1.9.5 swallow water / plain = bad terrain

[Caphriel]

I'm one, and I know there are a few others active-ish on the forum, although I can't recall names at the moment.

Alternatively, maybe we can get an artist to help us make a colorblind-friendly terrain image pack. At some point when doing the new water, for instance, they decided to decrease the saturation for the water tiles, and to reduce the contrast between shallow and deep water in order to make for smoother transitions.

I'm focusing on the shallow/deep water issue because it's the one I'm most aware of.

[Eleazar]

* I'm not especially an animator. I'd be happy to accept quality water or ford tiles that are more distinct in texture from each other. There are tons of things i'd like to improve in the terrain --what you see is not the final word-- i just don't have time to make them myself right now.

* Since there are many different varieties of color blindness, and they can't all be completely addressed by the same graphics, that making an add-on that substitutes terrains images is the way to go.

[Caphriel]

Can add-ons do that? Hmm.

[8680]

... making an add-on that substitutes terrains images is the way to go.

I don't think add-ons can affect core files.

Go on, prove my ignorance.

edit : Bah. Caphriel got there first. I shouldn't've spent so much time messing with size tags.

[Pentarctagon]

at the very least, you could probably make an era that would check for certain terrain types on a map and then replace them with a terrain that is the same in every way (an alias? i don't know terrain graphics very well), but with a different image.

[8680]

Wouldn't that cause OoS errors unless the other player(s) have the era too, effectively restricting color-blind people to playing only with other color-blind people?

[Pentarctagon]

as long as the stats stay exactly the same, what something looks like should not cause an OOS.

[8680]

...It being an era... wouldn't that mean that someone using the era could only play with others using the era, solving the problem of OoS errors but compounding the problem of restricting color-blind players' options?

[Pentarctagon]

there is a require_era=yes/no key, so as long as it is set to 'no', then you would not need the era installed to play in a game using it.

[8680]

Oh. I don't play multiplayer, so I wouldn't know.

[Eleazar]

I don't mess with add-ons much, so i'm not certain what the limitations are, but i've used addons that change the appearance of mainline terrain-- at least in certain contexts.

If that isn't practicable, just prepare an alternate terrain image folder, (preserving files names and organization) that color-blind players can copy over the default images. Installation requires slightly more work, but there are no conflicts or OoS errors

[Caphriel]

The biggest problem with that is distributing it, but I suppose just letting it float around the forum will probably be sufficient.

Thanks

(go go colorblind art team! )

[joshudson]

Well I suppose if one wanted to reduce the work involved enough, there is no particular reason why the alternate terrain would have to have any transitions. Just fit the hexsides and you will have a playable, if a bit ugly, tileset.

[Caphriel]

there is no particular reason why the alternate terrain would have to have any transitions

That's rude. Just because I'm colorblind doesn't mean I don't care about aesthetics. We have a playable tileset in 1.8. Changes to the tileset in 1.9 in order to make it look nicer (which overall, it does quite well!) in some cases reduce the differentiability of some of the terrain types. Proposing "solutions" that would be ugly but provide differentiation isn't really constructive.

[Gambit]

Since movement and defense is calculated based on terrain types (categories) rather than actual terrain ids or strings, you just need to write a copy of default era with a prestart event that replaces the offending terrains with others in the same category.

Balance will not be affected at all.