Full color Text Adventures?
Paul Allen Panks
I haven't seen many text adventures that take advantage of more than
one color on screen at once. What text adventures are available --
besides Westfront PC -- that use text color as a part of gameplay?
(not counting ANSI MUDs or MOOs of course)
Paul
Matthew F Funke
There's an obscure little piece called "Photopia", I think, written
by some guy named Adam Cadre. ;)
--
-- With Best Regards,
Matthew Funke (m...@hopper.unh.edu)
Peter Lansford
to all black with white font to give the standard html interface a
more DOSesq', Zork feel. We used #000000 for the background and
#F5F5F5 off color grey for the text. We didn't want to use standard
html white because we wanted the text to appear old, like looking
through a Franklin Ace monitor.
The jpgs are done with black cropping and smoke trails for pictures
that appear to melt on the screen.
We are trying to get smell to come through the players speakers but
the code keeps giving runtime errors.
A.P. Hill
IF Writer
Mike Tyson of TADS
atholbrose
news:7a1fd8df.02021...@posting.google.com:
MUDs that use excessive color drive me crazy, especially when things are
in, say, dark blue on a black background ... I'd rather most of the text
was the same color, in a font of my choosing, with different styles applied
to the text for emphasis etc. If there must be color, at least let it be
user-configurable color; there are several combinations almost unreadable
to me.
OTOH, I did play Robots of Dawn at one point, and the color-coding for
character speech was interesting. I've played some RPGs that do the same
thing and it seems useful there, too.
Stephen Granade
I used different text colors for the two aliens' dialog in Arrival.
Stephen
--
Stephen Granade
sgra...@phy.duke.edu
Duke University, Physics Dept
Plugh!
[snip]
>
> A.P. Hill
> IF Writer
> Mike Tyson of TADS
don't you mean "the Peter Lansford of TADS"?
Ashley Price
news:7a1fd8df.02021...@posting.google.com...
Hi all
Of course the problem here is that you have to be very careful which colours
you use as everyone has a different monitor with different brightness and
contrast specs.
My old PC monitor was *very* dark. I had the brightness and contrast turned
full up and still (in games like Quake II) had to adjust the brightness
option up almost as far as possible. So imagine what playing an IF with dark
text on a darker background would be like.
I guess the best way around this would be to make the background white and
then use darker colours. That would be easier on the eyes as well.
Ashley
A.P. Hill
not. Go buy a monitor freak.
AP
Gunther Schmidl
news:61188078.02021...@posting.google.com...
[snip obnoxious crap]
*plonk*
And about time it is, too.
Joachim Froholt
"A.P. Hill" wrote:
Huh? What was that for?
Joachim
Sabrejack
> full up and still (in games like Quake II) had to adjust the brightness
I use a voodoo 3 card, which is notoriously dark -- I have to do the
same thing. I have an added impedement to custom colours: i'm on a
13 inch monochrome VGA screen right now, and everything gets rounded
to to 256 shades of grey. even bright red gets rounded to such a dark
black that I cannot read it upon a black background.
I think more colour in IF would be a great thing, but you'll foregive
me if I don't start using more colour in my own work until I can
afford a colour monitor. Heh.
There also needs to be a start-up question "Do you want colour [Y/n]?
" and a verb "colour on" "colour off" to change the setting.. OR..
an option in the interpreter to strip colours. In fairness, no puzzle
should use text colour clues as the only hint to a puzzle. Perhaps
I'm biased though with my monochrome monitor.
Adam Cadre
> " and a verb "colour on" "colour off" to change the setting.. OR..
> an option in the interpreter to strip colours. In fairness, no puzzle
> should use text colour clues as the only hint to a puzzle.
I'm troubled by the notion that authors "need" to do anything. Authors
put hundreds and even thousands of hours of work into games that players
can then play for free. They are under absolutely no obligation to
accommodate anyone. If they want to mandate that the game be played
with pink letters on a plaid background, that's their right. They don't
have to spend tons of extra time assuring that their game will work on
black and white monitors or Gameboys or what have you. If players can't
play the game or don't like the author's choices, they can choose a
different game to play. The ability to play every piece of IF on your
exact system with your exact settings is not a right.
The flip side of this is that players are under no obligation to play
or like authors' work. If a particular player refuses to play a
particular game or give it a good review until it works on a Palm
Pilot or until there's a monkey in it or until the PC's name is changed
to Wilhelmina, the author has the choice of either making the changes
or saying, "Hey, your loss." There are times when the former is called
for, and yes, there are times when the latter is called for.
-----
Adam Cadre, Brooklyn, NY
http://adamcadre.ac
L. Ross Raszewski
>> There also needs to be a start-up question "Do you want colour [Y/n]?
>> " and a verb "colour on" "colour off" to change the setting.. OR..
>> an option in the interpreter to strip colours. In fairness, no puzzle
>> should use text colour clues as the only hint to a puzzle.
>
>I'm troubled by the notion that authors "need" to do anything. Authors
>put hundreds and even thousands of hours of work into games that players
>can then play for free. They are under absolutely no obligation to
>accommodate anyone. If they want to mandate that the game be played
>with pink letters on a plaid background, that's their right. They don't
>have to spend tons of extra time assuring that their game will work on
>black and white monitors or Gameboys or what have you. If players can't
>play the game or don't like the author's choices, they can choose a
>different game to play. The ability to play every piece of IF on your
>exact system with your exact settings is not a right.
I don't think anyone's suggesting an authorial police to go around and
give the slap-down to authors who don't accomodate their player.
That said, I think that there is a sense in which authors "need" to
accomodate their players; it's a matter of predicate logic. No one is
going to put a gun to my head if I skip class next week, but I want to
get a degree at some point, and therefore, I "need" to go to class (at
least occasionally). Similarly, the majority of authors want their
games to be played by as many people as possible, and therefore they
"need" to accomodate the superficial desires of their players. (Says
the man who released a V6 game)
Obviously, it is the author's "right" to force his game to whatever
display he likes. This does not make it "right" to do so.
You mention the extra work involved, which I suppose is fair, except
that the vast majority of it is trivial -- turning colors off, making
sure the game runs in any legal interpreter, handling the fact that a
user's system setting may not be identical to your own; none of these
are more than a few minute's work.
THe point that you don't directly make (and I'm a little surprised to
see it missing) is that there is something important in a decision
like color choice or UI design. If I write my game with some amazing
feature, and let you turn it off, you won't be experiencing the game I
intended for you to experience.
On the other hand, though, you've got this very cut and dry "if you
don't like my decisions, play another game" response. All-or-nothing
is reasonable in some contexts, but I think this is a touch extreme.
There *is* a fundamental difference between "I can't complete a Zarf
game because the puzzles are too hard" and "I can't complete Photopia
because I'm color blind and can't see the text". I find it hard to
believe that any work of IF (and now, we're talking "real" IF, because
I can easily see this falling into one of those "What is IF"
discussiosn that ends up proving that everything is, in fact, IF)
could have its meaning so totally entwined with the color of the text
that it's not worth playing unless you get the colors right.
Meanwhile, in the evil parallel universe...
Comrade Cadre, your words have touched my soul. My next game will be
written in ADRIFT. I've put years of work into it, and it's the
player's problem and not mine if they can't run it because they're
using some st00pid non-windows computer. Oh, and it will only run at
1240x756 resolution, but it runs too fast if you have anythign faster
than a 486, so don't do that! It also has eating and peeing puzzles!
Adam Cadre
> want to get a degree at some point, and therefore, I "need" to go to
> class (at least occasionally). Similarly, the majority of authors want
> their games to be played by as many people as possible,
Is this actually true? On a trivial level, this can be proven untrue
by pointing out that authors aren't writing v3 versions of all their
games for the one person playing on the Gameboy, or having their work
translated into scores of different languages. There are tradeoffs
between audience size and feature set, and authors have to pick their
spots.
> and therefore they "need" to accomodate the superficial desires of
> their players.
Well, that was the thrust of the whole second half of my post. *If*
an author is going to be bugged by a player rejecting the game for
lacking (or possessing) a certain feature, then it becomes the author's
problem again.
> THe point that you don't directly make (and I'm a little surprised to
> see it missing) is that there is something important in a decision
> like color choice or UI design.
I actually had a paragraph about that, but then chopped it since it
seemed redundant. But yeah, just to spell it out -- some design
decisions are more or less arbitrary, and if players complain, sure,
authors are likely to want to accommodate them. Other design decisions
are pretty much the whole reason why the piece was written, and players
who complain about them should be directed to other games, just as if
they'd complained about the genre or some such.
> If I write my game with some amazing feature, and let you turn it off,
> you won't be experiencing the game I intended for you to experience.
Right. It's a bit like the customer who tells the chef to make such
and such a sauce without the garlic, say, even though the flavor
balance depends on it. If the customer then complains that the sauce
is bland, or a bit off, or what have you, the chef is liable to think,
"Of COURSE it's bland! Of COURSE it's not right! Next time you either
take the sauce with the garlic in it or you order something else!"
And those who argue that *good* sauces are those which taste great no
matter what combination of ingredients the customer opts to leave in
or out will be lucky to escape the restaurant without the sauce poured
over their heads.
> My next game will be written in ADRIFT. I've put years of work into it,
> and it's the player's problem and not mine if they can't run it because
> they're using some st00pid non-windows computer. Oh, and it will only
> run at 1240x756 resolution, but it runs too fast if you have anythign
> faster than a 486, so don't do that! It also has eating and peeing
> puzzles!
I'm not really sure what this is supposed to satirize. Like, if my
response is supposed to be, "Damn, I'd really love to play this if
only he hadn't made these design decisions-- oh, the irony!" then
that's not quite what's being communicated.
But about the non-Windows thing, for instance -- a lot of people seem
to make the leap from "IF is practically the only type of game I can
play on my obscure machine" to "all IF should be playable on my machine."
And that's part of my point here. It seems to be ingrained in the IF
world that portability should be the #1 concern of the people writing
games, and that if ever an author has to choose between portability and
some nifty feature, portability must win. I don't think that's
necessarily true. Sometimes losing X% of one's audience is a perfectly
acceptable price to pay for a freer hand in shaping one's work.
Ashley Price
"A.P. Hill" <aph...@altavista.com> wrote in message
news:61188078.02021...@posting.google.com...
> That advice would be worthy if I was writing the game for you, but I'm
> not. Go buy a monitor freak.
>
> AP
I did actually say my "old" PC monitor, I now have a 17" monitor which is
more than perfect for brightness and contrast.
Reading posts correctly before criticising is the best advice I can give
here, especially as it was Paul Allen Panks that asked the original question
and I assumed he wanted helpful advice.
Perhaps I was wrong and it was just an excuse for you to insult people for
what was (in my humble opinion) a perfectly valid comment (and even more so
if you read Sabrejack's post below).
Ashley Price
> not. Go buy a monitor freak.
>
the rest of the newsgroup postings, I find his post even more incredible
because his reply to the "This Newsgroup" thread was (and this is a direct
copy): "I agree. There are some people on here that ridicule people for no
reason, which leads to further ridicule."?!
This was posted at 18:32 (GMT), just over four and a half hours after
posting the above ridicule!
Can we ALL please try to remember that the point of this group is for IF and
the writing of, not for criticising others because of their hardware (after
all, if I really wanted ridicule I would have mentioned that my PC is a
Pentium MMX with 233MHz and 64Mb RAM with a very basic graphics card and a
Sounbaster 16bit soundcard) or software.
Ashley
Magnus Olsson
>But about the non-Windows thing, for instance -- a lot of people seem
>to make the leap from "IF is practically the only type of game I can
>play on my obscure machine" to "all IF should be playable on my machine."
>And that's part of my point here. It seems to be ingrained in the IF
>world that portability should be the #1 concern of the people writing
>games, and that if ever an author has to choose between portability and
>some nifty feature, portability must win. I don't think that's
>necessarily true.
On a tangent: Even though I've publically defended the IF groups many
times against claims that they are elitist, unfriendly to newbies etc,
this is one of the few points where I think that we could actually
be a littl emore tolerant - sometimes it seems as if people saying that
they're working on a non-portable game are jumped at a bit too viciuously.
It should be pointed out that portability is considered important, yes,
but it's the author's choice.
--
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se, m...@pobox.com)
------ http://www.pobox.com/~mol ------
KenRay
> one color on screen at once.
One thing that people have to be aware of when using colour is that a
reasonable minority of the population (I was once told 10% of all men,
but that may figure may be wrong) have some degree of
colour-blindness. In tha majority of cases, this affects red-green
distinction, where reds and greens are just different shades of gray.
So if you are planning on using colours, bear this in mind. There are
probably some good on line references (but I can't find anything at
hand), which I am sure would give advice on colour combinations to
avoid.
Ken
Adam Thornton
Ashley Price <ashle...@DELETE-THISbtinternet.com> wrote:
>Can we ALL please try to remember that the point of this group is for IF and
>the writing of, not for criticising others because of their hardware
...because that's Stiffy Makane's job.
Adam
A.P. Hill
to the lab to determine what colors to use for font and background, I
should remember to consider the people with shitty monitors and shitty
eyes?
Before I continue with my work, Is there anything else to remember?
Should I limit my talent to the maximum capacity of the crippled? I
will, I just need to know what this forum thinks I should do. This
forum is very useful to me, I don't know what I would do without it.
After I finish with Amissville, I'll have to remember to write a game
for fingerless ferloins. A microphone enabled TADS, "Go North",
"Examine Trunk", "No! I said Examine the fucking Trunk!!!" "Go
south".
A.P. Hill
Medical Examiner of TADS
Skeet
wrote:
>pa...@dana.ucc.nau.edu (Paul Allen Panks) wrote in
>news:7a1fd8df.02021...@posting.google.com:
>
>
>OTOH, I did play Robots of Dawn at one point, and the color-coding for
>character speech was interesting. I've played some RPGs that do the same
>thing and it seems useful there, too.
Hmmm, rings a bell... is that the game that kept asking you if you
were really sure you wanted to quit? If so, that is absolutely the
most annoying "feature" I've ever seen in a game. On my old C-64, I
actually kept answering the question just to see if it ever let me
quit... eventually my screen was filled with incremental variations of
"Are you really really really really really really really really
really really really really really sure you want to quit?" If I'm not
mistaken, that was the main reason I never bothered to finish the
game.
---------------------------------
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
(T.S. Eliot)
atholbrose
news:5l7t6uki35cds4k1h...@4ax.com:
>>OTOH, I did play Robots of Dawn at one point, and the color-coding for
> Hmmm, rings a bell... is that the game that kept asking you if you
> were really sure you wanted to quit?
Yes, that would be the one; and it was a joke, because there was no way to
quit, you basically had to reset the machine to get out of the program.
A.P. Hill
was 'derogatory' in nature. Print and hang, because that will be the
last 'derogatory' remark as far as I know. I've decided to tone it
down a bit. From now on, as I surf posts, and I come across one that
is so utterly stupid and down-right full of crap, I'm just going to
gather everyone in the office thats nearby and have them gather around
my pc. Then I will begin to diminish the postee with 'live'
derogatory' remarks. I will refrain from typing my antics. Hopefully
this will allow some veteran users of rec.arts.int-fiction some
freedom of speech without ridicule.
Also later on, I hope to develop ways of dealing with my vicious email
blade by hitting things nearby, in an effort to curb my replies to a
more productive element that could, quite possibly, add to the
enrichment of the IF community.
A.P. Hill
Lucian P. Smith
: Right. It's a bit like the customer who tells the chef to make such
: and such a sauce without the garlic, say, even though the flavor
: balance depends on it. If the customer then complains that the sauce
: is bland, or a bit off, or what have you, the chef is liable to think,
: "Of COURSE it's bland! Of COURSE it's not right! Next time you either
: take the sauce with the garlic in it or you order something else!"
See, I think this is a faulty analogy. What I think is closer to the
actual situation here is that of the customer that orders the sauce
without the garlic, gets it, and then loves the stuff, galling the chef
to no end.
"You can't like my sauce without the garlic! The garlic is essential!
I will no longer make my sauce without garlic, simply because of fools
like you who like it when it's gone. Cretin!"
Different people care about different things. I'm not a very
visually-oriented person. I played through the entirety of 'Grim
Fandango' with some sort of incompatibility between the game and my
video card, making all the shades of gray vivid green and orange. It
looked like crap. It also didn't make any difference to me. I
replayed it recently on my new computer without the incompatibility,
and apart from a couple moments of, 'Hey, that really *was* vivid green
and orange--I thought it was grey', I never really noticed the
difference.
'De gustibus non disputandum est'
-Lucian
Peter Seebach
A.P. Hill <aph...@altavista.com> wrote:
>Let me get this straight. Im going to author a work of IF. When I go
>to the lab to determine what colors to use for font and background, I
>should remember to consider the people with shitty monitors and shitty
>eyes?
I don't suppose you'd be willing to do an interview? I do a usability
column on and off, and it's rare to see such an aggressive stance.
-s
--
Copyright 2001, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / se...@plethora.net
$ chmod a+x /bin/laden Please do not feed or harbor the terrorists.
C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon!
Consulting, computers, web hosting, and shell access: http://www.plethora.net/
Ian Trider
> reasonable minority of the population (I was once told 10% of all men,
> but that may figure may be wrong) have some degree of
> colour-blindness. In tha majority of cases, this affects red-green
> distinction, where reds and greens are just different shades of gray.
Not quite.
Red-green is common, and red-blue exists, and it is fairly common in men
(10% sounds about right). It is rare in women.
I am red-green colourblind and it doesn't affect my ability to see the
colours red or green, however when one is put on top of another it is
virtually impossible to distinguish, like somehow the red disappears into
the green or vice-versa, whichever there is less of.
For example, when I was doing some graphics work butchering.. er.. editing a
scanned in copy of a brochure to remove some text I had to use Photoshop's
clone tool to remove some RED TEXT from a green leafy background. Well it
was OK to start, but once I started getting down to little bits of red left
I had to crank the magnification because I could NOT see it at all.
Not that this help a certain A.P. Hill who is appearently an inconsiderate
asshole.
--
--------------------------------------
Ian Trider
--------------------------------------
E-mail: ian...@gmx.net
MSN : iantri (registered under
ian...@mailandnews.com)
AIM : iantri ICQ : 34119829
Y! : iantri1
--------------------------------------
Today's possibly humourous tagline:
COLDBEER.CAN Found - Programmer LOADED.
Joachim Froholt
Ian Trider wrote:
> > One thing that people have to be aware of when using colour is that a
> > reasonable minority of the population (I was once told 10% of all men,
> > but that may figure may be wrong) have some degree of
> > colour-blindness. In tha majority of cases, this affects red-green
> > distinction, where reds and greens are just different shades of gray.
>
> Not quite.
>
> Red-green is common, and red-blue exists, and it is fairly common in men
> (10% sounds about right). It is rare in women.
>
> I am red-green colourblind and it doesn't affect my ability to see the
> colours red or green, however when one is put on top of another it is
> virtually impossible to distinguish, like somehow the red disappears into
> the green or vice-versa, whichever there is less of.
So, if I have a red cd cover and a green cd cover and put them next to
eachother, you won't be able to see the difference between the colours, but if I
put them far away from eachother, you will?
Joachim
John W. Kennedy
>
> Let me get this straight. Im going to author a work of IF. When I go
> to the lab to determine what colors to use for font and background, I
> should remember to consider the people with shitty monitors and shitty
> eyes?
Yes. It's called being a human being. Not all of us were conceived in
a Tijuana donkey show.
--
John W. Kennedy
Read the remains of Shakespeare's lost play, now annotated!
http://pws.prserv.net/jwkennedy/Double%20Falshood.html
Ben A L Jemmett
news:3c70...@MAIL.mhogaming.com...
> I am red-green colourblind and it doesn't affect my ability to see the
> colours red or green, however when one is put on top of another it is
> virtually impossible to distinguish, like somehow the red disappears into
> the green or vice-versa, whichever there is less of.
Colour blindness or colour deficiency? I've red-green colour-blind,
blue-violet colour-deficient, and I have the same problem as you describe
with red and green; however, I can't tell the difference between the two
easily even when quite separate. Sometimes it's obvious, other times I see
them as just shades of some random brownish colour. It depends on the exact
shades, I guess. Dark green and red look very similar, as do light green
and yellow. Curiously, orange is usually easy to spot...
> For example, when I was doing some graphics work butchering.. er.. editing
a
> scanned in copy of a brochure to remove some text I had to use Photoshop's
> clone tool to remove some RED TEXT from a green leafy background.
In Photoshop, I tend to switch to RGB colour mode, then hide the channel I'm
not interested in, and possibly play around with inverting the colours so
there's more contrast when the display switches to shades of grey.
--
Regards,
Ben A L Jemmett.
(http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ben.jemmett/, http://www.deltasoft.com/)
Adam Thornton
Ben A L Jemmett <bal.j...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
>Colour blindness or colour deficiency? I've red-green colour-blind,
>blue-violet colour-deficient, and I have the same problem as you describe
>with red and green; however, I can't tell the difference between the two
>easily even when quite separate. Sometimes it's obvious, other times I see
>them as just shades of some random brownish colour. It depends on the exact
>shades, I guess. Dark green and red look very similar, as do light green
>and yellow. Curiously, orange is usually easy to spot...
I used to--back when there was work for independent computer training
consultants--teach a major billing package.
It had among its features time-based billing. There was a neat little
interface where you brought up a calendar and selected day and time
ranges for billing categories.
However, the UI left a little to be desired: "set"--that is, there was
an unambiguous rate schedule for a particular time--was fully saturated
green. "Unset" (i.e., no charges are created at this time) was
fully-saturated yellow. And "conflicting"--more than one rate at a
given time, no precedence rules to differentiate them was
fully-saturated red.
There was no way to tweak this.
I had a colorblind student from one of this company's large customers.
The *next* class I taught for them, I had a Human Interface Specialist
sitting in on it making usability notes.
Adam
Peter Seebach
Joachim Froholt <jfro...@c2i.net> wrote:
>So, if I have a red cd cover and a green cd cover and put them next to
>eachother, you won't be able to see the difference between the colours, but
>if I put them far away from eachother, you will?
That sounds a little similar to what my colorblind friend describes. We play
empire builder sometimes, and we can't play with any two of green, brown, or
red; he can't tell small lines apart.
With my friend, he could tell the CD covers apart, but if each of them had
a small dot of the other color, he might not notice.
-s
--
Copyright 2002, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / se...@plethora.net
L. Ross Raszewski
Single best practical example of what effect beign colorblind has on
normal life: I can't pick strawberries. Can't see them for the life
of me.
More frighteningly, since I've moved to the city, I have a hard time
distinguishing green traffic lights from streetlights. Fortunately,
you don't have to stop for the green ones.
Gunther Schmidl
news:3c71464b$0$36736$3c09...@news.plethora.net...
> That sounds a little similar to what my colorblind friend describes. We
play
> empire builder sometimes, and we can't play with any two of green, brown,
or
> red; he can't tell small lines apart.
Funny you should mention that -- we were on a sailing trip in the IJsselmeer
(the Netherlands), and since this is a very shallow sea, you have to be
between the red (=port =left) and green (=starboard =right) buoys when
approaching land, or it's crash-on-the-reef times.
Now, we had a map, but exactly *one* harbor we were approaching had the
entrance lined out the other way -- red buoys on the right, green on the
left.
It took us about half an hour to convince our color-blind skipper that we
weren't shitting him. He just couldn't tell on the map. Thankfully he
believed us, because we saw what would have happened if he hadn't later in
the day.
-- Gunther
Adam Thornton
Gunther Schmidl <gsch...@xxx.gmx.at> wrote:
>Funny you should mention that -- we were on a sailing trip in the IJsselmeer
>(the Netherlands), and since this is a very shallow sea, you have to be
>between the red (=port =left) and green (=starboard =right) buoys when
>approaching land, or it's crash-on-the-reef times.
Um, eeeagh?
I always learned red-right-return, and that red is starboard is right.
Green is port is left. The first rule seems to imply that port and
starboard are as calculated from the sea looking to shore.
Adam
Gunther Schmidl
> I always learned red-right-return, and that red is starboard is right.
> Green is port is left. The first rule seems to imply that port and
> starboard are as calculated from the sea looking to shore.
I didn't put that quite right, in fact.
*On the boat*, right=green=starboard and left=red=port.
With buoys, it's the other way round when entering harbor, as
http://www.ccg-gcc.gc.ca/obs-bsn/sbg-gsn/lateral_e.htm illustrates. (This is
also the silliest URL I've seen in a long time).
And that was what he didn't believe.
-- Gunther
Adam Cadre
> reasonable minority of the population (I was once told 10% of all men,
> but that may figure may be wrong) have some degree of
> colour-blindness.
Whereas I am not only not color-blind, but (and no, I'm not joking or
making this up) have a mild degree of synesthesia such that I experience
other phenomena as color. This happens with such things as letters and
touch, but is most strongly the case with numbers -- to a great extent
I experience numbers as colors and vice versa. (Example: I once got a
bit confused while driving, thinking I'd caught a glimpse of some
Christmas decorations when it was months before Christmas was due to
arrive. I looked around trying to get a better look at what I'd seen,
when I suddenly found the culprit: it was my car's odometer, reading
066446. Christmas colors.) So for me the idea of not being able to
tell red from green is like rolling a die and not being able to tell
whether it's come up with four dots or six.
John W. Kennedy
I have a friend with a tee-shirt reading "Starboard wine is green".
Branko Collin
21:23:39 +0100:
>Funny you should mention that -- we were on a sailing trip in the IJsselmeer
>(the Netherlands), and since this is a very shallow sea,
It's a lake.
--
branko collin
Volk van San Theodoros, ik heb U begrepen.
Ian Trider
> eachother, you won't be able to see the difference between the colours,
but if I
> put them far away from eachother, you will?
Nope. There is enough of each colour for me to be able to see it (or
something like that). But, if a CD cover was completely green with red dots
in it randomly, I may find it difficult to point out the red.
--
--------------------------------------
Ian Trider
--------------------------------------
E-mail: ian...@gmx.net
MSN : iantri (registered under
ian...@mailandnews.com)
AIM : iantri ICQ : 34119829
Y! : iantri1
--------------------------------------
Today's possibly humourous tagline:
I'm going crazy. Wanna come along ?
"Joachim Froholt" <jfro...@c2i.net> wrote in message
news:3C70AE0C...@c2i.net...
Ian Trider
> blue-violet colour-deficient, and I have the same problem as you describe
> with red and green; however, I can't tell the difference between the two
> easily even when quite separate. Sometimes it's obvious, other times I
see
> them as just shades of some random brownish colour. It depends on the
exact
> shades, I guess. Dark green and red look very similar, as do light green
> and yellow. Curiously, orange is usually easy to spot...
Uh.. colour deficiency I guess.. to tell the truth I never knew that there
was a difference, and just thought that it was a misnomer.
I can see both red and green easily though, as long as there is a decent
amount of each I can tell them apart.
To tell the truth, the only time the red-green deficiency was ever a problem
for me was in said case (graphics butchering).
I can't imagine what it would be like to not be able easily tell red and
green apart.
--
--------------------------------------
Ian Trider
--------------------------------------
E-mail: ian...@gmx.net
MSN : iantri (registered under
ian...@mailandnews.com)
AIM : iantri ICQ : 34119829
Y! : iantri1
--------------------------------------
Today's possibly humourous tagline:
This tagline is SHAREWARE. To register, send me $10
Lewis Raszewski
>
> > So, if I have a red cd cover and a green cd cover and put them next to
> > eachother, you won't be able to see the difference between the colours,
> but if I
> > put them far away from eachother, you will?
>
> Nope. There is enough of each colour for me to be able to see it (or
> something like that). But, if a CD cover was completely green with red dots
> in it randomly, I may find it difficult to point out the red.
>
The most annoying thing about being partially colorblind, in my
experience, is the inability to demonstrate the fact to people who are
convinced you're lying after they hold up an apple and ask you what
color it is.
Most colorblind people, I think, are colorblind enough that just about
the only thing that they can demonstrate the fact with is their
inability to pass colorblindness tests.
--
L. Ross Raszewski
The Johns Hopkins University
Wyman Park 407
"Do you dream about Jesus or quantum mechanics, or angels who sing
lullabyes?"
-- Barenaked Ladies, When You Dream
Lewis Raszewski
>
> > Colour blindness or colour deficiency? I've red-green colour-blind,
> > blue-violet colour-deficient, and I have the same problem as you describe
> > with red and green; however, I can't tell the difference between the two
> > easily even when quite separate. Sometimes it's obvious, other times I
> see
> > them as just shades of some random brownish colour. It depends on the
> exact
> > shades, I guess. Dark green and red look very similar, as do light green
> > and yellow. Curiously, orange is usually easy to spot...
>
> Uh.. colour deficiency I guess.. to tell the truth I never knew that there
> was a difference, and just thought that it was a misnomer.
>
It is, basically. Almost no one is totally colorblind by birth (I had a
science teacher whos vision was totally monochromatic, but that was as a
result of injury), but the term is Medically Okay to describe persons
with color deficiencies.
> I can't imagine what it would be like to not be able easily tell red and
> green apart.
>
Senses are funny things. I can't imagine what it'd be like to have
normal color vision, or, for that matter, not to be able to hear a TV
screen.
If you're sufficiently colorblind, you probably have an enhanced sense
of contrast. Nice to be able to say "Can't you *see that*?" instead of
having it said to me every once in a while.
--
L. Ross Raszewski
The Johns Hopkins University
Wyman Park 407
"I'll live as I choose, or I will not live at all." -- Cranberries,
Free to
Decide
Fredrik Ramsberg
The URL seems to talk mainly about channels -- unless it's my limited
English vocabulary that is the problem (quite possible), this has
nothing to do with entering port?
Anyway, if you should indeed generally keep green buoys on your port
side when entering harbour in Canada, this is not true in all countries.
This would make for another baseball labyrinth puzzle, only worse.
The buoys indicate red for port for port side of your boat and green for
starboard for starboard side of your boat. However, they have been placed
along a fairway, and the colours are only correct if you travel in the
direction of the fairway. It's perfectly legal to travel in the other
direction, but then the colours are of course reversed, and you should keep
green buoys on your port side.
At least in Sweden, the direction of the fairway when approaching a port
is generally from the sea, towards the port. However, in some ports there's
a fairway that sneaks up to the port really close to land and then heads
out from the port to the sea. Then the fairway just keeps the direction
it had before nearing the port. So, the only safe thing is to always check
the charts. A skipper that refuses to believe that the fairway is going
in an unusual direction, without even checking the charts himself, should be
tossed off the ship, IMHO.
/Fredrik
Peter Killworth
use
of colour in its endgame (and asks if this is OK!) for reasons I'd like
to
leave as a surprise for those playing. It is perfectly readable in B/W,
just
less interesting.
Peter K.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Peter D. Killworth, James Rennell Division for Ocean Circulation
and Climate, Southampton Oceanography Centre, Empress Dock, Southampton
SO14 3ZH, England.
Tel: +44 (0)23-80596202 Fax: +44 (0)23-80596204
Email: P.Kil...@soc.soton.ac.uk
Web: http://www.soc.soton.ac.uk/JRD/PROC/people/pki/pki.html
Editor, Ocean Modelling: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/omodol/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Julian Fondren
> If you're sufficiently colorblind, you probably have an enhanced sense
> of contrast. Nice to be able to say "Can't you *see that*?" instead of
> having it said to me every once in a while.
More accurately, it's easier for you to see contrasts that are obscured
by color differences for other people.
David Thornley
That's the idea about the color blindness tests, I think. You get
a bunch of circles with, say, color differences making a 7.
Presumably some other difference, perhaps circle size, makes a 3,
but I never could make that out.
Anyway, I heard a story from a guy with a colorblind wife (yes,
that's odd); he was watching a television show on camoflauge,
and finding it almost impossible to spot the camoflauged things,
when his wife came in, looked at the screen, and commented that
for camoflauged things they were very easy to see.
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
Gunther Schmidl
> "Gunther Schmidl" <gsch...@xxx.gmx.at>, you wrote on Mon, 18 Feb 2002
> 21:23:39 +0100:
>
> >Funny you should mention that -- we were on a sailing trip in the
IJsselmeer
> >(the Netherlands), and since this is a very shallow sea,
>
> It's a lake.
Well, it is *now*.
-- Gunther
KenRay
> At least in Sweden, the direction of the fairway when approaching a port
> is generally from the sea, towards the port. However, in some ports there's
> a fairway that sneaks up to the port really close to land and then heads
> out from the port to the sea. Then the fairway just keeps the direction
> it had before nearing the port. So, the only safe thing is to always check
> the charts. A skipper that refuses to believe that the fairway is going
> in an unusual direction, without even checking the charts himself, should be
> tossed off the ship, IMHO.
>
> /Fredrik
The standards for bouyage is set by an organisation called the IALA -
International Association for Lighthouse Authorities - and there are
two schemes (Scheme A and Scheme B). The "red on the right when
returning" (an old British Royal Navy saying) is I believe scheme A,
so you have the red (port hand) bouy on the port side (left) when
heading into hte harbour from the sea, or on the starbord (right) side
when returning to the sea. Most countries adopt this scheme.
The other scheme - which the US adopts (to be perverse? to be
anti-british?) has the bouys the other way around. All good maritime
charts indicate which scheme is in use for the country the chart maps.
Branko Collin
19:11:31 +0100:
When it was a sea it wasn't called IJselmeer. ;-)
Jdyer41
>More accurately, it's easier for you to see contrasts that are obscured
>by color differences for other people.
Is there anyone around here who is *completely* colorblind? My mother has one
as a student who had to drop an anatomy class because the teacher was obsessed
with having the students shade in the various body parts with colored pencils.
He could only see in shades of grey.
Jason Dyer
jdy...@aol.com
Stuart Allen
> At least in Sweden, the direction of the fairway when approaching a port
> is generally from the sea, towards the port. However, in some ports there's
> a fairway that sneaks up to the port really close to land and then heads
> out from the port to the sea. Then the fairway just keeps the direction
> it had before nearing the port. So, the only safe thing is to always check
> the charts. A skipper that refuses to believe that the fairway is going
> in an unusual direction, without even checking the charts himself, should be
> tossed off the ship, IMHO.
In Australia, red port markers are kept to port when returning to
port. Very handy thing to remember when you live on an island in the
middle of a river riddled with sandbars... Of course, it's all nice
and easy until you start going around islands and can't figure out
whether you are coming or going. ;)
Stuart
Adam Thornton
Assuming the student is in the USA, this is sort of what the ADA is all
about, isn't it?
Adam
David Given
"Gunther Schmidl" <gsch...@xxx.gmx.at> writes:
[...]
> *On the boat*, right=green=starboard and left=red=port.
>
> With buoys, it's the other way round when entering harbor, as
> http://www.ccg-gcc.gc.ca/obs-bsn/sbg-gsn/lateral_e.htm illustrates. (This is
> also the silliest URL I've seen in a long time).
>
> And that was what he didn't believe.
He should come to Scotland. With all the weird tidal flows between the
islands, you basically learn that bouy positioning is arbitrary (there are
some overall rules like red is port when going in the direction of the
tidal flow as it's rising, or something like that) and have to trust the
charts.
Oh, yes, and Admiralty charts have different symbols for port and
starboard so that colour-blind people can distinguish them. I am trying to
find the URL for the official chart key but can't find it, so you'll just
have to use your imagination.
--
+- David Given --------McQ-+ "I told you to make one longer than another, and
| Work: d...@tao-group.com | instead you have made one shorter than the other
| Play: d...@cowlark.com | -- the opposite." --- Sir Boyle Roche
+- http://www.cowlark.com -+
Fredrik Ramsberg
The best thing about standards is that everyone can have their own.
/Fredrik
Richard Bos
> "Gunther Schmidl" <gsch...@xxx.gmx.at>, you wrote on Tue, 19 Feb 2002
> 19:11:31 +0100:
>
> >"Branko Collin" <col...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> >> "Gunther Schmidl" <gsch...@xxx.gmx.at>, you wrote on Mon, 18 Feb 2002
> >> 21:23:39 +0100:
> >>
> >> >Funny you should mention that -- we were on a sailing trip in the
> >> >IJsselmeer (the Netherlands), and since this is a very shallow sea,
> >>
> >> It's a lake.
> >
> >Well, it is *now*.
>
> When it was a sea it wasn't called IJselmeer. ;-)
<g> It still isn't - everybody except ordinance maps and dictionaries
calls it "IJsselmeer", note double s. Well, maybe they don't on the West
side, but they do here near the East coast.
Richard
David Given
thor...@visi.com (David Thornley) writes:
[...]
> Anyway, I heard a story from a guy with a colorblind wife (yes,
> that's odd); he was watching a television show on camoflauge,
> and finding it almost impossible to spot the camoflauged things,
> when his wife came in, looked at the screen, and commented that
> for camoflauged things they were very easy to see.
There's a particular rare genetic condition in some women that means they
have four colour receptors, instead of the three most humans have. I think
its called tetrachromacy. They tend to be able to do this trick.
They also seem to have rather different aesthetic taste to most people,
when it comes to colours...
--
+- David Given --------McQ-+ "What appears to be a sloppy or meaningless use
| Work: d...@tao-group.com | of words may well be a completely correct use of
| Play: d...@cowlark.com | words to express sloppy or meaningless ideas."
+- http://www.cowlark.com -+ --- Anonymous Diplomat
Ben A L Jemmett
news:CKvc8.42341$Wf1.8...@ruti.visi.com...
> That's the idea about the color blindness tests, I think. You get
> a bunch of circles with, say, color differences making a 7.
> Presumably some other difference, perhaps circle size, makes a 3,
> but I never could make that out.
I think they work using some interaction between contrast and colour vision,
so normal colour vision sees one set of coloured dots and deficient vision
sees a different pattern in the contrast. I see the 'deficient' pattern for
the blue/violet tests and no pattern whatsoever for the red/green ones.
A lot of people get weirded out when they say 'oh, that's a 7' and the next
bloke says 'no, it's a 3' or 'where's a 7?'. i think it stems from the fact
that our colour vision is something we take for granted; we all sort of know
what the colours look like, but never how someone else is seeing them.
--
Regards,
Ben A L Jemmett.
(http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ben.jemmett/, http://www.deltasoft.com/)
Ben A L Jemmett
> > [I] just thought that [colour blindness] was a misnomer.
> It is, basically. Almost no one is totally colorblind by birth (I had a
> science teacher whos vision was totally monochromatic, but that was as a
> result of injury), but the term is Medically Okay to describe persons
> with color deficiencies.
There are six possible problems with colour vision; red/green, blue/violet
and another (green, I think) deficiency and the three associated blindness.
One of these is impossible -- I think it's blue/violet colour blindness.
Each has its own medical term. The blindnesses are pretty rare, since it's
a complete failure of one set of cones rather than a reduced sensitivity
AIUI. Which probably means that I have somewhat insensitive blue/violet
cones, broken red/green ones and normal ones for the other sensitivity
(again, green I think). That'd fit with my perception of things I guess.
There's a chapter on this in the first volume of The Feynman Lectures, but
last time I read that I was in hospital after my corneal graft went through
some nastyness which makes it about a year ago.
Lewis Raszewski
Now, bvefore this thread, I had never heard of blue/violet
colorblindness before. I was under the impression that the major color
defficiencies were red-green and blue-yellow, corresponding to the way
color receptors are paired in the eye.
--
L. Ross Raszewski
The Johns Hopkins University
Wyman Park 407
"But somehow I can't believe that anything should happen." -- Tal
Bachman,
She's So High
Ben A L Jemmett
> Now, bvefore this thread, I had never heard of blue/violet
> colorblindness before. I was under the impression that the major color
> defficiencies were red-green and blue-yellow, corresponding to the way
> color receptors are paired in the eye.
There are blue/violet sensitive cones that are responsible for
distinguishing blue from magenta and suchlike. At least, that's what the
optometrist told me. IIRC, there are red/green sensitive cones, blue/violet
sensitive cones, and yellow/green/something-else-possibly sensitive cones.
I can't remember the third, but it's the set that work in my eye.
Hmm... Some Googling reveals references to blue/yellow deficiency, which
would be the third type then because I can easily distinguish the two -- I
see 'yellow', 'blue' and 'dark' in general. So in that case the impossible
problem I referred to would be one of the colour blindnesses.
Here's an interesting set of tests:
http://www.umds.ac.uk/physiology/daveb/brainday/colourblindness/cblind.htm
For the most part, I can't see any numerals in the first set (slight curves
that could be part of the red-green deficient results at times). With the
wavy lines, I can see the first purple one and none after that. According
to:
http://www.islanddiscs.freeserve.co.uk/access/colour.htm
I have deuteranomaly and extreme protanopia, the latter of which my
optometrist has always called a colour blindness (it's the extreme bit,
where red shows up as black/grey that counts there I guess).
Jdyer41
>>Is there anyone around here who is *completely* colorblind? My mother has
>one
>>as a student who had to drop an anatomy class because the teacher was
>obsessed
>>with having the students shade in the various body parts with colored
>pencils.
>>He could only see in shades of grey.
>
>Assuming the student is in the USA, this is sort of what the ADA is all
>about, isn't it?
Well, yes, but it wasn't worth making a fuss over I gather, not a class
he cared dearly about or anything.
Jason Dyer
jdy...@aol.com
Lewis Raszewski
>
> news:3C740DB0...@hotmail.com...
> > Now, bvefore this thread, I had never heard of blue/violet
> > colorblindness before. I was under the impression that the major color
> > defficiencies were red-green and blue-yellow, corresponding to the way
> > color receptors are paired in the eye.
>
> There are blue/violet sensitive cones that are responsible for
> distinguishing blue from magenta and suchlike. At least, that's what the
> optometrist told me. IIRC, there are red/green sensitive cones, blue/violet
> sensitive cones, and yellow/green/something-else-possibly sensitive cones.
> I can't remember the third, but it's the set that work in my eye.
>
> Hmm... Some Googling reveals references to blue/yellow deficiency, which
> would be the third type then because I can easily distinguish the two -- I
> see 'yellow', 'blue' and 'dark' in general. So in that case the impossible
> problem I referred to would be one of the colour blindnesses.
>
> Here's an interesting set of tests:
> http://www.umds.ac.uk/physiology/daveb/brainday/colourblindness/cblind.htm
>
> For the most part, I can't see any numerals in the first set (slight curves
> that could be part of the red-green deficient results at times). With the
> wavy lines, I can see the first purple one and none after that. According
> to:
I can make out the red-green deficient numbers on some of them, but just
barely. I can definately see that *something*'s there, though. The
majority of the second set is nothing. Plate 16 indicatats that I've
got mild deuteranomaly.
--
L. Ross Raszewski
The Johns Hopkins University
Wyman Park 407
"I've seen this thing before, in my best friend and the boy next door."
--
Blondie, Maria
Ben A L Jemmett
> I can make out the red-green deficient numbers on some of them, but just
> barely. I can definately see that *something*'s there, though. The
> majority of the second set is nothing. Plate 16 indicatats that I've
> got mild deuteranomaly.
Here's what I get when I go through it actually paying attention to the
results:
Plate 1: 12 [Control I guess].
Plate 2: Very faint impression of a 3 -- mainly at the joint on the two
curves, the rest disappears almost completely.
Plates 3-5: Nothing.
Plate 6: The top of the curve of the 5, with the angular bit of the
downstroke.
Plates 7-15: Nothing
Plate 16: The 6 is visible, but not very clearly.
Plate 17: The 2 is visible, but not very clearly.
Plate 18: What I assume is the purple line (it looks grey-blue) is visible.
Plate 19-23: Nothing.
Plate 24: The winding line [again, seems to be a control plate].
But I fear this is now completely OT and boring to pretty much everyone else
reading... I would venture to suggest that anyone considering making colour
an important feature of a game pays some attention to this, though, as I
have found software (and web sites, and on-line docs, etc.) which is nearly
impossible to use because it assumes I can distinguish colours easily. One
of the mailing lists I'm one received some posts from an author who thought
it'd be great to use blue and pink to distinguish male and female voices in
an e-book he was writing; he refused to accept that some people would find
it a pain to read...
OKB -- not okblacke
>Here's an interesting set of tests:
>http://www.umds.ac.uk/physiology/daveb/brainday/colourblindness/cblind.htm
>
>For the most part, I can't see any numerals in the first set (slight curves
>that could be part of the red-green deficient results at times). With the
>wavy lines, I can see the first purple one and none after that.
I was relieved to find that I lined up with the "normal vision" behavior
on every test. It was kind of interesting to look at the ones where
normal-vision was supposed to see no number. I sort of stared at it for a
while, wondering where the number might appear if I were color-deficient.
--OKB (Bren...@aol.com) -- no relation to okblacke
"Do not follow where the path may lead;
go, instead, where there is no path, and leave a trail."
--Author Unknown
Tim Mann
> There's a particular rare genetic condition in some women that means they
> have four colour receptors, instead of the three most humans have. I think
> its called tetrachromacy.
There's an excellent article on this at
http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue86/mag-mutant-86.html. It also has
some good up to date information on the genetics of normal color
vision and color deficiencies, and some good links at the bottom to
current research.
I have normal color vision, but I've always been curious about color
blindness, since I read as a child that the then-current theories of
color vision couldn't explain it adequately. Research in this area
has come a long way since then.
--
Tim Mann use...@tim-mann.org http://www.tim-mann.org/
Joe Pfeiffer
> In article <10140637...@lilznntp.liwest.at>,
> Gunther Schmidl <gsch...@xxx.gmx.at> wrote:
> >Funny you should mention that -- we were on a sailing trip in the IJsselmeer
> >(the Netherlands), and since this is a very shallow sea, you have to be
> >between the red (=port =left) and green (=starboard =right) buoys when
> >approaching land, or it's crash-on-the-reef times.
>
> Um, eeeagh?
>
> I always learned red-right-return, and that red is starboard is right.
> Green is port is left. The first rule seems to imply that port and
> starboard are as calculated from the sea looking to shore.
There's a little red port left in the galley.
Port and starboard are calculated relative to the boat.
--
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D. Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science FAX -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
Southwestern NM Regional Science and Engr Fair: http://www.nmsu.edu/~scifair
David Keller
"Ben A L Jemmett" <bal.j...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote in message
news:GrusB...@bath.ac.uk...
<SNIP>
But I fear this is now completely OT and boring to pretty much everyone
else
> reading... I would venture to suggest that anyone considering making
colour
> an important feature of a game pays some attention to this, though, as I
> have found software (and web sites, and on-line docs, etc.) which is
nearly
> impossible to use because it assumes I can distinguish colours easily.
<SNIP>
--
> Regards,
> Ben A L Jemmett.
> (http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ben.jemmett/, http://www.deltasoft.com/)
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sounds like good advice to me. I appreciate WinFrotz's ability to let me
make color changes to suit my visual perception but it can only help in some
ways and changes might garble something essential in a game if the creater
made it color-dependent enough.
David K
Philipp Lenssen
news:B8kg8.30439$ZC3.2...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
>..
> Sounds like good advice to me. I appreciate WinFrotz's ability to let me
> make color changes to suit my visual perception but it can only help in
some
> ways and changes might garble something essential in a game if the creater
> made it color-dependent enough.
Just some small insights into the approaches used in web design. Here a
seperate stylesheet file is used to define formatting, like colors. But the
actual content is formatted via structural markup, like [this is an
important heading], or [this is emphasis]. So if the user decides to ignore
the author stylesheet and use her own stylesheet (put on top of the default
stylesheet of the rendering engine), at least certain formatting is
preserved since the structural markup is not ignored. (I rely on that system
in the CYOA language QML.)
This whole system can break if the author stylesheet is not carefully
written and allows combinations of author and user stylesheet that make for
unreadable text.
E.g., the author sets the font color to black, but doesn't set the
background color, because on his device the background is already white; and
the user sets the background color to black, but doesn't set the foreground
color, because on his device it's already white.
Results in black on black, which is of course impossible to be seen.