[mhc]

If you decide to have colours, you must allow the player to chose what colours to use. If you do not, the player becomes the victim of your artistic ability, or the lack thereof. Also, consider that not everyone experiences colour the same way - for example, many men are partly colourblind and cannot distinguish red and green. Forcing unwanted colours on people is rude and exposes how little though went into the design of the system.

Therefore, you should provide colour classes on texts, and the player should be able to decide exactly what colour it maps to. Of course there are technical limitations, for example on the number of colours, in the so-called ANSI colour scheme. You will have to live with those, as will the player.

Example of text-classes could be:
+ things you say
+ things other says
+ exits
+ enter and exit messages
+ logon and logoff messages
+ private communications
+ messages when you hit an opponent
+ messages when you get hit

There is at least one MUD out there that offers this to its players.

[Molly]

On a tangent note:

Too much colour in the wrong place can actually lag the mud down, or even crash the Port. The place to be especially wary of is the mob short desc, because that is used in the fight code.

I know this from own hard experience.

We once put in a Goblin invasion as a temporary Quest, and the Builder thought it a 'cool' idea to colour the different Goblins after rank/(level). Since it was not a permanent zone, I foolishly let it slip by the control.
There were tons of goblins, and they all assisted, so the first time a player got into a serious skirmish, the Port went down. The code couldn't handle the colour spam.

I also have an example, where an excessively rainbow-coloured object kept crashing the Build Port at each zone reset, because the reset line exceeded the max number of characters allowed.

So this is not merely an aesthetic question.

[KaVir]

Colour shouldn't cause lag or crashes unless there's something broken within your code - from a conceptual point of view, it really is a purely aesthetic question.

Personally I rarely use colour, although I find it's very nice for displaying maps. I also like to highlight "tell" messages, as it makes them stand out (unless you've got lots of other colour). The other place I like it is within prompts, with the colour representing a percentage of remaining health/mana/etc. But in general I prefer a very small amount of colour, so that what little there is really jumps out at you and draws attention to itself.

[Valg]

One of the main reasons we keep ourselves deliberately low-color is that it allows you to use color to say "This event is important or unusual." If you overcolor, it's hard to make things truly stand out.

[Iluvatar]

Our philosophy colored comm channels to separate them, standard low key colors for info preset and the occasional rare color for something that should infer surprise or some other emotion. When situations occur, it's typically in a certain color comm channel and I've learned to ignore other colors when concentrating on an issue. I think that's a valuable feature.

Rainbow muds are personally distasteful me and I would prefer running them as ANSI off and color off. Most have the ability through clients to change any color display on their screen if they wish, so imposing our artistic talent or lack of isn't really a large concern.

Iluvatar

[funkalicious]

Currently, in my mud, people can include colors in their tell, say, and other such commands using the colorcodes of circlemud, &R for red &B for blue and such. so...

say &RRed text hurts my &Wwhite eyes

would turn up as

hmm...cant figure out how to do colored text....but you get the idea.

I wanted to ban this, and have the &X strings be literal, and not translated into color. However, my other half implementor was dead-set against this, saying that he loves color, and he finds it as a form of self expression.

I have also seen builders transform our normally yellow room descriptions into a myriad of blinding color, simply unfair to the eye, but my other half wont allow me to block that either, stating (very rightly) that it can allways be taken out when the zone is reviewed. Again, he says this is a form of self expression.

Does this strike anybody else as self expression? Can you not express yourself without annoying colors? As a counter argument, I see the colors that I program my mud to be as a form of my own self expression, which I dont want the players to be messing with. After all, anything that a player sees on my mud reflects on the aesthetic feeling of the mud, which I work hard to generate with my preset colors. Should I allow players to mess with my carfully set scheme, or is that an impedement to their self expression? (do we even need self expression on muds...? but thats a different topic.) Some answers would be cool of all you lovely people.

[Eddy]

For most of your post you would have my support immediately. We don't allow coders to use colors. Certain types of messages are classed and players are free to choose the color those message appear in (if any).

Originally Posted by As a counter argument, I see the colors that I program my mud to be as a form of my own self expression, which I dont want the players to be messing with

Yikes, this part I won't support you on. I guess it depends on what the whole reason behind colors is for you. We implemented colors for one, and only one, reason: "Improve the interface". We don't use it because we think that blinking red on a high intensity green looks cool and is part of how we feel a player should see it. If the player however feels that it makes his playing easier and more clear to set those colors for all his combat messages he is free to do so.

Regards and good luck with your struggle,
Eddy

[Dre]

No colors! I'm certain now!

Everything and I mean everything in the game is for your own imagination.

Ok some colors, but I all set them client side in my mud client. I have tells and info set out so I don't miss them, but I don't wanna see the color used by the mud. Not that it might not be good or bright, but just the idea.

I don't need to see green when I enter a forest or see a green object. Or even see an object in color. I read the rooms that's part of the game right? And objects mostly aren't hidden and at the end of a room description so if you miss them you have played too long in a row

Nah colors should be done by the players themselves on their side.

[Hannah]

I like colors, helps me ignore some certain channels . And if I don't like the color I can always set all colors what ever I want with zmud.

[Rytorth]

I have nothing against colour in general, to be honest. It's the too-bright colours that give you headaches and make you half blind I don't like. Of course the way too dark colours aren't any fun either.

I don't want to have to squint at my screen in order to figure out what the heck this person is saying/wearing/whatever.

Channel titles are ok...asides from the aformentioned way-too-bright colours and way-too-dark colours. And using a bit of colour here and there in your description or pose is ok if you're trying to accent something that you're doing or wearing.

After all, 'Kairin sends, ~Hello~' is nice. But if you redo it so that it says, 'Kairin sends, <span style='color:green'>~Hello~</span>', the message itself gets across more clearly since your attention is drawn to the colour.

And something like that is ok. But a multi-coloured pose for no reason other then the fact that the person wants to show off their skills/has some deep-seated urge to make the entire MU** blind is /not/ ok. Personally I don't use colour all that much though--I just don't see the point in using it more then sparingly.

[Crystal]

The MUD I used to play on hardly had any colors at all, which was not necessarily a bad thing.

The MUD I'm currently creating, I believe we will have a bit of color displayed through a few colors, but very minimal. And with a certain amount of points gained through roleplay the immortals will be able to restring color into items for players.

I think too much color is too confusing and I usually don't bother playing MUDs with such.

Places to use color as a builder:
* Room names - I tend to make mountain rooms a dark yellow/brown.  Fields green.  Forests green.  I never color the full room description.  Many players, after having been through an area once, won't read the description again, so why draw attention to it each time.
* Very specific, special objects: one color, with a damn good reason
* Emotes by objects or mobs:  Sometimes when you have a series of emotes that can result from actions, it is useful to have the emotes colored light and dark gray, so that it doesn't get too repetative.  Example, I have a boulder in one area that you have to push about 20ish times (it's random) to get it out of the way of the path.  There are a variety of messages, from scraping sounds to revealing the beginnings of a path.  The messages are two different colors for the sake of keeping it from being endless screen spam.

Channel colors: I actually hate seeing bright colors in global channels, even channel names.  But that is due to my personal dislike of global channels inturrupting my in room stuff too much.

Player set stuff:  Let players set their choices through their clients, let them highlight the names of characters or words they want distinguished JUST FOR THEMSELVES.  I would say never ever let a player set the color of their name and if it can be coded, limit the who list titles to dark colors and no more than one or two colors.  In IC notes on the boards though, I am all in favor of color.  In part because as a player in the past, I have used one color to indicate the actions of how the post would be visible to a particular person and a second to distinguish the message itself.  Not necessary, but it adds a nice touch.  Maybe limit the colors to a certain number or only dark ones there too though.

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<span style='colorurple'>A young girl arrives with a small parchment in hand and blushing slightly begs your attention.  Excuse me, Sir Blahblah, but this is a message for you.  After waiting a moment in hopes of a tip, she rushes off.</span>

<span style='color:gray'>"Sir Blahblah,
  Lalalalalala.  Color is useful and it makes for a charming little note to you.  Lovely to bother you again and I hope our next killing spree goes equally well! Blessings of whatever dark god we love and sacrifice innocent victims to.
Miss Sapphar"</span>

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There are places for color everywhere.  Just don't overdue it, try to keep to the darker colors, and let players turn it off selectively.

Sapphar
(yes, I hate bright colors, in case I didn't state that enough times in enough ways *grin*)

[Thoric]

Generally one color per line, and in special cases (word highlighting) two colors per line.

Use colors to separate the room title from the room description, and the characters, and objects from the room description.

Also use colors to highlight important messages.

Anything beyond this becomes "too much".

[Enzo]

Colors helps make the MUD more interesting and more fun to play. Highlighting some keywords with Teal, or making the word rainbow a rainbow. Sometimes it seems appropiate to make a whole room just one or two colors. I think it should be the builder's choice. The person behind the building is the one with the ideas, who makes the describtions, and should control what their areas look like (except for what implementors want, but you get my drift).

[Jaewyn]

Color in MUDs is obviously a personal thing, each person will want something different. A system used on our MUD that seems to work quite well is to allow the players to choose the colors they see messages in themselves, this covers tells, chats, wartalk, clantalk, says etc. This way they can have things as bland or as gaudy as they like, the same goes for title descriptions, this is one of the few ways a player can visually add their own style to their character for everyone else to see.

Room descriptions are a single color unless to highlight a particular word, room titles are a different color to desc. At the moment, the default color for our room descriptions is bright yellow, after having several players asking for sunglasses so the could read they screen, we are considering changing the default color to something a little more subtle. As builders, we have also dabbled with using room description colors to fit in with the type of area, e.g. green for forest, dark cyan for ocean, dark yellow for desert. This seems to have been reasonably well recieved by the players.

One stipulation regarding color on our MUD... under no circumstances is flashing text to be used.

[OnyxFlame]

The mud I play on has a pretty good color scheme. Not abusive to the eyes and easy to tell what's going on at a glance.

For example when you look at someone, the health of all their limbs is represented in different colors depending on how damaged each part is. Concentration uses basically the same color scheme. Aura is represented in the colors it's supposed to be (except for octarine which just shows up kinda grayish. Bleah.) Room names are gray, descs are white, and exits are cyan or red, depending on whether there's a closed door or something there. Hexes (i.e. wilderness map) are colored according to what type of terrain they are, with prominent structures annotated. Valuable stones and metals in jewelry are colored, as are fireworks (which never get used unless it's a holiday or some creator got really really bored). You can buy colored who descs (1 color only) but they're expensive enough that people don't do it unless it's absolutely imperative to them that they show up as <span style='color:red'>a psychopathic killer</span>. Mobs and people and most objects aren't colored. The only really annoying color in the game is what happens when you're high on spotted mushrooms, and it was done that way to prove a point. You can't use color when you talk, although various methods of communication are colored separately to distinguish them from all the battle or spell spam.

As for color being a method of expression...if you can't express yourself through your words rather than <span style='color:blue'>a</span> <span style='color:cyan'>whole</span> <span style='color:yellow'>lot</span> <span style='color:green'>of</span> <span style='colorurple'>colors</span>, there's something wrong.

The moral of the story: make it tasteful, or the player will just turn off colors, or use his client to set them.

[shadowfyr]

Hmm. Coupla months since someone posted here last.. lol

Anyway. I use a lot of color triggers in my client, since there are a few things the mud I play at doesn't color that I think it would help if it did, like the combat activity. However one thing that bugs the heck out of me are some MXP based muds that looked into. Neither one I checked used MXP for the coloring and one seemed to use it only to make all the mobs and players underlined.

This was quite silly to me since in one room in the newbie area they had some flowers. This they did color (using ANSI), sticking four different colors smack in the middle of the line. Now a 'good' way to do it would have been to make it say 'You see a number of flowers growing here, including violets, dasies and tulips.' in the standard description color, then let the player 'look' at those flower types and put 'real colors' there. Who knows, the tulips could be mignight blue or hot pink, but no one will ever know, because the coders used MXP only to make my eyeys water with cyan mob names with underlines. Gove some people a magic marker and like a little kid they have to hilight every thing in site 'for your convenience'. lol

Color is very nice if used right, but if not you are better off with a client that lets you use triggers and custom colors to change the stuff you want yourself an turning the whole bloody mess off.

[halkeye]

I'm split on color actually..
My last mud was full of it, builders could do what they wanted, as could players.. it became a mess... the newbie channel alternated colors, etc.. mess

I think the next mud i'm working on, will have less colors, and more customizeation.. Let players change them if they want.

I think color is really only good for letting people know what they are looking at without really needing to read fully..

I liked having channels different colors.. this way i could easily tell which channel was used without using adjectivies (not as effective this time around though, channels won't be setup the same)..

Or if being attacked.. a color to indicate being hit or something...

but thats about it.. limited colors that seperate information or help to quickly identify things..