Color schemes

[beni]

Ben made a suggestion that we define color schemes for spaceships and other models of a certain race or organisation. I really like that as it will give more guidelines for designers to produce models that are fitting for the ones already in existence.

Now, I'm not really the color-guy, so I'd like somebody to come up with some themes for color schemes that we could use for Noxons, Asheroc and Human organizations. I can of course make some comments and give some informations, but I don't see myself coming up with suitable schemes.

[BadElvis]

Ok, so this means that we have a palette of a couple of color-hues for each faction. The texture designer may only change saturation and brightness. Is this what you mean?

Another thing that comes to my mind is the introduction of team-colored areas on the models. The team-color is defined as a hue value and only the saturation and brightness values are taken from the texture of the model. What do you think about this?

The concept could also be extended to particles that are emitted by the teams' models.

[x3n]

the attached colorable elements like engine trails, lights, or flares are currently our way to create different color schemes (for instance in team deathmatch). I'm not sure if different races should have different colors... that's a rather strong limitation, isn't it? if we have like 3 fractions + police + pirates + 2 alien races + neutral/civil ships, we'll run out of colors...

For some reason I prefer another approach which is a little unrealistic, but probably easier to understand for random players: friends are green, neutral ships are blue/gray, foes are red. This only affects the engine trails though, not ne model itself. Different races can have different styles, but the player can simply shoot everything that has a red trail. Let's call it a feature of the cockpit HUD that highlights ships, makes it a little more realistic

[beni]

Sorry, I wasn't clear with what I mean. What you are talking about are colors that help identify ships during gameplay. I strictly meant to talk about colors of textures, regardless of team. BadElvis had it right with his first guess.

The problem is, that textures from different artists may differ a lot. For instance a Noxon ship could be nearly black, a very light brown or be even green or red. This will result in a total chaos and each individual ship would look totally unique texture-wise. I think there should be some uniformity with which the player can easily identify a ship as alien or human, Noxon or Asheroc.

I'm not sure how we can solve this with just color-hue, since the darkness or lightness of models should also somehow be similar, but I guess it would be a very nice start for some guidelines.

On the team colors, I agree that we could have friend/ally, neutral and enemy colors and would have enough, with just that.

[x3n]

yeah ok, but the 3 races have completely different technology - humans: metal, noxons: organic, asherocs: energy - at least as far as I remember. Thats very easy to identify. Limiting all ships of a race to a color scheme would limit our possibilities.

examples:
human ships could be dark/camouflage military ships, dirty/rusty pirate ships, very bright and glossy civil "sport"-ships, etc, all shades of colors

organic noxon ships could be green snake-skin style, maybe red (like a beating heart), brown slime, black bug shells, etc.


I do however agree that we need some sort of schemes - like I just did (a scheme for military ship, one for pirates, etc), but not for the whole race. Same holds for alien ships which could have different coloring the further you advance in the story (different color -> new kind of enemy, probably stronger).
example: If the player spent some hours fighting green noxon ships and suddenly a red one approaches, he'll be very careful.


So to sum this up, I prefer a rich variety of ships and styles; but not all mixed up, rather sorted by theme or something. Have a look at classic games like Diablo II - all enemies look very different, but there are only ~3 different types of enemies in one level. Also the "hell" theme has a different style than the "desert" theme, etc.

[beni]

Well, I agree that we can use several kinds of systems here to identify.

You are exactly right about the humans having different colors for civilian, military and other ships, which is why I also mentioned factions in my first post. Unfortunately this led to some confusion.

I'm also no fan of limiting a designers creativity. Yet the player shouldn't ALWAYS encounter very unique designs, but instead only when a certain enemy has more importance, like strength or story relevance. (Why not have a blue ship for a certain important human character, while all other ships of the same model are white, for instance).

It would already be nice to agree on greenish snake color for skin and shiny black surfaces for chitin protection.
For once I don't really like the comparison with Diablo. It's true that we have different themes there, but we don't in Orxonox. Also in Diablo practically everything is just there to be slashed down as quickly as possible, so it doesn't really matter to distinguish friend from foe. And lastly the enemies allow for MUCH more variety than we have in Orxonox. Mud worms, zombies, tiny jungle men, ethereal ghosts etc.

I think it would make sense to define a few basic concepts for the design, like the skin and shells you mentioned for the Noxons. A designer could then design a ship, knowing where to put the weapns, shells, skin parts and legs etc. and already have an idea about the general design and coloring of it. I think combining these basic concepts and adding a little of its own to each design would give a good consistency and still wouldn't stifle variety or creativity.

[x3n]

so it doesn't really matter to distinguish friend from foe.

right, but as we just said before, we can use different concepts (team colors, trails, flares, etc) to distinguish friend from foe.

It's true that we have different themes there, but we don't in Orxonox.

Sure we do... I'm pretty sure the world looks different if you're close to jupiter instead of mars. Different environments have different kinds of inhabitants. I don't really know the details, you're the pro here, but lets say if mars is used for big towns and stuff, while jupiter is mainly occupied by gas mining companies, then you'll see different styles of ships flying around.

The same holds for enemies: You will probably fight against noxon scouts and fighters in the beginning, later you will probably find some sort of motherships or space stations, which are surrounded by different kinds of ships, like farmers and such.

This allows for quite a big variety of themes. So maybe we have a new topic here: should every level in orxonox look the same or do we want different styles/themes?


edit:
On a side note, I'm not saying I dislike concepts or styleguides, and I also agree that we shouldn't have too many totally unique designs, but rather a homogenous style. But that doesn't mean we can use only one color or one scheme.
It's like designing cars: They all have different shapes and colors, but still have 4 wheels and windows. And thus you can easily distinguish cars from planes or pedestrians.

edit2:
Talking about the "car" example: I prefere some sort of 'technical' styleguides - so designers are free to build fancy models, as long as they follow some rules.
Examples for rules:
Cars have 4 wheels, seats, windows, etc
Or in Orxonox:
Human ships have a metal hull, a cockpit, thrusters
Noxon ships have snake skin and bug shells (no note about the color though)

[beni]

so it doesn't really matter to distinguish friend from foe.

right, but as we just said before, we can use different concepts (team colors, trails, flares, etc) to distinguish friend from foe.

I meant in Diablo. There you just kill everything that moves.

It's true that we have different themes there, but we don't in Orxonox.

Sure we do... I'm pretty sure the world looks different if you're close to jupiter instead of mars. Different environments have different kinds of inhabitants. I don't really know the details, you're the pro here, but lets say if mars is used for big towns and stuff, while jupiter is mainly occupied by gas mining companies, then you'll see different styles of ships flying around.

Okay, I was referring to Noxons here. The human themes are clear I think.

The same holds for enemies: You will probably fight against noxon scouts and fighters in the beginning, later you will probably find some sort of motherships or space stations, which are surrounded by different kinds of ships, like farmers and such.

This allows for quite a big variety of themes. So maybe we have a new topic here: should every level in orxonox look the same or do we want different styles/themes?

Hmm, I haven't thought about it that far. I like the idea, but I wouldn't call it a theme or style if you just distinguish strength of the enemy. It is very well possible to fight against very small enemies around Mars, go somewhere else, fight stronger ones, go back to Mars and encounter even more stronger ones there. This is because the world in Orxonox is only semi-static, which means that the levels around the planets will change with time as the story develops.

edit2:
Talking about the "car" example: I prefere some sort of 'technical' styleguides - so designers are free to build fancy models, as long as they follow some rules.
Examples for rules:
Cars have 4 wheels, seats, windows, etc
Or in Orxonox:
Human ships have a metal hull, a cockpit, thrusters
Noxon ships have snake skin and bug shells (no note about the color though)

I agree that we need this, but it doesn't go far enough in my opinion. Maybe color is also not enough. The look of metal is not only dependent on color, but also structure. Looking at the pirate model from Felix and then at the ASSF (is it called that?) let me think of two very different styles. The same goes for an oldtimer car and a ferrari. There is only so much that can divert from a certain style until it looks out of place. I can't tell you how far it goes and which criteria we have to look at exactly, so we can define a style, but I wouldn't want to count out color hues.

[Mozork]

Regarding how to reasonably define guidelines for races/factions, I think we could borrow some of how it is done from the Tang Icon Theme Guidelines http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon ... Guidelines (especially regarding color scheme guidelines)

I think clear guidelines would help in creating a more concise experience, and I don't think defining a color scheme (or let's call it a color palette) is very limiting (see the tango icon theme guidelines). But I agree, that factors other than a color palette are important as well, e.g. the set of textures that is used, the general shape/overall feel of the model, a.s.o.
And of course such guidelines are limiting, but I think they are necessary (especially with so many different contributers) to create some sense of similarity.

As a first step it may be best to assign some adjectives to the different races/factions and then work our way up from that.

[x3n]

I meant in Diablo. There you just kill everything that moves.

I know you meant Diablo. Orxonox is more complex and thus we can use team colors.

The same goes for an oldtimer car and a ferrari. There is only so much that can divert from a certain style until it looks out of place.

I wouldn't say a model looks out of place as long as both follow the same physics/rules of the world.

let me make an example:
let's assume we create a racing game. now we have these two cars in the game: car1 and car2. As you can clearly see, they follow the same styleguides , but still one of these models will look out of place because of the different number of faces, texture resolution, shaders, etc.

and now another example, two cars that are actually in the same game (gran turismo 5) and neither of them looks out of place, because it's simply realistic to see completely different types of cars: car1 and car2