Colour choices on the game map, aka, are you colourblind?

[grandad1982]

So I'm only a couple of minuets into the stream and alarm bells are already ringing.

I'm colourblind, so when @Johan enters the diplomacy screen and says Rome is green (good), and the vassals are cyan (bad, very very very bad), I'm left wondering what the hell he is talking about. To me there is no difference in the colour he is hovering over and the rest of the (no rome) map.

This is a common problem in lots of games, and pdx games in particular due to the many map modes (EU4 tech map is a real case in point to me).

For this particular map example what is needed is a colour of darker/more saturated hue.

I understand that different people with colourblindness will have different issues that the solutions for aren't always compatible, but please take things like this into more consideration when choosing colours to represent vital info on the map!

 

[Selzro]

I trick I use when making figures for papers is to convert them to greyscale and see if I can still make out the different things I want to depict. If so, then the difference in brightness (and possibly saturation) complements the difference in hue well enough to probably make it okay for colourblind people.

 

[hewhoispale]

It would be nice if PDX changed their go-to colors from green/red to something more colorblind friendly, or at least put a colorblind mode in the game to use alternate colors.

While not AAA, they are hardly a nascent indie company these days and could afford to pay some degree of attention on accessibility concerns.

 

[Zerodv]

It would be better to have a colorblind mode so the intended design of the devs can still be used by the majority of the player base.

 

[hewhoispale]

It would be better to have a colorblind mode so the intended design of the devs can still be used by the majority of the player base.

It would be better to just use color blind friendly colors/shades in the first place to reduce UI complexity, but a probably maintained toggle mode would at least be a reasonable effort in the right direction.

Nearly all color usage in the interface (not the map) is green (good numbers) and red (bad numbers). Red/Green colorblindness isn't exactly unheard off or particularly rare. Maybe not picking *both* of them for the primary two interface colors would be good.

 

[Zerodv]

Nearly all color usage in the interface (not the map) is green (good numbers) and red (bad numbers). Red/Green colorblindness isn't exactly unheard off or particularly rare. Maybe not picking *both* of them for the primary two interface colors would be good.

Honestly that would be the easiest thing to handle with a colour blind mode.

 

[hewhoispale]

Honestly that would be the easiest thing to handle with a colour blind mode.

But, why does it need to be a separate mode? Why must the default be green/red? There's no grand artistic vision here. It's just context highlighting designed to convey that "these numbers are good" or "these numbers are bad".

 

[Denkt]

Red & Green is by far the most used colors to implicite something as good or bad, even traffic light use these two colors.

Other games have made colorblind modes and keep using colors such as red and green outside of that mode.

 

[hewhoispale]

Red & Green is by far the most used colors to implicite something as good or bad, even traffic light use these two colors.

Other games have made colorblind modes and keep using colors such as red and green outside of that mode.

Green is good and red is bad is because of traffic lights, not the other way around. Green and yellow were picked arbitrarily by train companies and largely pulled forward via un-examined inertia rather than any particular merit.

Traffic lights / signs also have additional context (signs have distinct shapes and/or symbols, lights are structured in a specific pattern). In the case of something like the opening situation, these 4-color map modes, there is no helpful context that can be used.

Instead of having a colorblind mode bolted on as an afterthought, why not have it be the default?

 

[Denkt]

Instead of having a colorblind mode bolted on as an afterthought, why not have it be the default?

Why not simply run the game in greyscale which have no problem whatsoever as far as I know.

 

[Zerodv]

But, why does it need to be a separate mode? Why must the default be green/red? There's no grand artistic vision here. It's just context highlighting designed to convey that "these numbers are good" or "these numbers are bad".

??? Green and red are the color people most commonly associate with good and bad, why should we change it for the remaining 90% of the player base when it's most simple thing to change with relatively little effort?

If you don't think it's important, why have it changed? Also trying to address the most common types of color-blindness would in of itself limit the color palette in many situations, so an alternative mode would not limit the palette that 90% of the playerbase can see.

Instead of having a colorblind mode bolted on as an afterthought, why not have it be the default?

Why do you think it would be an afterthought?

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Instead of having a colorblind mode bolted on as an afterthought, why not have it be the default?

As much as I sympathize with the colorblind community, there's value in having color-coded UI, especially for games as complex as Paradox ones.

In Stellaris, for example, you need to see at a glance who a ship belongs to. To address that, there are green ship icons (yours), blue ones (allies), yellow ones (neutral), and red ones (enemies). Resources and their associated buildings are also color-coded: you know that a building probably produces food because it's green, energy because it's yellow, minerals because it's red, etc.

A colorblind mode certainly shouldn't be "bolted on as an afterthought" but it'd be a waste if Paradox didn't take advantage color-coding their UI.