Producer Update: 24 Team Colors

[Kam]

Greetings Warchiefs!

As an ongoing concern we are looking for 24 unique team colors that take into consideration color blindness.

Please provide your suggestions here with color codes.

Thank you!

 

[Shar Dundred]

Whatever you do, please please do NOT remove Black, White and Dark Red!

Apart from that, I think the colors are fine.
That Brown/Dark Green switch should be looked into tho

 

[deepstrasz]

Whatever you do, please please do NOT remove Black, White and Dark Red!

Do not remove any of the original colours either. You could add those from Warcraft II, Brood War, something like that.
Oh and keep their order! Add others after the original ones!

 

[Wareditor]

Thank you for the incredible patch!

I am color blind and to be honest I had already some trouble with some of the 12 colors but I got used to it. It's hard to really create a good color blindness mode with 24 colors because of how each color blind people has trouble with different colors. The only solution would be to make it so you could change the colors of each player on the client side. You could for instance configure them in the menu to fit your color blindness. But even so, I don't know if you can find 24 very distinguishable colors.

As of right now here are my suggestions :

• Keep the original 12 player colors for legacy.

The 4th and 10th player colors have been changed. The 4th player color seems too close to the 2nd player color (blue). I understand it was to make them work better with the new colors. However I think after so many years they became iconic to the community and should be kept that way.
Also, players 11 & 12 have their colors swapped.

• Allow to customize the extra 12 team colors with 8-bit RGB.

 

[millzy]

White can be confusing on the mini map at times making u think they are your units when they are not. maybe a way around it is to keep the units u control the same colour on the mini map instead of all units u control being white? the white colour is nice to have

keep the original colours the same (purple and light blue have been changed)

 

[Kacpa2]

@millzy Exacly :v
LB is my favourite colour, it wont conflict or get confused with any other colour......
Brown and DG got switched.....i see no reason for it.
Original Purp and LB dont conflict with new TC at all.....to be honest i think that should use new player 4 colour as new PURP instead of that ...dark.....one and keep the original as it was. Light blue must be as it was.....it looks far too much like teal and it was perfect as it was.....also it's Jaina's campaign team colour......it must stay xD
Dark Red.....shuold be more.....vivid....it looks far too much like brown right now(vivid maroon would be so nice) Dark Orange should be...more orange......and Dark purp(player 16) should be replaced by that vivid violet that replaced original purp(player 4)......

Spoiler

This will help with confusion between dark pink, dark red and dark purp and brown.....there should be no dark purp to be honest.....just original one and that.....'Super violet' which replaces it right now......
Also keep Brown as player 12 and DG as 11 there is no need for them being swapped and i causes issues in all maps that refer to colours by names in commands and spells related to them(and lets be honest many of them wont be ever updated...)
Maybe instead of second dark green......A light green?

 

[TriggerHappy]

Whatever you do, please please do NOT remove Black, White and Dark Red!

Yeah I want to keep those colors too.

Keep the original 12 player colors for legacy.

+1

 

[A Void]

I would prefer a color palette, instead of the preset colors, players could choose their own.

 

[Shar Dundred]

Keep the original 12 player colors for legacy.

Agreed.

I would prefer a color palette, instead of the preset colors, players could choose their own.

Might be me, but I prefer preset over that. Too much of a pain to select the right color imo.
Also prolly not easily integrated.

 

[A Void]

Agreed.


Might be me, but I prefer preset over that. Too much of a pain to select the right color imo.
Also prolly not easily integrated.

With the introduction of 24 players team color became irrelevant as there are only so much colors before you start using different shades of each. Warcraft 3 designed specifically to use individual unique colors for each player, but color count is limited if we exclude color shades from the gradient.

What I'm trying to say is that it would be better option to give player complete freedom to use whatever color shade he/she wants. Why waste interface space for ancient preset system that's hard-coded and outdated? In the long term it would be wiser to implement a color palette and change how team colors work in War3. Instead of preset textures, they could make it so that the material is colored according to a color code. It's very much possible to implement this; use a default material of white ( a texture) and make the engine color that material to color code of each player.

Of course there should be an option to toggle color palette and preset colors. It would be optional in game settings.

 

[Shar Dundred]

Of course there should be an option to toggle color palette and preset colors. It would be optional in game settings.

That I'd be completely fine with.

 

[Sieben]

I'm not colour-blind myself, but I agree with Wareditor, not all people affected by colour blindness see the same things. The best way would probably be to let colour-lind players configure colours manually.

White can be confusing on the mini map at times making u think they are your units when they are not. maybe a way around it is to keep the units u control the same colour on the mini map instead of all units u control being white? the white colour is nice to have

I thought the same thing. Another suggestion would be to change the colour of minimap player-owned units to a bright flashy green, like in Warcraft 2. Or to let players choose the minimap colour of their units, in the options menu.

And I also agree with most of what was said: keep the old colours (including old purple and light blue), keep the colours order, lighten a tiny bit dark red and dark blue, and keep black and white!
About that palette option: yeah, it's not a bad idea, but I think it would be a lot of work for quite a small addition in the end. I mean, with 24 colours, we already have a lot, and the palette would only add slight nuances. But I won't protest if that feature is implemented though (with a palette toggle option)

 

[Ezekiel12]

I agree that the original player colors should stay untouched.
While I think white is a nice addition it might be annoying because on the minimap own units are always white.

 

[Shar Dundred]

A possible solution could be changing the player color on the mini map like it is in StarCraft II,
the lime green.

 

[A Void]

A possible solution could be changing the player color on the mini map like it is in StarCraft II,
the lime green.

Or units on the mini-map would be team colored as well.

 

[Sieben]

Or units on the mini-map would be team colored as well.

If prefer the lime green option. Because it may be troublesome to find some of your units in the minimap, if your colour is brown for example.
But team-coloured could be an option for those who wish so.

 

[deepstrasz]

As suggested by @Tauer here, we could use the Warcraft II additional colours:

Spoiler

Warcraft II had black (for neutral in WcIII) and white (gray in WcIII) as player colours. You can check how the unit colours look on the map and how the player colour shows on the minimap.

!Click images for full size view!

----------------------------------------------------------------

I'll add the StarCraft+Brood War ones to the suggestion as well:

Spoiler: I

Spoiler: II

StarCraft had a player colour difference depending on the type of tileset. Where there was snow (Ice tileset), the white player wasn't available and instead the green colour was used. However on many tilesets brown still could be hard to spot. On the Desert tileset, orange may create problems, and so on.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Warcraft III also has some issues especially with brown and dark green on some tiles:

Spoiler: I

Spoiler: II

Spoiler: III

Spoiler: IV

Spoiler: V

Spoiler: VI

 

[Kacpa2]

As suggested by @Tauer here, we could use the Warcraft II additional colours:

Spoiler

View attachment 292504

Warcraft II had black (for neutral in WcIII) and white (gray in WcIII) as player colours. You can check how the unit colours look on the map and how the player colour shows on the minimap.
[/spoiler]

Well we got White and black :v but other colours need adjustments or changes as i wrote xD

 

[Sieben]

...

Yeah, I guess this is why Blizzard chose only flashy colours in the first place. These new colours could lead to (slightly) unbalanced games, so we'll have to deal with it if we want to keep the new 24 players Unless minimap units are displayed with different colours than the actual colours, but this would get more and more complicated...

 

[Erkan]

As many already suggested I think the originals 12 colors should stay untouched. For the other 12, it's my personal opinion, but I found some of the dark brownish colors to be unappealing. I did some tinkering with the editor and managed to do this

Hidden

I tried to make the new colors stay close to what they are on the ptr but with some changes:

-The original colors are still here, old purple, green and light blue are back.
-Some of the new colors have been changed to look like they were in warcraft 2 (dark red and dark blue, black and white).
-I replaced the new dark teal with the new light blue because i think dark teal look too much like the original dark green.
- The other colors are lighter variants of their originals (tan for yellow, salmon for orange, anis for green ect..)

For the confusion with white units on the minimap maybe using a different "darker" white as the player color might help .

Exemple

It's just my opinion about the new team colors. For those interested, here are the color codes

Codes: RGB & Hex

1: 255,3,3 /#FF0303
2: 0,66,255 /#0042FF
3: 25,232,185 /#19E8B9
4: 84,0,129 /#540081
5: 255.252.1 /#FFFC01
6: 254.138.14 /#FE8A0E
7: 32.192.0 /#20C000
8: 230.90.176 /#E65AB0
9: 149 150 151 /#959697
10: 126 191 241 /#7EBFF1
11: 16 98 70 /#106246
12: 78 42 4 /#4E2A04
13: 155 0 0 /#9B0000
14: 0 0 195 /#0000C3
15: 0 234 255 /#00EAFF
16: 190 0 254 /#BE00FE
17: 235 205 135 /#EBCD87
18: 248 164 139 /#F8A48B
19: 191 255 128 /#BFFF80
20: 220 185 235 /#DCB9EB
21: 40 40 40 /#282828
22: 235 240 255 /#EBF0FF
23: 0 120 30 /#00781E
24: 164 111 51 /#A46F33

 

[Kacpa2]

As many already suggested I think the originals 12 colors should stay untouched. For the other 12, it's my personal opinion, but I found some of the dark brownish colors to be unappealing. I did some tinkering with the editor and managed to do this

I tried to make the new colors stay close to what they are on the ptr but with some changes:

-The original colors are still here, old purple, green and light blue are back.
-Some of the new colors have been changed to look like they were in warcraft 2 (dark red and dark blue, black and white).
-I replaced the new dark teal with the new light blue because i think dark teal look too much like the original dark green.
- The other colors are lighter variants of their originals (tan for yellow, salmon for orange, anis for green ect..)

For the confusion with white units on the minimap maybe using a different "darker" white as the player color might help .

Agreed :v that's what i thought should be done

 

[Tauer]

One thing I'd suggest you look into is making the team color textures replaceable in the World Editor. That way people can use custom TC without having to make a custom MPQ. Or a color palette like mentioned by @A Void would be amazing, of course with an option to use presets instead, and integration to the World Editor. But this might be too much of a hassle to implement.

Another thing is that the hero glow for black TC is pretty weak, I'd suggest maybe lightening it up a bit.

 

[Spacebuns]

Can we have checkered pattern colors?

 

[A Void]

Can we have checkered pattern colors?

It's possible, but that's not how team color works in Warcraft 3. Warcraft 3 uses a single texture file for each team color and applies that texture onto model's material. You can probably use a checkered pattern team color texture, but the results will be unpredictable and not that good. To put it simply; War3 doesn't support checkered pattern colors and wasn't designed for it. To implement such a feature you would have to re work entire team color system engine-wise and that's unlikely.

Besides, how would checkered colors even look in minimap or interface?

 

[_Guhun_]

It's going to be basically impossible to find a set of 24 colors that is going to be good for all types/intensities of color blindness. I have protanopia, but there wc3 colors were never much of a problem for me after a few years (except for teal and lb pings, because they look almost the same to me). I think adding an option to allow people to choose their own team color would make it confusing in-game for players to talk to each other (like how people reference each other by their colors in many maps).

For my two cents, at first I thought dark red would be bad because it would be too similar to brown, but at least in the units/minimap, they are fairly distinct. You should change the white color of the player on the minimap so it's not easily going to be confused for the white team color. While there are 6 colors that I can get easily confused, they look somewhat different enough so that I may be able to not confuse them after I get accustomed to seeing them.

 

[Kacpa2]

It's going to be basically impossible to find a set of 24 colors that is going to be good for all types/intensities of color blindness. I have protanopia, but there wc3 colors were never much of a problem for me after a few years (except for teal and lb pings, because they look almost the same to me). I think adding an option to allow people to choose their own team color would make it confusing in-game for players to talk to each other (like how people reference each other by their colors in many maps).

For my two cents, at first I thought dark red would be bad because it would be too similar to brown, but at least in the units/minimap, they are fairly distinct. You should change the white color of the player on the minimap so it's not easily going to be confused for the white team color. While there are 6 colors that I can get easily confused, they look somewhat different enough so that I may be able to not confuse them after I get accustomed to seeing them.

What do you think of Erkan's idea?

Its inline with what i wanted....excpet for new light blue replacing dark teal....it should be darker tealnot as in ptr but darker cuz its too similar to oroginal teal but aside from that its perfect

 

[A Void]

Black conflicts with neutral colors and the name in black is very hard to read comfortably. They should probably make it dark gray instead of black.

 

[Sieben]

What do you think of Erkan's idea?

I like most of it, but I prefer Blizzard's Dark Blue (except it's a little too dark-just a touch!)

 

[deepstrasz]

Yeah, I guess this is why Blizzard chose only flashy colours in the first place. These new colours could lead to (slightly) unbalanced games, so we'll have to deal with it if we want to keep the new 24 players Unless minimap units are displayed with different colours than the actual colours, but this would get more and more complicated...

Well, for multiplayer they could just change the minimap colour of tiles and leave the player colours be or something.

For the confusion with white units on the minimap maybe using a different "darker" white as the player color might help .

White is already too close to gray and your version is close to light blue so I don't know but I'd love the WcII white (heck all WcII and SC+BW colours if possible) in the game.

You should change the white color of the player on the minimap so it's not easily going to be confused for the white team color.

Actually, that could be solved by leaving all players with their own colour on the minimap, so when you'd be red, you'd see yourself as red on the minimap and not white, as suggested by Adorm here:
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20762056755?page=8#post-144

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How to Design for Color Blindness
World of Warcraft improves options for players with color vision impairment
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New Player Colors image - WarCraft II: Rise of Shadows (demo) mod for Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness

 

[_Guhun_]

Well, for multiplayer they could just change the minimap colour of tiles and leave the player colours be or
Actually, that could be solved by leaving all players with their own colour on the minimap, so when you'd be red, you'd see yourself as red on the minimap and not white, as suggested by Adorm here:

That would also be my suggestion. Maybe just a toggle on/of (another color option next to the minimap?) so that people can keep the old style if they want it.

 

[A Void]

That would also be my suggestion. Maybe just a toggle on/of (another color option next to the minimap?) so that people can keep the old style if they want it.

We might as well toggle the entire game to 1.26 while we're at it. Or wait, I want to toggle my game back to 1.00 version from 1.29..

 

[Sieben]

For that kind of minor features, I'm also in favour of allowing players to choose whatever pleases them most-provided it doesn't unbalance the game.

 

[Whitewolf8]

While I love most of Erkan's idea, I'd also love to see either one of the supposed 'Dark Purple' or 'Dark Pink' stay as they are, haha.

 

[opium911]

I have picked all those colors based on:

1) Being able to pinpoint your own color in a hectic brawl
2) Being able to pinpoint exact enemy colors in a hectic brawl
3) As much contrast as possible between the colors to avoid any confusion


The most important is that players do not get confused in the worst scenario possible which would be 24 players on the same screen and each one of them casting abilities. The players need to keep perfect positioning of their own heroes and enemy heroes at all times during the brawl.


Based on the color palette I have attached here, here are the colors I find could be suitable for the game in order to accommodate 24 players:

• 6 Luminous Vivid Red draw:color="#ff0000"

• 64 Luminous Vivid Orange draw:color="#ff8000 "

• 119 Luminous Vivid Yellow draw:color="#ffff00 "

• 193 Luminous vivid pistachio draw:color="#60ff00"

• 345 Luminous Vivid Cyan draw:color="#00ffff"

• 458 Luminous Vivid Blue draw:color="#0000ff"

• 603 Luminous vivid fuchsia draw:color="#ff00c4"

• 74 Deep brown draw:color="#592d00"

• 241 Strong green draw:color="#00a800"

• 532 Luminous vivid purple draw:color="#9f00ff"

• Pale grey draw:color="#cfcfcf"

• 109 Vivid gold draw:color="#e7ca00"

• 128 Strong olive draw:color="#a8a800"

• 370 Strong arctic blue draw:color="#0093a8"

• 427 Very pale sapphire blue draw:color="#e2e9ff"

• 627 Very light rose draw:color="#ff9eff"

• 571 Luminous vivid magenta draw:color="#ff00ff"

• White draw:color="#ffffff"

• Black draw:color="#000000"

• 61 Pale orange draw:color="#ffe0c2"

• 5 Light brilliant red draw:color="#ff6565"

• 318 Luminous vivid turquoise draw:color="#00ffbf"

• 676 Strong amaranth draw:color="#a80015"

• 79 Light brilliant gamboge draw:color="#ffc565"

Now this is the color palette I was using for this 24-color composition:

Spoiler

 

[aoszx2p2drd9]

An option to just add small numbers beside the icon on the minimap would be helpful. Or maybe they could solve this by using symbols on the minimap. As an example if there are 3 different teams in the match the first team gets an cross the second an triangle and the third a square.

 

[Kacpa2]

While I love most of Erkan's idea, I'd also love to see either one of the supposed 'Dark Purple' or 'Dark Pink' stay as they are, haha.

Same :v

 

[Kakerate]

Erkan's color scheme is almost perfect imo, dark grey is definitely a little too dark though.
Of opium911's suggestions, I could see use of the following:
676 Strong amaranth draw:color="#a80015" for Red two, or 5 Light brilliant red draw:color="#ff6565"

79 Light brilliant gamboge draw:color="#ffc565" for Yellow Two, or 109 Vivid gold draw:color="#e7ca00"

 

[Diegoit]

I would prefer a color palette, instead of the preset colors, players could choose their own.

And what about WE?

 

[A Void]

And what about WE?

If we follow by my approach then colors aren't really seperate textures anymore, but codes like this one: |c00FF0303Player 1|r


OR RGB 100, 0, 0

You could select a unit either in object editor or on the map and change it's color code to anything you like. Or you could change color code for the whole player via teams/players window.

It's possible to do this without removing preset colors.

Basically to sum it up, each player has white color texture, that white color texture is colored by the assigned color code.

 

[EternalOne]

One thing I'd suggest you look into is making the team color textures replaceable in the World Editor. That way people can use custom TC without having to make a custom MPQ. Or a color palette like mentioned by @A Void would be amazing, of course with an option to use presets instead, and integration to the World Editor. But this might be too much of a hassle to implement.

The team colors are already replaceable in the world editor, although the way to do it is a bit awkward. Each color in the game is handled by an 8x8 blp, with names such as:
ReplaceableTextures\TeamColor\TeamColor00.blp
ReplaceableTextures\TeamColor\TeamColor01.blp
ReplaceableTextures\TeamColor\TeamColor02.blp
and so on. In the regular War3.mpq file, each of these is a solid color. Importing a different 8x8 blp and setting its file path to one of those will replace the team color.

Earlier today, I tried to swap in an 8x8 blp that was not a solid color to see if I could make a rainbow player or something, but sadly, that doesn't work. The game always used the fourth pixel from the top/fourth pixel from the left of the 8x8 in question for determining the color. Might've been more efficient for Blizzard to store the player colors as a hex number than as an 8x8 image, but oh well.

 

[Diegoit]

Anyways i dont like the idea of custom TC.

 

[JesusHipster]

White is quiet meh!


WC3 modeling community struggles for resources so much that after patch goes out you can expect a whole bunch of models utilizing new teamcolours in no-import texturing routine.

 

[Kacpa2]

Anyways i dont like the idea of custom TC.

Me too, it's mainly for clear identificatin of players both in melee and customs with commands. Switching to "red enemies" isnt always a solution. And i want Erkan's colour set to be in full release of 1.29 cuz it's almost perfect(old colours kept intact, including undoing that weird switch of DG and Brown(names are still the same in triggers and otehr places mentioning players by colours......i have literally no idea why they done that.....other than maybe....making it separate from dark red? Maybe, because it's too brown-ish rn? but even then it causes issues, and changes colour of enemy brown forces to dg for no reason, and screws with maps that use player commands by colour for alliances and such, so IT must be returned to original order of colours and originals must stay as they were, new ones to Erkan's(and kind of mine cuz mine was similar xD) idea or close to it :v

 

[Map Designer]

@Kam @A Void

Why does it have to be limited to 24 colours?

Why does it have to be either colour palette or preset? Why not both?

Whydoes number of colours has to be same as number of players?

Spoiler

Thnx i like most of these colours.

 

[Bond009]

Are people from Blizzard actually on here to get advice for these things for the new patch update? Can someone point me to where things are discussed about the game engine and how bnet works.
I want to address, Clan room issues, channel issues, chat issues, limited connections of users to bnet at once from 1 IP (impossible to have friends over and all play now). Also how the game wont minimize right anymore, what to add to make games better searchable, desync issues in ladder, Hosting custom maps and bots. A lot of important issues to fix. thanks!

 

[Kacpa2]

Are people from Blizzard actually on here to get advice for these things for the new patch update? Can someone point me to where things are discussed about the game engine and how bnet works.
I want to address, Clan room issues, channel issues, chat issues, limited connections of users to bnet at once from 1 IP (impossible to have friends over and all play now). Also how the game wont minimize right anymore, what to add to make games better searchable, desync issues in ladder, Hosting custom maps and bots. A lot of important issues to fix. thanks!

Well head to 1.29 bugs and issues, you may pm Kam directly too if you're uncertain i think

 

[Sieben]

So I've been looking at the new colours after latest 15th March update. Overall I like it. I'm very happy purple and light blue are back!
However, I miss the awesome dark blue from first 1.29 PTR, even though it was very slightly too dark. The new blue is not bad, but it doesn't feel the same.
Also, I'm a bit concerned about some colours being too similar. I'm afraid this would bring confusion, especially in the minimap.
For example, there are two cyans looking very much alike. When looking at both of them side to side, you can tell the difference (well, most of the time); but when you look at them separately, you might get confused and not know which is which (it happened to me in a few games).
Same thing for player 22's white and player 20's pale purple, player 17's pale yellow and player 19's pale lime.
I would suggest to darken a few colours a bit, so the contrast is more obvious. Something like this, maybe:

Spoiler

I don't know if it's relevant, any thoughts?

 

[Erkan]

So I've been looking at the new colours after latest 15th March update. Overall I like it. I'm very happy purple and light blue are back!
However, I miss the awesome dark blue from first 1.29 PTR, even though it was very slightly too dark. The new blue is not bad, but it doesn't feel the same.
Also, I'm a bit concerned about some colours being too similar. I'm afraid this would bring confusion, especially in the minimap.
For example, there are two cyans looking very much alike. When looking at both of them side to side, you can tell the difference (well, most of the time); but when you look at them separately, you might get confused and not know which is which (it happened to me in a few games).
Same thing for player 22's white and player 20's pale purple, player 17's pale yellow and player 19's pale lime.
I would suggest to darken a few colours a bit, so the contrast is more obvious. Something like this, maybe:

Spoiler

I don't know if it's relevant, any thoughts?

Hi. I did some test with your suggestions and the results looks like this

Results

I think making the light pink more purple/lavender is a great idea because it's true white and light pink may seem very similar and this solves this problem.

Exemple: Pink & white

The new color even stands out next to the other two purples

Exemple: Purple

For the new cyan, it was originally the replacement for light blue, and it's true it's close to the vanilla teal. Making it darker like you suggest make it stand out and it's not similar to vanilla dark green.

Exemple: Teals

For light orange, in my honest opinion making it a little darker doesn't change much.

Exemple: Orange

For light green/lime making it darker make it different than white, but, again, in my opinion, maybe too close to the vanilla green

Exemple: Green

I think you have good ideas. The pale purple is great and darker cyan is a good idea, but I'm not sure about pale green and orange.

For those interested, here are the new color codes

Codes: RGB & Hex

Dark teal: 0 /157/170 009DAA
New pale orange: 248/131/97 F88361
New green/lime: 148/191/21 95BF15
Pale Purple/Lavender: 155/122/216 9B7AD8

 

[Sieben]

Hey, thanks for doing this, I had no idea how to do display colours in game!
Those were just suggestions anyway, they might require some tweaking to be viable, but I just thought I'd give it a try.

 

[Wrda]

Who ever said to keep white and black, and having a colour pallete is not thinking twice. First of all, implementing black colour is just being reckless because it will be confused with black masked terrain on mini map and with the colour brown. Secondly, the white colour will be a shiny one that will highlight in the minimap, but in some units and buildings it will look like they have no colour at all (imagine footmen or barracks), so it is out of question. Same as pallete since if people choose the same colour with slightly different chromatic or achromatic colour it will be confusing to distinguish for every player. So as several people have suggested earlier, have the 12 original colours with 12 new ones, but these news ones must be taken carefully and taken account for the reasons I've stated. And colourblind people should have some options, but general options, not subjective ones.