Changing map colors ?

[Yatta]

Hello there.

Id like to know if there is a way to customize colors of the map tool of the game - especially industries colors.

Im color blind and I have some difficulties reading industries map. I still can guess them out by their shape, but for the iron ore mine ... I just cant see it unless I stick my face on the screen and carefully check the zone where it is supposed to be.

So, is such customization possible ?

[planetmaker]

Hm, I guess such customization is in principle possible (see e.g. the side effects of the black company colour newgrf http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=45592) - so is maybe possible to re-define the whole palette via a newgrf. But unfortunately I know of no such newgrf.

Maybe you can grab an image manipulation of your choice and come up with a colour scheme which is also easily discernible to you and post the resulting images with the altered colours here?

Also: maybe check out OpenGFX base graphics. Those graphics are drawn from scratch and thus might be easier to distinguish for you. Maybe that helps you? http://bundles.openttdcoop.org/opengfx/nightlies/

EDIT: or possibly include the night transform newgrf. Dunno if it helps. Found there: http://users2.tt-forums.net/ttdur/ttdur.htm

[Yatta]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll be checking that and coming back with results.

Edit : actually I think there's a misunderstanding :
What I cant see is the Iron ore industry on the minimap / map tool / whatever its called / where you get the Black coal mine, red power station, gray farm & so on ...

[planetmaker]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll be checking that and coming back with results.

Edit : actually I think there's a misunderstanding :
What I cant see is the Iron ore industry on the minimap / map tool / whatever its called / where you get the Black coal mine, red power station, gray farm & so on ...

Oh... well... then I guess the only possibility might be the first method I posted. E.g. basically screwing with the colour table OpenTTD uses. I haven't tested myself either of those - or only long time ago.

[Zuu]

I remember seeing proposes for enhancements in this area. (making the mini-map colors easier to read for color blind people) There might also have been a patch too. But this is quite long time ago.

[andythenorth]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll be checking that and coming back with results.

We're working on this for FIRS. Either by choosing colours which work for colour-blind players (and for non colour-blind players!)...or by making them changeable if you're prepared to checkout the source code and build the grf (needs mercurial vcs, plus typing two or three simple shell / terminal commands) https://dev.openttdcoop.org/issues/624

[planetmaker]

Something worth considering when choosing (map) colours might be what is presented there: http://www.personal.psu.edu/cab38/Color ... intro.html

Basically they offer a proven scheme scientifically tested to provide good contrast - and an easy web test and config.

I use it when I need to chose colours for my presentations and graphics and it works well with people who have difficulties to distinguish the usual red / green / whatever plots.

[Roujin]

Interesting, but if you look at that tool, select a "qualitative" color scheme (because that's what we want here for industries), all of them will have a striked-through or at least "?"-marked "colorblind friendly" symbol for a number of classes > 4. And for higher numbers, nearing the amount of default industries in OpenTTD (not to speak of the numbers of industries an industry newgrf could have), there aren't even any "?"-marked schemes anymore, only crossed-out...

[planetmaker]

EDIT: changed a bit for clarity

Yes, playing around with it, there's definitely a limited number of easily discernible colours; but we don't need to limit ourselves to either sequential, diverging or qualitative IMO. Thenumber of colours is probably smaller than the number of e.g. FIRS industries. But maybe for the default industries a scheme can be found; there are schemes for at least 11 distinct colours. At least such results could be taken as a starting point.

Adding the red for "roads" and black for cities we end up with 13 colours.

[PikkaBird]

A newgrf which just changes the map colours of the default industries should be quite easy to make.



Let me know which colours you want for each industry and I can knock something up.

[Eddi]

also note that you can click on the industry name to make the industry appear and disappear on the map (might create a "blinking" effect) to find industries of a certain type easier (not sure if that is already a trunk feature, or only part of an improved minimap patch)

[PikkaBird]

Works in 0.7.3, Eddi.

[Roujin]

While that can surely help discerning one industry from another, what if the problem is discerning the industry from the green background? I'm not sure if blinking helps there, if the two colors are similar for your eyes..

[Eddi]

the colours can be changed by GRF, as pikka pointed out.