Colours

[CaractacusPots]

Raised the issue in another forum section but it's particularly relevant here.

Those of us who unfortunately suffer degrees of colour blindness have great difficulty with Carcasonne when red and green meeples are used.

We get used to being effectively discriminated against throughout the gaming world in which developers seem totally oblivious to the plight of sufferers.

Given a choice I would suggest that both red and green meeples or counters in any game should never feature. There are so many other colours to choose from that it is simply totally unnecessary.

What is particularly frustrating here is that even with just 3 players in a game the system here still sometimes selects red, green and another colour for the meeples. It's intensely frustrating.

Could I suggest please, beg even, that there should exist a pecking order for colours and that blue, yellow, black and white should be the preferred colours in any game.

Now I appreciate also that Premium members get to set up their colour preferences but this imo should still not allow players to discriminate against colour blind players. So if 2 premium players have red and green set as their No 1 preferences respectively they should not be permitted to both use their No 1 choices. Use either red or green but not both, give the other player their 2nd choice.

In the end the very simplest way forward is either to totally abolish either the red meeples or green meeples, or alternatively allow non-premium members to change the way their meeples appear for themselves only. Note that it is not a solution to simply say that if you become a premium member you can choose what colours you want. That amounts to real discrimination of colour blind people i.e. pay up or be discriminated.

Red - green combos need to go

I hope you will sympathise

Many thanks

[paramesis]

Given a choice I would suggest that both red and green meeples or counters in any game should never feature. There are so many other colours to choose from that it is simply totally unnecessary.

That depends on the graphics of the game itself. Carcassonne has meeple graphics for red, green, blue, black, and yellow, while some other games may be limited, and as you mentioned, do not consider this important aspect of accessibility.

In the end the very simplest way forward is either to totally abolish either the red meeples or green meeples, or alternatively allow non-premium members to change the way their meeples appear for themselves only.

From the development side, changing the appearance of colors on the client side is a much easier approach than abolishing color pairs. There is a way you can do this with BGA's built in features.

I wrote some CSS overrides that make all the meeple colors distinguishable for Carcassonne according to ColorOracle, (a free software I recommend every game designer use). It does this by blowing out the color on the red meeples to make them white, and darkening and putting a shadow on the green meeples so they are more clearly distinguishable from the landscape.

Before



After



To apply this, go to your Preferences -> Advanced tab, and in the section "CUSTOMIZE THE APPEARANCE OF THIS WEBSITE", paste the following and hit "save":

Code: Select all

:root {
--shadow-dist:2px;
--shadow-blur:3px;
--shadow-color:#000;
}

.partisan_ff0000 {
filter:brightness(20);
}

.tile_last_ff0000 .tile_border {
border:3px #FFF solid;
}

.partisan_008000 {
filter:brightness(.9)drop-shadow(var(--shadow-dist) var(--shadow-dist)var(--shadow-blur) var(--shadow-color));
}

.latest_artwork .partisan_008000 {
filter:brightness(.9)drop-shadow(var(--shadow-dist) var(--shadow-dist)var(--shadow-blur) var(--shadow-color))!important;
}

.latest_artwork .partisan_ff0000 {
filter:brightness(20)drop-shadow(var(--shadow-dist) var(--shadow-dist)var(--shadow-blur) var(--shadow-color))!important;
}

Technical note: I doubt any other games use .partisan_<color hex value> as class names, but if so this would affect them too, and it may be necessary to make more specific selectors.

The variables are needed because BGA filters out white space from the CSS in a way that breaks the filter: drop-shadow property

EDIT: the previous code I posted only worked on first edition tiles. The revised CSS works on both editions.

[CaractacusPots]

Wow that is super helpful, many many thanks

I will go and test. Hadn't realised the site was so open as to allow personal scripting.

I will have a play with it.

Cheers

[CaractacusPots]

Ok had chance to try it now and it worked really well. Game changer for me in this particular game.

What's the issue around other games? Are they all using some unique colour system ?

It would be useful to be able to tweak the colours on other games like Can't Stop for example.

[Tisaac]

Ok had chance to try it now and it worked really well. Game changer for me in this particular game.

What's the issue around other games? Are they all using some unique colour system ?

It would be useful to be able to tweak the colours on other games like Can't Stop for example.

Well most of them are using assets from the publisher which are usually jpg or png images so the color cannot be changed easily.
The filter css property is a good workaround but sadly is not yet supported enough to be used in the games here.

[paramesis]

There are a couple games using css filters mostly for shadows around transparent pngs, including Carcassonne when the "latest" tiles are on.
There's even mention of it in the BGA studio cookbook

For Can't Stop, the green tokens are very bright and conflict with yellow. You can add this to the CSS overrides to change yellow to white, and to change the name of the yellow player to match in the player board.

Code: Select all

.token_ffa500 {
filter:brightness(20);
}

a[style="color: #ffa500"] {
	color: #fff !important;
	background-color: #999;
}

Before



After

[Tisaac]

There are a couple games using css filters mostly for shadows around transparent pngs, including Carcassonne when the "latest" tiles are on.
There's even mention of it in the BGA studio cookbook

Sure, using it for minor UI addition is fine, since the game will still be playable if the browser is not supporting the property.
On the other hand, changing the color of the meeples using this won't be a good idea as the support is still bad : https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-filter-function
The only solutions so far that I know that really works are either :
- create assets that match alternative colors and switch to them using user preference
- use svg asset and "hardcode" the user-color in the tpl file

[paramesis]

The "filter function" is distinct from "filter effects", which is what this CSS is using.

https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-filters

[Tisaac]

The "filter function" is distinct from "filter effects", which is what this CSS is using.

https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-filters

Oh my ! Sorry for my misunderstanding ! Any game could be quite easily adapted then !

[Rooquee]

RE:
From the development side, changing the appearance of colors on the client side is a much easier approach than abolishing color pairs. There is a way you can do this with BGA's built in features.



I find it difficult to distinguish the blue and green meeples on my monitor. Hate it when they are both in play, which is almost always with 3+ players. (I will only play 2 person till this is resolved.)

Thank you for the code. But it did not work for me when I pasted it into the "change the appearance" box. That text showed up at the toop of the page, and it seemed to corrupt all (mac).

Anything simple to try to just fix green/blue? Seems that what you describe you did for red would be ideal for me, for either of them.

Thanks!!! Jeff