Colorblindness as a Trait/Mutation

Game Talk The Bunker
1

Color in the game is a big help.
A huge help.
Really, playing the game without color would be an almost insurmountable difficulty, and involve either the player guessing about what they’re looking at, knowing from experience what they’re looking at, or look-scrolling constantly through the game.

Color in the game is almost necessary. Almost necessary.

I think it would be really cool if we could set colorblindness as a negative trait that gives a good amount of points in character creation, and an acquirable mutation in the game.
Not only would this give an interesting challenge for hardcore players, but it would be cool to have it as a location or setting-based problem in the world, perhaps occurring temporarily in the presence of an eye monster, or as a random occurrence in underground science labs.

Not only would this be fun, in my opinion, but it is a reasonable trait, realistically, and many people have it in our world today, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable for a survivor to have it.

2

Your color-blindness mutates.

You lose your color-blindness.

You gain blind.

3

I like this!

I jus dont get if you mean full color blindness (black and white) or red-green or one of the other varieties of it. Having color go out due to space time deteriorating could be a good effect to tell you something is wrong

(you also posted in the wrong board but we aint killing you for that

4

There’s also definitely code for this, look at a dark room like a cave and shine a light-- some things will be visible but grayed out.

I’d say 2 points in chargen for this?

5

+1

6

You can always use the “far look” key to check out stuff.
This will only be an annoying feature, I presume.

In real life, it will really disturb one’s sense of things, like trying to discover if a meat is fresh or rotten only by sight, or try to guess if a rifle is made of wood or metal.

7

Daltonicism or directly no colors?

8

While I do like the idea, there is also the matter of tilesets. With ASCII colorblindness would pose an interesting challenge, with tiles it is simply a slight visual effect.

9

Did not tought of that. It was a good idea, until that D:

10

[quote=“deadmerits, post:2, topic:4917”]Your color-blindness mutates.

You lose your color-blindness.

You gain blind.[/quote]
Lol I like this idea.

Agreed

11

I considered this for Lupine and rejected it based on the fact that it’s far more an Interface Screw than any sort of worthwhile feature.

It’s one thing not to be able to tell a red lever from a blue lever from a green lever. Quite another to not be able to tell grass from dirt from road from sidewalk from flooring. Or zed scientist from zed hulk. Chairs, tables, solar panels, can’t tell 'em apart at a glance anymore.

So not really a great idea.

12

[quote=“KA101, post:11, topic:4917”]I considered this for Lupine and rejected it based on the fact that it’s far more an Interface Screw than any sort of worthwhile feature.

It’s one thing not to be able to tell a red lever from a blue lever from a green lever. Quite another to not be able to tell grass from dirt from road from sidewalk from flooring. Or zed scientist from zed hulk. Chairs, tables, solar panels, can’t tell 'em apart at a glance anymore.

So not really a great idea.[/quote]

I find interface screws to be enjoyable, though, if done well. Obviously this is the sort of mutation you’d want to avoid, but so long as we did it carefully (insuring a healthy spread of greyscale values) I could see it adding to the game.

But then, I enjoy things that change the way the player perceives.

I guess the better question is whether or not anyone would think the significant amount of work this would require would be worth the effort.

13

The code for the basic version is already existent (lit things in dark places that are far enough away from the light’s origin are grayed out but still visible… and when you don’t have a light at all, everything’s gray) and from that I can’t possibly imagine the coding requirements are terribly huge.

14

[quote=“GlyphGryph, post:12, topic:4917”][quote=“KA101, post:11, topic:4917”]I considered this for Lupine and rejected it based on the fact that it’s far more an Interface Screw than any sort of worthwhile feature.

It’s one thing not to be able to tell a red lever from a blue lever from a green lever. Quite another to not be able to tell grass from dirt from road from sidewalk from flooring. Or zed scientist from zed hulk. Chairs, tables, solar panels, can’t tell 'em apart at a glance anymore.

So not really a great idea.[/quote]

I find interface screws to be enjoyable, though, if done well. Obviously this is the sort of mutation you’d want to avoid, but so long as we did it carefully (insuring a healthy spread of greyscale values) I could see it adding to the game.

But then, I enjoy things that change the way the player perceives.

I guess the better question is whether or not anyone would think the significant amount of work this would require would be worth the effort.[/quote]

To my knowledge, we have three greys (light/med/dark). Maybe more are possible, I don’t know. Talked with Rivet about it at the time, too. The issue isn’t so much the perception as having to manually look at just about everything. Lupines ought to be able to tell different zeds apart fairly well, and the same with furniture. Removing color from the game makes it vastly tougher to tell what’s what at a glance.

So it not only requires work on the coding front, but more importantly work on the player front. And I think that falls under the TEDIOUS clause of the Rule Of Fun. So, not happening IMO.

15

I’m with KA101 on this. Cata uses color as an integral part of its display system, removing it both severely screws over the person playing the game and TOTALLY fails to represent color blindness on the part of the character in-game.

Color blindness does NOT render a person incapable of telling a chair from a solar panel, which this approach would cause. In Cata, the color of an objects’ letter has no real bearing on the color of the object itself; it tells you what that object IS. A trait that removes all color from the game display would not accurately portray color blindness; it would portray severe dementia, an inability to understand anything more than an objects’ basic shape without concentrated focus.

While a color blind trait could be interesting, this is just not a sensible way to do it. An accurate portrayal would involve varied penalties to perception, which would have to be calculated based on how vital color is to any given task, which would be immensely difficult to implement.

On further thought, while this wouldn’t work to represent color blindness, it COULD work to represent severe cognitive impairment, like being really drunk or sustaining a major concussion. If we ever get around to adding a “category default” system for tilesets, this could be a very interesting concept.

16

[quote=“Natures Witness, post:15, topic:4917”]I’m with KA101 on this. Cata uses color as an integral part of its display system, removing it both severely screws over the person playing the game and TOTALLY fails to represent color blindness on the part of the character in-game.

Color blindness does NOT render a person incapable of telling a chair from a solar panel, which this approach would cause. In Cata, the color of an objects’ letter has no real bearing on the color of the object itself; it tells you what that object IS. A trait that removes all color from the game display would not accurately portray color blindness; it would portray severe dementia, an inability to understand anything more than an objects’ basic shape without concentrated focus.

While a color blind trait could be interesting, this is just not a sensible way to do it. An accurate portrayal would involve varied penalties to perception, which would have to be calculated based on how vital color is to any given task, which would be immensely difficult to implement.

On further thought, while this wouldn’t work to represent color blindness, it COULD work to represent severe cognitive impairment, like being really drunk or sustaining a major concussion. If we ever get around to adding a “category default” system for tilesets, this could be a very interesting concept.[/quote]

Couldn’t agree more. While it could be cool in practice, I can’t think of a good way to actually implement it. Coming from an actual colorblind person (red-green, I skimmed the post and didn’t see anyone else say this, so I might as well) I hardly even notice it except with certain shades of red or green being indistinguishable from others, or close colors like a dark green looking black, and so on.

It’s not a huge loss in my life. Very few colorblind folks are actually monochromatic/completely colorblind, most are my type, a simple red-green contrast deficiency. Most people, when told I’m colorblind, point to the nearest colorful object and ask me what color it is. Of course it’s red/yellow/green/whatever, and they’re astounded I can see it.

Now with the technicalities out of the way if there was some way to implement an interface-screw on the player in a well-executed manner that didn’t result in tedious looking at everything manually, I’d be all for it.

On a tangent, a colorblind-mode with more vibrant or distinguished colors in the game would be great, sometimes it’s a little hard for me to see the more subtle green and red hues.

17
Now with the technicalities out of the way if there was some way to implement an interface-screw on the player in a well-executed manner that didn't result in tedious looking at everything manually, I'd be all for it.

This would be a good idea - combined with the red-green colorblindness and not total monochrome vision.

18

Yeah, it wouldnt work as a trait, but having certain areas of the game lose their color could be a neat effect if done well, for example, removing color from the interior of the lab when you activate the resonance cascade, or having swatches of land lose their color as a side effect of using an artifact.

As for the shades of colors we kinda need those anyways, I think we are getting short of colors to represent monsters with.

19

I could see this color blindness mutating into a form of ‘Darkvision’ like in Dungeons and Dragons, allowing sight at night with no color representation

20

Been suggested upthread :wink: