Team "colors" for colorblind people

[thespaceinvader]

Mm, the minimap would, i think, be a choice to blank all the dots but the ones belonging to the selected team when you select a unit. It wouldn't be AS good as the minimap, but you're right, there's no other way.

[the_revenant]

Mm, the minimap would, i think, be a choice to blank all the dots but the ones belonging to the selected team when you select a unit. It wouldn't be AS good as the minimap, but you're right, there's no other way.

That seems like a pretty good idea, though the disadvantage is that you wouldnt be able to see enemy units, and at a glance may miss out a random soldier who is out of your screen.

[irrevenant]

Mm, the minimap would, i think, be a choice to blank all the dots but the ones belonging to the selected team when you select a unit. It wouldn't be AS good as the minimap, but you're right, there's no other way.

That seems like a pretty good idea, though the disadvantage is that you wouldnt be able to see enemy units, and at a glance may miss out a random soldier who is out of your screen.

Yeh, that would be too high a price to pay.

It would be better to just brighten the dots for the target team and maybe dim the others a tiny bit.

[Viliam]

Maybe the units on minimap should be displayed not by 1 pixel but by 3×3 pixels... square for my units and allied units, cross for enemy units.

[irrevenant]

Maybe the units on minimap should be displayed not by 1 pixel but by 3×3 pixels... square for my units and allied units, cross for enemy units.

The units on the minimap are 4x4 pixels, but that's still too small for any level of detail. Anything other than a square is hard to distinguish at that size. And I don't think you can make them significantly bigger at the scale of the minimap.

[zharmad]

Hmm... for the minimap:
what about animating the dots by having them blink on and off, or fade into/out of black?

[Aethaeryn]

If you change the colors in the mini-map so everything in grayscale is a distinguishable shade (there's only 9, shouldn't be that hard), it might be easier on colorblind people.

[irrevenant]

If you change the colors in the mini-map so everything in grayscale is a distinguishable shade (there's only 9, shouldn't be that hard), it might be easier on colorblind people.

Here's an example. The 4 colours are as different as is possible for 4 colours (this of course, means that they get even less distinguishable as you go to 6, 8, 9 players). Can you tell what's going on? (Note that we have an advantage colourblind people don't as, for us, it's at least grey against a colour background).

Team Colour
1 0
2 64
3 160
4 256
5 32
6 96
7 128
8 192
9 224

[zharmad]

If we go any further than four greyscale colours we'll also start running into issues with optical "illusions".

I mean, a light grey in a darker part of the minimap will appear diffferent to the same grey in a lighter portion.

With that map I can easily make out three teams. The dark grey has about same brightness as the forest hexes and is (therefore) almost imperceptible. I couldn't recognise any of them on the first few scans.

[Aethaeryn]

If we go any further than four greyscale colours we'll also start running into issues with optical "illusions".

I mean, a light grey in a darker part of the minimap will appear diffferent to the same grey in a lighter portion.

With that map I can easily make out three teams. The dark grey has about same brightness as the forest hexes and is (therefore) almost imperceptible. I couldn't recognise any of them on the first few scans.

Same. Sorry for the bad idea, was just an idea...

[Industriebrot]

A single colored block wont do it.

Our eyes need a clear contrast to see whats going on.

I've made the following squares which should be much more suitable.
They dont just offer a clear contrast, but also clear and distinct patterns which can be spotted easily.
Have a look:

[Alink]

Units dots and hex of the minimap don't have a fixed size (and before 1.3.9 they didn't have a fixed shape)

It depends of the minimap scaling which depends of the map dimensions (relatively to the place allowed to the minimap by the theme used).
Units dots are supposed to have the same size than an hex and cover it exactly (1.3.9 tried to correct some small rounding errors about this).
But that remind me another problem that I noticed on big map: a dot can indeed be only 1x1, which on high resolution is very small. I hesitated to put a minimal size. It's true that it's probably already a problem for people with low vision, and any of your symbols ideas need big dots, but there was few annoying details:

- units are often next to each others, so big dots will overlaps a little. The worst case scenario is hiding a surrounded unit. We can maybe add a rendering order, to display player team in first or in last. Both cases have the problem, not sure which one is beter.
- changing from 1x1 to 2x2 (or 2x2 to 3x3 etc.. ) will cause some small shifting of the position, which, i think, sometimes looks strange (e.g. not centered on the keep, bridge or any noticable hex). It's not the case when going from nxn to (n+2)x(n+2), which is equivalent to add a 1-pixel border. And maybe use a different color for this border. Or do this only for the current/player team, etc...

Some other quick random ideas:
- render the minimap terrain in darker shade to better highlight units (it's sometimes already hard to see them with a good vision). Terrains don't change, when scrolled at least once and big zones known, you just need some markers to locate the view.
- we can maybe try a per-team fast cycle blinking: highlight team1, then team 2, then team 3, like these Christmas lights. Probably need test and tuning the speed to see if it can work. But at least you can see where the units are, and i think that in most case understand how a team is spread on the map.
- Moving the mouse on the minimap can have a effect (e.g. with the previous ideas: fully hide the terrain or pause/slow the blinking cycle)

[Tonepoet]

Oh i see what he was doing now. Sorry i got confused thinking that the numbers represented the colours, when actually they represented the teams.

Actually, there is an argument for writing the colour given that all the chatter will be about "the red team" and "the green team". Noone I know says "It's team 3's move".

Well, nobody has a quick and easy reference to the side order. You have to go to a separate dialog to know, and even then it may not be possible to know if you're playing with shroud or fog, as some information is hidden when it's on. Naturally people get into the habit of saying what information is 'obviously' available to them, when referring to a person without using their screen name. There just simply isn't any choice that's as quick and easy at the moment, so nobody bothers. I won't make any bets but somebody might say "It's team three's move." if it's implemented, simply because of the sudden increase of ease it is to find out.
One final thought on the "it's color's turn" thing. Is it possible to tooltip the usernames to display team color? It might make conversations easier to follow and if we're going to do this, we may as well do it full blown...

I actually think labeling the sides by their player number is a great idea. It not only helps the colorblind but it also helps the general populous with turn ordering issues in 6+ player games. Oh so many times, I've started playing a game, made my moves and only found them to be horrible ones. Why? Because I couldn't remember the turn order for all the players involved in the conflict. Particularly troublesome in Waterloo Sunset and even more particularly so if you're playing the center, as there is a amount of multiside interaction. Placing a number underneath the HP bar or to the upper left corner area, beneath where leader and hero icons go. If it helps the general populous and if it helps the colorblind, why not?

Roman numerals were suggested and I think they'd be most aesthetically appealing, as it'd fit the Medieval theme of Wesnoth and would likely be sufficient. However, it isn't as widely used of a system as Arabic numerals so it might still raise some confusion if we do go with the Romans. One example of this is "What in the hell does III mean? Somebody being overly egotistical over there?". Granted, ignorance cannot be completely accounted for, but it can be eased there is another concern.
This concern is that dyslexic people may have trouble telling IV (4) from VI (6). Granted, there aren't too many dyslexics in the world but if we're going to support colorblindness, we may as well take dyslexia into consideration as well. Sure they could use team color, but then there are might also be colorblind dyslexics, who might actually seek out Wesnoth if it's said to be a colorblind considerate game ('cause they are colorblind) only to still have troubles with it since they're also dyslexic. Too small a crowd? I think that much is safe to assume but I don't know honestly. No real statistical research on the manner. As a counterpoint to this concern, Wesnoth is probably already quite difficult for dyslexics at the moment irregardless, with the way attack dictation is written out. Mix up the location of that dash and you've suddenly got thunderers doing 11-8 or something equally awkward looking. I won't go further into the issue as it is off topic anyway. Just a thought.

On the issue of greyscale, it sounds like an imperfect solution, as it has been mentioned that it may not be a completely accurate depiction of what colorblind people see instead. This means that we really have little idea if the color balance is correct or not. At least, not without info from a colorblind person. Do we have any colorblind people playing who could give such input? Looks like there's at least two in this thread, who've made comment, it'd probably be best to consider what they say.

Oh, and as long as I'm here, does anybody know why yellow was removed? If I recall correctly, it was originally rumored to be for the ease of colorblind people but I heard it was sheerly a manner of developer preference later on. I figured somebody interested in this conversation might've heard something about this in the past if it's true and could tell me if it's the former or the latter. Just curious.