gameplay for colorblind people

[abstauber]

Hi there,
I hope there are some colorblind (hopefully this is not an offensive term) people around. In this project I'm working on, it's kind of import to distinguish colors.

So my question to you guys: can you distinguish all those colors? It's not important to name all of them, I just need to know if you can keep them apart.



Thanks for you help

[FruitTree]

I'm not colourblind myself but I've heard it's hard for them to keep red and green apart! so you might want to change those.

[Gilbert]

I think different people with colour-blindness might have difficulties in recognising different colours, so it may not be possible to address all the problems by just trying not to use some certain colour combinations (though there are combinations that are more common as far as I've heard).

Whether it is easy to get around this problem depends on the context of your game (puzzles). If it is just colour buttons/lights like the image you posted it wouldn't hurt to put a number or a letter on each of them (like R G B W, etc.), but for some other contexts you may try to substitute the colours with patterns selectable in the options or even, use sounds (surely this is still unfair to people who are colour-blinded and deaf at the same time , but think of Loom^tm*).


* Oh well yea, in Loom^TM it should be the other way round. Sound is most important. Colour is just an aid. Think also people running the game with CGA.



P.S. And yea, I can distinguish these colours.

Edit:

Spoiler

Ah well. You actually mentioned Loom^TM in your game's thread. I wonder if there are colour "gemstone" puzzles and sound puzzles related to that star gadget/amulet thingie and the guitar strings on the interface.

[close]

[abstauber]

Hehe, funny that you've been thinking at Loomâ,,¢, as I'm actually making a Loomâ,,¢ like interface

edit: how could I have forgotten the â,,¢.. tss

[Gilbert]

Hehe. Funny I just edited my post with the same thought. 

[Ishmael]

The two middle ones look somewhat too alike. Distiguishable, but I'd say too near each other for comfort. The rest are ok.

[TerranRich]

There are some interesting sites out there about color blindness, including one that shows what a certain image would look like to different types of color blindness, including this one: http://www.tsi.enst.fr/~brettel/DaltonDemo/DD2.html

There's this website also: http://www.vischeck.com/

Just remember that the most common form of color blindness is red/green distinguishability... hence the reason why American traffic lights are arranged vertically... I think.

[m0ds]

Spoiler

Green, red, yellow, blue, purple, white/grey

[close]

I'm colour blind, and I called purple blue to someone yesterday, so that's made me "think" about understanding purple more today so I hope I'm right with that one

[abstauber]

Thanks everyone for participating so far.
What I've learned so far is, that colorblindness can differ a lot - so I guess the safest way is to also use some sort of shapes.

Here's the next try, what's the easier on the eyes (apart, from those sprite being very small) ?




@Mods: 100 % accuracy

[Dualnames]

Bicilotti did a colourblind version of colourwise..as far as i can recall..

[Ishmael]

Just to clear something up, I'm monochromatic. Thus I can tell red and green apart. You and your confusing term that is colourblind. In Finnish we have it's own term for the unability to tell red/green apart.

[Matti]

Here's the next try, what's the easier on the eyes (apart, from those sprite being very small) ?

I's prefer the different shapes over* the different symbols. It's much easier on the eyes..


* Is it to prefer sth. over sth.? I can't remember. Ha, a question I should have asked in the English thread.

[Haddas]

Is this any easier Ishmael?

[abstauber]

Hehe, according to wikipedia, we have 5 different terms for all kinds of color seeing variations in german. Saying colorblind is just the most common, thus inaccurate term


One more thing I'm curious about: have you ever encountered a completely unplayable game so far?

(btw. I'll give those shapes a try)

[m0ds]

For me Abs, the top row of the two is the clearest for me. The black makes the other colour surrounding it easier to define. But thats just for me

[Ishmael]

On the shapes over symbols matter, my intuintion says the symbols are easier, but thinking about it I can't decide on which one's better. So I'll still go with the symbols.

Haddas, that seems like only four different colours. So no

[TerranRich]

What about patterns instead of colors? Like diagonal stripes, horizontal, vertical, checkerboard grid, etc.?

[abstauber]

Alright, I hope I've got it now.




The lower row is being used as particles, the upper row is for the GUI.

In other words you have to recognize the sprites from the lower row and click on the related icon from the upper row.

I think, this is a good compromise between symbols and shapes
Also I'm afraid using patterns won't work, because they're harder to spot in backgrounds.

[Matti]

Also I'm afraid using patterns won't work, because they're harder to spot in backgrounds.

Yeah, and it' quite difficult to make patterns with a few pixel like these, isn't it?

[TerranRich]

That's true. But in cases where there are large areas of color, and seeing the color is important, maybe a universal "color blind" setting would replace these colors with patterns. That's more along the lines of what I was thinking.