I think this is an interesting topic of debate, but I think
it needs specific examples...unless we can all look at
the same thing and then cast our opinions, we could be
talking apples and oranges.

I'd like to provide an example of what I humbly consider to
be a good balance of color use and restraint.

Exhibit A:



When people speak, it is typically important to notice,
so speech-text is cyan, to make it stand out.

The yellow input text is from my client, a local setting.

Most everything in descriptions is just the default color.
It's my opinion that descriptive text should usually
be allowed to speak for itself. Where color should be applied,
IMO, is *functional* texts, such as item lists.

Below the description you can see text colored in
magenta. This is for things lying in the room you can
pick up, manilpulate, etc. Specifically things that can
be removed from the room, or chopped down, or
destroyed.

You'll note that Tim and Wim are bright green. This is
to indicate they are mobs (which, in a real life room,
does tend to stand out). If they are injured the color
grades from bright green to dull green, to blue, to
dull blue, to red, to dull red. When they die, they
go magenta, like all inanimate objects.

Exhibit B:


"zap" is a special creator command. Players don't get to
do that! Because it's special and magical, and fatal, it's
colored red to provide some shock value to those seeing it.

As before, room descriptions are just plain white, to
avoid distraction. It's descriptive, not functional, although
nouns *in* the descriptions can often be looked at (see
)

And finally, the who command is bordered and labeled in
the default color, with the functional tags on the titles
being different colors to make it obvious who is whom.

Probably this is too much color for some. I'm curious to know
what y'all think. The principle I'm trying to follow is to
enhance clarity with color. I'm trying to use it functionally,
rather than descriptively.

-Crat

The only thing I remember as being odd with the colour scheme on Dead Souls was that, iirc, the channels were written in white with only the sender and channel name coloured to indicate the channel where I personally prefer to colour the message also because otherwise the channels get even more confused. I also didn't like the colours (also a personal preference) but these were both easy changes with some help from people on intermud channel, including Cratylus himself, who actually know how to code (which I don't).

The thing that confuses me about your example, Cratylus, is: why exa carpet? I'd have preferred to exa sign, if I didn't get confused and think the green sign was a mob. *inno*

I nuked a bunch of off-topic and insulting posts (and one post by Ilkidarios trying to calm people down).

--matt