[Freeciv] Re: Odp: Re: question: CivII like tileset for FreeCiv

[Christian Knoke <chrisk@xxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Apr 13, 2002 at 10:45:56AM -0400, Cameron Morland wrote:
> 
> La 2002-04-12, Christian Knoke skribis:
> 
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 12, 2002 at 03:01:44PM -0500, Tony Stuckey wrote:
> > >
> > > On Fri, Apr 12, 2002 at 01:58:06PM -0600, Bobby D. Bryant wrote:
> > > > Also -- Marco, ask your friend whether he needs special tiles for
> > > > terrain, cities, etc.  If someone decides to do this, they may as well
> > > > do a thorough job of it.  (And along with the accessibility options in
> > > > GTK 2.0, this could make Freeciv a popular game for the visually
> > > > impaired.  Maybe the only strategy game with such support?)
> > >
> > >   Not the only.  SMAC had edited graphics which were supposed to be
> > > better for color-blind people, etc.
> > >   Having a greyscale-only tile set might be interesting.
> 
> I made a black-and white (ie 1 bit per pixel) tileset, based on the
> Trident tileset. I believe it's available in the downloads section. All I
> really did was dither Trident to B&W, then manually tidy up a number of
> images (especially the oceans; mine are very dark).  Something similar for
> grey could probably be quite nice. The flags are the biggest problem. I
> note that in Sid's Civ on the Mac, you could run it in 1 bit mode; it used
> a small symbol to designate nations. Of course, it only needed to
> differentiate 7 nations.
> 
> I don't know that status of my B&W tileset, I haven't used it much.
> 
> > Now you mention this, I feel encouraged to mention a similar problem.
> > The Freeciv minimap is bad for the color-blinded, even partial
> > color-blinded, i.e red-green-blind (which is a common term though it's
> > not clear defined what lack of sight it describes AFAIK).
> 
> Humans can usually differentiate three colours (RGB), and combinations of
> these or colours between these give the range of colours we see. Red-Green
> blindness means that the human is sensitive to blue and red/green, ie they
> have only 2 points with which to specify a colour. You could probably
> emulate this with gamma-modifying software (I found one for Windoze, and I
> have in the past used one that shipped with Photoshop on the Mac). Just
> set the brightness of green (or red) to zero, and then see how clear your
> icons are (you probably should test it long enough to be familiar with
> them, or it won't be a fair test).

Well thats not the whole truth. I'd tried that (setting brightness 
of red or green to zero). While it improved the situation, it didn't
solve it. Further experiments require adjustable color sets IMO. It seems 
that how much red and green can be seen differs from one to another.
So may be a solution can be different color sets for different persons.

BTW: 8 percent of german male are color blinded in a way or another.
     Other nations have a lower rate.

> > Some experiments with a friend of mine turned out, that the special
> > composition of colors in the minimap is the problem, not the use of
> > colors at all.
> 
> I think the minimap worked very badly on a B&W screen, but I don't
> remember. I don't have one these days.
> 
> I don't find the minimap particularly clear even with normal vision; the
> difference between cities and background isn't very clear. I think this
> could be improved just by making the green and blue of the land and water
> much darker.

Maybe.

Christian

-- 
Christian Knoke     * * *      http://www.enter.de/~c.knoke/
* * * * * * * * *  Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse dividendum.