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

["Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbryant@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2002.04.13 08:45:56 -0600 Cameron Morland wrote:

> 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).

I'm red-green colorblind and I guess I should point out that things 
like reducing to greyscale don't really help; that just removes 
whatever color contrasts we *can* see.  For colorblindness you just 
need to remember that the colorblind can't see a lot of contrasts as 
well as you do, so you design tiles that contrast colors other than 
reds vs. greens, and you also use light/dark "value" contrasts whenever 
you do use a red or a green.  There's not really anything wrong with 
using red and green for us; just don't use them in situations where 
confusing them or failing to see the distinction will cause problems.  
E.g., don't make two unit types that are similar in size/shape/value 
and use only red vs green to distinguish them, don't display a red 
symbol on a green background, etc.

Also, red-green colorblindness in some ways just means that we don't 
see the red components of other colors.  I have trouble with 
red-vs-brown-vs-green, but also with blue-vs-purple.

But none of the above is relevant to Marco's friend's problem.  As I 
understood it, he simply doesn't see well, so he needs readily 
distinguishable icons.  I assume that that means start by using large 
tiles, and then distinguish them by bold shapes rather than by 
details.  Color contrasts might help too, e.g. if your vision is blurry 
you could presumably see yellow shirt and blue pants as "yellow over 
blue", and eventually learn that that meant "dragoon" or whatever, even 
if you can't see that he's holding a rifle.

I would also assume that a tileset for the visually impaired would need 
to have reduced detail on the terrain tiles, since it adds up to a lot 
of clutter that keeps the units from jumping out at you.  (FWIW, I 
usually use the large and somewhat plain Engels tile set, but last time 
I played I used the neotrident just to try it out, and it really caused 
me a lot of eyestrain.)

I think the primary rule of thumb for good tilesets would be "contrast 
along as many dimensions as possible", except that contrasting detailed 
vs plain probably won't help people with poor eyesight.

Bobby BRyant
Austin, Texas