WinXP console colors

[Timofei Shatrov]

I switched to Windows XP quite recently and as you all know, the default
colors for text console are god-awful. Sick yellowish color instead of
brown, light gray and dark gray are very similar, same for light red and
dark red and dark blue is extremely dark. I don't know if the person who
picked these colors was colorblind or something, but he obviously didn't
have a clue. It makes roguelike experience much less pleasant. Still I
guess many people use these horrid default colours, because they don't
know how to change them. They may have never even seen the "right"
colors so they can't appreciate just how beautiful the roguelikes may be
if the right color palette is used.

So, here is the fix:

1. Run "regedit" and enter HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Console branch.

2. Export this branch into a file, say "console.reg"

3.Open it with notepad.

4. Substitute the first 16 lines that follow [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console]
with:

"ColorTable00"=dword:00000000
"ColorTable01"=dword:00990000
"ColorTable02"=dword:00009900
"ColorTable03"=dword:00999900
"ColorTable04"=dword:00000099
"ColorTable05"=dword:00990099
"ColorTable06"=dword:00003399
"ColorTable07"=dword:00c0c0c0
"ColorTable08"=dword:00666666
"ColorTable09"=dword:00ff3333
"ColorTable10"=dword:0033ff33
"ColorTable11"=dword:00ffff00
"ColorTable12"=dword:003333ff
"ColorTable13"=dword:00ff00ff
"ColorTable14"=dword:0000ffff
"ColorTable15"=dword:00ffffff

5. Save the file and run it - this will patch your register.

6. Enjoy the natural colors.

7. If you don't like these ones, you can change them. The values must
have the form "dword:00BBGGRR", where BB is hexadecimal representation
of blue intensity, GG - green, RR - red. In particular, brown color may
need further tweaking - it's not symmetrical to other composite colors
so some guessing had to be done.

--
|WAR HAS NEVER SOLVED ANYTHING|,----- Timofei Shatrov aka Grue---------.
|(except for ending slavery, ||mail: grue at mail.ru ================ |
| fascism and communism) ||============= http://grue3.tripod.com |
|...and Saddam's dictatorship |`----------------------------------[4*72]

[Solf]

Timofei Shatrov wrote:
> I switched to Windows XP quite recently and as you all know, the default
> colors for text console are god-awful. Sick yellowish color instead of
> brown, light gray and dark gray are very similar, same for light red and
> dark red and dark blue is extremely dark. I don't know if the person who
> picked these colors was colorblind or something, but he obviously didn't
> have a clue. It makes roguelike experience much less pleasant. Still I
> guess many people use these horrid default colours, because they don't
> know how to change them. They may have never even seen the "right"
> colors so they can't appreciate just how beautiful the roguelikes may be
> if the right color palette is used.
>
> So, here is the fix:

[fix snipped]

Thanks for the information, it is very useful if one wishes to alter
color appearance for all console windows.

Meanwhile I've been using another approach to alter colors in
particular console windows (such as Crawl window):
- Launch the application.
- Open "Properties" (Alt-Space, P).
- Open "Colors" tab.
- Adjust colors appearance by selecting desired color and altering its
RGB values.
- Make sure Text/Backgroud colors are selected properly (when you
clicked different colors to adjust them, you've changed background
color selection if you didn't select another radio button before).
- Close properties window and tell it to "remember settings for future
windows with the same title".

Works like a charm :) In particular, I always adjust default dark blue
to be much brighter -- my color perception considers default dark blue
entirely too dark.

[How786]

"Solf" <sol...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1145541616.2...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

>
> Meanwhile I've been using another approach to alter colors in
> particular console windows (such as Crawl window):
> - Launch the application.
> - Open "Properties" (Alt-Space, P).
> - Open "Colors" tab.
> - Adjust colors appearance by selecting desired color and altering its
> RGB values.
> - Make sure Text/Backgroud colors are selected properly (when you
> clicked different colors to adjust them, you've changed background
> color selection if you didn't select another radio button before).
> - Close properties window and tell it to "remember settings for future
> windows with the same title".

Hmmm....I'm using the tile version of Crawl and this does not seem to work
for me.
Is there a way to change the appearance in the tile version?
Thanks
Howie

[Erik Piper]

How786 wrote:
> "Solf" <sol...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1145541616.2...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > Meanwhile I've been using another approach to alter colors in
> > particular console windows (such as Crawl window):

[...]

> Hmmm....I'm using the tile version of Crawl and this does not seem to work
> for me.
> Is there a way to change the appearance in the tile version?
> Thanks
> Howie

The original version of Crawl, and the one played by the majority of
players (not to say you ain't with it, just to say that that's why the
author assumed everyone would know what he's talking about) is what's
called a console program: it runs in a purely textual window called the
console. The technique described talks about affecting which text color
looks how when you're running Crawl in a console.

TileCrawl does also offer some configurability -- there are settings
for the font (text) size (not sure if it affects ALL text, though),
font type, etc., and common sense dictates that if you change the BMP
(picture) files where the walls, floors, monster pictures, equipment
pictures, etc. are stored, then you've changed how these things look.

e.