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+ Show Spoiler +
slightly more contrast while keeping it easy to look at, stylish - it ended up pretty much like the old version :D the main difference is that the yellow and lime green work better together in my opinion than the orange and green in the original version by dimfish, because the reddish orange contrasted a lot. darker blue and violet are easy picks, so the colors form a gradient from light to dark as well as from yellow to blue (and violet).
i like burningDog's suggestion a lot but i am not sure if the difference is strong enough between levels. when the crosses remain black throughout all cliff heights 4/5 of the height indexing remains the same. might be an idea to only use crosses and go from black to grey to white.
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Barrin, my thoughts
Openness, the information is crisp, so I think your general strat of dark, light, light, dark and whatever opennessRenderMax you picked are very good (12?) but I honestly do not like the inner green and red.
And for the influence, I think your post on page 2 is better. White as the equal influence shows better, and the colors close to the basest gave much clearer bands for comparison.
I think burningDog's influence from early on really, really, shows great bands, its so easy to look at a ramp or a space and compare it to the opposite end. Maybe you could try working your black/white into his color scheme and see how it goes?
On October 22 2010 03:48 burningDog wrote:How about using less colors for the infuence map, but repeating them? In the pictures in the spoiler tag I used Cyan, Magenta and Yellow as the only 3 colors and I think it shows regions pretty well. But maybe you lose some other type of info in doing it this way... + Show Spoiler +
Actually, now that I think about it, maybe its something about cyan/yellow/magenta none of which has a pure RGB value in it that makes those gradients pick up really well... Who knows color theory?
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On October 24 2010 06:24 Barrin wrote:
@samro yes it does look better but I really reccomend a scheme like this
opennessLow = dark color opennessMid1 = light color opennessMid2 = light color opennessHigh = dark color
right now you have
opennessLow = light(er) color opennessMid1 = light color opennessMid2 = dark color opennessHigh = dark color
i really think that opennessHigh should contrast a lot with opennessMid2 so it's very obvious which places are the most open.
i was aware of it. i also pointed out in my last post that i thought it was a good idea to have a color gradient as well as a lightness gradient.
having read your suggestion i tried around a bit in order with dark-light-light-dark and it works well. at the same time a narrowed the color palette with a dark yellowish green.
when opennessLow and opennessMid1 have a similar color the image signifies quite well were space will feel small.
+ Show Spoiler +
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On my colors All constants unchanged, float opennessRenderMax = 14.0 You can try it: opennessLow = 0x56630D opennessMid1 = 0x6CE362 opennessMid2 = 0x33AAFF opennessHigh = 0x7800C2 I think what works so well is the small nuances. the dark green actually is very yellow or warm, the light green has a tendency into cool blue. I'll try to use an even warmer color for opennessLow.
On this discussion You analysis are convincing but I think one could also try with a more playfull attempt. this might be also an answer why so few people participate in this dicussion. there are many people with good colorschemes here, there is a relative high level of discussion going on and everybody seems to put quite some thought into this - it is just not very playfull although very sexy indeed - I just love maps. while I am more an analytic guy I tend to leave that a bit away when trying around with colors, sothat it feels natural, not too logic and stringent. this might be a reaction to your very analytic apporach. I think your thought help everybiody a lot to understand what is going on, but also it might put of some people who are less interested in a very strong effort. do not get me wrong such analysis have to be done. it is just a lot to read for somebody who is not in maps (cartography, not leveldesign) or graphic design etc.
but don't feel bad about pushing this discussion's level up. groups often work quite well in such a size like 5 people because everybody can contribute and actually take the time to look at everbody's effort. if 15 people try to contribute to this thread there might be a lot of post one misses.
On your new colors your analysis is very strong and I like the outcome. I would probably switch the blue to a very light color sothat it looks white but probably with some green or blue touch. this is my only critiscism to your apporach. having a strong idea yopu end up with very strong and pure colors. probably you now want to look into the very detail of each color: is there a lot of blue in the red? check the hex code for dark purple: #800080. Or is the white a bit blue-ish? does the yellow acually lean a bit into the the green spectrum? then you can configure the colors a bit more and they end up easier to the eye (this does only apply to blue in your map) and blend well while they give information to the expert.
A new analysis on my own stuff
In my last try I did pretty much this: Y(G)-G-B-V (dark warm color - light cold color - light cold color - dark warm color)
I think with a higher resolution one could see all the details but until then I have to put more yellow into my dark green and more red into my purple. Also I will try to pick a darker blue while hoping that the lightter pruple and the darker blue willl not split but blend well.
edit:
New image
I change the colors and are quite happy with the outcome. while they still blend well the give more information as there is more contrast. big plus is that there is no red used (in my humble opinion). somehow red is a 'very loud' color...
here is the code: + Show Spoiler + opennessLow = 0x544C0C opennessMid1 = 0x6CE362 opennessMid2 = 0x1873B5 opennessHigh = 0x9400F0
and the image: + Show Spoiler +
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am I wrong or is there no yellow spike in position 2 on your image?
probably I misunderstand your point, but when you say that there should be spikes (more visible information once you look at the details), then there should be more contrast. when you use very similar tones like red and yellow they look orange anyway. when you then add orange as the tone in between than it looks good, but it is harder to see the information. I mean, we need more spike! this is the reason why i changed my colors: blending because they are at the right position with the color spectrum (Y-G-B-V) but switching it to dark-light-dark-light (but not too strong) and using different tones (violet/pruple is quite red while green is pretty blue) to separate them enough from another sothat the blueish spike is visible. i do not want to agument that my colors are supperior, actually i think there is a wide variety of colors that could work well, but as far as i understand in your example there is more info in position 1 and 2 (blistering sands - pretty much the best map for analysing the analysis)
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This is sick, I love that you all are getting into this. I agree that Samro's colors look good, show the details, and also they play well with the terrain colors.
So you noticed that the LoS blockers get rendered on Blistering Sands right? Barrin helped a lot with cataloging all the doodads and I'm writing up their coded footprints. In the next release we'll do new color schemes and support every flippin' doodad you can place currently. I'm psyched!
Who else is working on schemes? Is the general consensus that a variation of burningDog's influence and samro's openness are leading the pack? Barrin's of course still tinkering, but I want to hear whether anyone else is playing around.
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On October 26 2010 06:05 dimfish wrote:This is sick, I love that you all are getting into this. I agree that Samro's colors look good, show the details, and also they play well with the terrain colors. So you noticed that the LoS blockers get rendered on Blistering Sands right?  Barrin helped a lot with cataloging all the doodads and I'm writing up their coded footprints. In the next release we'll do new color schemes and support every flippin' doodad you can place currently. I'm psyched! Who else is working on schemes? Is the general consensus that a variation of burningDog's influence and samro's openness are leading the pack? Barrin's of course still tinkering, but I want to hear whether anyone else is playing around.
mea culpa - i did not even try to play around with the influence map although I followed your discussion. do you think influence and openness should share a style or color scheme? I would definately want to take a shot at the influence colors tomorrow.
i saw the LoSBs in the map but forgot to comment on that: it is great. having all doodads and their collision represented in the mapanalzer is sick XD
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burningDog's incluence colors are great for seeing the bands of influence since they contrast so well, but I have a problem with only using 3 colors instead of 6. The problem is because the colors lose meaning and you have the same color representing two separate areas of influence. For example: + Show Spoiler [burningDog's Influence] +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ykklV.gif) Reference from burningDog's post. Look at the Steppes of War image using burningDog's influence. You will notice that the main and the third are both largely blue, yet the difference in influence is huge. The main has an influence of about 96% yet the third has an influence of 55% yet they appear as the same color of blue. Since the main and the third are actually pretty close, this could add to the confusion. I'd like it if you could find a way to give the same contrast as burningDog's colors yet maintaining separation by using 6 distinct colors.
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OK, that was a long read! 
really interesting theories being thrown around. And I agree with most of 'm, but they don't seem to always work in practice (as others have pointed out).
Anywho, I've tried to make my influence map with out the repeating colors (at each players side) and came up with this. It's CMY from the center and then I inverted the CMY colors to fill up the last 3 slots.
+ Show Spoiler +influenceMid1 = 0x12ff73 influenceMid2 = 0xff510f influenceMid3 = 0x000dff influenceMid4 = 0xfff200 influenceMid5 = 0xed008c influenceMid6 = 0x00aef0 influenceMid7 = 0xed008c influenceMid8 = 0xfff200 influenceMid9 = 0x000dff influenceMid10 = 0xff510f influenceMid11 = 0x12ff73
I don't know if it's more clear in conveying all the information we need, but it strikes me (atleast) as less asceticly pleasing. Which might not be the most important thing ever, but it does count! 
Oh, by the way, my CMY(K) values come from photoshop. You just input CMYK values and it turns it into RGB and hex for you.
+ Show Spoiler +
Which brings me to the following RGB based openness map. Just like CMY values RGB values have lots of colors in between them, so the gradients should work pretty well. (added yellow as the forth color)
+ Show Spoiler +opennessLow = 0xfff000 opennessMid1 = 0xff0000 opennessMid2 = 0x0000ff opennessHigh = 0x00ff00
At the end, even though I think more subtle schemes like Samro225am's look beter, we might be beter of using super bright colors that burn the eyes. They just seem to bring out small (1 or 2 tile) differences beter.
Edit: just realized that cmy-green might make a good combo. I'll have to try that later
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Wait--WHAT? That's crazy!!! No blending? 29 variables?? KU-RAHZY...
Give me a little bit...
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