Procedural colors for video games

http://blog.noctua-software.com/procedural-colors-for-game.html

by guillaumec • 12 years ago

67 13 12 years ago

mxfh• 12 years ago

Good to see that the OP is getting acquainted with color theory.

Just one thing: Is this color scheme used elsewhere in the game? This might be OK for a menu, but it's almost impossible to extract any encoded information out of it, if you have any mild form of color blindness. The difference between factory/jungle just doesn't work out in any version.

Having different lightness values actually helps as a factor to maximize uniqueness of each distinct color in the set.

See the simulated example in similar case and how to fix it http://wearecolorblind.com/example/trainyard/

skywhopper• 12 years ago

I also found the difference between "Factory" and "Jungle" colors to be very difficult to discern in the example images.

Any design, be it for software, physical interfaces, traffic lights, or anything else that relies on colors for conveying information should also provide alternate means of encoding the same information. You can use shape, texture, lightness/saturation, order, or a number of other properties. The 4-5% of the population who are colorblind or have color vision deficiency will thank you.

guillaumec2• 12 years ago

I hear you guys. In that case it is not a problem, since the color does not convey any information. In the game the difference in lightness of the elements should be enough so that colorblind people can still play without any trouble.

eXpl0it3r• 12 years ago

Seems to be overloaded: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http:/...

guillaumec2• 12 years ago

Yep, sorry my server is completely overloaded now :( I am trying to fix that.

cordite• 12 years ago

Unfortunate that the pictures aren't there.

jaunkst2• 12 years ago

Create a color fence. You can create a polygonal fence that describes your preferred color set and calculate an intersection from the hue value in HSV. If my hue is 320, then I could find a nice shade of orange/red along the polygonal fence. This should give you controlled useable colors. The intersection length is the value, and you could store variable saturation on the fence points if you want to control the level of saturation.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s6/sh/c48da69a-7056-4ee0-9bcf...

jaunkst2• 12 years ago

Here is a codepen example, this code was thrown together. You can add modify the fence line in the colorFence array

http://codepen.io/anon/pen/ycqpI?editors=101

boronine• 12 years ago

Plugging HUSL [1], a color space created for this very purpose.

http://www.boronine.com/husl/

vanderZwan• 12 years ago

Procedural colours might also make daltonization[0] easier.

[0] http://www.daltonize.org/p/about.html

joeld42• 12 years ago

That's pretty cool. Ages ago I made a procedural platformer that colorized random tilesets in a similar way (I don't have any screenshots handy, sorry) and it worked out really well. I used the same random colorscheme code for a procedural landscape generator:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/12/19/some-planets/

If anyone cares, the code is here:

https://code.google.com/p/ld48jovoc/source/browse/ld19_disco...

flip101• 12 years ago

Does anyone know how to get an X amount of colors that visually are as much different from each other as possible? While setting boundary conditions such as allowed lightness values.

Procedural colors for video games

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