Can the player colors be altered?

[Oort]

My monitor is wearing out and dark and I have trouble with the light blue on that light back ground. Also the purple and the orange can get confusing. I wanted to tinker with different shades of colors to best show up during play but couldn't find anything that would allow you to do that. Is it not part of the skinning files?

[Chuckie Chuck]

I believe it's in a character sprite folder, I'll have to look to see which one, but if you figure out how to change it, you'll want to keep a backup so you can reinstate you changes at the next mule release.

[Chuckie Chuck]

Basic research reveals the following, there is a "race" folder that has each race graphic in it, but it is using colors that are acting as mask for the game colors to adhere to (invisibility palette technique)  Kinda like using green screen tech to paint the graphics in the game.

So, easy to change the shapes, but not the color, you have to know a little more about the game programming than I do, I'm not a programmer.

[Rogue Cat]

Basically, the only way to change it is modifying the original file containing the races image files. All of them are PNG files (1088x48), so you can easily edit them. Only colours Red, Green, Blue, Cyan and Yelow are affected by the player color, the rest remains the same. Now they go like this:

Red = Lightest color
Green = Light color
Blue = Normal
Cyan = Dark color
Yellow = Darkest color

If you want to remove the darkest colors, you should replace all Green, Blue, Cyan and Yellow colors for Red. That way your avatars would have the lightest possible color, at the cost of removing your characters' shadows and making them look like plain sprites. Be sure to make a copy of the Data.jar file before you modify it. You can open it with WinRar or WinZip, then access to Data.jar\images\races\ to check the image files.

Up to date there's no other way to add your own colors or custom species/races. I guess the Dev. team is planning stuff like this for future releases. I would like to add my own Feline specie too. Something like "Use custom specie" in the options menu, and selecting your own PNG file to use would be great. Let's see if they find a quick way to make it work in a similar way custom skins do. But allowing for each player to have their custom specie. The files are really fast to upload/download even for my connection, so it should be a problem. *Hint hint wink wink*

[Oort]

I wasn't looking to alter the characters themselves, but the plot outline colors. Those are the hardest to differentiate during play, and the text for the blue player is completely unreadable to me through my monitor.

[Chuckie Chuck]

Don't know if you have craigslist.org where you are, but maybe you can pickup a very cheap or even free used monitor in better shape.  I know what you mean though, can't be tricky sometimes, always, blue is one of the easier colors on a good display.  Maybe if they just made the lines THICKER

[Rogue Cat]

I wasn't looking to alter the characters themselves, but the plot outline colors. Those are the hardest to differentiate during play, and the text for the blue player is completely unreadable to me through my monitor.

In that case, I guess the image to modify is sprite-frame.png inside the data.jar file. The color pattern is the same, the way you might want to change it is up to you. You might want to paint a corner, make a mail-pattern tile or simply make the lines wider.

[Chuckie Chuck]

The files to change to get a thicker plot border and or make the colors brighters are...

land_grant_frame.png

and

plot_border.png

Testing it right now, I made the lines twice as thick on mine

[Chuckie Chuck]

Must remember to maintain the transparency settings when you edit those files.

[barbie_girl]

If you have an LCD TV and there wouldn't be conflicts with other members of the household most of them can double as computer monitors. In fact, most of them are basically flat screen computer monitors with added functionality.

[Chuckie Chuck]

Poor blokes like me are lucky to have old CRTs.  I have yet to get and LCD t.v./hi-def monitor.  Most my computers are old beat up notebook PCs, but anything that's a desktop is hooked to an old SVGA CRT display.

My dad has one External LCD monitor with VGA and DVI inputs, and we got and HDMI to DVI adapter to hook it to his DVD recorder.  Kinda the reverse of using an LCD t.v. as a computer display.  We use the LCD computer display as a t.v. display, and the only difference is, it doesn't have a tuner or speakers.  We have external speakers.  The DVD recorder has a tuner, so we're all good, lol.

I have one genuine hi-def T.V., and it's a very heavy 27 inch CRT.  It only does 480i, 480p, and 1080i.  It doesn't do 720p or 1080p.  It beats composite though.