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Mega Man 8-bit Deathmatch => Bugs/Suggestions => MM8BDM Discussion => Closed => Topic started by: Korby on May 09, 2016, 12:23:40 AM

Title: Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!
Post by: Korby on May 09, 2016, 12:23:40 AM

Two pretty exciting ideas have been mulling around in the devteam for a while now. Both of them will be covered in two topics made in this forum so that you can provide your feedback on them.
The second of them was to add a Stardroid Team as we'll likely be using that for the MMV expansion, and it's easier to get it out of the way now.
Not long after that idea gained traction, Lego brought it up to me that having an odd number of teams would be strange, so we had to find a sixth team to add.
And that's how the Mr. X team came back from the dead.

Now, as you've probably guessed at this point judging by the topic title, adding more teams isn't the only purpose of this idea.
On the same track as "getting it out of the way now," we'd like to change the team colors themselves.
(http://i.imgur.com/Zctjmpz.png)

Here's a set I've come up with. Personally, I'm pretty happy with all of them with the exception of the Stardroid team. Somethin' just feels...off.
To explain the thought process a little, Light team's colors were changed to Megaman's palette from MM9/MM10. It was a fairly nice palette that would also be a cheeky nod to the expansion this would come in. Cossack team becoming green happened because a green team would be cool and because of the next two teams. Stardroid team is purple because they're lead by Sunstar, who is purple; it also evokes a colder, spacier feeling than green does. King team became yellow for, you guessed it, their leader's color. Finally, Mr. X team is gray because the only other primary color not covered is Orange, and I am not about to have Red, Yellow, and Orange teams. That would get too confusing too fast.

Now, much like the other topic, let us know what you think! Do you like the idea? Do you think the color choices could be better? Leave your thoughts below, and provide examples!

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: Two More Teams?!
Post by: Gumballtoid on May 09, 2016, 12:28:38 AM

I definitely like the idea -- plus, this means we'll be able to add a Dr. Samba team for DOS Reborn. Probably.

I like the direction the colors are being taken in, but I'm not crazy about those palettes specifically. I'll post my own attempt shortly.

EDIT:

(http://i.imgur.com/v7uGuC6.png)
There are a few changes from Korby's version that should be pointed out:

Light and Wily are entirely unchanged.
Cossack's primary was darkened slightly to help distinguish the two colors better.
King was made generally darker to help prevent the bit of eye strain one might experience when looking at such bright colors.
Stardroid's primary was changed to be a little closer to the violet end of the spectrum to help distinguish the team from Wily.
X's secondary was saturated just a bit to make the team less dull gray and more metallic-y.

All of those colors exist on the 8BDM palette somewhere so it should be a non-issue.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: Two More Teams?!
Post by: Orange juice :l on May 09, 2016, 01:34:52 AM

I'm all for more options even though I think a six-team game would be absurd. I prefer GBT's edits, but my only concern is that out of the corner of one's eye Team X might look a little bit like Team Light or someone else against certain backgrounds.

But why green for Cossack? Shouldn't he be Gold to fit with his theme? I would suggest Green Stardroids (space aliens n stuff, plus the Gameboy didn't even have color), Purple King (he had a lot of purple/dark blue-ish robots, didn't he?), and Gold Cossack (simply because we can't make him the Red Menace)

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: Two More Teams?!
Post by: Kapus on May 09, 2016, 01:37:56 AM

I can never not see the gold color scheme as Cossack

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: Two More Teams?!
Post by: Gumballtoid on May 09, 2016, 01:43:22 AM

I'd be fine with any of those arrangements, really. Purple is a color often associated with royalty, which suits King nicely, green gives off a good alien vibe, and Cossack has been the mainstay orange/gold team in every version.

I'd really like to see these palettes used, though.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: Two More Teams?!
Post by: JaxOf7 on May 09, 2016, 01:58:51 AM

They didn't post team bar icons, so I guess I will
(http://i683.photobucket.com/albums/vv191/JaxOf7/teambar%20v5a1.png)
top row is what we currently got
king icon under their king icon is one I made to be more consistent with the other icons (height)
bottom row Is what we're lookin at (with a stardroid icon I guessed at)

My color arrangement suggestion
Cossack - yellow, like hammer and star on USSR flag.
King - purple, purple is royal.
Stardroid - gray, is evil and is like the darkness of space. Also they were on gameboy.
Mr. X - green, green is money, Mr. X is an eccentric billionaire.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: Two More Teams?!
Post by: Russel on May 09, 2016, 03:56:47 AM

TEAMINFO doesn't support more than four teams max.
It's worth pointing out that the ZDoom wiki's list of teams lists 8 teams: Blue, Red, Green, Gold, Black, White, Orange, and Purple.
This led Korby to believe it was possible to have more than four teams.
Zandronum not only has a hard coded cap on teams at 4, but also a server variable that controls how many teams are usable in play.

The discussion on the colors should continue, however. Just bear in mind that there will only be four teams, where Light, Wily, and King are the definite keepers.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: Two More Teams?!
Post by: Gumballtoid on May 09, 2016, 04:00:39 AM

In that case, I'm thinking the teams should retain their current colors, albeit with the palette changes posted above. Until v7 hits, I don't think we should worry about the Stardroid team.

I'm optimistic that Zandronum will see 8-team support at some point down the road, but it's a shame that it isn't possible now.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: Two More Teams?!
Post by: Knux on May 09, 2016, 04:01:56 AM

Games with 4 teams are rarely played, so I don't see why having 6 teams would be a good idea.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: Two More Teams?!
Post by: MusashiAA on May 09, 2016, 04:07:46 AM

EDIT: Let me just spoil this up, it's hella ugly.

(click to show/hide)

Cossack Team: Orange and yellow like (http://puu.sh/oLh59/3491abb59d.jpg) his logo, orange and gold, some yellow-ish/orange-ish color with green like (http://puu.sh/oLh8g/505c614a70.jpg) the suit under his labcot, NOT ALL GREEN.







King Team: A more soft blue-ish looking purple, less corrupt-ish more regal-ish, if not gold on dark gray like (http://puu.sh/oLha6/7cd7e7b5fa.jpg) King himself. LOOK AT HIS COAT, THAT'S A ROYAL KIND OF PURPLE.












Stardroid Team: Green is kinda fine, Sunstar was (http://puu.sh/oLh2w/127e08ddea.jpg) purple/blue on peach? so wrap your head around this, Stardroid logo looks like (http://puu.sh/oLh3v/8680300039.jpg) this. As an alternate, weird and out of left field suggestion, (http://puu.sh/oLhqu/cd44946f62.png) Gameboy green as its color scheme.







Light Team: Fine.

Wily Team: Fine.

Mr. X Team: Gumballtoid's palette.

EDITEDIT: Also

(click to show/hide)

Wily Team: (http://puu.sh/oLhDb/81d1db74db.jpg)

(http://puu.sh/oLhFW/c1be63eb82.jpg)
No no.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!
Post by: Korby on May 09, 2016, 11:47:36 PM

Well, I sure feel dumb.
I regret to inform people that, unlike Zdoom, Zandronum cannot have more than four teams defined in TEAMINFO.
What's this mean for us?
Well on the color switching side...not much, but for the other half of this topic, it means that the Stardroid and Mr. X teams won't be coming in v5. It's possible they could be added later if Zandro catches up to ZDoom in that department, but it won't be happening yet.
However, there IS the possibility that never happens, so I ask instead:
Do we replace the Cossack Team with King and make the purple team into Stardroids?
I'm expecting a resounding "no" because I like Cossack and would be sad to see him go, and I expect many other people hold this opinion as well.

Also, to defend green Cossack, his castle is green and his tie is green. Green clearly means something to the guy, and it makes about as much sense as Wily being red because he's evil.
Also, green is another general team color, like red and blue, and I'd like to see it in the game.

To comment on Gumball's colors, I like them aside from King's; it looks a bit too brown for my tastes.
I also think X's colors are a bit too similar to Junk Shield, but that doesn't exactly matter at this point.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!
Post by: SmashTheEchidna on May 09, 2016, 11:48:44 PM

If you remove Cossack I will riot.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!
Post by: MusashiAA on May 10, 2016, 12:06:37 AM

Cossack is one of The Three, you can't remove Cossack. If we're going by this, then only Mr. X makes sense to persist since every single team is centered around a human character: Mr. X Team being purple or green makes more sense than Cossack being green instead of orange/yellow.

4 humans (Light, Wily, Cossack, Mr. X), 4 colors (blue, red, yellow, green).

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!
Post by: Korby on May 10, 2016, 12:46:42 AM

The King team is used in the campaign, it's unlikely we'll be removing it.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!
Post by: Hallan Parva on May 10, 2016, 01:37:48 AM

Cossack already gets shafted enough in-universe
he needs all the help he can get

keep him in :ugeek:

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!
Post by: fortegigasgospel on May 10, 2016, 02:18:53 AM

Well Cossack would be less of a faction anyway though, I would see his robots helping Light's, if they weren't always with Wily anyway.
Stardroids and King would make sense the most due to the campaign factions.

Title: Zandronum, you have 3 years to do this!
Post by: BiscuitSlash on May 10, 2016, 02:55:10 PM

Keep Cossack.

I know it's beyond our control, but having 6 teams available with only 4 of them playing at once sounds good. Adds more team variety and options.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!
Post by: IamaMedalHunter on May 10, 2016, 09:40:51 PM

Well. It's no doubt the Stardroids are going to shine in the spotlight in the future. They will eventually play a great role in the story and Dr.Cossack still doesn't. Unless Cossack plays a very major role as a leader too, I'd say the Stardroids should replace the Cossack team soon.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!
Post by: Gumballtoid on May 10, 2016, 10:10:54 PM

Soon, maybe, but not this version. Wouldn't it be just a bit weird to have a Stardroid team in the game when there's not yet any MMV content? no, Tango doesn't count

I think the safest thing to do would be to keep the teams as is, while still updating the colors (preferably using the palettes I posted, though it might not be a bad idea to keep Cossack gold and King purple since that seems to be a popular opinion). To follow up on that, folks should push for 8-team support on the Zandronum end to hopefully assure we'll be able to add these teams in the future.

I like the idea of Stardroid and Mr. X teams being in the game, but I think this is a case where it would be better to cross that bridge when we come to it, either during v7 development, or when Zandronum sees that feature implemented.

--

Yeah, I admit my King palette is kinda brownish, but I think it helps that it can be distinguished from the other teams well enough. That was my big hangup when I was messing around with them.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!
Post by: Magnet Dood on May 14, 2016, 05:07:34 AM

I'm a total fuckin loser who wasted like 3 hours on this

(http://i.imgur.com/sZiie0z.png)

If you ask me, I think that the current team colors work well for the four teams that are already in the game. But why stop at 6 when we can have double the fun!?

Ignore the Samba team thing right there (or treat it as a sneak peak for Bit Man's skin?), that's what were gonna use for a potential Samba team in the DOS expansion and I had the logo lying around. The pink team doesn't have a logo, but if it were up to me, it would symbolize some sort of team built on masters that aren't owned by any of the doctors/groups present, which is why the MM10 masters show up there. The current team colors for King, Wily, Light, and Cossack are all nice and do contrast well, which is what I was gunning for with my colors here.

The Stardroids were meant to be a gold-brown color in order to simulate stars and shit, but I'm not huge on the palette. At least it doesn't clash with Cossack though- an older version of this had it being straight up yellow, but it could've been confused with Cossack's orange kind of easily. In any case, this is what I have for it. Obviously, the green and gray palettes would be what I'd add, and it would probably be good to switch Samba with Stardroids for core purposes.

Title: I wanted six Bombmen for Stardroids but this was cheekier
Post by: Gumballtoid on May 14, 2016, 02:53:51 PM

I'm going to hate myself for saying this later but I don't think we should worry about the Samba team right now. I'll work around whatever core ends up doing.

A big part of this process is being able to distinguish the team colors. Light and Samba stand out well enough, but you might mix up Wily, Cossack, and Stardroids (which is a problem that currently exists in core I think) or mistake King for the non-aligned gang. Hell, if you squint really hard, you could mix up King and Mr. X pretty easily.

(http://i.imgur.com/K3MGMOR.png)

When I was going over these, I was trying to make sure no team would be easily confused with another. Stardroids had to strike a fine balance of purples so as to avoid being too close to either end of the Light / Wily spectrum, and King had to be a little less orange and a little more golden brown to keep away from Wily's reddish pink color. With six teams and only so many color options, it's hard to keep them from stepping on each other's toes. With your eight teams, you've got the six colors I've given, but now there's a pink team and another orange-y, yellow-y team, which kind of takes the issue at hand overboard.

Also, having a non-aligned team kind of contradicts itself, maybe? For a team to be a team, it needs to have some kind of identity or allegiance, and if you ask me, even the Mr. X team is kind of pushing it in that regard.


EDIT: While I'm at it, I figured I should try some of the combinations other folks suggested.

(https://i.gyazo.com/e827bce9698554bf9f1d81ad04d19f3f.png)

I'm really not big on that second one myself, but the first one I can totally see.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!
Post by: Magnet Dood on May 14, 2016, 04:23:04 PM

Personally, I don't buy the claims that you can't distinguish the teams in my mock-up. Their primary colors are the deciding factors for the most part, and I'm able to tell them all apart pretty easily. The only one that's slightly ambiguous is Cossack and Wily to me, and even then it's really not that bad. Of course, in game it might be a different story due to distances, so I can't really offer any insight into that. We'll see, though-- I've been a proponent for an 8 team modification for a while, anyway.

With that all being said, I certainly can't deny that all of the mock-ups you posted won't get anyone confused. It'll be sad to see the orange go, but your first makeup on the bottom picture (with the addition of a gray Mr. X team) has the best look out of them. If 6-team support does indeed become a reality, I'd be all for the gold Cossack, purple King and green Stardroid teams (although I like my primary green better since it's a touch darker I think, but whatever).

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!
Post by: BiscuitSlash on May 14, 2016, 09:01:29 PM

I completely understand that Dr. Cossacks's tie is green, but I do still feel like Cossack's team should remain orange. Though since King's team kinda goes better as Gold than purple, mostly for the sake of King himself.

Essentially:

Cossack's team: Orange
King's team: Gold

Sounds slightly dumb, but the idea should at least be played around a little.

Stardroids purple or dark blue I guess. Depends if they are truly led by Sunstar or not.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!
Post by: MusashiAA on May 14, 2016, 09:25:16 PM

The whole "looks the same from the corner of my eye or if I squint my eyes real hard" argument sounds kinda bogus to me, it's like you're trying very hard to be able to say the suggested color schemes aren't discernable enough for the sake of making them as differentiable as aesthetically possible. If you're in a team match and don't realize which player is in which team, either team colors are too similar, or you're not paying enough attention, and pretty much all the color schemes presented are very clearly discernable from each other. I know it sounds like proper game design in theory, but we shouldn't be expected to have team colors be using the most wildly contrastable color schemes imaginable for the sake of portraying the outmost clarity of information to players: players are not dumb, and if they're playing a game, they have to be focused.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!
Post by: Gumballtoid on May 14, 2016, 10:52:33 PM

The squinting bit was mostly a huge exaggeration, but I hope folks got the gist of what I was saying.

In a fast-paced arena shooter like MM8BDM, clarity is extremely important. In the midst of a match, there is rarely an opportunity to sit down, breathe, and sort everything out, because you're either on the move, being shot at, or both. No, players aren't dumb. Yes, they have to be focused. The more clear and more pronounced you can make something, the easier it is for the player to grasp on the fly, so their focus can stay on the match and not on who belongs to which team.

Dood's palettes aren't impossible to discern, and some of them look quite nice, but during a skirmish, with folks from several teams joining the fray from different places and getting right to it, you can't afford to stop and try to pick out who's who. In traditional team games, this is never an issue because there are only two colors to worry about: red and blue. Once you start adding teams, such as in a game of 4-Team LMS, things get a little hairy.

I'm not saying his colors are bad, or that they're especially hard to distinguish. I'm saying, though not guaranteed, it is very possible to confuse a red team with an orange one in a heated match. We should be striving to get them as pronounced and unique as possible so as to prevent as much confusion as we can.

Title: Re: Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!
Post by: Russel on July 22, 2016, 09:27:02 PM

Yeah we're using Gumball's latest set of colors up there.

Moved to closed.