My theory on the openness colors were that the opennessHigh color was a warning color and the rest were 'safe' colors. So you would take a quick look at the image and if you see a lot of red, it would stand out because you probably don't want everything to be extremely open. You want most paths to be green to yellow and contrast isn't as important since you don't need as much precision.

With burningDog's openness colors, there is definitely more contrast and you can better see the changes in openness but I think the meaning of the colors is lost because the magenta color stands out to me, but then it is used on the middle openness that shows up the most. Instead of warning us when something becomes too open.

Randomaccount#77123

United States5003 Posts

October 21 2010 22:22 GMT

#26

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dimfish

United States663 Posts

October 21 2010 22:30 GMT

#27

Yeah, exactly what Barrin said. Openness is not good or bad. You really want the various bands to stand out though, so if your map has different openness in areas that are supposed to be balanced, then it should stand out in the image.

One of my goals for openness is to detect that the choke between the natural and third bases on Scrap Station is tighten for the lower spawn and more open at the top. I'd like for this difference to be noticeable just from looking at an openness image. Many players found this by experimenting in the game, but the map analyzer should nail stuff like this in a snap.

Randomaccount#77123

United States5003 Posts

October 21 2010 22:42 GMT

#28

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dimfish

United States663 Posts

October 21 2010 22:56 GMT

#29

On October 22 2010 07:42 Barrin wrote:
This is intrinsically connected to the # of color variables that shift over a specified area of space. In other words, I really think you're the one with the proper tools to change this.

But for us, it seems to me that in order to do this is it extremely important to make sure that opennessMid1 and opennessMid2 should contrast the most. opennessLow and opennessMid1 should also contrast a lot, depending on the map really.

If you open up constants.txt you can change the variable "maxOpennessRender" or something like that to set the scale!

So it goes like this: when a map cell is directly adjacent to a boundary is has openness zero, it always renders the openness minimum color, say red (I think it is currently red?)

Let's say you made a completely empty map that was 64x64. I think the current opennessMax constant is 14 or 15, so all the cells in the middle of your map that are farther than 15 from the edge will all be the opennessMax color. So if you make the opennessRenderMax constant 32, then the openness gradient would stretch to the center of your 64x64 map.

So yes, you can stretch or squish the scale as you like, but if you want more levels you gotta tell me and I'll code it in, and create the extra colors like for influence.

Randomaccount#77123

United States5003 Posts

October 21 2010 22:59 GMT

#30

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burningDog

Netherlands59 Posts

October 21 2010 23:06 GMT

#31

Maybe the maxOpennessRender should be set to 9 (or maybe 12 + one extra level). Somehow that feels like it makes sense to me, because alot of buidings are 3x3.

I'm done messing arround with the analyzer for today, but maybe it can help someone (if it actually does make any sense

Randomaccount#77123

United States5003 Posts

October 21 2010 23:30 GMT

#32

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dimfish

United States663 Posts

October 21 2010 23:59 GMT

#33

Barrin, what your saying is true for a hallway that is exactly 20 cells wide (10 cells of good openness colors in each direction). But the analyzer actually does a really good job of calculating when a point is like 7.35 cells away from a boundary, whatever the angle is to the closest thing. So actually lots of cells on the map are colored in the gradient with in-between values.

Still, if it looks good, it looks good. and YES YES YES we need a standard, like the current version has become a standard, so when someone looks at the openness image of a new map they can put it in perspective compared to maps they know.

Any takers for even more openness colors, or are the current levels with a new max of 10/12 or some such looking good?

Any suggestions what the benchmark maps are for openness? What maps show extremes in tight and open in the most critical areas (main choke, natural + surroundings)?

Randomaccount#77123

United States5003 Posts

October 22 2010 00:54 GMT

#34

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Randomaccount#77123

United States5003 Posts

October 22 2010 02:22 GMT

#35

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Samro225am

Germany982 Posts

October 22 2010 11:38 GMT

#36

barrin:
the problem in picking colors with strong contrast is that the actual space of the map gets separated into several stripes. this is not very intuitiv since one could get the impression of a narrow space.

i like the concept of sticking to 'neutral' colors. did the same. no comments on my try (first page)? probably more contrast needed?

Randomaccount#77123

United States5003 Posts

October 23 2010 06:19 GMT

#37

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dimfish

United States663 Posts

October 23 2010 16:26 GMT

#38

Barrin, nice analysis. I'm tinkering with new color schemes, too. Can everyone post their latest versions (if newer than what's posted already?) and I'll collect them into a nice post with lots of styles side-by-side. Maybe not time for choosing a final version just yet, but I want to collect everyone's input up to this point.

It'll be something like this:

Openness Schemes
-BoomStevo's dark blue cold to red warm, colorful, I think blends well with other colors in the image
-Samro225am's yellow/green/blue is stylish, but maybe needs some color reordering to achieve a little more contrast?
-burningDog's wicked evil blue-magenta-yellow-white, which is also stylish, and for some reason the blue edges really bring out the map outline which gives the user an immediate frame of reference. I think the inner colors could use more contrast? Maybe just tweak the yellow so the in-between orange color pops out more?
-Barrin's grey-green-blue, again a stylish set, my only concern is that it generates a lot of grey which blends with the terrain, BUT there have been proposals to help the terrain stand out more...

Influence Schemes
-BoomStevo's rainbow
-BurningDog's Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, which I think reads really, really well in terms of being able to pick out the bands, and with a minimum of contrast
-Barrin's high-contrast, information-is-most-valuable scheme

I'll use either burningdog's or Barrin's terrain elevation adjustments for the round-up. burngingDog flattened the lowest elevation and the 1st playable to zero to keep the average color dark, clever idea:

terrainElev0 = 0x000000
terrainElev1 = 0x000000
terrainElev2 = 0x212121
terrainElev3 = 0x424242

and Barrin's is similar, but not as tight a range: 0, .2, .4, .6

If you have input on which of these terrain color sets works better for you, give a shout!

Oh yeah, and burningDog, I didn't forget about your idea to do terrain as dithered points, but I think the initial round of schemes showed it could be done much better than my initial attempts. Your new way does require some coding, so I'll put it to you: are you still interested in seeing a version of that or do you think the color schemes coming out have solved the problem? If you still want it I'll get it for ya.

Don't forget about burningDog's suggestion to find a slick version of a color scheme you're already using: colorpicker.com

burningDog

Netherlands59 Posts

October 23 2010 18:39 GMT

#39

The dark elevation scheme Barrin and I used looks the best, but it can be hard to see wat level your looking at. I mean, we all know maps like steppes so it's easy there, but on new maps it's pretty hard to tell.

But at the same time I kinda don't like my dithered example anymore either, it's to noisey

Maybe something like this. Where there's a 4 pix square at the center of each tile.
lvl1 black, lvl2 grey and lvl 3 white. (or maybe lvl2 = no square in the middel)

[image loading]

But before you start the coding, it's probably best to hear what other people think about it.

So, what do you people think about the height map representation?

dimfish

United States663 Posts

October 23 2010 18:43 GMT

#40

Mmm, that could be cool, I'll vote for a square on low and high, nothing on mid, and the exact coloring can of course be in the colors.txt so it's easily played with. And then you want the crosses that are currently the terrain color to always be black, to really contrast whatever color information is on the map cells