Colourblind gamers and developers ignorance in programming

James J

James J

James J

Soldato
Joined
4 Dec 2002
Posts
14,520
Location
North Lincolnshire
As a red, green and blue colourblind 26 year old, I have numerous issues with vibrant games or those which have a basic colour palette which uses the colours I cannot see properly. I recently bought RUSH, which is a puzzle game on steam in the sales and can't play it to save my life because their doesn't appear to be a colourblind mode in the options to shift the red and green blocks to something I can actually see.

The source based games and most of the U3 based titles have colourblind option modes put in, changing the base colours on essential parts of the game (from crosshairs to objective markers etc) so that I can enjoy them as much as anyone else.

Lets take frozen synpase as another prime example. I can't honestly tell the difference between either side due to the **** colour scheme used in the game and there appears to be no option to change it after a bit of internet digging. Due to that, I have to completely avoid a game I'd potentially like to buy, play and enjoy.

There are MANY more examples of this being a problem, but is colourblindness in users something which a publisher really should take into consideration, based on most gamers are male and most colourblind sufferers are also male?

Serious thread btw, no "what colour is this then?" sort of BS or I'll report you for trolling.
 
I think I saw an option for it in CoD BLOPS and MoH.

Tbh all games should have the option it is hardly a time consuming process of adding it to a game. Maybe you should contact the game developer to ask for a colour blind mode? A petition maybe? I am sure there are other people in your same position who would join a petition and many others would join to help too (including me) :)
 
I'm red green colourblind, battlefield bad company might have a colourblind mode but that only changes the colour of the markers over people heads when you spot them. This don't stop me getting raped in Bad Company Vietnam addon, can't see people at all.. it's like the trees are alive maan :p

I don't really have too many problems with games on the whole, but it's nice when a game is very dependant on colour differentiation and perception that developers take into account colour blindness.

In before "if you can't tell red from green, how do tell the difference between trafic lights.." :p
 
Overslop said:
Maybe a daft question, but are there glasses you can get that would help?
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Sadly not. The rods and cone cells in colourblind peoples eyes aren't ordered properly which is why we get overlap in colours that we can see.

Example of what we see compared to normal vision here
 
James J said:
Lets take frozen synpase as another prime example. I can't honestly tell the difference between either side due to the **** colour scheme used in the game and there appears to be no option to change it after a bit of internet digging.
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See I find it very hard to sympathise with people when they go off like this, you are making it sound like do it on purpose specifically to spite you, what with you calling a games colour scheme something starred out so presumable not nice and calling developers "ignorant" in the title.

Approach the problem with care and much like the key remapping thread that we have had on this forum and less like a child throwing their toys out of the pram and maybe you will get somewhere.
 
Iam sorry but if you are red, green and blue colourblind then maybe its a bit much to ask for developers to accommodate you, I know several devs who are colourblind aware and try to keep the most obvious colours in order to help but with a wide selection of three then perhaps visual gaming is something you will have to adapt to it rather then it adapt to you.
 
Fenris said:
See I find it very hard to sympathise with people when they go off like this, you are making it sound like do it on purpose specifically to spite you, what with you calling a games colour scheme something starred out so presumable not nice and calling developers "ignorant" in the title.

Approach the problem with care and much like the key remapping thread that we have had on this forum and less like a child throwing their toys out of the pram and maybe you will get somewhere.
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I'm angry at the fact that some game studios do this as standard whilst others don't, not throwing my toys out of the pram like you suggest. Sorry for showing abit of passion at something which affects myself and many other gamers directly... :rolleyes:

dalin80 said:
Iam sorry but if you are red, green and blue colourblind then maybe its a bit much to ask for developers to accommodate you, I know several devs who are colourblind aware and try to keep the most obvious colours in order to help but with a wide selection of three then perhaps visual gaming is something you will have to adapt to it rather then it adapt to you.
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How is it abit much when valve and even most EA game studios do this as standard already? I'm not asking entire levels to be changed in colour and massive differences in textures, I'm asking for an option to change key things in games like crosshairs, text, waypoints and highlighting tools to have colour changing options on them.

Picture this, playing call of duty team deathmatch and you can see a nameplate of someone in a dark room and not their uniform, and due to the colours in the nameplates being red for enemy or green for friendly, you just have to fire anyway to "be on the safe side". Simple changes make massive differences to people in my position.
 
James J said:
As a red, green and blue colourblind 26 year old
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So are quite a few of the members of the dev teams! and the subject comes up for discussion every so often. Specific issues regularly get highlighted by the colour blind designers, artists and QA members throughout the development process. However the bottom line is that colour blindness concerns will rarely trump art style decisions, and most developers just don't have the money to spend accommodating disabilities beyond the requirements set down by MS, Sony, Nintendo in order to get a game accepted for publication.
 
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James J said:
As a red, green and blue colourblind 26 year old, I have numerous issues with vibrant games or those which have a basic colour palette which uses the colours I cannot see properly. I recently bought RUSH, which is a puzzle game on steam in the sales and can't play it to save my life because their doesn't appear to be a colourblind mode in the options to shift the red and green blocks to something I can actually see.

The source based games and most of the U3 based titles have colourblind option modes put in, changing the base colours on essential parts of the game (from crosshairs to objective markers etc) so that I can enjoy them as much as anyone else.

Lets take frozen synpase as another prime example. I can't honestly tell the difference between either side due to the **** colour scheme used in the game and there appears to be no option to change it after a bit of internet digging. Due to that, I have to completely avoid a game I'd potentially like to buy, play and enjoy.

There are MANY more examples of this being a problem, but is colourblindness in users something which a publisher really should take into consideration, based on most gamers are male and most colourblind sufferers are also male?

Serious thread btw, no "what colour is this then?" sort of BS or I'll report you for trolling.
Click to expand...

I'd never have thought about that option, I'm just as ignorant as the developers, sorry!
 
Riot games are terrible for this. League of Legends has 2 teams, a purple and a blue team. I literally can't tell the difference beween the 2 teams' minions, they look identical. Also the enemy health bars are red and ally health bars green, so it's very difficult to tell who is on your team. When I first started playing it was impossible to last hit because of the minion colours. Luckily there's a good mod that changes one set of minions to red, and the enemy health bars to grey.

It's really annoying. There's hundreds of forum posts about it, and I'm pretty sure there's only ever been 1 Riot reply saying "colourblind mode is coming soon". But I doubt it ever will.
 
Red, green and blue?! That's rough.

I imagine most games look greyscale :/
 
EVH said:
Red, green and blue?! That's rough.

I imagine most games look greyscale :/
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Lol it's not THAT bad :D Red and green just look the same colour, certain shades of green look blue and vice versa and the same with dark greens appearing black and deep blues appearing purple....

Work that one out :confused:

To me it just looks normal and a game would have a vastly different colour palette if people like me solely developed them. However, seeing the world in the way I and many others do, it makes playing games in many circumstances more of a chore than fun. Personally I don't play that many online competitive games simply because I have to do twice the work. On call of duty MW2, which I use to play with my dad on the PC, I constantly had to keep checking the list of names on the lobby I was on so that I didn't potentially team kill someone because I couldn't tell the difference between their green or red name tag :(
 
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