[+][SUG][PL] Improve colour scheme for panel stats (lemmings, to save, time)

[Simon]

CE 1.1.2

During play, in the panel at the bottom of the screen, above the skills:

Number of lemmings turns red when it's not sufficient for winning. Okay.

Clock turns red at arbitrary time (1 minute? 15 seconds?) and turns purple when it's not sufficient for winning. Instead, ditch the arbitrary threshold. On different maps, different thresholds will feel like too short anyway. Consistently use red for insufficiency.

Save requirement is printed in blue? Blue makes it hard to read; the digits 5, 6, 8 look similar. And the blue makes the panel look more colorful than necessary. This removes the meaning of other colors. Practically every number is now a funky color at whim.

Clock is yellow when it is a time limit. Okay, we must pay attention. And it matches the yellow hourglass. (As said, don't put a blue save requirement; it makes the yellow blend in, the yellow becomes yet another irrelevant color next to the blue.)

Lemming count is yellow when there are neutral lemmings. Why is this important? Why do we have to pay attention? I would understand it becoming yellow when there are only neutral lemmings left.

Lemming count also becomes cyan in some cases? When and why?

-- Simon

[WillLem]

Clock turns red at arbitrary time (1 minute? 15 seconds?) and turns purple when it's not sufficient for winning. Instead, ditch the arbitrary threshold. On different maps, different thresholds will feel like too short anyway. Consistently use red for insufficiency.

Purple is essentially 'overtime' as opposed to 'insufficient time to win'. It's only there because gameplay doesn't end when time is up, and it might be useful for the player to know by how much their attempted solution exceeds the time limit. Red could be confusing here, especially since the timer counts upwards at this point.

Instead, red is used to mean 'time is nearly up'. We could adjust when this happens depending on the total time limit, but it seems better to keep it consistent for all levels.

Save requirement is printed in blue ... This removes the meaning of other colors

Save count is printed in blue until it is met, then it changes to green. Yellow probably makes a bit more sense but then visually blends with the time limit counter when it is yellow. Could we try teal instead?

Lemming count is yellow when there are neutral lemmings. Why is this important? Why do we have to pay attention? I would understand it becoming yellow when there are only neutral lemmings left.

Agreed, this has never fully made sense to me either. Let's make it change only when neutrals are left.

Lemming count also becomes cyan in some cases? When and why?

This is when there are only neutrals left (I think...?).


Bottom line: agreed, we can look again at the panel's colour scheme.

[WillLem]

After a cup of tea and a think, here's a suggested scheme:

GREEN = State is OK / Normal

Use this for: hatch count, there are regular lemmings in the level, save requirement is met, time limit is infinite


TEAL or CYAN = Pay attention!

Use this for: cut future replay actions warning (the recently-added 'CUT N TASKS'), only Neutrals remain, save requirement is not met but there are enough lemmings remaining to be able to meet it, time limit is finite

 
RED = State is critical

Use this for: there are not enough lemmings remaining to meet the save requirement, time limit is about to run out (15 seconds is good for this)


BLUE = Information only

Use this for: lemming actions when hovering over a lem, panel button hints, overtime


No other colours.


The only issue I can see with the above is that { lemming actions when hovering over a lem } is currently Green, and this is what people are used to. We could also do with differentiating it from { panel button hints }, as both could be - for example - 'BASHER' (the former for a lemming performing the Basher action, and the latter for the Basher skill button).

We could either:

a) Use Purple (or some other colour) for one or the other

b) Continue to use Green for { lemming actions when hovering over a lem } and accept the slight inconsistency in the proposed scheme

c) Some other suggestion (please post if you have one!)

[Simon]

TEAL or CYAN = Pay attention!
Use this for: save requirement is not met but there are enough lemmings remaining

It's normal to not have yet met the save requirement. Keep it green, it shouldn't stand out.

The abnormal state is having won the map. That should be non-green, assuming anything here will turn non-green-non-red. Pay attention, you've won.

I suspect that you want your section for paying attention to be only about problems (bad stuff is about to happen), not for general noticing (bad or good stuff). Fine with me, you can accomplish that by a green unsatisfied requirement and a green satisfied requirement. Convey it via better icons, winning the map swaps the flag (without checkmark) with a big green checkmark (no flag).

Alternatives: Remove all other green across the whole panel. Or invent, e.g., white for winning, even though that clashes with the green checkmarks in the menu. I value non-screaming panel colors more than avoiding such a clash.

-- Simon

[Simon]

Purple is essentially 'overtime' as opposed to 'insufficient time to win'.

Overtime is one case of having insufficient time to win. It's even the only condition where you can tell for sure that it's insufficient.

Fix the design bug where the engine guesses that 15 seconds is somehow an important threshold. Ditch the entire threshold feature. Zero is the important threshold. Either you can win (depending on other things) or you can't win. When you can't win anymore based on the clock alone, you have a reason to recolor from yellow to red.

It will be consistent across all levels to never guess a threshold other than 0.

It's only there because gameplay doesn't end when time is up, and it might be useful for the player to know by how much their attempted solution exceeds the time limit.

Right, for the same reason we don't stop after we've lost too many lemmings to win. Certainly we'll continue playing with red lemming count.

Red could be confusing here

I believe we're talking about different things.

#1 Existing:
yellow > 15 seconds
red > 0 seconds, < 15 seconds
purple < 0 seconds

#2 I agree that this is confusing:
yellow > 15 seconds
red > 0 seconds, < 15 seconds
red < 0 seconds

#3 But what is confusing with this?
yellow > 0 seconds
red < 0 seconds

I assume you're arguing that #2 is confusing. Certainly, #2 would be annoying with red for winnable and unwinnable, and the clock counts down during winnable, then back up during unwinnable. Instead, I meant #3 in both the OP and I mean it today.

It's hard to argue when the point is so vague. Instead, people should write down the supposedly-confusing situation in full, and an example of a second situation, and a reason for why a user will confuse the two. Sometimes even a reason for why the confusion is a problem. Prod me when I make this mistake and ask for examples.

especially since the timer counts upwards at this point.

Print a minus sign!

This will be sensible regardless of anything else in this topic. The timer will count in the same direction, down. And you'll be independent from any coloring. Design without color, and then use color on top of the color-blind design.

Lemmings 1 separated minutes from seconds by a dash (1-30), replace that dash with a colon (1:30) and you won't have awkward clashes such as −1-30.

If space is a concern, stop printing the minus sign after −10 minutes.

-- Simon

[WillLem]

It's normal to not have yet met the save requirement. Keep it green, it shouldn't stand out.

I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right. In fact, making it green when the SR is met is a reversion to 'default green', which doesn't seem right. So - agreed, let's make it green for 'not met' and change it (and/or use icons) when it's 'met'.

I value non-screaming panel colors more than avoiding such a clash.

As well as improving the colour scheme, we could also add an option ('Use colour scheme for panel text' or something). Unchecking it keeps everything green. We make sure that symbols, icons, and the text itself conveys all the important stuff (which it mostly already does).

Do we think such an option is necessary? Or would improving the colour scheme to be 'quieter' be sufficient?

Overtime is one case of having insufficient time to win.

I disagree. Overtime is not so much 'you don't have enough time left to win' as it is 'the game is already over'. It's a subtle but important distinction that I don't think red text would convey as clearly as something a bit more neutral (like purple/blue).

Overtime in NL serves 2 primary purposes:

1) Allow the player to continue exploring the level

2) Allow the player to rewind into 'playable' time

In either case, we need to let the player know that they are in Overtime. Purple/blue does this without conveying urgency (which red arguably does more so) or normality (for which we are using green).

Fix the design bug where the engine guesses that 15 seconds is somehow an important threshold. Ditch the entire threshold feature. Zero is the important threshold. Either you can win (depending on other things) or you can't win. When you can't win anymore based on the clock alone, you have a reason to recolor from yellow to red.

It's a fairly standard design practice for a descending timer to change to red, or orange, or some other 'urgent' colour, when time is close to running out, but not actually fully run out yet. Another design choice I've seen is to make the timer flash, but - let's not do that!

15 seconds is somewhat arbitrary, agreed, but we do need to provide the player with some visual feedback that the timer is close to running out, especially since time limits only tend to be used in custom levels when they're an actual feature of the level - most levels use infinite time. The player therefore needs to be reminded that the time limit (a) exists - the icons do this, and (b) is critical - if not with colour, and definitely not with flashing, then... what would you suggest?

#3 But what is confusing with this?
yellow > 0 seconds
red < 0 seconds

If I see a timer turn red, I'm more likely to think 'time is about to run out' rather than 'I'm out of time'. Indeed, most games just end when time is up (the only other video game (than NeoLemmix) that I can think of that uses Overtime is Tetris!).

Also, the use of red arguably conveys urgency, as previously mentioned. There is nothing necessarily urgent about the 'Overtime' state. Quite the contrary: the timer no longer matters once it's run out. This is why purple/blue is better.

Print a minus sign!

IMHO, this is more visually noisy than colour. I'd honestly rather not do this if we don't absolutely need to.

We need others to chime in.

[Proxima]

My thoughts:

The fewer colours, the better. In particular, it's nice for the default (most often seen) colour to be green across the board: lemmings in hatch, lemmings alive (when there are still enough to win), lemmings saved (before meeting the save requirement), timer (when there is no time limit).

Colour change on its own doesn't convey any information, unless it's easy to work out from context alone what it means. Number of lemmings going green -> red when there are no longer enough to win is fine (unless you are red-green colour-blind, but we can design the normal feature first and add optional tweaks for colour-blind players later).

For the save requirement, NL goes from negative to positive, so no colour change is needed. NLCE adds a tick to the flag, which is also good. (I would still prefer the negative numbers, as "-5" conveys "5 short of the requirement" a lot more easily than just "5" does, but maybe there's already an option for this?) Anyway, no colours needed here and that's great.

The timer needs to indicate (at least) three possible states: infinite; time limit counting down; overtime. There is already a different timer icon for the "infinite time" case, but I guess we are worried that with time limits being uncommon, a stronger reminder is needed. I am tentatively okay with using colours here, such as the suggested cyan for "there is a time limit" and blue or red for overtime. Of the two, red seems better as it's more consistent: the same colour for "not enough lemmings left" and "not enough time left". Both tell you that the level is failed and you need to rewind. Will argues that red shouldn't be used for overtime because red conveys urgency, while you can remain in overtime as long as you want; but the same is true for "not enough lemmings left" and we're fine using red for that. (Or should we change it to blue for both?)

Completely agree with Simon that there is no need for any "15 seconds left" indication. I grew up playing Repton 3 and I've had enough "15 seconds left" indications to last a lifetime    The player can tell time is close to running out because it says a number that is less than 15.

[Simon]

Tetris has a good reason for the urgency because your strategy differs toward the end.

Lemmings doesn't have anything like this in the final seconds. What are you expected to do in the last seconds? Click harder? Fast forward faster? Use a consistent color for unwinnable. Unwinnable number of lemmings is red? Then overtime should be red.

If you change this as Proxima and I recommend, you'll have a good chance to get used to the consistent meaning of red. Red means unwinnable state. Time limit hasn't become meaningless. It's the opposite! Time limit is now doing its only job it can ever do: Preventing you from winning.

Since you're looking for examples from other games: Pushover and One Step Beyond have time limits. Both allow you to continue into negative time where you can't win. Positive time is yellow, and negative time is red.

Alternative to minus sign: The yellow hourglass (that has sand in both halves) turns red (together with its number) and has all the red sand in the bottom half.


I too have a weak preference for the minus sign in the save requirement, but I can't make a solid case.

The satisfied save requirement is a flag with a checkmark. Consider removing the flag and have only a checkmark in this icon. Makes it easier to see the checkmark, and the switch into the winning state will pop a little better.

Don't introduce options, you're already on the way to make the usual situation non-screaming. Green unmet save requirement is the most important for this. We agree on this already.

-- Simon