Color-blind friendly GUI icons

[Wildcard_tw 2]

Due to my red-green deficiency, I find that it really tough to spot gauge the color transition in the current icons. There are several ways they could be improved, and I am not sure what ARMA2's capabilities are in this regard, but a graphical change that isn't solely chromatic would make the icons a lot more meaningful to those of us that are color blind. :]

One option would be for the icons to act as "fill meters" in addition to changing color - see attachment for an example i mocked up. If that's too tough to implement, a numerical representation (ala blood counter) would work fine as well.

Keep up the great work :]

[Seaon09 5]

I second this, I do not suffer from color definicies but I do support adding some kind of feature so that people arent at a disadvantage.

[Cal. 0]

Definitely a necessity in my opinion. I'm not colourblind myself, but one of the guys I play with is.

[rocket 16567]

I have felt TERRIBLE ever since this was bought to my attention some weeks ago

Unfortunately, alpha sorting for UI elements is not sorted in the engine (the way you illustrated was how I wanted to do it). It is on my todo list and I will try to get something working as soon as I can.

Could someone who is colorblind email dayzdevteam@gmail.com with details and I will add them on skype to get their advice and help test.

[robollama 1]

I have felt TERRIBLE ever since this was bought to my attention some weeks ago

Unfortunately' date=' alpha sorting for UI elements is not sorted in the engine (the way you illustrated was how I wanted to do it). It is on my todo list and I will try to get something working as soon as I can.

Could someone who is colorblind email dayzdevteam@gmail.com with details and I will add them on skype to get their advice and help test.

[/quote']

note that there are several different forms of colorblindness, so take that into account!

[Scriptwolf 0]

Yeah, a graphical chance like the meters lowering over time displaying how full they are and not just being dependent on seeing the colour would be very very helpful would be really helpful right now I can only tell when it's full and when it's basically empty hehe :P

And as the other guy said there are many different forms, you really need one sure fire way to tell how full or empty the meters are

[Wildcard_tw 2]

Yeah, that's why I didn't suggest just changing the colors used. Changing the green to blue would have fixed things for me, but would have caused havoc for people with violet deficiency. I personally just have issues with certain shades of green and red, and my case is pretty mild compared to some people so I don't think I'd make a good guinea pig.

Always helps if the colors being used vary in brightness and saturation instead of just hue, but the easiest quick fix would probably just be a numerical value next to the icon.

Rocket, don't feel bad, man. I appreciate you keeping us in mind. :] It's definitely not a priority considering everything else you have on your plate.

I've just been drinking/eating whenever the icons start flashing or if I run across excess food/drink that I can't carry.

[Land Squid 22]

*raises hand* I'm once of those who are Red/Green deficient in my vision, specifically anomalous trichromacy (though unsure if it is protanomaly or deuteranomaly, been a while since I was tested). I frequently have difficulty in the game seeing waypoint markers (green on green) or any red text on green background.

An easy fix (at least in my case) would be to change the waypoint markers and name tags to a bold blue color, and switch the icons from a green to red shift, to a blue to yellow or blue to white shift. Or as Wildcard mentioned, for those people with some of the rarer color deficiencies, perhaps a white to black transition instead.

Something else I've just been working around (simply through the immensely time consuming close scrutiny of everything I look at) is the monochromatic green vision experienced when using NVG's in the game. I know this breaks the "realiasm" in the game but if the NVG's could be switched to a user choice of monochromatic red, yellow, blue or gray scale, (personally I'd probably go with blue or gray) that would be tremedously helpful.

[statistx 5]

Having the green-red problem myself (and no, that doesn't mean we can't see those colours, it just is harder to distinct some of the different mixed colour layers like some green-brown-red tones, blue-purple and such) i totally support that.

I don't know what others there are instead of the green-red which seems to be the most common, but making the colours more vibrant or rely on other main colours would possibly help out.

I personally could possibly work with Blue for full, bright yellow for half and dark red for empty.

The best case scenario would be of course numbers or different symbols of course.

Edit: since alpha layers don't work on the UI, couldn't it work if you for example replace the "empty" part of a meter with black to trick the engine? Not needed that it is transparent

[therussiandong@hotmail.com 5]

Good to know there are other colorblind players out there besides me who feel the pain of the GUI.

[DR1F7R 19]

+1 no CB but this is a great idea for those who are.

Would it be possible to represent the amount of water/food etc left with a number counter under the icon? kinda like the temp value on the debug display?

[Fraguido 1]

haha I was so happy to see this thread I am super color blind. Orange/Red/Green/Brown Blue/Purple. No need to feel bad Rocket Im pretty sure i see better than u in the dark. The game is not unplayable and i have not died as a result of this but i do have a difficult time with the vehicle repair status icon, the marker/distance meter and the blood/drink/eat meter. I would be very pleased to help in anyway to make things better for my colorblind brothers. I'll add my info if the devs wish to contact me. Thanks for all your hard work dev team!!!

[clever 12]

Red/green colorblindness is somewhat common in males actually, I don't see a reason why this couldn't be in.

[Lukio (DayZ) 24]

One of the few multiplayer games that had great support for colour blind people was DAoC.

It employed different characters like $ # % for poison, disease and stun (I don't remember exatcly) as well as + and - to indicate the approximate difficulty of enemies.

Anyway how it could work in DayZ is having some kind of text indicator next to the icons:

For the health meter for example:

Full health: +++

Medium health: +/-

Bad health: ----

Maybe it would be simpler to integrate a text based colour blind system, not graphical.

[raspu86 0]

I'm red-green blind as well! I always had problems to distinguish the icons on the bottom right, so a solution would be much appreciated!