ANSI COLOR (again)

[FightClub]

Okay I went through the forums, and I've read one or two threads on this that were immediatly dismissed by the players of admins, here are my thoughts on the ordeal.

1.  A major portion of people who come to this game dismiss it immediatly because it does not have color, a good portion of them that are great rpers that I know personally, who cannot handle the difference, and have trouble picking out things of the spam of white (or green as I put it to slightly help me)

2.  I noticed a lot of people saying that we don't have it so people could not tell a difference between NPC and PC's -- if this were such a big ordeal then why do I have "A human soldier" or "a pack of slaves"  you can look at those and immediatly say hey that's a NPC.

3. When in combat, especially combat of inceasing numbers I notice all that is highlighted is damage.  I can't even tell when my player is knocked down, bashed, tripped, or anything of the sort, because it goes right in with the spam  this is something I would know icly, I was just knocked on my bum for krath sake.

4.  I think it's a pretty inpractical restriction to say no you can't have color, especially if it's a reoccuring request, for those of you who prefer not to have colors, great, if ANSI were implemented you wouldn't have to view them, they'd most likely be toggled, or you could go set all of your default colors to the same thing.

I'm not too sure how hard it would be to implement full ansi, I mean even if you didn't break out and turn everything colored, road names, tables, objects, and combat types would be the least things you could do, and I'm sure it would greatly improve new players impression of the game, and greatly help to reduce some of what I see as "spam" and half the time that's what it appears to be to me.

Thanks,
FightClub

[Vesperas]

I've actually grown used to the lack of color, and have found it to be one of those standard "things" that you notice is common with RP-based MUDs.

I wouldn't really like to see full-blown color.  However, I wouldn't mind seeing the hunger, way usage, and thirst message to be colored (along with other very important messages that your character would feel).  I can't tell you how many times I've gone from 'not hungry' to absolutely starving and half-dead before I noticed and went, "Huh.  My HP are dropping.  Wonder why?"


Most coloration, however, can be done with triggers.  For the sake of my own eyeballs, I often set up a trigger to color my prompt a noticeable color, so I can tell when I've gone between rooms with long descriptions, and I can keep my place when reading them on those long night hours.

[amoeba]

1.  A major portion of people who come to this game dismiss it immediatly because it does not have color, a good portion of them that are great rpers that I know personally, who cannot handle the difference, and have trouble picking out things of the spam of white (or green as I put it to slightly help me)

A simple solution would be for people to "donate" thier color mapping settings for the major clients.  This could all be stored easily on a web page somewhere for easy reference.  This wouldn't take much work, and limited IMM support.  

The option of adding color to the mud itself would irk the purists, although I'm sure a flag could be put out there to ignore colorization.   This may or may not be diffucult to do, I can't speak to the code obviously.  I still think the webpage is the preferred method.

2.  I noticed a lot of people saying that we don't have it so people could not tell a difference between NPC and PC's -- if this were such a big ordeal then why do I have "A human soldier" or "a pack of slaves"  you can look at those and immediatly say hey that's a NPC.

Oddly enough I think not being able to tell a PC vs. an NPC apart is a plus.

[amoeba]

double post... tired sorry

[Nao]

I never figured out how to do the triggers in any of my clients.... Also, isn' all that you can do trigger to highligh specific words?

I'd really love to see one color for pcs and npcs, another for items, a third one for damage....  Room exits and echos sticking out from the standard color through using some other color... Even the highlighting won't really work if your text olor is already white.

Really, please, give this some thought. Not having any color was a bit of a turnoff for me when I got here, and I'm sureit is even more for other people.

[Larrath]

I am highly against having NPCs and PCs colored differently.
This is because an experienced player, though he may ignore the NPC, would not pretend that NPC is a statue sitting somewhere.
A PC coming from a new MUD might see an NPC and immediately proceed to ignore it and treat it like a statue.  It would also mean that whenever a staffer animated an NPC, you'd immediately know it's an NPC and some people might react differently.

However, after giving this some consideration, I think that some color, if it defaulted to be Inactive, could be good for the game.

This is what I would color (and what colors I use, with darkgreen on black):
Prompt (greenish-blue)
All psionic messages (copper orange)
The word "Templar" (white)
Languages (sirihish silver, cavilish gold, mirukkim firebrick, bendune beige, tatlum cyan, allundean blue)
"At your seat/table" (brown)
"You overhear" (cyan for whispers, purple for tables)
Hunger and thirst could also use a bit of color, I guess.

More than this, I don't think we really need colors; except, possibly, for when you're disarmed or bashed.

Of course, MUDs are often limited to those sixteen crappy colors, so it probably won't be very pretty.
My ideology about colors is that colors should help your eye find things your PC couldn't not notice, and not guide your eye away from 'unimportant' details like NPCs and room descs.

I'm against colors for objects (you never know, that ginka fruit you're trying to pick up could be a ginka-shaped monster in disguise!) and, for the reason I stated above, NPCs.  Coloring damage also feels unnecessary to me.  No for echoes, because people shouldn't be able to tell if that's a staffer sending echoes or just coded room echoes.

[FightClub]

Completely agreed, not sure that such an emphasis on seperate languages should be placed -- but it should be a seperate color for speaking in particular, in my opinion.

The highlighted damage, should only be placed if it is for disarms, bashes, and other things that effect your character in combat.

See the importance of this is to put enough color, preferably darker tones in the game that are enough to capture the characters eye, about key things they should see, but would otherwise not, I don't think descriptions of rooms, descriptions of players, or items should be colored, and items only colored if it is a uniform color, that helps per say to seperate from tables or chests.

Just a few suggestions, this has probably been battered over and over by the players, but I think it is something the staff should give as an option to their players, and who knows Armageddon coming out with color might cause another dramatic player boost.

Because I for one know of atleast five people who say "I don't play Armageddon because it hurts my eyes, or I can't read the crap because it scrolls to fast and doesn't have any color."

These are things people should be given a chance to recognize, these are things that do not directly hinder the player, or create an unfair advantage, these are things that would easily be toggled or untoggled, or even made to where a user could select their own preference, based on staff selected colorable items.

Little to ask in my opinion, but aye we'll see.

[Tarx]

I've experienced the same issue.  My problem is that sometimes--when everything is black and white and you get spam either at a tavern, in battle, or while traveling--you miss some key things.

I've highlighted things like languages, directions, certain combat functions, stuff said at my table, stuff that I overhear, contacts from other people...I'm going to add in hunger and thirst messages, too.  Might help a bit.

I'm not opposed to the colors in the game now (which is none).  I believe it allows for more personalization of the color system for each person.  It's so much easier to use sdescs and stuff when you don't have to worry about a stupid color command and make sure that you aren't BLEEDING within your emote or whatever.

[Agent_137]

For the record, i dismiss other games that force color on me.

I prefer very limited color, myself, and the few things i want colored, i'll color on my own.

PCs vs NPCs are easy to figure out:
NPCs have non-default long descriptions, and aren't sitting at the tables in the bar when you "look tabless." They also don't respond to you unless you wish up.

Again, the color issue. Any half decent client has colorings. I prefer wyrmnet for it's simplicity, power, and the fact that it's pure freeware. http://www.wyrmsoftware.co.uk/freeware/wyrmnet.asp

Other people prefer other clients.

Granted, you are right. These two issues (color and npc confusion) might shock some new players since most of the other muds handle both in a very different way.

But I don't see how we could make these two other things like all the other muds without BREAKING our mud. You see:

1. I hope no immortal ever spends time trying to set some default colors for the game, even if I can turn them off. I'd rather him do ANYTHING ELSE that has to do with enriching the game world. If you want color, color it yourself.

2. You can never obviously make NPCs obviously NPCs without making them Obviously NPCs! And this is what I would consider "breaking" armageddon because it's another OOC thing that's there to slap you in the face. The "discussion boards" in game are bad enough, but a necessary evil. There's no reason to mark NPCs as NPCs when to the character they're just another person in the world.

p.s.
Dealing with battle spam is a skill that partly involves using a client to color key messages, part experience, part being able to handle a higher resolution screen, and part being able to read quicky. Also, it requires the knowledge to use the prompt. I have two prompts, one for the desert that has full information including my position and who i'm fighting, and one for the city which includes just my stun for psi use.

see:
help alias
and
help prompt
for more info on those.


p.p.s
I would be willing to donoate my color settings for wrymnet client (not that anyone else uses it) to a webpage when I feel they are mostly complete. Still working on a adding a lot of combat messages right now.

[Nao]

2. You can never obviously make NPCs obviously NPCs without making them Obviously NPCs! And this is what I would consider "breaking" armageddon because it's another OOC thing that's there to slap you in the face. The "discussion boards" in game are bad enough, but a necessary evil. There's no reason to mark NPCs as NPCs when to the character they're just another person in the world.

Umm... use the same color for npcs and pcs, then? And if it stops new players from saying 'ugh, no color -  I can't play this!' then it's worth the effort more than a few new crafting items that only a fraction of the playerbase is ever going to use.

I had a hard time getting used to the no color thing. I would have left the game upos seeing that if I hadn't had a cool helper that told me it was worth it and if I hadn't put so much effort into the game before I even started playing.

And still no one is telling me how to do the color thig with a client that can do colors... please, someone? I'm, looking for a nice and new client anyway, not too happy with my current one.

[Rindan]

I personally think that some limited color as an option wouldn't hurt.  It would be nice if communication, some combat message, the exits, and some other important aspects of the game had a little color to them.  If soem staff member felt bored and wanted to go through different aspects of the game and add color, I think that would be awesome, so long as that color is optional.

I, like other people, just use triggers to color important messages, but making the game more newbie friendly never hurts.

[Larrath]

I don't see why NPCs -and- PCs should have colors.
Also, sometimes you might run into an object you should think is an NPC, like those gortok dummies, so NPCs, PCs and Objects all need to be the same color.
And I'm glad that they should, otherwise we'd have a colorfest.  I don't think Arm should ever have more than every other line (not including prompts) with a single highlighted word.

Here is my list for what Arm's default colors should be, and what they should be for.  I'd like to see some others' people lists, to roll this idea a little further on.

Code Select Expand


Normal text - dark green
Background - black
When you're disarmed - dark red
When you're bashed - dark magenta
Contact, Break and Psis (both ways) - dark yellow (brown)
Hungry or thirsty - grey

Sirihish (just 'in sirihish:', not the whole speech) - green
Allundean ("" "") - blue
Cavilish - yellow
Tatlum - magenta
Bendune - dark yellow
Mirukkim - dark red
Anyar - dark grey
Heshrak - red
Nrizkt - green

Overhearing - magenta
The word 'templar' in any sdesc - white


[Jherlen]

Color as a selectable option wouldn't hurt, as long as it was limited. A lot of muds go completely overboard and color absolutely everything. You see things like...

<worn on head>   a red and white hat
<worn on body>   a sunburst-emblazoned woodsplint vest

and so on. Yuck.

Some people think color is a tool to illustrate and add flavor to text-based games, but I disagree... you don't see books printed in multi-colored ink because it gets distracting to read descriptions like that. So I'd be against any color in any sdesc, mdesc, ldesc, or extra description on any pc, npc, room, or object anywhere. Also, don't allow anyone to put color in their emotes, please please please.

The only thing I think color is good for is highlighting certain things and making them easier to notice, and I think Arm could possibly benefit from that a bit. So if we were going to color Arm, here's what I would suggest:

Normal text: default (whatever color the player's client uses for default text. Mine is gray, my girlfriend likes hers to be green because she's weird).
Background: default (most people's terminals are set for a black background anyway)
Says and tells (any language): highlighted white
"Talks" (at your table): highlighted yellow
Whispers: highlighted green
Psionic stuff: highlighted cyan
(Overheard language of any kind would just display it with its normal color)
High-level damage hits, to you or other people: highlight the adjective bright red, and the victim bright white (as in, A spider bites somebody's neck, doing frightening damage)
Special combat moves like being kicked, bashed, disarmed, charged, backstabbed, sapped, and so on: dark red

Honestly I think that's about all I'd like to see. Comparing my list to Larrath's I noticed some pretty significant differences, and that's another thing about color... it's hard to come up with a scheme everyone will like. Maybe if the staff were interested in adding color we could start a thread on the submissions forum where everyone could suggest their own color ideas.

I've seen systems that let players define their own color coding, and that's another possible option (the system allows for the capability of coloring certain things, and the players set which color they'd like those things to be.) That would be a fairly big project though.

It's surprising so many people are saying we're losing newbies over the color issue, I wouldn't have expected that.

[bardess]

I think, to keep it really simple:

PCs and NPCs one color.  "You" would also be colored, in whatever the PC color is (I like dark purple, personally).  The short desc would be colored (like in emotes and says) along with the long desc.

All normal text default color.

Objects a color, both long and short desc (I like dark green).

Maybe the "you are hungry" and "you are thirsty" a cyan (dark, the bright colors hurt some of us, but again, I'm open to anything).

Also, the heading of the room, perhaps also a dim cyan ("Radoon Street: [NE]").

This is very mild color, but it highlights everything you need.  Follow the same srot of thing for combat (which I know none of).  Words such as "brutally damages" or "Scrapes" (whatever) a red color, andspecial moves simply highlighted.

I think this keeps it moderate as the IMMs want (obviously because there is no color implemented) but it helps.  A lot.

--ShortAttentionSpanNeedsColor

[Delirium]

I am not fond of objects or sdescs being highlighted at all.  Not only does it make for a technicolor emote, it also makes it distracting when you include a virtual character or describe an object without specifically targeting it.

I have some combat highlighting that has proven very effective, and some very minimal highlighting elsewhere, namely the room titles and a slight "greyout" on things I overhear or are said at another table, which helps me to pay less attention to them on an OOC level as well as an IC level, and makes busy tavern spam less confusing.

[FightClub]

It seems to me, that everyone, could atleast agree with having an option to color their own world.

I've played a couple of muds that allowed this in a config menu, as far as players making triggers to do it, what of those that use telnet at work, or simply don't want to use "your" client, might call this selfish, but I know many of you who wouldn't switch over from your client for a simple alteration, especially if you paid and licensed it.

I think this is a worth addition, period, it needs to be recognized by the staff, and it needs to be considered, atleast -- for the possibility of having an even larger player base, and for the possibility of pleasing people who have dealt with the single color, but want more.

[James Mancuso]

I'd like color very, very much.  I'm legally blind without my glasses, and even with them on I don't see very well.  It's extremely difficult to sort through line upon line of achromatic spam.

[FightClub]

I use mushclient, pretty religiously, i've never worked with triggers specifically to highligh words as they come, if someone would be willing to help me work with this, my aim and e-mail are listed on my account.  Seems I'll have to make due, unless this problem is resolved.

Thanks

I was just browsing this forum and pulled this up and decided to throw in my two pennies

I understand that to colour code and change all items, objects, NPCs and descriptions of numerous varieties is a -huge- task in itself and I'm sure the staff have better things to be doing.

However, there is a better solution, in my opinion, than the one that is being suggested.

From the experience of another MUD, it is not confusing or techicolouring if you were to do it as such.

All objects - one colour - all objects ranging from armour to quills in one colour.

All people - one colour - all PCs and NPCs be it people or animals. This colour would be included in the speech so: the short, curly-haired man says, in Sirihish, "blah" and the person's description would be the same colour as it is when seen in a room.

The distinction is significant and things are easily focused in emotes and speech. It need not be complicated or like a rainbow but like I said above, I'm sure it takes a lot of work and secondly, the majority of the player base is happy with what they've always had and, afterall, you get used to it

Drew

[Hymwen]

Edit: Nevermind, I just realized that the thread is like 2 years old sorry.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I think that we need to give this idea a considerable amount of thought.

Here is the situation as I see it. While we may not like color, the option to turn off ANSI completely fixes our problem For those who would play if we had ansi, it completely fixes their problem.

ANSI, in itself, is not hard to implement. There is no rewriting of sdescs, ldesc, or anything else. What ANSI can be told to do is: All ldesc of objects are blue, all sdesc of PCs are red, etc. Then there is the added functionality of being able to fool players by painting an object or mob as an item.

I actually think that ANSI would be a great addition, if it were implemented correctly. With three modes, off, partial (our current ANSI), and full, I know for a fact that more people would check it out. I have had a number of folks tell me over the years that Armageddon turned them off because of the lack of color.

[LauraMars]

I prefer many colors.  Therefore I have my client put them in for me.  It was a lot of work, but now there is a rainbow where my heart is.

[Hymwen]

Well, now that it's bumped anyway...

Personally, the reason I want ANSI is not because of "the pretty colors that keep me entertained". It doesn't need to be a ROM hack'n'slash mud with flashing combat messages where we can *AnNiHiLaTe you with A-C-I-D SPRAY!!!1". What I want is to be able to read emotes and speech more easily. Reading a two-line emote that includes the emoter and two other ~people can be very annoying.

On SoI, sdescs (not only when 'look'ing in the room) are colored, and it helps a lot. Room names and objects could be colored as well, but it's not necessary. Check out the difference:

The two-legged, dressed templar's gaze passes the poor, begging beggar as he motions for the strong, armed bodyguard and points his finger at the poor, begging beggar before making his way past the common commoner.

The two-legged, dressed templar's gaze passes the poor, begging beggar as he motions for the strong, armed bodyguard and points his finger at the poor, begging beggar before making his way past the common commoner.[/list]

It's a lot easier on the eyes because you don't have to concentrate as much on seeing who was the actual emoter and who were the targeted players. PCs and NPCs should by all means be the same color.

[LauraMars]

At any rate it would be nice to have the option.

[spawnloser]

As V is for Venomz said, it wouldn't be hard to add ANSI color...

...but setting everything that should have color in it?  Depending on how ANSI was implemented, it could be quite a pain to implement.  If we want it done right and flexible, each item that needs coloration would have to be individually updated.  We could just tell the code that sdescs or this are this color, these are that color and this is that color...but that eliminates the possibility men tioned about having monsters colored as object to confuse those people that aren't paying attention, that sort of thing.