Better spark colors

Discussions related to the BloodsPilot clients
Post Reply
Angeba
Posts: 88
Joined: Sun Feb 06, 2011 11:23 pm

Better spark colors

Post by Angeba »

The default spark colors (yellow and red) interfere too much with important game objects.
They make it more difficult to see things like enemies on the HUD radar (red) and yellow is
too bright, obstructing the view of shots (white) and HUD information (green).

Single stepping through some experimental recordings reveals that the default spark colors of
the bloodspilot X11 client (7,3,5,5) (i.e. yellow, red, dark red) are in fact in the opposite order
of what they probably should have been. A spark leaving the exhaust of the ship is first dark red,
then red, then yellow with the defaults.
So the client expects the numbers to `sparkColors' with the darkest color first to the brightest color last.
The corrected default would then be `5,5,3,7', which actually looks quite nice.

Still, the colors which I am happy with for a long time are `6,8,13,2' (dark grey, dark blue, medium grey,
blue). They obstruct the view very little. Sparks help to better understand what is happening, i.e.
influence of explosions, thrust and wall bouncing particles. One can even notice a ball popping outside
of the visible area, by the resulting sparks. They are also very helpful on maps with cloaks, because
you can see the exhaust sparks of the ship even while the ship itself is invisible (depending on server
settings, e.g. on New Dark Hell).

Note that the above is true for the bloodspilot X11 client. The situation seems different for other clients,
because they seem to use other default colors and/or a different color palette.

Let me know which spark colors you prefer, so we can set some sensible defaults.
rotunda
Site Admin
Posts: 77
Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2010 2:19 pm

Re: Better spark colors

Post by rotunda »

Personally I'm not inconvenienced by the current colors, but would like to try the combinations you suggest.
Post Reply