105 replies to this topic

[T FreeLancer]

Why not just have seom settings that allow the user to change the game experience to fit their particular color perception. If you are red-green deficient then have that setting that might change the colors to some that are more visable

[DarkTreader]

Garth Erlam, on 24 February 2012 - 12:45 PM, said:

I had a brainstorm - so far this has worked 100% of the time:

Those of you who are red/green colourblind - can you tell the difference between a Red and Green lightsaber?

(this helps greatly with hue, saturdation, tint, and intensity)

Yes and no. Yes, because I know that Sith use red lightsabers. No, because the colors are close enough in my head that if I didn't know otherwise, I'd think they were almost identical.

Thankfully (I suppose?) I was lucky enough to get the happy side-effect of Pattern Recognition +1, so my brain/eyes/whatever function better off of context clues and things of that nature. For the lightsaber example, I honestly couldn't tell you whether my eyes see a slight variation between them, or if my brain automatically assigns one a slightly different tint because it *knows* that one is supposed to be different. Blasted visual matrixing... terribly handy at times, but frustrating at others.

[Nick Makiaveli]

DarkTreader, on 24 February 2012 - 03:38 PM, said:

Yes and no. Yes, because I know that Sith use red lightsabers. No, because the colors are close enough in my head that if I didn't know otherwise, I'd think they were almost identical.

Thankfully (I suppose?) I was lucky enough to get the happy side-effect of Pattern Recognition +1, so my brain/eyes/whatever function better off of context clues and things of that nature. For the lightsaber example, I honestly couldn't tell you whether my eyes see a slight variation between them, or if my brain automatically assigns one a slightly different tint because it *knows* that one is supposed to be different. Blasted visual matrixing... terribly handy at times, but frustrating at others.

Actually it's just a side effect from being dropped so much when you were little, at least that's what your mom said.


OT: I think the idea of a toggle/setting is a great one. My brother and I were lucky not to inherit from my dad. My son also seems fine. This is something that all to often gets passed by, so add me to the list of people who are impressed

PS: This isn't the first rodeo DT and I have been on, and yes I have talked to his mom in the past. And yes, I am more than willing to sell embarrassing stories....PM me for paypal info

[Psydotek]

Prosperity Park, on 24 February 2012 - 10:54 AM, said:

Here are come links to various Ishihara plate tests for colorblindness. From these links, you should get some useful data, especially if you probe the images with a "color-sampler" paintbrush tool in photoshop.
http://intro.bio.umb...ect/colorblind/

http://www.toledo-be...nd/Ishihara.asp
http://waynesword.pa...du/colorbl1.htm

This. Completely. I'm red-green colorblind and these are the shades that I have trouble with. Usually the darker shades of green and red become difficult for me to tell apart especially when they're right next to each other. Put a green stripe next to a red stripe and the colors will seem to blend or shimmer back and forth. I have no problem with bright neon shades (because, well, they're so bright).

For clarification, being colorblind doesn't mean that I can't see the colors but rather the colors aren't as bright to me as they should be (because i don't have enough receptors in my eyes to make those colors really stand out). This is usually easily compensated for by using brighter shades of green/red.

For gameplay, I'm not to worried about distinguishing between color until it becomes an issue where I can't distinguish between teammates and such.

Other info requested earlier in the thread:

I can see traffic signals correctly. I can also distinguish between green/red lightsabers unless they're so bright that they're mostly white with a green/red tint, then I usually have to spend afew extra seconds to stare at them to figure out which color it is.

Edited by Psydotek, 24 February 2012 - 06:01 PM.

[Zoberraz]

Oh, I misread this thread. I thought it was something about trying to adapt the game to colorblind people. Not to just touch on laser beam colors.

From experience, the PPC lightning bolts from Mechwarrior 3 were fairly recognizable. The rest of the lasers were just... laser-like regardless of color. I never, in my life as a MW gamer, ever identified a laser type being fired by its color.

And no, I cannot really tell what color the star war lightsabers are. On first glance I would've even register that they are different colors. If I payed more attention... yeah, I kind of see they are different but a color descriptor (slightly green, slightly red) doesn't come to mind.

It also feels, forgive my saying so, unimportant: it never killed me never to know what lasers were being fired at me. It appeals to me that we have a champion trying to make up for our handicap... but I'd be far more keen in this intent being directed to the parts of the game where I'd be the most affected: customization (choosing colors for something), and identification in information warfare.

Likely not what you want to her. Still, thank you.

[Nick Makiaveli]

Zoberraz, on 24 February 2012 - 06:34 PM, said:

Oh, I misread this thread. I thought it was something about trying to adapt the game to colorblind people. Not to just touch on laser beam colors.

Journey of a 1K steps starts with deciding to get off your butt or something like that.

To put it another way, what else would they do to adapt it? Not include any colors you can't see? If they did, would you even notice if they didn't tell you?

Also, tactically speaking it could be quite helpful to know what size laser just shot you. Gives you a quick way to tell the max range of it and thus whether backing out of range is a feasible option or not for example.

[metro]

My friend was green/red blind, and for some reason purple issues as well.

One day his mother actually let him wear purple checkered pants to school with a orange and white vertical striped shirt!

Its amazing a Boeing 747 didnt try to use him for a landing strip.

He still hates her for this 30 years later!

[Kairaveth]

I do not know if I am typical of the red/green color blindness. But until I was shown flashcards with all kinds of dots and was told to determine what number was represtented I didn't know I was color blind. I see reds and I see greens. It is when you get them together and dark that it becomes and issue to me, and if you can see 20 different shades of red sitting side by side I may only see about 5 to 10 different shades.

Thank you very much for considering something I rarely consider myself.

[Fidelis]

Blues and Purple shades
Red and Green shades
Green and Brown shades
Light greens and Yellow shades

Lights make everything worse.

For instance with traffic lights, I see the "green" light as white and the yellow light as green.

Thank you for considering those who are color blind. It can be very frustrating when a game rely's soley on colors for interpertation.

[Tal Kath Naabal]

While I am not color blind myself (I feel a bit left out of this group) I do want to help in anyway possible to make this game as good as possible for everyone so I feel obligated to throw my two cents in.

It seems to me that getting a reliable way to make (specifically lasers) identifiable would not be to change the hue of the lasers slightly or try to find specific colors that are identifiable to colorblind people, but to keep the colors you want (the ones everyone has come to remember) AND,

simply use a different sprite to stretch/replicate along the length of the laser that is shaped different or has different intensity of white light distribution.

For example; take the texture map of your lasers and throw them into Photoshop. Desaturate them both and look at them side by side. If you can identify them when they are devoid of color saturation, any color blind person should also be able to with any colors. (my sugestion would be to distribute the "hot" center and the "fuzzy" outside of the laser beams differently for ER and Standard laser texture maps) Also this way you can apply whatever color you want to the effect later and re-use the texture asset.

Anyway PM/Email me if you guys need examples, I can throw together some simple maps that should work. I don't have any experience with the cry-tek engine but I do with Unreal 3.

[TwitchTv Morkani]

Hello,
I am Morkani, and I am color-blind.
I have difficulties distinguishing between these colors:
red & pink
red & orange
red & brown
green & yellow
blue & purple
I also have difficulty telling what color cyan, magenta, turquoise, & other mixed colors are.

I always hear about other people describing their color blindness as red-green, green-blue....I have no clue what my type of color blindness is called. All i know is i fail nearly every type of eye test there is, but i can still see colors.

PS: I applaud your efforts to accomodate our disability. I'm less concerned about the color of lasers, than I am about the UI & colors within the UI, especially being able to tell friend from foe (or other instances where color recognition is necessary).

[Bluemaxx]

thank you so much for asking this question of the community and that the community is responing with great feedback (this really is a great bunch of people on here )

in regards to the question about light saber hues, yes i can tell the difference between them but the extremely bright centres does make it harder for me.
I can see traffic lights without issue (thankfully!) but i tend to have problems with shades that are close (examples: bright (almost neon) green and yellows, dark reds and browns, light greys and light pink, purples and blues)
I hope something is enabled to help out with this issue as having colour issues with a game can really take away the enjoyment of if - a good example is BF3 on consoles - the colour pallette for that game mixed with the lighting of it can resulted in MANY accidental team kills...

[Xenois Shalashaska]

Great consideration from the developers. My brother is colour blind of Red & Green. The colours by themself are fine. Its only when you mix them together. Needless to say christmas is very black & white lol. Jesus thats evil.

[MechaKitsune]

Red-Green colorblind here. If it's a question of red and green lasers, a crimson hue for the red and a viridian shade for the greens would sufficiently differentiate the two colors. As someone else mentioned, I also have trouble spotting the difference between violet and blues. The red in the violet just doesn't show through for me.

Thanks so much for looking at this aspect for those of us with color deficiencies! Having played other games where this became a real hassle, it's great to see you guys tackling it from the get-go.

Edit: As someone else mentioned, UI color coding is a huge concern for me above the color of weapons fire. Having an option to toggle colorblind mode to set friendlies to blue and hostiles to red as opposed to a green/red scheme would be fantastic. Yellow for unidentified if a third color is needed would be good.

Edited by MechaKitsune, 27 February 2012 - 07:01 AM.

[DarkTreader]

In regards to UI coloring, one of the best examples I can think of is Descent: Freespace - the option to swap the color of everything was incredibly handy, and made determining movement at distance a lot easier since my eyes weren't having to figure out what color that flashing light is.

Really, the easiest way would likely be color customization, either through a Settings panel option, or through a CB texture pack that can be applied based on a) the type of color-blindness, or just a general CB-friendly pack.

Oh, and Maki? *flips off* You may've just lost your beta invite, Mister. =p

[Felicitatem Parco]

DarkTreader, on 27 February 2012 - 08:30 AM, said:

In regards to UI coloring, one of the best examples I can think of is Descent: Freespace - the option to swap the color of everything was incredibly handy, and made determining movement at distance a lot easier since my eyes weren't having to figure out what color that flashing light is.

OMG I LOVE FREESPACE!!! Did you know it's all fully available for download as FreeSpace 2 Open, including FS1 and the Intelligence expansion pack? Plus plenty of user-created campaigns...

Anyways, yes, you could choose your own HUD color scheme from the Options menu, and I don't think it took *too much* work on the dev-side to make this possible. It seems like the best way to resolve the myriad different shades of colorblindness that exist.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 27 February 2012 - 10:30 AM.

[Barantor]

Showed up to this a bit late, but I had posted a suggestion before in the suggestions topic so I will tell my side.

Traffic Lights - green light and normal street lights look the same at night, no difference here in the US for me. I drive slow at night because of this.

Barney the Dinosaur - he will forever be as red as an apple to me, that hue of purple is not perceptible by my eye.

Light Green to Yellow - the blur is here and I cannot tell if the text like the link on this site "back to general discusssion" is green or a light yellow.

I recently got an eye checkup and was only able to differentiate between one of the colors for the normal spot 'colorblindness test' where the dots look like numbers. This was out of 20 different shade combinations and I am the most colorblind person I have personally met to date.

Before World of Tanks put in their colorblind mode I would often not be able to tell where the border to the map was because I could not see the red line to denote the border. I believe it is now a shade of blue instead as I am able to see the edge and the enemy tank designations. League of Legends did the same thing and I am able to see a lot more of the icons and more easily determine friend from foe.

Hope this helps and I am overjoyed that you guys are working on this.

Here is the link to the original discussion.
http://mwomercs.com/...__fromsearch__1

Edited by Barantor, 27 February 2012 - 11:51 AM.

[Dlardrageth]

Had a brief little chat to a doctor today at the hospital when I went there for donating blood. (Mere coincidence, didn't donate blood just to get info for MWO, duh! ) And no, I inquired in general terms, didn't mention a computer game specifically.

Statistically by far the most "popular" issue seems to be with red/green. Amounts to over 85% of colorblindness issues. Among this group, the most prevalent matter is that both shades of red and green appear as another uni-color, like brown, grey etc. Among those uni-colors, grey followed by light brown is most popular. Borderline cases are (someone mentioned that already, I think) the "neon" variants for some reason, as the very bright neon green and the pink-ish neon red are visible to some of the colorblind. (Hope that info is somewhat helpful.)

I wonder how much of the issue could be solved by being able to set merely contrast values instead of colors. A red line on a grey background could that way show up for colorblind people as well, not as a red line but as a contrasting grey one perhaps. Which might do already?

[C45U41B45T4RD]

tbh we could best help if u posted some like some screen shots of the color variants cause we cant really tell u what color where seeing we can give u guess but about it so for us to tell u what colors are best for us wont really work.

[Rook3]

Zoberraz, on 24 February 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

Just, don't rely purely on colors to rely important information. If you can do this right, it could save colorblind people a lot of trouble and embarassment (like, sneaking up to do proper spotting on an Atlas, and then open up with a full weapons volley only to realize the Atlas was on your side!)

Modern Warfare 3 has a "colorblind assist" mode which changes the "friendly" HUD indicator to Blue instead of green.
Before I found that change I'm sad to say I lit up more than one friendly, or held my fire until the "friendly" killed me first
because the color difference between the red/green colors was too close. Or so my poor eyes say it is.

The ability for the Mech pilot to change the HUD colors would be great. Even between a day/night scenario,
a contrasting HUD color would save the day for me at times.