Janis Papanagnou
2024-10-11 04:24:43 UTC
How to handle color settings in roguelikes, generally?
(Or in NNDNH, specifically.)
In my earlier NH days, playing locally on my computer or at
the NAO server, I had quite acceptable colors (or had just
set them appropriately in the configuration file to choose
more appropriate colors, e.g. for specific [dangerous] types
of monsters to become better visible and distinguishable).
On the Hardfought server while trying many different NH
variants I experienced different settings, some suboptimal
ones and some even worse. (For example the well-known
beep-blue monsters that can't be reliably seen at a black
background.) With some variants having the tile symbol's
background color also set (e.g. for peaceful monsters) the
foreground color very often gets spoiled and the monster
hardly identifiable.
Now recently (during the past few days!) the colors of my
long-time played NNDNH game ("magically") changed. They
now have even less contrast than before and I'm wondering
what happened; did they change the variant's color setting?
(The NNDNH game reports: "last build 2024-09-15 21:24:10",
which doesn't quite match the time I observed the changes.)
(Note: I reset my terminal before starting the ssh session
to be sure the problem is not on my terminal's side.)
Other still active games on that server from other variants
(e.g. an Hack'EM game) doesn't show such spoiled colors (or
spoiled default color settings; whatever applies).
I would have thought that the decades old NH color issues
would get better over time. That some sensible standards
would get implemented. And maybe some convergence between
variants. But no, obviously.
What could the players do - define for every variant own
color profiles? (If that works in the first place; I have
some doubts.)
Janis
(Or in NNDNH, specifically.)
In my earlier NH days, playing locally on my computer or at
the NAO server, I had quite acceptable colors (or had just
set them appropriately in the configuration file to choose
more appropriate colors, e.g. for specific [dangerous] types
of monsters to become better visible and distinguishable).
On the Hardfought server while trying many different NH
variants I experienced different settings, some suboptimal
ones and some even worse. (For example the well-known
beep-blue monsters that can't be reliably seen at a black
background.) With some variants having the tile symbol's
background color also set (e.g. for peaceful monsters) the
foreground color very often gets spoiled and the monster
hardly identifiable.
Now recently (during the past few days!) the colors of my
long-time played NNDNH game ("magically") changed. They
now have even less contrast than before and I'm wondering
what happened; did they change the variant's color setting?
(The NNDNH game reports: "last build 2024-09-15 21:24:10",
which doesn't quite match the time I observed the changes.)
(Note: I reset my terminal before starting the ssh session
to be sure the problem is not on my terminal's side.)
Other still active games on that server from other variants
(e.g. an Hack'EM game) doesn't show such spoiled colors (or
spoiled default color settings; whatever applies).
I would have thought that the decades old NH color issues
would get better over time. That some sensible standards
would get implemented. And maybe some convergence between
variants. But no, obviously.
What could the players do - define for every variant own
color profiles? (If that works in the first place; I have
some doubts.)
Janis