So I was playing SCFA recently and I noticed there was no way of telling which player is on what team (beside Intel coverage and Player tab) directly on the map. So why not give every team in game a team color, and then outline the unit icons on the map using this team color. Maybe also give a secondary/tertiary color to every unit model using the team color specified. I think it would be nice to more easily see on what team players are. Any ideas on this?
For the minimap, unit symbols when zoomed out: I think it would be nice if your units have the actual ingame color on the minimap, friendlies all have the same color (green or adjustable) and enemies all have red. If you look at the actual unit you can still determine who's unit it is by hovering over it or using the color.
The problem with the FA method is that you can't tell if all the units in the area you're intending to attack are controlled by one player or not, and this has a bearing on whether attacking is a good idea or not (also buildings, to hit someone's eco you want to do several quick strikes on high-value eco buildings, accidentally targeting three different players would have much less impact). What would be best would be shades of the same colour, so that one team is all green, but the shade variations make it easy to see different players.
So turn it off and then you have everyone with their player colours. That said, the stylised graphics of PA will assist a lot in team identification as there will be less distracting textures.
Thinking about 2 things : 1) Think about blindcolor people :cry: too many game studios ignore this ... i guess they have never played a game where you can't make the difference between ennemies and mates on a map 2) Regarding color choice when configuring the team : Many people prefer to play with a very specific color, why not implement such kind of color mapping : 4 players : 4 colors => PC1, PC2, PC3, PC4 Player 1 would like to play with Yellow color Player 2 would like to play with Yellow color Player 3 would like to play with Yellow color Player 4 would like to play with Yellow color Player 1 maps colors for PC1/C11,PC2/C12,PC3/C13,PC4/C14 => Players are rendered with C11,C12,C13,C14 for player 1 Player 2 maps colors for PC1/C21,PC2/C22,PC3/C23,PC4/C24 => Players are rendered with C21,C22,C23,C24 for player 2 Player 3 maps colors for PC1/C31,PC2/C32,PC3/C33,PC4/C34 => Players are rendered with C31,C32,C33,C34 for player 3 Player 4 maps colors for PC1/C41,PC2/C42,PC3/C43,PC4/C44 => Players are rendered with C41,C42,C43,C44 for player 4 This way any player could configure its client and decide : 1) which colour should be used for ennemies 2) which colour he would like to play with 3) Of course team mates would be displayed the same colour on its client
And then you can't remember which colours are allies and which are enemies. I'm terrible at big team games and I think this is probably a big part of why.
I think what's being proposed here is a system like Zero K, where your allies are all similar shades of a cool color (blues/greens) and the enemies are similar shades of a warm color (reds/oranges/yellows). This is a fairly effective method for differentiating teams while still being able to recognize the individual players. However, as someone said, it can become challenging for those who have color blindness, etc. The only solution I can think of is allowing the player to customize the colors, and allowing the two modes (team colors, player colors) and customize the player colors to the warm/cool colors as needed.
Big Supporter of Multiple Unit colors for sake of readability, having a player color and a team color could accomplish this" /url], having a player color and a team color would allow team colors to repeat when on different teams so that individual team colors would be more different.
Doesn't happen online though. On Forged Alliance Forever it is very common to have a light green player on one team and a dark green on the other. Makes it very hard to tell what's going on. Can we have three toggleable option? 1. Custom colours - whichever colour the player chose is the one displayed 2. Allied/Enemy - Each team is displayed in distinguishable shades of the same or similar colours 3. Colour blind - colours are adjusted so that colourblind people can tell them apart. Maybe even have a colourblind version of #2. Also, there should be a limit on the darkness of selectable colours. Nothing less than say 40% brightness should be allowed. The reason for this is that anyone who chose to be black in Supcom made it very hard to identify their units.
1 & 2 were already options in SupCom, albeit only for the minimap. There are a couple of threads on this sort of theme already; Emblems/Badges/Banners customization & Army painter I don't think they are likely to have a minimap in PA, so I'm not sure what the options will be or how they will implement them. I guess just the ability to toggle the actual colours of the units will be enough to make it workable.
Or you know a list of people, what team they're on, and what colour they've chosen? Like the scoreboard from FA without the score. If you can't remember who's on your own team then you got bigger probs than fighting the enemy.
Maybe not for the minimap, but certainly for the strategic icons when zoomed out. As for using the legend for color reference, it's poor UI design to make the player remember a new color set defined as allies each game. It's much better design to have a set theme of colors for allies and enemies. Warm/Cool colors works very well for this, as they are very easy to tell apart at a glance, and still have enough variety that each player looks sufficiently different.
Or you can open the diplomacy tab (where you can make or break alliances, give units and resources) and that shows the teams and their color.
