Feedback: Character Colors

[Dr_Chat]

Hey,

First off: I loved the original Renegade, and I really love a lot about Renegade X and would really like to see this game succeed.

 

One thing I've noticed from playing this game is how hard it is to see who's a teammate vs. who isn't. I played a bit of RenX earlier today for the first time in a long time, and I noticed I would constantly mistake friendly infantry units as enemies, and enemies as friendlies.

The problem is a lot of the infantry units look the same color from a distance, which makes them hard to distinguish.

Here's a few examples of what I mean:

 

Look at this picture from the original (in fullscreen preferably): If I had a better character - at first glance who would I shoot? The red guy, duh!

 

Now - a picture from RenX. Featured: two NOD infantry guys running up to help attack GDI's base. Or are they NOD units? Either way, they didn't raise enough suspicion for me to go back and see if they were friendlies or not.

Here's a picture of a bunch of GDI units going for an early-game attack on the NOD base:

 

Yeah - first, seriously, the characters look amazing. Great job! They also just need to be more colored depending on the team. In the original, characters were primarily team-colored - even down to the bullets coming from their guns! This makes enemies really easy to distinguish compared to teammates in milliseconds without ever directly looking at them.

I understand though that one issue may be Renegade's lighting is rather simple compared to the UDK's lighting, making it harder for a character to actually show their team color. Why not try another solution, e.g. subtle team-colored outlines only on friendlies?

 

I feel that this issue extends to vehicles as well - but in a much more minor way.

Either way - let's open a discussion on this issue.

Edited June 24, 2017 by Dr_Chat

[Madkill40]

This only extends to vehicles if you steal your enemies vehicle and your enemy doesn't target you. An automatic outline on your allies seems really intrusive and could either make any form of covert operations harder or easier. 

If you look at how simply colourful the original Ren is those yellows blend with all the other simple colours, in RenX those engineers stand out but not every character on GDI can be like that.

Most (I think all) of Nod is black, grey and/or red, if you are on Nod and don't see those colours on the player ahead then it is an enemy.

When you point your gun at anyone they get a box around them, clear enough indication.

[Dr_Chat]

@Madkill40: You're right on the first two points. For vehicles - I meant they all had similar colors (to a much lesser extent) across team lines.

In the original screenshot, the yellows do blend together which is okay. It makes the red enemies easier to see.

 

2 hours ago, Madkill40 said:

Most (I think all) of Nod is black, grey and/or red, if you are on Nod and don't see those colours on the player ahead then it is an enemy.

In that middle screenshot, those GDI units are primarily black/grey/not yellow. I looked at them for less than a second before thinking they were teammates.

In the last screenshot, I looked at that NOD unit behind my teammate, and right away thought he was a teammate. So I go back to fighting, then later on he snuck up behind me and killed me.

It is not enough to have an absence of colors indicate that someone is an enemy.

2 hours ago, Madkill40 said:

When you point your gun at anyone they get a box around them, clear enough indication.

Correct - I could look at them to confirm (which I have to do too often in RenX).

Edited June 24, 2017 by Dr_Chat

[vandal33]

Pointing at them and the color of the outline will tell you it's friendly or not (even spies) but I do feel this issue sometimes, one time after seeing the outline when I pointed at a friendly NOD Officer (who looks like GDI officer because he was bright yellow from a distance), I even thought that was a GDI officer spy teammate.

[Tomcat_]

I don't have any problems with identifying friendlies vs. foes other than with stolen vehicles. I find that it's generally pretty obvious who's who unless you're in a shadowy area or some place with weird lighting, in which case I'd say combatant identification becomes more of an interesting gameplay element than a nuisance.

The infantry in the middle screenshot look ambiguous because they're sort of far away. The fact that they're coming down the cliffside toward Nod vehicles from what appears to be the GDI infantry path should make it obvious that they're GDI.

The third screenshot, though, I can clearly see that it's a Nod trooper and not GDI. Can't help you there...

I have heard suggestions that it may be difficult for colorblind or near-colorblind people to tell the difference between the various muted hues of greys, yellows and greens on the infantry uniforms. I'm not suggesting you're colorblind, just bringing this up because I feel it's related. An option to increase color saturation for the colorblind would be a welcome addition. This is a feature already present in a number of multiplayer games. I recall some brief discussion about this mid-game just the other day.

As for identifying stolen vehicles, I think alternate skins that activate when an opposing combatant captures it would solve the problem. Today, Jeff stole an arty on Fort and sat behind the strip for several minutes decimating everyone before he was discovered. The base was under siege at the time and it was rather chaotic, so nobody realized that the arty at the back of the base was an enemy until I happened across him after repairing the refinery. Alternate vehicle skins would look pretty fucking cool, to boot. Picturing a mammoth tank or an orca in Nod silver, or a stank in GDI gold... would be as cool as it would be visually helpful.

Edited June 29, 2017 by Tomcat_