colour circles for more players

played around with extra colours, focusing on ones that won't conflict with the maps. not a lot to choose from, but bright ones tend to not camouflage in the map landscape




from left..the original 10
the 6 someone else created.
and 7 more that i attempted.


grey
green
blue
red
pink
purple
orange
black
yello
cyan
desaturated blue
dark lime green
dark red
magenta
violet
Moderate orange
Vivid cyan
Vivid blue
Vivid green
lime green
Pale orange
Vivid pink
soft yellow

We had tests on this on the beta sites - I remember that darker colours often didn't work, and lighter colours often didn't have enough contrast with existing colours...

But lighter is probably better.

what about using hexagon shapes for the extra colours? you can make them the same size as circles, so numbers still fit

I think that would be confusing to new players. It would look like the hexagon green is just a special type of territory for the green players. It also becomes harder to see who owns what at a quick glance: what if green-circle and green-hex players are right next to each other? You really have to look carefully to see who owns what.

We also use colour coding in a lot of things outside of the map: the username in chat and game log; the arrow shapes in the list of players, etc. I don't think using different shapes would work.

That brings us back to colours. Not only have the new colours be distinguishable from the underlying maps (we could easily achieve that by shadows and glows), but we also have to consider distinguishability for colour blind users. Our current colours aren't perfect, but additional colours are not going to make it easier. We could decide to limit the choice to the first 9 colours for games with 9 players or less and limit the distinguishability problem to 10+ player games only, but it's not really a solution.

I think in the end the question you have to answer for yourself is: is the demand for games with 10 or more players - a game mode that hasn't been tested, won't work very well on many maps, doesn't really fit the interface, and may do weird things with the cards - really big enough to warrant a likely negative user impact into the site's usability?

while i am waiting for map feedback (matty) asia.., i don't mind playing around with other things as ideas/suggestions at least.
i do think, there should be at least 12 player games, for the namesake/signifigance of the site. i think it would be cool, and there are opportunities to just have LARGER maps for that specific annual tournament. A 12 player game would be an earned luxury and extra incentive to get there.

and some pattern circles 100%

dark lime green
dark red
magenta
violet
Vivid cyan

are good colours on the maps, very clear...
about the pattern circles mmmmm I guys it's distracting,

what about using Geometric shapes?

The geometric shape problem is explained above on Cireon's post #4.

On the beta site, Psymon came up with a load of suggestions of new colours, we tested them as well, but there were always issues with any new colour.
At the time I also suggested split colours ( 3 ), but I can't remember how that was met or if it was tested?

What about filled circles?

Simply try to add just few more colors like brown,silver-gray,and kind of gold or someing like that,others dont work pink and purple is already confussed ,depend on display but ..

ThEre dark green and pale orange looks ok

In my opinion we've always been very conservative around this topic. Why not choose 3 that we think they may fit, and see how well they perform, for a week, for example, and then get feedback? After we know the general opinion of the players, we'll have more info and know better what to do.

The problem is a bit that once you add 3 colours, you can't remove them (you can change the colours though). But if you remove them, all games that used one of the new colours break.

Well then don't remove them, just disable them so people can't choose them in the create game page.

did a bit more testing, against all the maps and this is the result.








The first 9 colours are the original.

The next 3 (cream/peach/teal)are bright/suitable and as much contrast as i could find with the existing colours and existing maps.



last 3 colours (white/navy blue/maroon) conflict with the least amount of maps.

white! why not white? there might be an issue with one region in westeros map..

the last two colours are dark, but are distinguishable to existing colours. there's a lot of maps, but mainly it's the darker maps like africa that those dark colours have problems with.