Color blindness

[Air Gear]

Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo...such an awesome game. Unfortunately, as in a lot of puzzles, there's one fatal flaw in it. You see, I'm partially colorblind, so the yellow and green blocks look basically identical (I have to stare REALLY closely to have a chance of telling them apart). I'd probably be playing it on a regular basis if there were some option to change colors; it strikes me that a game like this (or like Klax) would be best "skinnable": it's an option to swap individual piece colors to any out of a large set. I've thought about doing a Klax or Puyo Puyo-style game which has this feature, but this is another to add to the list...

[Pineapple]

Unfortunately, as in a lot of puzzles, there's one fatal flaw in it. You see, I'm partially colorblind, so the yellow and green blocks look basically identical (I have to stare REALLY closely to have a chance of telling them apart).

Have you every played a puzzle game where you could tell all of the pieces apart? I'm thinking that a Tetris Attack series game would be easier for you to see, because of the shapes.


And while the 5 easiest colours to tell apart (for most people) are red, blue, greeen, yellow, and purple, often, it's the choice of coloiurs within those definitions that cause the problems...

[Air Gear]

Unfortunately, as in a lot of puzzles, there's one fatal flaw in it. You see, I'm partially colorblind, so the yellow and green blocks look basically identical (I have to stare REALLY closely to have a chance of telling them apart).
Have you every played a puzzle game where you could tell all of the pieces apart? I'm thinking that a Tetris Attack series game would be easier for you to see, because of the shapes.

And while the 5 easiest colours to tell apart (for most people) are red, blue, greeen, yellow, and purple, often, it's the choice of coloiurs within those definitions that cause the problems...


Oh yeah, Tetris Attack was perfectly fine. Too bad more games don't have little extras...

[Pineapple]

Any chance you can do me a bit of a colour test? If so, I'd like a smallish image containing the 7 colours that you think are easiest to tell apart for you, with one colour in each of these "categories": red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, pink.

[tepples]

That, or we could use a library of 12 symbols that could be put on blocks to make them easier to tell apart.

[Pineapple]

Sounds very similar to an idea that I would like to fulfill eventually, of free "block" images for use by developers in puzzle games.

[Rosti LFC]

That, or we could use a library of 12 symbols that could be put on blocks to make them easier to tell apart.

Yeah, like they did on the monochrome Gameboy games.

[Air Gear]

I'll do a color test a little later (have one thing to do before I can really spend time here), but let me say:


Multiple skins will still be a necessity since I'm sure that people who see normally would find what works for me overly bright or ugly. Meanwhile, then there are people who see in yet other ways; since skins that work for them would also be an idea, the "choose a color per block" thought (admittedly, we'd have to figure out a good set) would likely be the most efficient way to do it. It'd also be the most aesthetically pleasing solution...


Completely random thought arising from this: putting together strategies for games where there are indistinguishable colors is pretty interesting. Maybe I should put something together with that mechanic someday...


Lastly, interesting how this got separated from the Puzzle Fighter thread.

[tepples]

Completely random thought arising from this: putting together strategies for games where there are indistinguishable colors is pretty interesting.
Minesweeper: The color of a tile without a mine is indistinguishable from the color of a tile with a mine.

TAP: The color of a block that has locked is indistinguishable from the background.

Lastly, interesting how this got separated from the Puzzle Fighter thread.

It looked like a derailment (Klax? Puyo?) to me, and fortunately a cleaner derailment than the ones I often have to clean up on gbadev.org.