rrrrrrrrr
Probably Diablo, but it might be earlier than that. In Diablo there were white, normal items, blue items that were magical but common, and gold items that were unique. This was refined to include "rare" items and items that were part of a set, in Diablo II (adding yellow and green, respectively).
Sakamoto demands an explanation for this shit.
First game I'd heard of to do it was Borderlands, but then again I haven't played Diablo or World Of Warcraft.
Not that specific way of doing it, but I could swear they did it in the SSI goldbox games, or the Bard's Tale series, but it's been so long I can't be sure exactly what they did.
Some slight chance on the Ultima series.
crazy and proud of it
The Bard's Tale series definitely didn't do it - all text was the same color.
Unlikely that the SSI games did it either - played through the Krynn series not too long ago, and all text in those games were likewise the same color
The Might & Magic series might have done it descriptively, but all text was the same color anyhow. You just had to imagine what a "sparking lapis glass wakizashi" looked like.
I would have figured Ever Crack but that post-dates Diablo.
Noodle Implements FTW!
I vote for Diablo, as it was the Trope Codifier for a LOT of interface improvements now tightly associated with Roguelike games.
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Jamais vu
I don't remember if it was before Diablo, but Doom, of all things, had the different armor colors, with different colors connoting different armor percent.
UN JOUR JE SERAI DE RETOUR PRÈS DE TOI
Doom does indeed predate Diablo, but I don't think that's the kind of "color-coded loot" being referred to here. :/
The kind of loot we're describing is by label. For Example All Of This [[orange: Stuff]]
edited 25th Apr '11 8:11:52 AM by MajorTom
Jonah Falcon
I remember some SSG/SSI games doing it on the C64.
Jonah Falcon
Yeah, so do I. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the games had it, and some didn't. They did change the engine a few times.
Specifically the system of white<green<blue<purple in terms of quality. I know that World Of Warcraft is probably the most prominent but I've seen this particular coding appear in several other games.
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