread before and it is mostly on replacing existing unit shapes for personal/military preference as a whole and wouldn't help for a colour blind mode, i don't think you can mod for each territory to have different shaped units...but then i could be wrong...there maybe some mods that when run by a certain player only has an affect on their units, i don't have any experience with modding but i highly doubt this to be true.

Rollover names are an obvious choice but not fast enough considering the amount of units a player could be seeing in any given game...particularly aerial incursions.

[xander]

Well, you could do something like this: put a red dot, a green dot, and a blue dot on each unit. Depending on which team the unit is on, different dots will be brighter. It isn't perfect, because the subtraction that Defcon does is not 100%, but I am sure that someone could refine the method a bit, and get better results. The following are images of what might be done.

This is what you might do with a battleship.


And this is how that battleship would look on different teams.




As you can see, the image that I created doesn't really distinguish red from green, but the orange team is definitely different, and the yellow team stands out pretty well. There are a few things that might make it work better, i.e. using a softer edge to the dots, and darkening the color a bit. I don't feel like experimenting with it right now, but I am sure that some industrious person will figure it out. The other problem is the way in which Defcon will flip the units. I suggest that all of the dots be placed in one corner, so that when units are flipped around, it won't cause confusion. At any rate, have fun. ;)

xander

[BrianBlessed]

I also tried this on my Galactic mod, trying to get the Star Destroyers to all look different. I believe it worked, however it meant that turquoise ships had bits of green in them and orange ships had bits of blue in and things like that. They were all different from one another, but the orange and turquoise ships were multicoloured and stupid looking thus it was a failure for my purposes.

[kentuckyfried]

A small letter or number identifier on each unit might be simple. Team A, B, C, or 1, 2, 3, etc.

Or user created symbols, like a flag for each player!

[Smiling Buddha]

A small letter or number identifier on each unit might be simple. Team A, B, C, or 1, 2, 3, etc.

Or user created symbols, like a flag for each player!

Thing is, the same unit images are used for every team.

[xander]

A small letter or number identifier on each unit might be simple. Team A, B, C, or 1, 2, 3, etc.

Or user created symbols, like a flag for each player!

That would be ideal. However, that would also require IV to rewrite some portion of code. Until such time as they do that, the limits of modding are what they are. ;)

However, as long as we are discussing things outside the range of modding, I think that kentuckyfried is right -- while it would be nice to have different units for each team, perhaps a little letter or number for teammates would be helpful? On one level, I really like the idea of flags, and user generated images, but I am concerned that they would be too small to be really useful. I think that a number or letter would be easier to read.

Also, remember that you can mouse over a unit, and the owner of the unit will be displayed. If you know who your enemies are, that can help. It is not the entire solution, but it can't hurt, right?

xander