Above is the picture of my Ship from my upcoming shooter 5th Moon. I havementioned it before in this blog and even shown various stages of it's graphics changing and developing etc. Now I was recently introduced to the problem of colorblindness in games. I wasn't aware of the main issues faced by this group of people. However i do sympathize. I do not know much about all the issues faced, and currently am aware of only an issue related to the colors Red and Green. They cannot be told apart.
I feel this is an easy thing to be solved in any game for sure, but as most games have baddies colored red in some way (read name tags etc), and the good guys so often in green, it is obviously a big issue. Especially in a game like MW2. I only have a small game it's true. But i would love to address these kinds of issues as best as i am able.
So for 5th Moon i realised that i am using the center of the players ships to indicate their health. This will be bad when i color them in various stages of health and they start green, and end in red. Hmm, a colorblind player will not nescessarily be able to tell if they have one hit left or three. So i am wondering right now what would be the best way to alter this Health spot to make it work for colorblind peeps. so far i have a couple of ideas, but no idea which would be better for them.
1. As the health decreases, i can shrink the color/health spot on the ship.
2. I could fill the color spot up with Black from the center, so it looks like it is diseased haha!
3. What else could I do ?
If you have any ideas, please leave me a comment or email etc.
I also have the above picture showing the colors i chose for my multiplayer ships. Are these colors AOK for colorblind people to see fast and easily? If you have an answer please let me know. I can of course change them, and would love to if this helps players out.
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Hi - tried to post this on your site, but it wouldn't work for me....
ReplyDeleteTo my husband, who is colourblind, the top and bottom ships look the same. The middle two he can differentiate between if he looks at them for a long time, but in an instant they are not easily identifiable.
Colours he'd be able to easily tell apart are Dark Blue; Yellow; Red/Green; White.
Note, red or green, but never both together.
"Red and green should not be see, except upon an Irish Queen" :p
Or you could use textures or symbols on the ships instead of just colour alone?
The green health indicator he would not be able to tell apart when it changed to red - having it as a depleting bar would be best, or as above: using texture / shading as well as colour; or symbols / shapes.
@hodsey77
Glad to see you are trying to do what you can to help colourblind gamers - if only the big companies like Infinity Ward, SEGA and Take 2, etc would follow suit :)
Regards,
Helen