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davidalayachew opened this issue Apr 26, 2025 · 5 comments · May be fixed by #745
Open

Improve visibility of certain low-contrast game elements #740

davidalayachew opened this issue Apr 26, 2025 · 5 comments · May be fixed by #745

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@davidalayachew
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Here is the problem I am trying to solve.

My eyesight has been deteriorating for some time. Things that used to be easy for me to see and do in this game have gotten harder.

One of those is being able to see some harder to see things, like Kobold's in dark areas of the map. Or the player itself, for that matter. Here is an example of both in one screenshot.

Image

This is fairly difficult for me to see. At least with the player, I have been following them this whole time. But it is a 50% chance that I don't see the Kobold. To work around this, I have started to just watch the left side bar, to see what is around me, then hover my mouse on it to see the actual location. This creates a nice, bright white highlight under the item/enemy/etc of question.

Image

This is great. I can do the same for the player too. Here is an example of that.

Image

Also great. (sorry the mouse is not visible in the screenshot)

However, this doesn't really solve my problem for 2 reasons.

  1. Switching back and forth from keyboard and mouse slows down gameplay significantly.
  2. I can't scroll the left sidebar, therefore, if there are enough things on the screen, I might not see an enemy until they are right on top of me. This, specifically, has been the cause of death many times for me.

Here is my feature request.

  • Add a toggle setting to slowly and constantly flash a highlight underneath "points of significance".
    • The flashing highlight should slowly go back and forth between transparent background and the highlight -- maybe a 3 second cycle?
    • Would be smart to have separate highlight colors for each different type of "point of significance"
      • Enemies = bright-red
      • Items = bright-blue
      • Gold = bright-green

And it's important that it goes back and forth from transparent to the respective color, otherwise, we cannot see what the item/enemy/etc is sitting upon.

If this is just not worth the effort, that's fine, just let me know. Here are some other alternatives.

  • Add a toggle to turn off "dimming" in darker areas of the map.
  • Add scrolling to the left-hand side bar.
    • Is this not a bug? Why have the side bar if I can't see all of it, even if only by scrolling?
  • Add a high-contrast mode (or alternative color scheme) to this game.
    • That's been my solution for other applications.
@davidalayachew
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Also, if we decide to go down the alternate routes, here is a small and incomplete list of things that are (now) hard for me to see. And when I say "dark squares", I'm talking about squares on the map where your stealth improves when you stand on them.

  • Kobold on dark squares
  • Player on dark squares
  • Pit bloat on dark squares
  • Goblin on dark squares
  • Eel
  • Bog monster
  • Troll on dark squares
  • Underworm on certain backgrounds

I'm sure there is more than this, but my record is only Level 16 or 18 (I forget). And lol, I did die at that level because the room I was in was full of stuff, but I didn't see the monster until it was too late for me to effectively react.

@tmewett
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tmewett commented Apr 28, 2025

Thank you so much for this really detailed report. My first question is: what is your experience like playing with "hide color effects" turned on (via the in-game menu)?

@davidalayachew
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davidalayachew commented Apr 28, 2025 via email

@tmewett
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tmewett commented Apr 28, 2025

Ok, good to know.

I think my favoured solution to this would be to increase the contrast of the "hide color effects" mode - it doesn't add any new options and it doesn't require as many UX decisions. I agree that the mode is quite dim at present and I don't think there's any need for it to be.

What do you think of that?

@davidalayachew
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I'd have to see it to say, but that certainly sounds good to me.

If it helps, the real problem is the mix of darker colors on darker backgrounds. You could probably get away with a simple re-coloring of the components I mentioned above. It might annoy folks to have enemies they know be a new color, but that's really all I'm struggling with. The map itself is easy enough to see in normal mode (except for pits, but you give me warnings already, so that is a non-issue).

Just want to propose this as an alternative to altering the contrast of the hide color effects mode. In my ignorant opinion, that would probably be the cheapest way for you to make me happy, while also bothering as few other people as possible.

@davidalayachew davidalayachew mentioned this issue May 19, 2025
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@tmewett tmewett changed the title Put a slowly flashing highlight behind enemies/items/gold/etc Improve visibility of certain low-contrast game elements May 23, 2025
@tmewett tmewett linked a pull request May 23, 2025 that will close this issue
Increase visual contrast #745
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Increase visual contrast tmewett/BrogueCE
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@tmewett @davidalayachew