Why are the colors always wrong?


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Spider Stomper

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Post Tuesday, 2nd May 2017, 18:30

Why are the colors always wrong?

I know this has ALWAYS been true, or at least, for a very very long time. But ... why can't Crawl have item colors that match what they say?

I mean, I just found an ominously black robe. Oooh. Wonder what that could be. (Like rF+ rN+. Yeah, wow.)

In my inventory, the ominously black robe is about what I expected: pastel green with a cute little gold trim.

I put it on, and on my character it is white with a sort of little blackish or bluish vestment on either side.

I mean... come on. It's stuff like this that makes the game seem unprofessional.

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Snake Sneak

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Post Tuesday, 2nd May 2017, 19:49

Re: Why are the colors always wrong?

You try making a tile that looks like a distressingly furry ring mail! :P

I apologize in advance if the following is not the kind of feedback sought by the thread...

In my opinion this is very low on my personal priority list, it has never really bothered me that it seems to (semi)randomize the appearance of item tile vs. player tile. Compared to Dungeons of Dredmor it feels state of the art. Also, as I alluded to in my opening joke, I don't think the majority of artefact descriptions have straightforward colors like that example. It might be a lot more vague and frustrating than expected to try to match them all up with/create new tiles.

All that being said, this would be a cool addition in a perfect world.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Tuesday, 2nd May 2017, 20:56

Re: Why are the colors always wrong?

It's true that it would be cool if item icons and item tiles matched. With shield it's currently not that way.
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Blades Runner

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Post Tuesday, 2nd May 2017, 22:09

Re: Why are the colors always wrong?

i think tiles is intentionally bad to make you ashamed to play tiles

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Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 3rd May 2017, 00:24

Re: Why are the colors always wrong?

Console has the same problem: randarts are just random colors that aren't used for normal items.

I agree that this is a very low priority, but it does have a simple(ish) solution: remove mentions of color from randart descriptions.

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Dungeon Master

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Post Wednesday, 3rd May 2017, 01:38

Re: Why are the colors always wrong?

I've occasionally considered making one or two variations of each randart item, but I fear even that would add too much visual busy-ness and cognitive load to the game.

The main reason that there are so many different tiles for standard/ego/randart versions of items is because I enjoy drawing fancy magic items and nobody told me to stop. From a gameplay standpoint, it would probably be better to have duller-colored items across the board, and ego/randart items could be differentiated by their outlines only, like DoomRL. Items don't need to catch your eye the way that monsters do.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 3rd May 2017, 01:55

Re: Why are the colors always wrong?

Randart descriptors just need to not include adjectives like colours and materials. The game used to only have stuff like "shimmering" and "vibrating" for non-jewellery randarts, and it was fine.

Crypt Cleanser

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Post Wednesday, 3rd May 2017, 02:17

Re: Why are the colors always wrong?

Alternatively, if you remove the identification minigame then there's not really a need to describe randarts in this way at all.

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Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 3rd May 2017, 05:01

Re: Why are the colors always wrong?

roctavian wrote:I've occasionally considered making one or two variations of each randart item, but I fear even that would add too much visual busy-ness and cognitive load to the game.

The main reason that there are so many different tiles for standard/ego/randart versions of items is because I enjoy drawing fancy magic items and nobody told me to stop. From a gameplay standpoint, it would probably be better to have duller-colored items across the board, and ego/randart items could be differentiated by their outlines only, like DoomRL. Items don't need to catch your eye the way that monsters do.


i love your work. please draw more item tiles
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Spider Stomper

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Post Thursday, 4th May 2017, 22:53

Re: Why are the colors always wrong?

The artwork is great. If you want to strip out all the descriptions and artwork, why not just go back to playing Hunt The Wumpus? As for being "distracting", well, magic items are supposed to be. My characters tend to be more greedy than cautious, and the world as it appears seems well suited to their psychology. :)

I don't think it should really be that hard to make everything line up. You just say that every item gets one of a few possible tile representations, chosen to be appropriate for what it is, and every tile has a text description, a console representation, and a corresponding whatever-it-is-they-put-on-your-character-icon. If you randomly roll up an rN+ rC+ robe, you pick a random tile from a pool skewed toward blue (for cold) and black (for negative). On console you would still get some kind of clue from the color it appeared, so any advantage from this stylistic touch would be relatively similar in both formats. If that tile looks like it's encircled by a bunch of feather boas, its description might be "distressingly furry". If that tile is really really black, then it's "ominously black". To be sure, by "tile" here I mean simply the text name/numeric identifier/whatever of the tile, not the graphic image itself; but that can then be used to look up the graphic image if you're playing tiles.

Blades Runner

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Post Friday, 5th May 2017, 18:14

Re: Why are the colors always wrong?

Chicken wrote:"distracting"


why did you put this in quotes? Are you responding to someone who said it?

Blades Runner

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Post Friday, 5th May 2017, 18:21

Re: Why are the colors always wrong?

console has other funny glyph color conventions, like purple helmets, and red robes, etc. imo these items should just be colored by their rarity like in lots of other rpgs. so mundane weapons and armor are all gray [s and )s, ego are blue, artefact are white. theoretically the specific colors for specific items communicate more information if someone remembers every glyph/color combination but there's no rhyme or reason to it, so (for me anyway) it's faster to make decisions about what floor loot to pay attention to in terms of "i don't have a full set of armor yet, that mundane [ might be something i want, i'll ctrl+x or ctrl+f armour or check the message log". or if it isn't faster maybe it would just add visual consistency...

(also artefacts are bright colored, but their color doesn't correspond to the color of the glyph of the item base type... like all mundane robes are dark red [s, so shouldn't artefact robes be bright red [s?)

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 5th May 2017, 18:31

Re: Why are the colors always wrong?

yesno wrote:theoretically the specific colors for specific items communicate more information if someone remembers every glyph/color combination but there's no rhyme or reason to it, so (for me anyway) it's faster to make decisions about what floor loot to pay attention to in terms of "i don't have a full set of armor yet, that mundane [ might be something i want, i'll ctrl+x or ctrl+f armour or check the message log". or if it isn't faster maybe it would just add visual consistency..

It doesn't take very long to memorize like 6 colors (12 if you include weapons, 18 if you include ammo) Really I see a colored [ and go "Oh I need some gloves, good" that is way better than ^X every time a body armour comes into view.
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Blades Runner

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Post Friday, 5th May 2017, 19:27

Re: Why are the colors always wrong?

You're right, it's not that hard... I think it is inelegant though, because the colors are so arbitrary, and it clutters the visual presentation of the game. I guess to me ^x seems like the fastest way since then if it's something you want you just hit one more key to go get it. Plus it will be announced in the message log when you first see it.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Saturday, 6th May 2017, 05:01

Re: Why are the colors always wrong?

yesno wrote:it clutters the visual presentation of the game.

To my eye it reduces the monotony of a typical console level, but aesthetic sense is absolutely arbitrary and wholly subjective.
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Snake Sneak

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Post Saturday, 6th May 2017, 09:35

Re: Why are the colors always wrong?

I play in console and recognize both gloves/helmets/etc and weapon types by color. Removing these differences would be a step backwards for me.

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