Choosing preferred player colors

[Marty78]

I'm not sure how hard it would be to implent, but something that would be really neat would be to be able to select your preferred player color(s). As an option from your profile you would be able to select preferred player colors in descending order.

Then in games where your player color doesn't matter you get your most preferred color that is a color available in the choosen game. If more than one person has the same most preferred color then obviosly only one person gets this color (randomized among the people with the same preferred color).

Example:
Game: Stone Age

Player 1 (Perferred colors: Green, Red)
Player 2 (Preferred colors: Blue, Green)
Player 3 (Preferred colors: Blue, Red)
Player 4 (Preferred colors: none choosen)

Player 1: Green (As no one else has green as their most preferred color)
Player 2: Blue (Gets lucky and wins blue over player 3)
Player 3: Red (As red is this players second most preferred color and red is still available)
Player 4: Yellow (Since this player hasn't choosen any preferred colors he/she gets what's left)

[oXJerXo]

I agree. Picking a color or marker is the first thing everyone does when starting a board game. It's probably silly, but I would like to not be red if possible >.<

[CB Droege]

Came here to suggest this very idea, but decided to search for it first and found it!

Choosing color is an important part of gaming culture, sure, but it also might make the games easier for some people, like myself, who can get confused if they're different colors from one game to the next.

Example: I just finished a game of Tokaido with my friends, and decided to play another game right afterward, but we joined in a different order or whatever, and we were all different colors this time, which kept getting me mixed up about where everyone was. At a real table, players would never change player-color between games. Maybe (probably) I'm a nincompoop for letting this hurt my gaming, but it seems like a simple thing to just let players choose what color they prefer.

With every game using a different color set, you might have to set your preferences on a game-by-game basis, but that's okay.

[CB Droege]

I was thinking about this more, and I realized that we don't even need a system of preferences, players can simply choose their color and be that color, no matter wahat, because each player has their own lens into the game. I could take the blue pieces in every game I play, and so could one of my buddies, and it would never clash because I can see him as a different color, while he sees me as a different color.

In most games it doesn't really matter what color you are by the rules, and people don't chat about the pieces by their colors, so allowing each player to choose whatever color they want should be easy.

I realized this while thinking about the way Age of Empires (a video game) handles player color. You can all choose your own color at the join screen, and each color can only be chosen once, but there is also the option of 'simplified player colors'. If this is on, the player always sees his own pieces as blue, the enemies pieces are always red, and ally pieces are always yellow. Everyone could have this setting turned on, and it doesn't change their 'technical' player color (the game still records them as unique colors for purposes of spectators, playbacks, and so forth) it only effects the way each player sees the game.

[aschig]

What CBD says makes perfect sense. Its an excellent idea.

I wanted to suggest choosing colors as different colors have different relative separations. If only two players are playing I would much prefer one of the two colors to be blue or yellow rather than the two being red and green.

Any idea if there are plans to implement this?

[The Glen]

great idea cbd, havent been here long but scuppered any chance i had when starting a turn when i thought i was someone else

[Rico the Hobbit]

good idea ! +1

[yzemaze]

+1

Especially when playing several turn-based games and switching tables it's really annoying to have to pay attention to your colour instead of just knowing you're blue at each table no matter what.

[Liallan]

For those of you who might feel silly about this... no it's not. For one thing, it definitely can be very confusing going from one game to another, and that is especially true for turn-based when you can be playing them at the same time. So that confusion is totally legit. I have messed up moves because of that, and I just saw a guy mess up a move (and give me points) for that reason - even without asking I knew he'd confused his player color.

And even just liking a particular color is not silly. Like I hate red, and it seems I'm red in a lot of online games. (Although admittedly I'm getting used to it.)

It absolutely is possible for each player to pick whatever color they want and only see that from your own point of view, i.e. so another player could pick the same color but I won't see that from my point of view. Yucata does this on some games, so I know it can work, although I don't understand things like "basic framework" and how much difference that makes to how difficult these things are to do. (Theirs actually work several different ways, which may partly be the age of the game, and partly the developer, I don't know.)

I would rather it be game-by game rather than an option I pick in my profile. I prefer purple when it exists, but it's unusual so second choice is blue. But there may be times I want something else, and your first turn could start with picking your color.

[sparr]

It occurs to me that this could be done with a userscript. You'd just need to muck with the players array in the gamedatas when it arrives. I might give this a try next time I'm poking at BGA scripts.