Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: pak19652002

I'm another member of this forgotten minority and have raised this issue several times in the past. Steve has assured me that Matrix publishes its games in full compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In other words, he promised to make important information available in ways color blind people can perceive.

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The Canadians. Next on my list is to add the letters CA to the right of the NATO symbol, rotated 90 degrees. The color will be yellow. I will do the same for all the Commonwealth member nations: NZ, AU, IN, SA, and UK.

I had to choose between two conflicting standards here: (1) white print units get white interiors and (2) Canadians get yellow interiors. I went with the white interiors and I am adding the letters to compensate for the linformation that is lost by not using yellow.

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Here are revised units for the Japanese. I have replaced the divisional interiors. I tried Patrice's pink but it was a disaster. The red just overwhelmed it. The more neutral pale yellow works ok. I lightened the interior of the corp units though not by much. When I made them too bright, they looked the same as the basic red for Japan and the interior disappeared. The militia symbol is more legible here

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I replaced the red from the counter sheets with yellow. I just couldn't get the red bright enough to be seen as lower resolutions. The black surrounding it seemed to absorb it visually. The yellow might take some getting use to for those of you expecting red. However, the numbers are clearly visible now even when zooming out to 100%. No more squinting and eye strain.

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ORIGINAL: Froonp
My opinion :
The black print units's interiors should be slightly slightly darker.
I do not like the DIV interior being green, seems like MAR units. But it may be my tastes. And as you know, I prefer it as the cardboard WiF.

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ORIGINAL: Glen Felzien

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The counter sheets have SS units with white lettering and red lettering. The white are elite, the red aren't. In the rules, the term "white print unit" means elite and there are different rules for them concerning their strength when out of supply.

Ah ok, things have changed since I last played. The SS units where valued due to them all be white print but the game has evolved much since then.

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ORIGINAL: Froonp

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I replaced the red from the counter sheets with yellow. I just couldn't get the red bright enough to be seen as lower resolutions. The black surrounding it seemed to absorb it visually. The yellow might take some getting use to for those of you expecting red. However, the numbers are clearly visible now even when zooming out to 100%. No more squinting and eye strain.

Well, I'm not convicted by the yellow here neither. It is too close to the white for me.
Maybe try blue ?

Otherwise those German units looks great to me .

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ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

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ORIGINAL: Froonp
My opinion :
The black print units's interiors should be slightly slightly darker.
I do not like the DIV interior being green, seems like MAR units. But it may be my tastes. And as you know, I prefer it as the cardboard WiF.

I just finished lightened it - slightly, slightly lighter. The black on dark red was too hard to see when zoomed out.

There is no green for the Japanese except for the marine units. The Japanese interior divisional color is a pale yellow (I know that because it is taken from CorelDraw's definition of pale yellow). In fact, it is the same interior color I used for the Nationist Chinese and the Russian divisional units.

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The similarity between the yellow and white is a problem. But blue seems too far a jump for a German SS color - I hestitated using yellow.

The trouble is the black. The basic unit rectangle is quite large relative to the interior of the NATO symbol. Any color that is not bright enough becomes engulfed by the black and appears much darker than it would against a lighter background. That forces us to use bright colors and they have a tendency to appear white next to the black. For example, when I used pure red (in order to mimic the cardboard counters) it is 255, 0, 0 in RGB terms. White is 255, 255, 255. And yellow is 0,255,255. I am not sure whether the the brightness increases linearly or as the square of the magnitude (probably the former), but I do know that the red diappears and the yellow stands out. Of course the white is best of all because it has maximum contrast (contrast is difference in brightness). This is a problem not only for the SS, Belgians, and Afghan (all have black as their national color) but also for the Netherlands and a few other minor countries that have very dark national colors.

I'll try toning down the brightness of the yellow and see what affect that has.

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ORIGINAL: JanSorensen

I concur about the Canadians - their interior should remain yellow also for the white print units. The white is told by the color of the numbers well enough.

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ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

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ORIGINAL: JanSorensen
I concur about the Canadians - their interior should remain yellow also for the white print units. The white is told by the color of the numbers well enough.

Uh, oh. They're ganging up on me.
When I get the letters added I'll post screens shots both with (1) white and (2) yellow elite unit interiors for the Canadians.
In looking over the units again I see I should use two or three letter abbreviations for the Commonwealth member nations: CAN, AUS, IND, SA, NZ, and UK (colored yellow, red, green, orangish, white, and black respectively). These will just be for the land units. Space is at too great a premium for the air and naval units.
Hey, any body who agrees with me could say so too!

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ORIGINAL: Froonp
Steve, please consider leaving those minors' elite unit and the CW home countries (except the UK ones) with their untouched box color, and add a golden star on all elite unit so that they all uniformely and consistantly stand out from the rest.

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ORIGINAL: Froonp

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The similarity between the yellow and white is a problem. But blue seems too far a jump for a German SS color - I hestitated using yellow.

...

I'll try toning down the brightness of the yellow and see what affect that has.

Usually when I have this problem (seeing red writing out of black background), I use bold font.
Is it possible to use a bold font, and so keep red color for the writing ?

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ORIGINAL: Froonp

By the way, why are you doing all this complicated picture conversion stuff you wrote about : BMP to ??? to JPG. Can't you make it directly BMP to JPG ? JPG & BMP are the same (or I thought they were), except that JPG is compressed, but basicaly they are the same. There should be not conversion problem going from BMP to JPG directly.

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ORIGINAL: Froonp
Please, put a golden star in the top right corner of Elite units, and keep the boxes as they are .

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And the software for converting BMP directly to JPEG is?

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Nice star. A tad large for the counters.

Top right corner is holding the R for reserve right now. I moved it up so I would have room for the Commonwealth member nation abbreviations.

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ORIGINAL: Froonp

Top Right Corner Elite Golden Star :
Well, there is barely the space for a dot the same size as the ART dot, this is not much this is true.
So, why not test a golden counter outline (yellow for non yellow units, orange for yellow units) for Elite units ?

Well, as someone previously said, having the factors being white print may also be enough, may not it ?

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As a last note & suggestion about this issue :

The difference between elite & non elite is that elite units when disrupted and out of supply have 3 combat factors, and non elite disrupted & out of supply units have 1 combat factors.

Why not having those modified combat factors actually be written on the counter when the proper conditions are here ?

It is also true with not self-propelled ART units, when they are alone they are worth 1 combat factors if attacked. But they keep their combat factors for bombarding purposes for example, so maybe this won't be a good idea for them.

Also, disrupted units and out of supply units can't attack, so why not grey out their combat factors when units are disrupted or out of supply to show that ?

Well, I realize that this may be too much, but these are just ideas that I give you as they come, aren't we here for that ?

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And the software for converting BMP directly to JPEG is?

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Off on the horizon is the issue of the status boxes, the choice of their colors and other manipulations to convey come of the items you mentioned.

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White print numbers with white NATO interiors for all elite units should be be enough to distinguish them from their regular army counterparts. It is only the Commonwealth member nations that present a problem and that is because several of you would like to make their NATO interiors match what is on the counter sheets (a good and noble thing to do since the counter sheet versions are beautiful). I am trying to accommodate that desire but these past couple of dozen posts should give you an idea of what all the contraints there are in choosing colors.

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ORIGINAL: c92nichj

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And the software for converting BMP directly to JPEG is?

I usually end up using paint which comes with Windows, just open a picture as bitmap amd save it as jpeg.

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ORIGINAL: c92nichj

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Off on the horizon is the issue of the status boxes, the choice of their colors and other manipulations to convey come of the items you mentioned.

Talking about the status boxes are they slightly larger than the counter itself? To me it looks like there is an extra pixel on each side of the counter. Is that intentional or could you use that extra pixel to add a tiny 3-D effect to the counters.

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ORIGINAL: stretch
that pic looks nice, less loss of clarity in the conversion I guess. Lookin good.

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ORIGINAL: stretch
Nice. I love that 12-5 SS Arm. I have always had an uncanny ability to never draw it from the force pool. Argh. I swear it could be the only counter left in the pool and I'd reach in and magically pull out something else.

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My advice is that practice makes perfect when drawing counters