This is the last in a series of posts. Click here for Part 1, here for Part 2.
I just have a few more quick complaints about color in SC2.
First, it blew my mind when someone mentioned that the Stim lightning bolt is green when it starts and red when it stops. I still can’t believe it:
These colors are practically the same to me. If Blizzard wanted to help me out, they could saturate the colors, or use a different animation style, such as having the bolts “roll up” when starting and collapse down when finishing.
Another complaint is directed more at streamers and tournaments who use two very similar colors in 1v1 matches. Allowing players to choose Yellow and Orange as their colors makes it really difficult to glance at the minimap and see what’s happening:
Although there is a “Team colors” option available in replay mode that switches the colors to Blue and Red, Blizzard has a bug that the stats colors don’t update to the same colors:
I could complain about the red dot used to show that a nuke is incoming, but I’m guessing that Blizzard doesn’t want it to be easy to find. The dot easily blends in unless placed out in the open, and once my territory gets large enough I don’t spend too much time scrambling around looking for nukes. This is more of a psychological disadvantage for a color-blind player than a real game-design issue.
The last color issue I’ll mention is when doing fungal growth on stalkers. For some reason I can never see the green goo:
So, to wrap up: I know that I’m terrible, and that there are probably many color-blind Grandmaster SC2 players who’ve overcome their mild disability. But I think Blizzard has made several color decisions that could be easily modified to improve the experience for color-blind gamers, such as:
- Increase the size of the color patches on buildings and units.
- Saturate unit/building/grid colors more.
- Add other visual feedback to the player aside from just color — flashing building grids, different stim/fungal animation
Thanks for reading! For other posts in this series, click the DaltonistsUnite tag.
Click here for Part 1 in the series.
Another fairly serious problem I have while playing the game is placing my buildings quickly. There are several rules: you can’t place a CC/Nexus/Hatchery too close to resources and you can’t place a building too close to another building or a ramp. Whether or not your building “fits” is indicated by a large or a small building grid, depending on whether you’ve enabled the “Display build grid” option.
If your placement is bad, the grid turns red, as shown here:
The edge of the grid turns reddish, as you can clearly (haha!) see in this zoomed-in version:
As a color-blind person, I can assure you that I can only tell that’s red if I really, really try to make myself believe it. After staring at it awhile, I can tell that it’s different, but in the pell-mell confusion of the game, I just have to click around like mad until the probe stops complaining.
Here’s an example of a CC that’s placed correctly:
Now here are a few that are off a bit:
The same problem happens when landing a floating Terran building, or replacing one for an add-on:
After playing with this a bit in while writing this post, I’ve found that turning off the “Display building grid” feature actually helps a lot, by diminishing the amount of noise I need to filter through, as you can see in this example:
However, in this case I actually can’t tell if the placement is good or not. I think it’s red, but… I can’t be sure. The downside of turning off the building grid is that you can’t see if you’ve placed your CC too far from the minerals.
If I were to redesign this feature, I’d make the red squares much redder, and make them flash. I’d also add an indicator that shows whether or not your wall-in is tight. (Maybe this is already apparent to non-color blind people?!) This problem is especially maddening in the early game as Terran vs Zerg on an unfamiliar map, because you don’t have a lot of time to mess around when walling off against a rush. If you leave a gap, you’re doooooooomed…
For more articles in this series, look for the DaltonistsUnite tag, or click here for Part 3.
I’m pretty bad at Starcraft 2, and there are plenty of reasons why — I watch pro replays more than I play myself, I’m 41 and so my reflexes aren’t as good as a lot of my 18-year-old opponents, I’m not a terrific multitasker by nature, and I play mostly for fun not for blood — but, being color-blind definitely doesn’t make things any easier! Color provides important information to players during the game, and over the months I’ve slowly made a list of Blizzard’s more frustrating color-design choices. I’m finally getting around to sharing my list…
First, I should say that I’m not as color-blind as some folks who can only see in black and white. To me, red, green and brown are easily confused; the problem is worse if the colors to be distinguished are in small patches and/or if they are of similar hue. I have some form of “deuteranopia”, according to this cool test from Wikipedia. The classic example I give people is of red berries on tree: the little berries will easily get lost in all the green leaves, and I’ll never notice them until I’m quite close to the tree.
What’s more, the colors that are bad for me — red/green/brown — are easy to distinguish for people with a blue/yellow impairment. Good design will be quickly “readable” by as many people as possible, and with 8-10% of males affected by some kind of color-blindness, it might be worthwhile for Blizzard to take a look at this issue.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some Starcraft 2 units and buildings!
Here we have two images of a Nexus with different team colors:
Can you tell which team is which? No, it’s not the pale greenish-blue gemstones; they pulse and glow the same no matter which team you’re on. You’re supposed to look at color of the symbol on the side, and the little scallops on four of the corners of the building.
These tiny patches of color are the common way Blizzard identifies the team for most SC2 units and buildings. They want each race to have an overall “look” — yellow/silver metal for Protoss, silver/grey metal for Terran and reddish/purple (?!) for Zerg. Unfortunately, this leaves color-blind folks like me squinting for hints about which team is which, like looking for those little berries on a tree.
Now let’s take a look at some unit colors. Here’s the “green” team:
And here’s “pink”:
In these two images there’s an allied unit in the mix… good luck finding him!
Protoss units and buildings are the ones I have the hardest time differentiating, but other races are bad, too. Even the siege tanks, which have pretty big patches of color on their sides, are tough to distinguish because the colors Blizzard uses aren’t very saturated:
This is the first in a series of posts. You can find the others by clicking the DaltonistsUnite tag, or click here for Part 2.
Well hello!
After much in the absence department, I have re-emerged shaking dewlets glossily from my mane.
Be seein’ ya.
