I think this is an important statement from the economics side of things. If you care about retaining players then I don't know anybody who logs in muds and quits in the absence of psychedelic or abstract coloring schemes. The misconception that color is merely a decoration for muds should be left to those who don't understand design principles. I.e. Ideally the players, not the designer(s) of the game itself. Even saying it's okay to have a bad default scheme if it's customizable is a copout. Players shouldn't have to design your game for you. Or know how to.

I agree with @ChrisBailey. Colors are (were) my #1 criterion for judging the quality of a MUD in the first 5 minutes. Complete lack of color, use of background color anywhere except an ASCII map, or seizure-inducing color vomit all over my screen were all deal breakers for me.

Lack of any kind of compass or overhead map came in a close 2nd. I usually closed the tab immediately if I saw the line "Exits: north west down".

i like colourful muds.

We have what I would consider to be a consistent and tasteful color scheme throughout the game. Generally speaking, for all config menus, information menus and such (score sheet, who list, etc), we use predominately shades of white/gray with some of the outer lying borders or dividers using darker red. Bright red might appear here and there, but I can't recall off hand. The thing is, I feel like a tasteful and consistent color scheme can be instrumental in helping set an overall mood or feel to a game, and throughout my 15+ years playing MUDs, I've noticed just the simple layout and color scheme of a game can evoke completely different feelings or moods, and logging into a game that I haven't played in years can bring back the feelings of playing it just by simply seeing the score sheet or who list or just being immersed in how they've chosen to "skin" their game.

Areas are left to the builders, generally (although considering I've built close to half of our 100+ areas, I've set a strong precedent toward color use within areas). Again, color can do a lot toward enhancing or setting a mood. Most of our forest areas, for example, have dark yellow set as the room title with dark green as the description, or a desert might use a bright yellow for the room title and dark yellow for the description, etc. Changing colors when going from an exterior to an interior room is another thing that we do a lot, such as having a dark white description for an exterior and maybe going dark cyan when entering a building. We disallow clown puke, and there's very few instances of the bulk of a description using bright text, but our game is colorful, but only to the extent that we consider to be appropriate.

I'm not against allowing players to set their own colors, I just don't really think it's important enough to go through the code to find every instance of a color code and add in something to allow it to be customized. If someone is going to be picky enough to leave my game because they don't like the color their name is in my who list, I'm sure they'll find a thousand other things to nitpick at that will drive them away anyhow.

I second HK completely. The color scheme should be taken very seriously, but as part of the game design. As some people here have shared, they logged off immediately if the default color scheme was not to their liking–they didn't go searching for ways to customize it on the server.

You can really waste a lot of cycles making every single bit of color customizable, and you'll still please/displease about as many folks as if you didn't. It doesn't pay off to try and guess what so and so will or won't like to be able to change. What pays off is if you approach your *default* color scheme in the same way that one approaches building a website template, for example. It has to make it easier to focus on important stuff, separate visually stuff that belongs together, not scream, have normal readability, etc. You will still get people who hate your color scheme because there's a level of subjectivity there. You can minimize that by choosing more unobtrusive (less contrasty) color combinations; that's the A-B-C of web design. Just don't go imagining that there's a color scheme, or some color customization feature, that's going to please everyone everytime.

Having a non-stupid default color scheme is not mutually exclusive with customizable colors.

You say later in your post that it pays off to have smart default colors. Well, duh. Nobody is disputing that.


It's easy to add.


Your statement is empirically demonstrably false, as you can see in this thread with people asking for it. :smile:
Tongue-in-cheek aside, I see no justification for your claim.


Now this is a silly thing to say. If I don't like your default color scheme, but you let me "fix" it, then I'll be a whole helluva lot more pleased than if I'm stuck with your scheme that I don't like.

Note the difference between rainbow barf that makes a user quit immediately, and a scheme that they don't like but can tolerate.

Sometimes people argue that if you rhetorically support an idea, you imply that everyone ought to buy into it as the correct choice.

It is an odd application of the categorical imperative that tends to, in practice, cause confusion and unnecessary strife.

Just because FEATURE X in some mud is good in that mud, doesn't mean you need to implement FEATURE X in yourmud too.

You can just agree in principle that it sounds neat without having to buy into the commitment to putting it in your mud too.

This applies to customizable colors and limited gridmapping in muds and letting people modify the game while in the game.

Only the Sith deal in absolutes.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

I have to agree with HK and plamzi on this topic. Presenting your game with a consistent and tasteful color scheme is preferable to making every color option configurable by the player. The color sets the mood for the game and helps to paint a picture of the world - water is blue, grass is green and blood is red. Transitioning from inside to outside should be demonstrated by change in color. Menus should be standardized, using colors that highlight the important fields. If I let 10 players configure all those options, I predict the following breakdown:

1 player who hated my default color scheme enough to leave over it will use the configurations to change them, then deciding to stay.
1 player will screw around with the configurations, making the blood purple, the grass orange and the water yellow, tell me my game is retarded for having dumb colors, then quit.
1 player will decide to quit BECAUSE I have this feature - just on general principle. This is essentially a law regarding any game feature.
7 players will fail to notice that the configuration options even exist. Their existence can be pointed out in help entries, popped up in hint boxes or explicitly stated to each new player. This information will be ignored and/or disregarded.



Well said. Now we just wait for Quix to pop up and insist on the absolutes.

Hey I feel bad about that thing that time. Come back :(

@Lycanic: Be careful about using the word "should" unqualified like that. Sure, color change should be used to indicate moving from inside to outside, in your opinion. Definitely not in general, though. If you're talking about changing room description colors to indicate this, I know a small army of people who would vehemently disagree, including myself. I think colored text has no place in room descriptions at all. I find it harder to notice colors that otherwise would have drawn my attention easily when my screen is full of colored text. And if the game presented this kind of color overuse to me at the outset, I would leave. Not because I'm too lazy to find the setting to turn it off (if one even exists), but because in the past, I've found it a very good indicator of games that made other design choices that I didn't like.

Not that anyone cares, but my line of thinking is something like "if I'm supposed to read it, don't color it; if I'm just supposed to glance at it and scrape a few key pieces of info, then go for it." Of course, others have different opinions.

Just like how you're inherently required to wear prescription glasses, tote a pocket protector and listen to catchy pop rock as an excuse to try and relate with the rest of the human race on the off-chance you get stuck in an elevator with an attractive woman who's still going to dislike you the moment you open your mouth because YOU'RE A SOCIALLY AKWARD MUD-CRAZED NERD?

This.

Ultimately you should do a little research on your market audience and approach your colour scheme accordingly (if you care about it). You can get away with rainbow barf with certain themes, when most others would likely see you lynch mobbed in quick order. Ground breaking advice, I know.

@Ssolvarain: Every stereotype is based in truth.

Laser-like, you focus in on a single word out of a post. I'm sure you've heard the expression, "Missing the forest for the trees"? It's quite applicable here. I'll give you a hint: Only the first and last lines of my post were pertinent to the overall point. If you spot that, you'll realize why your entire reply was completely unnecessary - that is, unless your intent was just to state a list of your preferences when looking for a text-based game to play.


I was a bit wounded over the thing that time, but I mostly forgot about it a few days later. I've just been incredibly busy. I'm somewhat surprised anyone noticed I was gone, to be honest.

Every discriminator has an excuse.

If you're saying that you're everyone, everytime, this is indeed a very silly thing to say.

Nobody is disputing that a consistent and tasteful color scheme is a good thing to do. I'm not sure why folks keep presenting it like it's some point they're making in disagreement with others. The suggestion is only that customizable colors is a good thing, not the exclusive alternative to a sane default color scheme.

As Crat said, you can agree that it's alright, without making some promise to implement it. Sheesh – are you actually arguing that it's a bad thing? If not, then I'm not sure what you're arguing with. :sad:


I am defeated by the power of your rhetoric, which somehow failed to actually talk about what I said. :smile:

I'm not sure what you were trying to say with this post. I'm not sure how you can possibly disagree with the statement that customization of colors is better than lack of customization of colors, completely independently of any other consideration. Really not sure what's got you all in a twist here.

If you're not sure what people are saying, then consider that maybe you need to re-read their post before calling them silly. If you still don't get their point, then try not to assume they're arguing that the earth is flat. And finally, when you try to pull a super-obvious straw man on a reasonably smart person, don't try to feign ignorance when they bust you.

Actually, I was very much agreeing with Cratylus on that point (the last line of my post) - maybe it just got lost in the succinctness and the Quix joke. The part before the last line was merely intended to demonstrate why it may not ALWAYS be desirable to include configurable colors, as you seemed to suggest. For the reasons given, amongst others, I will not be implementing configurable colors in my game. I don't actually think it's a bad idea. That 1 player out of 10 does, though.

I don't think a customization system for colors is a cure for a poor default scheme.

However, I don't think it's a bad idea. I just think that the bad scheme shouldn't be default. It should be what is configurable. I shouldn't have to configure your game to have sensible colors… btw, most game already have at least 2 configurations. Colors and no colors. Some have "low and high" colors.

And I'm not sure numbers like "1 player out of 10 does [think it's a bad idea], though" is useful. It's invention of statistics that I am certain isn't even near accurate.