Colour Blind Play

Posted on Able Gamers, active member ‘Sagan’ submitted a small program which enables you to change colour settings on PC based versions of games like MW2 and Bioshock 2 by modifying Direct X to enable you to change green to black, thus making it easier to see those pesky colours that make it increasingly difficult to succeed, not through lack of skill, but through the lack of ability to ‘see’ the trigger colour element to progress, score, time an action or frag an opponent.

The post can be seen here > click on me < and the file can be downloaded directly via here > download me link <  A BIG thank you goes to Sagan for spending time in creating this application/plugin/vital ingredient. We hope that your skills are picked up by an understanding development company who understands the importance of including such an important feature as this one in mainstream games. After all, how much is spent on visual plugins (foliage, textures, sound etc)? Which in reality all they do is add to the background visual ambience, when the really important function is the ability to respond to the absolute action.

Sledgehammer Games has announced that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will include a colour blind option.

On the company’s ‘Question of the week’ blog, Sledgehammer vice president Michael Condrey addressed the need for a colour blind option.

“Research suggests that as much as 6% of the general population suffers from Colour Blindness, or more accurately Colour Vision Deficiency,” said Condrey.

“Those numbers vary depending on which source you quote, but we estimate that nearly a million gamers are playing Call of Duty every day with this issue. I am happy to report that we are working on a Colour Blind Assist option for Modern Warfare 3.”

The most common form of colour blindness is red-green colour blindness. Games like Modern Warfare 3 have typically used the colours green and red to indicate the locations of teammates and enemies on maps, making the games difficult to play if colour blind.

Its great so see developers taking the issues seriously, especially for the such big brands as MW. We urge you to check out the full article over at digitalspy.co.uk which includes comments and reactions to this news as well as a preview of MW3.

[...]

Roses are red, violets are blue but according to the latest understanding these colours are really an illusion. One that you create yourself.

Horizon reveals a surprising truth about how we all see the world. You may think a rose is red, the sky is blue and the grass is green, but it now seems that the colours you see may not always be the same as the colours I see. Your age, sex and even mood can affect how you experience colours.

Scientists have unlocked the hidden power that colours can have over your life – how red can make you a winner, how blue makes time speed up, and more.

To view the documentary via iPlayer go here:

While making a Portal 2 map last month, Robert Yang asked:

Was choosing “red” a bad idea / horribly insensitive to colorblind people? Like, will they be able to distinguish the non-portalable metal plating from the stone walls? I don’t want a BioShock 2 debacle on my hands.

Special thanks go over to @adurdin who sent over a link to this article on backslashn.com which discusses colour mapping in the Valve SDK. The full article can be read here.