Possibility to colour levels?
issueid=3699 04-17-2015 02:53 PM
Senior Member
Number of reported issues by sylph: 26
Possibility to colour levels?
Add some variety into the game

I love how the tower, and the underwater cave, really look different from the rest of the game. I was wondering whether it might be worth colouring all levels to some extent or another? Just a pallete swap would be great, I think. Bit of a green shade here, bit of red there. Saving the purple for deeper levels where corruption is stronger, etc.
In the old 8-bit era of games, a bit of colour variation really brought recognition to levels that would otherwise have looked and felt exactly the same, and I can't help but feel a bit of the same would help brighten ADOM. I'm not trying to suggest anything as extreme as the tower or the water temple, just an option of slightly varying the palette based on dungeon level to mix things up a little, and bring a little recognition to those same old levels. For example, recognising that unusually dirty D:5, or the weird, pinky colouration of the brick on D:13, where higher metal items start becoming common...

Further suggestion / fleshing out based on ideas and comments: I agree with tkoyah, that it would be nicer if each dungeon had a slightly different tint - Assassin's guild, dwarvern graveyard, high kings, Uninteresting dungeon, rift dungeon, darkforge etc, but were uniform in colour across the dungeon in question.
Special case perhaps being made for CoC, which could get darker and more purple the deeper the player ventured down.
Issue Details
Issue Number 3699
Issue Type Feature
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category All
Status Suggested
Priority 9
Suggested Version ADOM r58
Implemented Version (none)
Milestone Modernized ADOM UI
Votes for this feature 12
Votes against this feature 0
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




04-17-2015 03:02 PM
Senior Member
Here's an example of how a little colour can spice up an otherwise identical 50 levels (C64 game: Zamzara), not that I'm suggesting anything that extreme, I just wanted to show an example how much a bit of palette swapping can spice things up...

http://i.imgur.com/EkiWdfz.jpg

04-17-2015 03:28 PM
Senior Member
Here's a mock-up of what I was thinking for ADOM:


04-17-2015 04:11 PM
Ancient Member
Hmm that reminds me, I havenīt seen the Scintillating caves with the tile set yet..

04-17-2015 07:40 PM
Ancient Member
Pretty good idea, even if we're talking pure, old ASCII, of which I'm a die hard nerdy enthusiast.

04-17-2015 07:50 PM
Ancient Member
The screen mock-ups look alright. Perhaps levels that generate herbs could have a slight mossy appearance on the walls.

04-18-2015 03:35 AM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by Blasphemous
Pretty good idea, even if we're talking pure, old ASCII, of which I'm a die hard nerdy enthusiast.
I'm not sure how this would work for the ASCII version, since that is (to my knowledge) limited to the 16 VGA colors. Changes would be too noticeable, and the levels which are currently deliberately colored would lose some of their charm.

04-19-2015 11:49 AM
ixi ixi is offline
Junior Member
Quote Originally Posted by anon123
and the levels which are currently deliberately colored would lose some of their charm.
Agree with this point. After this special level won't be so special anymore. Not voting against through...

04-20-2015 02:47 PM
Junior Member
I think, since it's just a little added flavour, the ACSII version can conveniently be forgotten about for this feature. ..no real way to do small colour-tint's with ASCII. But it could be done for the NotEYE version.

Personally, I think, rather than particular levels, there should be just a few different colour tints for the different dungeons. You know, like there is a different variation of rock in that area. There could be a bit of additional tinting, for key levels. But I'd like the effect best if it was mostly a differentiator for each dungeon. ..all IMHO of course. Voting for.

(I can see where anon123 is coming from, but if it's subtle - probably more subtle than the example screen-shots - it won't detract from the wholly different tile-sets that are the special levels.)

04-20-2015 08:14 PM
Ancient Member
I think ASCII can still benefit from this one.

For instance, the Arena level. If you manage to enter it in the dark or while blind, you will get a message about standing in the sand. Why not color floor tiles in yellow? Would be quite consistent.

04-20-2015 10:56 PM
Junior Member
In ASCII, recolouring is dramatically different. I'd like to see the yellow-coloured theme restricted to truly special places, like the pyramid. ..The Arena doesn't feel special enough to me. And who's to say the Arena sand isn't grey anyway? ..IMHO, add too much colour to the dungeons, and they won't feel 'dungeon-y', and the dank, dark things they should be in contrast to the above-ground world.

04-20-2015 11:12 PM
Senior Member
And if we added colors to monsters, they might not feel 'monster-y'. We can't just reject all progress because its different.

04-21-2015 03:31 AM
Junior Member
With all due respect gr3ybird, that's a terrible argument. Monsters in D&D are colourful (looking at the 4th edition monster manual), and ADOM uses that within the restrictions of the ASCII colours and character set to distinguish type (and taxa) to very good effect.

With dungeons, I felt blandness/greyness of them was an intentional design decision so you would feel they were dark, dangerous places; and the bright greens of the wilderness and towns were intended to contrast with this, so you would feel above ground to be a place of relative safety, where you could recover, before diving back into the grey/black depths. ..Punctuated with the occasional splash of colour in very special locations to make you go "whoa! what the heck is this!"

From a gaming-psychology perspective, I think it works very well. And NotEYE has the capability of subtlety of colour to allow (very limited) tinting of each cave to make them feel different, without losing that dank dark feel. The ASCII pallette is far too coarse to be able to achieve the same effect, and I think any attempt to colour all dungeons in ASCII will ruin the feeling the visuals currently achieve. ie: that dungeons are dark, barren places.

So, I would argue that colouring the dungeons in ASCII would be a mistake, not progress at all. Perhaps you're arguing from the perspective of a Dwarf? If so, I respecfully disagree, o bearded one - this game will largely be played by humans.

04-21-2015 03:53 PM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by tkoyah
With dungeons, I felt blandness/greyness of them was an intentional design decision so you would feel they were dark, dangerous places; and the bright greens of the wilderness and towns were intended to contrast with this, so you would feel above ground to be a place of relative safety, where you could recover, before diving back into the grey/black depths. ..Punctuated with the occasional splash of colour in very special locations to make you go "whoa! what the heck is this!"
tkoyah, maybe (probably?) tb didn't think of any of that stuff. Maybe he just wrote the dungeon generation algorithm and moved on.

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