Why Aren't All Colors Available?

[Meeplelowda]

I understand that the devs try to (or have to) match the color palette of the physical game, so sometimes a color preference may be unavailable even if no other player is using it. However, as far as I can tell, the physical version of Martian Dice has no colored pieces that are specific to a player, such as a pawn that moves along a scoring track.

In a recent game, my opponents were assigned green and blue, which are two of the colors set in my preferences. But I was assigned some other color that was neither of the other two colors set in my preferences. Is this a bug or are the available colors limited for Martian Dice?

[voriki]

And what were the other players color preferences? What if they also picked green and blue? And you then had to settle for a 3rd color?

[Meeplelowda]

And what were the other players color preferences? What if they also picked green and blue? And you then had to settle for a 3rd color?

I think you're missing the point. They *did* pick green and blue, but this was a three-player game, therefore my other two colors were available, yet I was assigned neither one. You get to select up to four colors.

[RicardoRix]

You'll get a message in the log when the game starts:
The colors of SudburyGamer, Meeplelowda have been chosen according to their preferences. Change my preferences.

It's a bit wishy-washy.
When you start a project the code for the colour preference is already there. There are a handful of colours defined in an array. The developer is meant to change this to suit. (conjecture) But as a developer it's not something that particularly occurs to you to change. With this game in particular if there are no colours from the assets then there was nothing to prompt the developer to change it. And if you do change it, change it what..? So it's likely it gets left as the default values, I guess your 3rd and 4th preference don't match the defaults.

Code: Select all

self::reattributeColorsBasedOnPreferences( $players, array( "ff0000", "008000", "0000ff", "ffa500" ) );

Looks like red, green, blue and orange/yellow.

It would have been better if the BGA had a different field, say 'NoColourPreferenceArray' so the game dev doesn't have to worry about defining this array where there are no asset colours to chose from. Or perhaps simply set an empty array. A bit late now, the best you can do is file a bug suggestion.

[Meeplelowda]

You'll get a message in the log when the game starts:
The colors of SudburyGamer, Meeplelowda have been chosen according to their preferences. Change my preferences.

It's a bit wishy-washy.
When you start a project the code for the colour preference is already there. There are a handful of colours defined in an array. The developer is meant to change this to suit. (conjecture) But as a developer it's not something that particularly occurs to you to change. With this game in particular if there are no colours from the assets then there was nothing to prompt the developer to change it. And if you do change it, change it what..? So it's likely it gets left as the default values, I guess your 3rd and 4th preference don't match the defaults.

Code: Select all

self::reattributeColorsBasedOnPreferences( $players, array( "ff0000", "008000", "0000ff", "ffa500" ) );

Looks like red, green, blue and orange/yellow.

It would have been better if the BGA had a different field, say 'NoColourPreferenceArray' so the game dev doesn't have to worry about defining this array where there are no asset colours to chose from. Or perhaps simply set an empty array. A bit late now, the best you can do is file a bug suggestion.

Thanks for that detailed explanation. My third and fourth choices are black and red. I would think at least red would be included by default, but who knows. I was assigned brown, which seems pretty random.

[RicardoRix]

I would have thought red should match.
Just checked the game code and red is there (as well as a lot more):

'player_colors' => array( "ff0000", "008000", "0000ff", "ffa500", "773300", "9A6324", "469990", "f58231", "4363d8", "911eb4", "f032e6", "a9a9a9", "9a8ac8", "ff58b1" ),

IIRC, the colour shouldn't need to match exactly although I don't exactly know how a match is calculated.

[Yasten]

Black not being taken for that might be wrong, as the dice are black too actually... Maybe it thought black+red=brown?

[Meeplelowda]

I would have thought red should match.
Just checked the game code and red is there (as well as a lot more):

'player_colors' => array( "ff0000", "008000", "0000ff", "ffa500", "773300", "9A6324", "469990", "f58231", "4363d8", "911eb4", "f032e6", "a9a9a9", "9a8ac8", "ff58b1" ),

IIRC, the colour shouldn't need to match exactly although I don't exactly know how a match is calculated.

If red is there, then this should be a bug report, yes?

[Yasten]

But can you even file a bug report for a non-beta game? Or is that impossible?

[Meeplelowda]

But can you even file a bug report for a non-beta game? Or is that impossible?

You absolutely can. Development doesn't cease just because it's out of beta. It just may move slowly.

But even for Martian Dice itself, the change to have the tanks face the death rays came from a bug report, and it was implemented in April 2021 after Martian Dice was out of beta.

Although that bug report was submitted during beta (I think), so it doesn't prove that bug reports submitted after beta will be considered....but they will. For example, there are many bug reports whose status is tagged "notabug" showing that someone did review it. It's not like BGA wants something to remain broken just because the bug happened to evade detection in beta.