Line #24 Main/ColorblindMode


1	[[quoteright:319:[[VideoGame/{{Linx}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/0000000000000linxcblind.png]]]]
2	[[caption-width-right:319:Pattern recognition > color recognition, in terms of frequency.]]
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4	ColourCodedForYourConvenience is fine. "Colour-Coded for Mandatory Gameplay Reasons" however... well, that's where it becomes a bit of an issue for games.
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6	Not every single person on the planet can see every color in the visible spectrum, or at least, not properly. This is known as Color Blindness, and it comes in many flavors. Some have protanopia,[[note]]the inability to distinguish between colors in the green-yellow-red spectrum, and red appears dark if not black[[/note]] deuteranopia,[[note]]similar problems to protanopes, but without the abnormal dimming and red doesn’t appear dark[[/note]] tritanopia,[[note]]seeing short-wavelength colors (blue, indigo and a spectral violet) as greenish and drastically dimmed, plus yellow is indistinguishable from pink, and purple colors are perceived as various shades of red[[/note]] or the rarest of them all, monochromacy.[[note]]seeing everything as black, white, or gray[[/note]]
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8	To make games with color elements accessible to a wider audience, developers may implement a colorblind mode into their game via the settings (though even players with ordinary vision can freely select the option if they think it makes the game look better for them). It may affect either the entire screen's color palette, only the most vital parts of a game, or the game could add in symbols or patterns to its objects.
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10	As you may expect, this trope is most commonly found in puzzle games that rely on colored objects, or games with ColorCodedMultiplayer that require you to know the color of what you're looking at, like distinguishing between abilities and team colors. Modern games studios started to commonly add color blind modes into their games in TheNewTens and beyond, simply for the sake of accessibility, even if the game didn't really require such an option to make the game playable for those folks. In older games (even as late as TheNineties), such a mode was sometimes implemented not with colorblind players in mind, [[RightForTheWrongReasons but rather for players who didn't have color displays.]]
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12	A very easy, and ''by far'' the most common way, that developers implement a color blind mode into a game is by overlaying a color filter preset on top of the game, which shows only specific colors to simulate different types of color blindness. The advantage of this is that it's ''good enough'' at replicating different colors for specific types of color blindness to get the job done, but the disadvantage is that color filters don't always work as expected, with certain colors still seeping through on occasion that could confuse color blind folks.
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14	This also has the weighty advantage of game developers not having to manually adjust the colors for every part of the game. Part of the reason why modern 3D Games avoid recoloring the texture for color blind players is at least in part motivated by keeping the collective file size of a game down. In general, most 3D models in a given game have at least 3 textures associated to them; The Diffuse Map (that's the color and pattern you see) a Normal Map[[labelnote:]]or a Bump Map, the terms are basically interchangeable at this point, though there is a difference; bump maps are greyscale, instead of using the [=RGB=] spectrum[[/labelnote]] (adds finer detailing to a model without modelling), and the Reflection Map (controls the reflection strength, go figure). A fair amount of games go even ''further'' to include other textures that control other functions (Occlusion maps, Specular Maps, Emissive Maps etc.), so as you might imagine, taken all together, any given model is gonna look pretty large if you also start to add six ''separate'' colored textures, which would lead to absurd file sizes for each model,[[labelnote:]]In general, 1K textures (1024) will be less than 512kb, 2K textures (2048) are about 2MB, 4K textures (4096) are often 16MB[[/labelnote]] which is just unfeasible as a solution for most developers to add, not to mention the time taken to make and bake these colorblind oriented textures to begin with. In 3D games at least, color filters are here to stay.
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16	When it comes to 2D games, like ones that use old 16-bit sprites, the filesize issue is basically a non-issue, as those sorts of games rely on sprite sheets that are significantly smaller. Not to mention the nature of these games means there are less textures to begin with, as level usually repeat the same tiles again and again. Another solution is to simply do in-engine color picking to a sprite sheet, as sprites of this nature lack complex shading, so they can change the color to a different hue in-engine.
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18	Subtrope of AntiFrustrationFeatures.
19	----
20	!!Video game examples:
21	* ''VideoGame/AHatInTime'' has it in spite of there actually being no puzzles or tasks where seeing in color would be a necessity. Whether it means color-based puzzles were once intended but DummiedOut, or if Gears For Breakfast were just looking out for their color-blind fans is anyone's guess.
22	* ''VideoGame/AmongUs'' has the task of matching like-colored wires to each other. On first release, completing this task was an exercise in futility for colorblind players, but eventually Inner Sloth added small matching shapes on the corresponding ends of the wires.
23	* ''VideoGame/{{Arcaea}}''[='=]s Arc Notes are normally blue and pink, but a toggle changes pink Arcs to yellow. One track, "Red and Blue", features hints pertaining to its Arc colors; colorblind mode will change all references to "RED" to "YELLOW".
24	* The Platform/Atari2600 had a color/black-and-white switch on the console, because black-and-white televisions were still fairly common when it was released. Exact effects depended on the game; ''VideoGame/{{Combat\|Atari2600}}'' and many other early games switched to monochrome, while many later games ignore it.
25	* ''VideoGame/{{Battlefield}}'':
26	** ''VideoGame/Battlefield3'' has a simple colorblind mode, originally exclusive to PC but later added to consoles. It makes teammates dark blue, squadmates yellow-green, and enemies dark red, plus it adds a black border to text and icons.
27	** ''VideoGame/Battlefield4'' has a complete selection.
28	*** Off - Squad: Light Green, Team: Light Blue, Enemy: Orange
29	*** Protanopia - Squad: Gray, Team: Purple, Enemy: Green.
30	*** Deuteranopia - Squad: Purple, Team: Indigo, Enemy: Salmon.
31	*** Tritanopia - Squad: Purple, Team: Blue, Enemy: Orange.
32	** ''VideoGame/Battlefield1'' has similar options, plus neutral things are white. Also, there's a custom option allowing players to adjust it for whatever coloration they need.
33	* ''VideoGame/BlueRevolver'' has a few options to assist colorblind players, including reducing the background brightness and changing enemy bullet colors from pink and yellow to red and green.
34	* The original Windows port of ''VideoGame/ChipsChallenge'' has an option to switch to black and white graphics, since monochrome displays were still in use at the time. Keys, doors and buttons are given unique patterns, rather than colors.
35	* ''VideoGame/{{Chuzzle}}'': There's a colorblind mode in the settings that puts shapes on Chuzzles' heads depending on their color.
36	* ''VideoGame/CrystalCrisis'' includes within its crystal colour sets a colourblind set that can be chosen, though it's anyone's guess how effective it is. It also includes an option to make a custom colour set for those unsatisfied with the one given to them.
37	* ''VideoGame/Doom2016'' has its colorblind settings just filter the game to how it would look like if you had the disability rather than adjusting it to be more useful to such players, making them more suitable for challenge runs/curiosity than actual assistance, though it doesn't require hue recognition that much anyway (green lights often signify progress against many reddish backdrops, but they ''are'' glowing and thus still stand out well enough).
38	* Games in the ''VideoGame/{{Dots}}'' series (including ''Two Dots'' and ''Dots & Co'') have a color blind mode which changes the color palette so that the different colors of dot are more distinct, and also marks each type of dot with a distinct glyph (red dots have a horizon line, green dots have a cross, and so on).
39	* The UsefulNotes/GameBoy port of ''VideoGame/DrMario'' could be seen as this in comparison to its [[UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem NES]] counterpart, albeit out of necessity due to console limitations. Rather than the NES that strictly uses color patterns the Game Boy uses both shades ''and'' patterns to differentiate between the pills, with them also appearing as hollow (yellow), checkerboard (blue), and solid (red) in addition to using different shades of green/grey. Undoubtedly there were color-blind fans who were ''very'' happy to learn that there was [[https://i.imgur.com/P9OLOc4.png a version of this game they could actually play]].
40	* More recently, a [[https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5625/ colorblind mod]] of ''VideoGame/DrMario'' was made that changes the red / blue / yellow palette to a brown / blue / white one, making them distinguishable for people with most kinds of colorblindness, being only unplayable for people who have full monochromacy.
41	* ''VideoGame/DungeonsOfAether'' has deuteranopia, tritanopia, protanopia, and Okabe-Ito options, since matching colored dice to their corresponding stats is an important part of the game.
42	* ''VideoGame/FlowFree'' and its spinoffs, which normally have the user connecting same-colored dots, has a mode it adds letters to the dots. So instead of connecting dark-blue to dark-blue, you connect A to A.
43	* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' didn't have a color blind mode for years. Originally, the AOE markers were colored a dark red, which made it hard to see in dark areas or against certain surfaces. While this would annoy color blind players (protanopia in particular, who would see the red as black), it also annoyed players that weren't color blind because dark red is not very distinguishable from black either. To alleviate the issue for both camps, the AOE markers were changed to a bright orange and pulsated. The game would eventually get a proper color blind mode.
44	* ''VideoGame/{{Fortnite}}'' has modes for protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia, each of which can have a level which changes how strongly it's adjusted. [[https://www.reddit.com/r/FortniteCompetitive/comments/cq50yw/colorblind_mode_in_fortnite/ According to players on Reddit]], D10 also helps see through storm and T10 makes nighttime looks nice.
45	* ''VideoGame/FTLFasterThanLight'' has an option for a colourblind-friendly interface, which adds status icons for enemy ship's systems that are normally colour-coded (a lock symbol for systems disabled by ionisation and an X for damaged systems), among other changes.
46	* The Polish puzzle game ''VideoGame/{{Kulki}}'' has a "[[https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/kulki/screenshots/gameShotId,312860 "mono monitor"]] mode, which desaturates the colors, apparently to make the game easier to play on a computer with a monochrome monitor.
47	* ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends'' has a colorblind mode intended for players with deuteranopia which has received actual use from regular players who prefer it. It changes allied health bars from green to blue, makes certain red effects yellow and green effects blue, and changes particle colors slightly.
48	* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaLinksAwakening'': The 2019 Switch remake modified the Color Dungeon, adding square, circle and triangle shapes to all color-coded elements.
49	* ''VideoGame/{{Linx}}'' has a mode that gives a pattern to colored lines and bases. Yellow ones lack a pattern, red ones are dotted, blue ones are striped vertically, green ones are striped diagonally, etc.
50	* The ZX Spectrum puzzle game ''VideoGame/MamPlan'' has an alternate graphics mode, where the tiles were indicated not by colors but [[https://www.mobygames.com/game/zx-spectrum/mam-plan/screenshots/gameShotId,569883/ by patterns]].
51	* ''VideoGame/MiniMotorways'' has a colorblind option that lets you customize the building colors for better contrast.
52	* ''VideoGame/{{Overwatch}}'' has three separate colorblind filters to simulate Deuteranopia, Protanopia, or Tritanopia. The game also comes with a slider to adjust the strength of the filter.
53	* ''VideoGame/{{Paladins}}'' has three separate colorblind filters to simulate Deuteranopia, Protanopia, or Tritanopia.
54	* ''VideoGame/PathPix'': You can have differently colored outlines around circles. They seem to be particularly useful for tritanopia and monochromacy.
55	* ''VideoGame/ThePerfectTowerII'' has colorblind settings which include assistance for protanopia, deutranopia, tritanopia, and a no shader mode.
56	* ''VideoGame/{{Picross}} S'' games starting with ''Picross S5'' has a "high contrast colors" toggle for Color Picross, which locks all cell colors to a fixed palette of easily-distinguishable colors.
57	* ''VideoGame/PiczleLines'' has settings for protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia, each of them changing the in-game palette to better suit the need. For example, tritanopia focuses on greens, blues, and violets.
58	* Colorblind mode in ''VideoGame/Progressbar95'' makes certain segments have characters mark them. For instance, dangerous red segments have an exclamation mark, or useless gray segments have a zero.
59	* Later entries in the ''VideoGame/PuyoPuyo'' series allow you to change the designs of the Puyos. They are normally differentiated primarily by color, and subtly by shape and eye design, which can be easy for a colorblind player to miss. The most visually distinct designs are the ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' theme, which uses the heads of various ''Sonic'' characters, and the Alphabet theme, which changes the Puyo shapes to resemble the first letter of their respective color (R for red, G for green, and so on). ''Puyo Puyo Champions'' and ''VideoGame/PuyoPuyoTetris2'' have direct menus that can adjust the Puyo colors specifically for various types of colorblindness; in ''[=PPT2=]'', the Tetris pieces can also be swapped to their more visually distinct Game Boy designs.
60	* ''VideoGame/PuzzleAndDragons'' has its colorblind mode make the water orbs darker, fire orbs brighter, dark squares less dark and more purple, light squares more yellowish, and the hearts go from pink to gray.
61	* ''VideoGame/{{Rodina}}'' features an option to turn navigational symbols for celestial bodies, normally rings distinguished by colour, into the initials of their names.
62	* ''VideoGame/ShovelKnight: King of Cards'' has a colorblind setting for Joustus. It makes the player's cards a much darker blue and the opponent's cards brighter orange than standard.
63	* The ''Franchise/{{Splatoon}}'' games have a "Color Lock" option that locks the ink colors for each game mode. For example, in the second game, ink is always [[YellowPurpleContrast yellow/purple]] in multiplayer, purple/green during Splatfests, blue/dark green during Salmon Run, etc.
64	* The [[{{Vaporware}} unreleased]] Game Boy and Game Boy Color versions of ''VideoGame/SutteHakkun'' would have contained a number of changes from the Satellaview/SNES versions to make it easier to tell apart the three different paint colors and their effects when injected into blocks without having to solely rely on color. Jars of paint use double-sided arrows that face either vertically (red), horizontally (blue), or diagonally (yellow), and the blocks they fill in are marked with stripes to indicate the direction they travel in.
65	* ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' has a colorblind mode that can be enabled in the options. So far, it just displays an icon over players that have been splashed with Jarate or Mad Milk for those who have trouble seeing the yellow tint or splash effect.
66	* ''VideoGame/{{Temtem}}'' has a weekly sidequest where players must catch a Koish that has a specific combination of features, and one of the variables is the colours of the stripes on its tail. The 1.2 update added a colourblind setting that gives each possible tail stripe colour a distinct pattern.
67	* ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}} 99'' has an incidental example in the [[TemporaryOnlineContent temporarily-unlockable]] Game Boy ''Tetris'' skin, which uses monochrome patterns on individual blocks to differentiate the seven tetriminoes, unlike the other skins which use colors. Downplayed, in that colors and block designs don't have any functional purpose in ''Tetris'' other than helping players see what the next piece is at a glance.
68	* ''VideoGame/{{Trainyard}}'' has an option to add letters to the colored trains and other elements that use colors. The letters used are R for Red, O for Orange, Y for Yellow, G for Green, B for Blue, P for Purple, and T for brown.
69	* ''VideoGame/{{Valorant}}'': There are four options for enemy color highlights: Red (Default), Purple (Tritanopia), Yellow (Deuteranopia), and Yellow (Protanopia).
70	* ''VideoGame/{{Wispin}}'' involves changing your color to defeat enemies that match yours. Normally, you can only change between red, green, and blue, but the game's colorblind mode changes them to cyan, yellow, and magenta, which have higher contrast.
71	* Toggling colorblind mode in ''VideoGame/{{Wordle}}'' turns green tiles (and the option toggles) orange and yellow tiles light blue. When shared, the normally green and yellow square emojis will also be orange and blue.
72	* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' has a standard colorblind mode in the settings which for example changes money so that it isn't marked by colored coins, but by letters indicating which coin type it is (like "31g 41s 59c"), or marks recipes more likely to give skill points with plus signs. That said, hues can be adjusted for several forms of the disability, including the less talked about ones like achromatomaly. If you want a specific type, just type "/console colorblindshader #" in the chat with # replaced by the mode's number (0-8).
73	!!Non-video game examples:
74	* ''TabletopGame/SevenWonders'': While the game's use of color was never the only way to identify the function of a card, it was still significant enough to make the game awkward to play if you're colorblind. The second edition rectifies this by using clear symbology in addition to high-contrast colors to code the card types.
75	* ''TabletopGame/{{Azul}}''[='=]s tiles are pattern-coded in addition to being color-coded, meaning that colorblind players can play the game.
76	* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'': The mana symbols consist of a colored circle with a unique symbol (a sun for White, a droplet for Blue, and so on) on it so that colorblind players can tell them apart. However, Phyrexian mana replaces the unique symbols with the Phyrexian symbol, which would cause problems for colorblind players if not for the creators taking care to avoid it: all cards with Phyrexian mana only feature one type of it and have reminder text specifying which one it is (e.g. a white card will say "<white Phyrexian mana symbol> can be paid with either <normal white mana symbol> or 2 life").
77	* ''[[TabletopGame/SeaSaltAndPaper Sea Salt & Paper]]'' has a few cards that care about sets of cards with matching colors. The game uses the [=ColorADD=] code so that colorblind players can still identify the colors.
78	* ''TabletopGame/{{Splendor}}'' has built-in colorblind friendliness: each color of gem has a different shape, making them distinguishable without color vision.
79	* Website/ThisVeryWiki has one: The ''Highlight Links'' toggle in the Display Options. Turning it on gives page links a yellow highlight and an underline.
80	* ''TabletopGame/TicketToRide'' cards are symbol-coded in addition to being color-coded.

Context Main / ColorblindMode