Green and Yellow

The Pain of Colorblindness

from GalCiv2 Forums
Good morning folks!

I, along with approximately one in ten males, am red-green coloblind. I've been thoroughly enjoying the game so far. I've noticed some problems, however, that are causing me some trouble with quick recognition of things in game because of my bad eyes.

Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the most common strain of color blindness, it's not so dire as you might think. I can see reds, and I can see greens. If you hold up a sheet of paper that's been colored fire-truck red, I'll be able to tell very easily what color it is. The difficulty comes in colors that *contain* reds and greens, such as bright yellows, dull browns, and purple. If you were to put these colors together with their original colors, I might not be able to tell the difference!

Where this becomes an issue, specifically in computer gaming, is green and yellow. The bright green and bright yellow colors are so close as to be almost indistinguishable to me! For example, in game, squares that require soil enrichment look *exactly* like regular squares. Text colors are almost completely lost on. The status bars and race colors are impossible to recognize between races that use yellow and green.

Is there some way to modify the built-in color scheme to omit one or both of these colors?
4,456 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I know you can mod your race colors along with the colors of the AI empires. To modify the AI colors you simply have to modify their XML files.

I'm not so sure you can modify the colors the game uses to denote the build squares on the planetary screen. Those seem to be hard coded though it may appear in one of the desktopx files.

Maybe in a future patch SD can add an alternate palette option for those that have trouble with the current color scheme .
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Actually the build squares seem to be moddable, seeing as how they're in the Gfx\Terrain folder for GalCiv 2 (Dark Avatar also uses thse files). It would simply be a case of coming up with a mod that uses tile colours which can be distinguished. I did this in about ten minutes with GIMP.

I'm not sure if this is any good, mind, so here's a screenie:

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That's exactly what I'm talking about, Marvin. I'm rather new to the game, so how would I look into doing this myself? And if I were to do so, would it affect any score I'd get online?
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There are more comprehensive guides to modding than this, but basically you want to create nested folders so that you end up with a path reading GalCiv 2\Dark Avatar\Mods\Your_mod_name_here\Gfx\Terrain\ and then place the modified tile graphics in there. When you next start the game it will read this folder and you'll be able to select it from the general options screen - you also have to check the 'Use Mods' box.

The following link is for a ZIP of the mod I used to make the screenie above. It contains the correct directory structure so it merely needs to be unzipped into the Mods folder.

WWW Link

As I said the original files are in the installation folder at GalCiv 2\Gfx\Terrain\ and with a bit of work in your favourite painting program, you can customise them how you see fit.

As for the Metaverse scoring, well as you probably know you can't play a Mod with a Metaverse game. However I don't see how it would be cheating to backup and replace the original graphics yourself.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That's exactly what I'm talking about, Marvin. I'm rather new to the game, so how would I look into doing this myself? And if I were to do so, would it affect any score I'd get online?


It shouldn't be that difficult, I believe they're just basic graphic files that can be loaded into almost any graphic prgram. Just make some adjustments to the colour balance while there, then resave them.