The COLOR_PLAYER_BLUE thread: needs a lot of help

[LAnkou]

Hi everyone,

I need some help for my superciv mode:
there are two much player using blue as a main color:
France, america, persian, greece, quebec, Israel, Bulgaria, Texas, scotland

i chang bulgaria to some green, but i know i will need other blue value for other blue civ
can people help me by posting RGB value of Blue?

Here are the one I'm using:

		<ColorVal>
Israel			<Type>COLOR_PLAYER_ISRABLUE</Type>
			<fRed>0.00</fRed>
			<fGreen>0.46</fGreen>
			<fBlue>0.66</fBlue>
			<fAlpha>1.00</fAlpha>
		</ColorVal>
		<ColorVal>
	Texas		<Type>COLOR_PLAYER_TXBLUE</Type>
			<fRed>0.00</fRed>
			<fGreen>.26</fGreen>
			<fBlue>0.74</fBlue>
			<fAlpha>1.00</fAlpha>
		</ColorVal>
		<ColorVal>
	America
<Type>COLOR_PLAYER_BLUE</Type>
			<fRed>0.21</fRed>
			<fGreen>0.40</fGreen>
			<fBlue>1.00</fBlue>
			<fAlpha>1.00</fAlpha>
		</ColorVal>
		<ColorVal>
Persian
<Type>COLOR_PLAYER_CYAN</Type>
			<fRed>0.07</fRed>
			<fGreen>0.90</fGreen>
			<fBlue>0.86</fBlue>
			<fAlpha>1.00</fAlpha>
		</ColorVal>
		<ColorVal>
France			<Type>COLOR_PLAYER_DARK_BLUE</Type>
			<fRed>0.16</fRed>
			<fGreen>0.00</fGreen>
			<fBlue>0.64</fBlue>
			<fAlpha>1.00</fAlpha>
		</ColorVal>
		<ColorVal>
greece
<Type>COLOR_PLAYER_DARK_CYAN</Type>
			<fRed>0.00</fRed>
			<fGreen>0.54</fGreen>
			<fBlue>0.55</fBlue>
			<fAlpha>1.00</fAlpha>
		</ColorVal>
		<ColorVal>
Quebec			<Type>COLOR_PLAYER_QUEBEC_BLUE</Type>
			<fRed>0.00</fRed>
			<fGreen>0.00</fGreen>
			<fBlue>0.8</fBlue>
			<fAlpha>1.00</fAlpha>
		</ColorVal>
		<ColorVal>
Scotland			<Type>COLOR_PLAYER_SCOTLAND_BLUE</Type>
			<fRed>0.00</fRed>
			<fGreen>0.00</fGreen>
			<fBlue>0.4</fBlue>
			<fAlpha>1.00</fAlpha>
		</ColorVal>

Moreover, do you feel that feet for these civ?

By the way, i need two more white (finland+Bretagne), 3 green more (Bulgaria, Celts, Tupi), 3 more red (Turks, Canada, Portugal), 1 yellow (Brazil), 1 peach(ZULU)

the most used color are Blue (a lot), green, red and white...
the big classic is the Blue, white, red flag

oh man, i really need help!!

 

[Rayanth]

um... it's RGB, not RVB

Texas isn't a civ in the normal games...

RGB is short for Red, Green, Blue. These three colors make up all others (despite what you were taught in school). The higher one value, the more prominent the associated color is in the resulting color.

Possible values range from 0-255. RGB 0,0,0 is Black, 255,255,255 is white. 0,0,255 is pure blue.

There are 16,777,216 possible colors in the RGB system. All of them have some amount of blue to them. it is impossible to get "the value of blue" (aside from pure blue, which i already mentioned was 0,0,255 -- however the varying shades of blue will have varying RGB values, with the B value the more prominent in most.)

 

[Rayanth]

addendum: hadn't seen the code. Given that they are using Floating Point values less than or equal to 1 in the XML you posted, there is one more conversion necessary:

divide the (0-255) RGB value by 256 to get the 0.** number. They are ussing a Percentage system in those files.

so RGB 0,0,255 is 0,0,1 in their system

RGB 0,0,128 is 0,0,0.5, etc

Edit: Final Addendum: fAlpha is the alpha channel, or how Opaque the color is (whether objects below the color will show through it, and if so how noticeably)

 

[LAnkou]

ok but are 0,0,0.5 and 0,0,0.49 eye-distinguable enough?

that's my problem, i need a range of eye-distinguable blue that can fit to civ...

Changed it, but RVB is for "Rouge-Vert-Bleu", well RGB in french....guess what? i'm french

 

[Rayanth]

ok but are 0,0,0.5 and 0,0,0.49 eye-distinguable enough?

that's my problem, i need a range of eye-distinguable blue that can fit to civ...

Changed it, but RVB is for "Rouge-Vert-Bleu", well RGB in french....guess what? i'm french

Well, you could try them and see.... I highly doubt they are though.

Are you trying to add more Blue civs? or remove them? your OP suggested you might be trying to remove them based on the wording of your second sentence, but it appears you're trying to add more???

 

[LAnkou]

well i'm trying to remove civ from a particular blue (dark blue BTW).
But i need to create other blue to fit with the civ...could you imagine to play America yellow?

I try to avoid touching vanilla civs and colors, but i have problem with the new ones...

 

[Velja]

ok but are 0,0,0.5 and 0,0,0.49 eye-distinguable enough?

that's my problem, i need a range of eye-distinguable blue that can fit to civ...

You can just try it in paint(Define custom colors). Of course instead of 0.5 for blue you'll have to set 255*0.05=12.75. You can also add some red and green(but not too much).This way you can put all blue colors on one picture, so you can see is there enough difference.

 

[Rayanth]

You can just try it in paint(Define custom colors). Of course instead of 0.5 for blue you'll have to set 255*0.05=12.75. You can also add some red and green(but not too much).This way you can put all blue colors on one picture, so you can see is there enough difference.

(note that you can't set an RGB value of 12.75 in paint -- just round to the nearest. fractions of fractions are indiscernable tot he human eye anyway)

 

[LAnkou]

my main problem is not to find enough blue, my main problem is too find enough blue that fit the civ...

gonna post a screenshot of what it looks like....

 

[Reveilled]

Are you saying that the fact that so many countries use blue that you can't find distinguishing colours for all of them?

If so, perhaps other colours would be appropriate? Red works fairly well for Texas, and a slightly purple colour (154,125,255) would probably be okay for France (it being the colour used to depict their empire in 19th/early 20th century maps). Persia could be green. Green might also be suitable for Greece (they were Green in Civ 3, anyway).

 

[LAnkou]

i won't change vanilla civ colors (you're quite mad to think i would change the beautiful dark blue for France to an horrible pink color!!!)
if i change color, there will still be a problem, but with others colors!!!

 

[bad_ronald]

There is no easy answer to selecting appropriate colors for every civ, as the numbers increase it will be more and more difficult to select appropriate colors. Some things to keep in mind though: the human mind is much better at differentiating colors in the red through yellow range than in the green through cyan range or the cyan through blue range (e.g., the color between red and yellow (itself red + green on a computer monitor) is called orange, yet there is no name for the color halfway between green and cyan or blue and cyan - even cyan itself is an obscure color, which would be akin to lacking a name for yellow).

An important tool to use is the paleness of the color, so for example: pure blue would be (0,0,1) while pale blue could be anything above (.6,.6,1) - note: I strongly recommend against pale cyan if you're using pale blue, no one will be able to tell the difference; if you just want pale cyan though it's around (.6,1,1).

Another possibility is using muted colors (i.e., slightly greyish), this happens when the most saturated color is less than 1, so (.5, .25, .25) would be muted red (it'll look like the color of a brick, roughly).

I realize that you're hoping not to modify the vanilla colors, but the changes below for America and France are very slight (test it out and see how it looks):

Blues and Cyans:
Scotland (0,0,.1) // this is almost black, but there is no alternative
France (0,0,.5)
Quebec (0,0,1)
America (.2,.4,1)
Israel (0,.5,.64)
Greece(.5,.75,1)

You can make Persia whatever you feel like, no one will care if it's not cyan anymore, I suggest not making Portugal red, make it some shade of green and move Texas into it's spot.

At some point though, you'll have to use the less common national colors that are very useable. For example, think of the many shades of brown (which is essentially between dark orange and dark maroon) that there are distinct names for. People will have a much easier time telling the difference between tan, gold and brown than they will between really really bright cyan, somewhat bright cyan and marginally bright cyan, if you understand what I mean.

 

[EdCase]

i won't change vanilla civ colors (you're quite mad to think i would change the beautiful dark blue for France to an horrible pink color!!!)
if i change color, there will still be a problem, but with others colors!!!

Purple is not pink. It is closely tied with Imperialistic thought patterns, a colour of strength.

On the other hand maybe yellow for France? [gentle riposte, no real offense intended]

 

[LAnkou]

pink was a reference to civ3

for the actual civ, included in the mod, i managed to have different blue, but i will have to add georgia, serbia, pennsylvannia, alaska and some others later surely, so i may try to find blue for them first.

making portugal green is a possibility since there is some used but not too much yet

i will have surely a problem with the white civ (ie england, bretagne, Finland), making them grey can't be a good solution i think (for the moment i have white, england, and light gray, Bretagne) Finland use a seablue that is not used by any other, making them seablue and having the flag redone could be a solution

 

[LAnkou]

in the superciv thread there is my work for blue and green civ, if anyone is interrested in telling me what they think of it...

 

[MeteorPunch]

The two blues that are very similar are Austin and Quebec. The greens are good.

 

[tdb]

Distinguishability of colors depends on several factors. One of them is the spatial distance of the areas with different colors. If you have the borders of two civs next to each other, a difference of 0.1 of probably enough. However, if they are far away, perhaps not even on the same screen, you might need a difference of 0.5 for them to be clearly distinguishable.