How to vary empire name and text colour?

Problems and solutions for installing or running FreeOrion, including discussion of bugs if needed before posting a bug report on GitHub. For problems building from source, post in Compile.

Moderator: Oberlus

Message
Author
maxand
Space Floater
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue Mar 18, 2008 5:42 am
Location: Australia

How to vary empire name and text colour?

#1 Post by maxand »

Currently playing as Terran Imperium with one other empire - "Control"

Image

If I select, say, 7 empires to play against, they seem to be given rather vague names, such as Integration, Compact, Entirety, Brotherhood, Protectorate, Cluster and Bloc. I would have expected these empires to be named after their major species, hopefully another of the starting species in the list, or alternatively chosen from another list of species with known characteristics that can either be "known" immediately or "discovered" as time passes.

I'm confused as to why default empire names are as above, rather than, perhaps, "Egassem Empire", which would at least give a clue to the nature of who owns the empire and what I can expect. I haven't played far enough to discover whether or not the the identity of the race that owns the empire is revealed - does this occur?

Image

My other problem here is that about half the empire text colours, being dark, are extremely difficult to read against a dark grey background. I don't know how many AI empires most users tend to play against, but I would have thought 3 or 4 would be about maximum (depending on aggression settings), in which case it would be easy to change the order of colours in the relevant array so that the first half dozen are all easy to read. (Note that the second empire's text colour always seems to be dark blue!)

I had a similar problem with another app not so long ago and discovered through trial and error that colours such as olive, khaki, tan, hot pink and light grey are easily distinguishable from the the main primaries and secondaries, even with small font sizes as here.

How can I customize these colours or edit the array so that the most readable (lightest) ones appear first?

PS I'm not sure whether to be asking "how do I change ..." in this Support forum, or in some other subforum specializing in coding. Please advise me on this.

User avatar
Dilvish
AI Lead and Programmer Emeritus
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2012 6:25 pm

Re: How to vary empire name and text colour?

#2 Post by Dilvish »

maxand wrote:I'm confused as to why default empire names are as above, rather than, perhaps, "Egassem Empire"
In FO, an Empire is fairly distinct from the species of it's starting world, and in general the more turns pass the more different species get incorporated into any given empire; the starting species easily may no longer predominate. FO intentionally avoids conflating the species and empire concepts.
My other problem here is that about half the empire text colours, being dark, are extremely difficult to read against a dark grey background.
I don't think I could agree with 'about half', but regarding some of the colors anyway (dark blue in particular), yes, I'd agree there should be some modifications to improve contrast against dark backgrounds.
I don't know how many AI empires most users tend to play against, but I would have thought 3 or 4 would be about maximum... in which case it would be easy to change the order of colours in the relevant array so that the first half dozen are all easy to read.
The default is 6; I most commonly play against 7-10, sometimes played against up to 20, and I think I'm far from unique in that. Still, I'd agree that reordering the colors seems like a reasonable idea.
How can I customize these colours or edit the array so that the most readable (lightest) ones appear first?
I believe these are specified in the file default/empire_colors.xml; you could edit that to reorder the colors. And I think I may do so myself now :D
PS I'm not sure whether to be asking "how do I change ..." in this Support forum, or in some other subforum specializing in coding. Please advise me on this.
This seems fine to me.
If I provided any code, scripts or other content here, it's released under GPL 2.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Re: How to vary empire name and text colour?

#3 Post by Geoff the Medio »

maxand wrote:I'm confused as to why default empire names are as above, rather than, perhaps, "Egassem Empire"...
Because species and empires are separate concepts in FreeOrion. Multiple empires can start with the same species, and an empire that starts with a species will not necessarily have any of it or be dominated by it at any later point in a game.
How can I customize these colours or edit the array so that the most readable (lightest) ones appear first?
Edit empire_colors.xml to have only colours you like.

User avatar
MatGB
Creative Contributor
Posts: 3310
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 11:45 pm

Re: How to vary empire name and text colour?

#4 Post by MatGB »

Plus, an empire that starts with one species may, later on, have none of that species within it and the capital may be moved somewhere completely different. I actually think we ought to rename the default empire name away from "Terran Imperium" anyway (plus, also, if you select Imperium yourself, you can sometimes have another Imperium to fight against, bit annoying).

I've never noticed the contrast problem but I personally always prefer low contrast stuff and am aware I'm unusual in that regard, have to get others to test pages I've worked on &c.
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

maxand
Space Floater
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue Mar 18, 2008 5:42 am
Location: Australia

Re: How to vary empire name and text colour?

#5 Post by maxand »

Thanks guys for answering these curly questions.

I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that an empire may be inhabited by several species, let alone the fact that the original "owning" species may no longer even be there after a while.

If I start off as a Terran species, am I likely to be fighting other Terrans who happen to be inhabiting other empires?

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Re: How to vary empire name and text colour?

#6 Post by Geoff the Medio »

maxand wrote:If I start off as a Terran species, am I likely to be fighting other Terrans who happen to be inhabiting other empires?
As far as I know, your choice of initial species doesn't affect the likelihood of seeing that species in other empires. The number of other empires and frequency of native-inhabited planets will both increase the chances of see any given species in a game.

(Also, "terran" isn't a species in FreeOrion; "human" is.)

User avatar
MatGB
Creative Contributor
Posts: 3310
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 11:45 pm

Re: How to vary empire name and text colour?

#7 Post by MatGB »

maxand wrote:I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that an empire may be inhabited by several species, let alone the fact that the original "owning" species may no longer even be there after a while.
Don't think of it as "owning", think of it as founding. Obviously, if an empire loses control of its original capital it's not actually doing brilliantly overall, but it does, sometimes, happen. To put it a slightly different way, in Star Trek, the Federation was, effectively, founded by the Vulcans, but the capital is on Earth because Humans became the dominant species—in the later stages of the game, you'll want to build a Megalith, which sets the empire capital, I regularly put it elsewhere from my original homeworld, the benefit is normally best on a newly conquered world or a research world that you're going to switch to industry, etc.
If I start off as a Terran species, am I likely to be fighting other Terrans who happen to be inhabiting other empires?
The chance is relatively good if you're running multiple AIs. Each AI has an equal chance of being any Playable species, at the moment no account is taken of other species selected already, so you can end up with multiples of your species, but that's statistically less likely.

At the moment, the background and fluff explaining what's going on hasn't really been written, so there's no real jutification for that at the moment, but it's worth noting that the two non-playable super species extant within the system are known as the Experimentors and the Testers, my personal "story" is that the galaxy is a giant experiment created by precursos species and they've forced evolution on multiple worlds the same way in this galaxy, just to see how it happens. At some point a story might get written, but the game's still in a large amount of flux regarding features and setting so everything is subject to change.
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

User avatar
em3
Vacuum Dragon
Posts: 630
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2011 2:51 pm

Re: How to vary empire name and text colour?

#8 Post by em3 »

In many fictional works [citation needed], the name of a species or organisation is derived from the planet of contact or planet of origin.

Maybe the empire name could be somehow based on the home star name?
Like "[Title] of [Star]" : "Brotherhood of Sol", "Cluster of Centaurus", "Empire of Chulak"...
or "The [Star] [Title]" : "The Sol Brotherhood", "The Centaurus Cluster", "The Chulak Empire".

This could get hairy in translation, though...
https://github.com/mmoderau
[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - Randall Munroe, title text to xkcd #556

User avatar
Vezzra
Release Manager, Design
Posts: 6095
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2011 12:56 pm
Location: Sol III

Re: How to vary empire name and text colour?

#9 Post by Vezzra »

em3 wrote:Maybe the empire name could be somehow based on the home star name?
Like "[Title] of [Star]" : "Brotherhood of Sol", "Cluster of Centaurus", "Empire of Chulak"...
or "The [Star] [Title]" : "The Sol Brotherhood", "The Centaurus Cluster", "The Chulak Empire".
That should already be doable in Python universe generation.

maxand
Space Floater
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue Mar 18, 2008 5:42 am
Location: Australia

Re: How to vary empire name and text colour?

#10 Post by maxand »

I like Vezzra's suggestion - might make FO more intuitive to n00bs like me, also attract more players. :)

Thanks everyone for making this concept much clearer to me. I should have used "human" instead of "Terran".

maxand
Space Floater
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue Mar 18, 2008 5:42 am
Location: Australia

Re: How to vary empire name and text colour?

#11 Post by maxand »

I've tweaked the original colours used in empire_colors.xml so that the first 16 AI empires appear like this:

Image

Hope this is easier on the eyes! :)

Modified file attached.
Attachments
empire_colors.xml
(1.45 KiB) Downloaded 190 times

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Re: How to vary empire name and text colour?

#12 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Don't use a saturated red for a player empire colour; that is reserved for non-player monsters.

maxand
Space Floater
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue Mar 18, 2008 5:42 am
Location: Australia

Re: How to vary empire name and text colour?

#13 Post by maxand »

Sorry, didn't realize that.

maxand
Space Floater
Posts: 36
Joined: Tue Mar 18, 2008 5:42 am
Location: Australia

Re: How to vary empire name and text colour?

#14 Post by maxand »

My excuse is that I've been playing without Monsters, so didn't realize the colour conflict :oops:

For those who don't need monsters this shouldn't be a problem!

Anyway here's a new version, hope it complies:

Image

Rearrange the order of colours by editing the file until the ones you like most are at the top and match the number of AI empires selected.
Attachments
empire_colors.xml
(1.73 KiB) Downloaded 211 times

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Re: How to vary empire name and text colour?

#15 Post by Geoff the Medio »

maxand wrote:Anyway here's a new version, hope it complies:
The "Society" colour seems a bit too close to saturated red (though might be more distinct next to it?)...

Post Reply