Top Mud Sites Forum Return to TopMudSites.com
Go Back   Top Mud Sites Forum > MUD Players and General Discussion > Tavern of the Blue Hand
Click here to Register

Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 07-09-2006, 11:20 PM   #1
Rathik
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Arizona
Posts: 35
Rathik is on a distinguished road
Send a message via Yahoo to Rathik
Red face

Every now and then, I venture away from my favorite mud to try another, usually one that is advertised on the forum. Whoops. I can understand when color is used in moderation to differentiate some things such as channels or room names, but what is the deal with putting 5 different colors in a prompt or seeing 6 colors when I just type 'look'? Personally, I do not like it...but maybe I'm in the minority. How does it work from the view of an administrator? Do most player prefer super-colorful screens? Do more colors bring more players?
Rathik is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2006, 11:46 PM   #2
Fern
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 156
Fern is on a distinguished road
Gad, I agree. Blinding kenderish rainbowing colors drive me right out the door. My preference is color placed in control of the player. That's one reason we provide Colorset to make the game the way you want it.

A game without capability to customize the colors is like moving into a house and leaving the walls the same garish purple that the previous owner found 'delightful.'

Fern
Fern is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2006, 11:49 PM   #3
Baram
Member
 
Baram's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Seoul
Home MUD: Tears of Polaris
Posts: 218
Baram is on a distinguished road
I'm with you on that one, some color is good but I've seen games that go WAY overboard on it.

In Ilyrias we let you customize what color you want each channel to be, the brief description of a room, extended description of a room, color of items/mobs in the room, color of players in the room, color of exits in the room, etc. They we also use 3 colors on the prompt, green yellow and red. Those change based on your health/mental status. Ie if you are 75% or higher in health it's green, if you're at 50% and higher it's yellow and below that is red.
Baram is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2006, 11:57 PM   #4
The_Disciple
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 113
The_Disciple is on a distinguished road
Much like anything else in life, different people have different preferences, and a wide variety of MUDs cater to them all.

Personally, I prefer low-color, with color only highlighting important things I might otherwise miss in the sea of quickly-scrolling text.

I've seen high-color done well, but most of the time high-color games just look like a Crayola factory puked all over them. Multicolored room descriptions (for no real reason other than the builder secretly wishing they were writing Hallmark cards instead of MUD rooms) are the worst -- if the description mentions a nearby sea, and the word sea is colored blue, I'm finding a different MUD.
The_Disciple is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-10-2006, 03:54 AM   #5
KaVir
Legend
 
KaVir's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Name: Richard
Home MUD: God Wars II
Posts: 2,052
KaVir will become famous soon enoughKaVir will become famous soon enough
Like most things, it's a matter of preference. Personally I try to make the colours as customisable as possible, and avoid using them purely for cosmetic purposes (i.e., if something is coloured, that colour has a specific meaning).

I use five colours in prompts - these are the default colour (usually white), and four scaled colours (defaulted to cyan, blue, magenta and red). Things like health, mana and action points use the scaled colour as a percentage indicator (with each colour also representing a pain penalty level). Boolean options use only the two extremes of the scale, but it provides the same benefit - it lets you see the important information at a glance.

For the actual descriptions I don't use colour (except highlighting for the title), but I use it extensively for the ascii maps (including the one displayed alongside the description). In my opinion it's much easier to see that "." represents plains and "~" represents rivers when the former is coloured green and the latter blue.
KaVir is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-10-2006, 07:42 AM   #6
Jazuela
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: New England
Posts: 849
Jazuela will become famous soon enoughJazuela will become famous soon enough
It's just as bad, when a game has white text on dark screen as their "no color" default, thus forcing you to read as though presented with a negative film, or tweaking your mud client to get the whole thing back to normal.

Normal, to me, is dark text on a light background, just like reading a book. You remember books? Those funky things made with wood pulp smushed to thin-ness, with writing on them, that stacked up on shelves in your grandpappy's office?

Even reading Topmudsites too long will give me a headache, because of the inverted color scheme. One of these days I'm gonna do a poll to find out how many people who've played muds for more than 5 years wear glasses. And see if it correllates with my theory that the human species was not intended to read light on dark.

Give me a nice, easy to read a nice greyish black, on a pale ivory or subdued (meaning, not stark) white background, no highlights, no bolds, no special colors. When I mud, I try to play as though I'm being immersed in a novel, where my character is one of the characters in the plot. I've never seen a novel in a bookstore written on black paper with white text. I wasn't brought up reading white text on black backgrounds. My eyes can't handle it. They refuse, reject, and outright battle against it. And yet, every freaking single solitary game I've ever visited on the internet thrusts a black background in my face.

It's torture I tell ya. Now someone please give me a hug. I'm feeling neglected.
Jazuela is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-10-2006, 10:38 AM   #7
Malifax
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 108
Malifax is on a distinguished road
Give me black text on a white background and a client with the ability to color stuff the way I want it. Color belongs client-side IMHO.
Malifax is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-10-2006, 11:05 AM   #8
KaVir
Legend
 
KaVir's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Name: Richard
Home MUD: God Wars II
Posts: 2,052
KaVir will become famous soon enoughKaVir will become famous soon enough
White-on-black is what you get on a dumb terminal, which is the minimum spec required to play a mud. It's also what a lot of old-school mudders learned to mud on, and personally I can't stand anything else.

If your client supports black-on-white, then it almost certainly also supports customised colours, so there's nothing stopping you from changing it.

What I really dislike, though, are the muds that don't let you switch off colour at all. That's almost as bad as the muds which display information wrapped at more than 80 characters...
KaVir is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-10-2006, 12:59 PM   #9
Jazuela
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: New England
Posts: 849
Jazuela will become famous soon enoughJazuela will become famous soon enough
Jazuela is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-10-2006, 01:12 PM   #10
Earthmother
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Home MUD: GateWay MUD
Posts: 68
Earthmother is on a distinguished road
Earthmother is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-10-2006, 01:28 PM   #11
Luvan
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 46
Luvan is on a distinguished road
Lucky.... I am so badly nearsighted that something the size of this text has to be around half an inch to an inch away for me to read it without glasses.

Anyway

I like color, and I like muds with minimum color. I have seen them both work well. I recommended AU to someone in another topic because of its fantastic color usage, but if you look at a desc and the word "Ocean" is blue and you dont like it, you wouldnt like AU.

I personally really dislike on muds when there is no way to customize and everything is practically identical when you walk into a room (color wise). Like the desc is green and the items are green that are on the ground (mixed in with the room desc) so are the peoples names are green and also mixed in as part of the rdesc.

When I have already read the description of Ye Old Tavern 10 times I get a good idea of what it looks like and if I just want to see whats different in it and it is all mixed up..guh.
Luvan is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-10-2006, 01:50 PM   #12
Kelvin
New Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 13
Kelvin is on a distinguished road
Kelvin is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-10-2006, 02:12 PM   #13
Spoke
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 101
Spoke is on a distinguished road
The answer I have is twofold.

On one side, I dislike MUDs where you are shown multiple colors per line or text block. This applies to descriptions, prompts, MOB emotes/words etc. I find it irritating because I have to concentrate longer on every specific line to read them, and after a while it ends up tiring me much faster (and I consider myself almost tireless when it comes to play the MUD I like).

On the other side, when you have a big MUD with multiple events happening that are accessible to the characters, then I like to have a way to quickly recognize the type of information comming to me by the color codes, so that I do not have to read any part of the message to know what type of event is the one happening.

The way I have seen it implemented in my favorite place is by using at most 2 colors per info line. All channels and info's are customizable both in color scheme and activity (can turn them off). Two colors allows for the special information in the line to be highlighted, and the main color code to tell you the type of information being talked about.

Another thing I hate and that will make me delete is when players colored prompts or channel emotes are allowed or forced uppon everybody, makes every line a pain to read and the problem usually is that the more "freedom" given to the players to configure what will be seen over channels, the more annoying it gets. A plus in the game I like is that a) pretitles are not colored (cannot be), b) you can choose not to see pretitles at all and c) you can recognize and filter out emotes from regular channel use easilly (with a couple of simple client sided triggers).

Just my $2.4/100 (or 2 US cents)
Spoke is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-11-2006, 11:54 AM   #14
Markov
New Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Harmony, Pa, USA
Posts: 8
Markov is on a distinguished road
Send a message via ICQ to Markov Send a message via AIM to Markov Send a message via MSN to Markov Send a message via Yahoo to Markov
Hmm, I'm the opsite of dark on brirght crowd, I for one can't do light backgrounds, my eyes are too light sensitive... it gives me a head ache, if I need somethign from a document or a website that is dark text on hwite or yellow i print it out... since the paper isn;t backlit, I to get anoyed at builders and even players that use too much color, unless it serves more of a purpose... like the one mob that follows one of my morts aroud that si garishly random colored... but that's to be anoying not to be artistic
Markov is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-11-2006, 01:47 PM   #15
Earthmother
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Home MUD: GateWay MUD
Posts: 68
Earthmother is on a distinguished road
Earthmother is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-12-2006, 09:18 AM   #16
Malifax
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 108
Malifax is on a distinguished road
I guess I don't see the big deal of server-side color. Any client worth using will allow users to color their screen however they want.
Malifax is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-12-2006, 09:32 AM   #17
KaVir
Legend
 
KaVir's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Name: Richard
Home MUD: God Wars II
Posts: 2,052
KaVir will become famous soon enoughKaVir will become famous soon enough
The client can only add colour based on keywords - it doesn't know about internal data. If you want your combat table to colour-code fighting techniques based on their attack and defence strength, or you want help files to highlight keywords and references to other help files, or you want your opponent's name to be coloured red when they've got their back to you, or you want critical hits to be coloured differently, or any number of other non-cosmetic uses, then it needs to be handled server-side.
KaVir is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-12-2006, 02:38 PM   #18
shadowfyr
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 310
shadowfyr will become famous soon enough
shadowfyr is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-14-2006, 12:15 AM   #19
DonathinFrye
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Name: Donathin Frye
Location: Columbus, OH
Home MUD: Optional Realities
Home MUD: Atonement RPI
Home MUD: Project Redshift
Posts: 510
DonathinFrye is on a distinguished road
Send a message via AIM to DonathinFrye
I personally enjoy colorful MUDs that give you easy ways to minimize the amount of color you see, or set the colors using 'colorset' or a similar command.

Customization is almost always the way to go if you have capable programmers, I'd say.
DonathinFrye is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-03-2006, 02:27 AM   #20
marzzbar
New Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 4
marzzbar is on a distinguished road
marzzbar is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools


Color Obsession - Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
MUDs with no color DarkOzma Tavern of the Blue Hand 22 08-03-2006 12:50 PM
To color or not to color rockcrusher_sargon MUD Builders and Areas 12 01-24-2004 02:18 AM
Staff of a different color... Sally Advertising for Staff 0 03-24-2003 10:00 PM
This ikonboard color scheme crymerci Bugs and Suggestions 0 01-16-2003 06:02 PM
Color Codes in LPC kaylus1 MUD Coding 0 04-27-2002 09:49 PM

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

All times are GMT -4. The time now is 04:48 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Style based on a design by Essilor
Copyright Top Mud Sites.com 2022