Grey Player Skin

The grey player skin is an unfair advantage because it's very hard to see against the textures that most of the maps use.
The logical conclusion is that everyone uses the grey skin and that would be very dull indeed, and we would develop squinty eyes trying to make each other out.
I propose that the two shades of grey should be removed from the player setup menu, hopefully in the first release of Xonotic.

Fixed poll. There is one thing though now the pants have been turned into glow. I would suggest you try the diabolik/ignisplayermodel branch to see what it looks like now.

Gray skin is fine as long as the marine model isn't a part of Xonotic 1.0. That was by far the hardest to see, and people took advantage of it. Voted "remove" on that basis.

That's what grey on grey looks like now. And all old nexuiz models have been thrown out.

EDIT: Sorry about the shotgun. It's been scaled down so dont worry.

you should take some new screenshots then

How about making players have some white areas coveng say... 5 to 15 % of player skin. Those white rectangles or dots would be flashing (1~3 Hz) so no one would miss a player - even if he has a green skin. Other thing is to give players some default black areas also so gray skin wouldn't be invisible on gray background (on Farewell map )

This is some idea to make the gray skin not a cursed one, and improve player's visibility.

All in all - on some maps red skins are almost invisible. This is not about gray - this is about player visibility regardless colors - another tools here are light and motion.

Flashing unlit (white) areas might be a win here I think

No don't remove it, that makes no sense!

First of all, the glow map is supposed to be used to make players equally visible, not the diffuse (or specular/gloss) textures.

Second, you can adjust its shade to make it more visible without removing it outright.

Third you can make the other colors less flashy so that they blend better with gray. This can look better anyway, less eye sores and epilepsy and more believable and quality style.

FS++

the color choices always annoyed me with nexuiz, because it was really hard to make a combination look good.

NO. if you play on a very bright green map, you should remove the green player skin.
if you play on a very bright red map, you should remove the red player skin.

It depends on the map.

Now that is getting somewhere. What if a map could set a cvar in the mapinfo file that contains player colors to not allow (and randomly replace by an allowed one)?

I agree with div0 and kay.

also +1 to kay and divverent from me

Now that is getting somewhere. What if a map could set a cvar in the mapinfo file that contains player colors to not allow (and randomly replace by an allowed one)?

You know what i liked about 16 bit cursors for Windows? The "inverted" color.

Hehe, neat solution div.

Indeed a good idea. *thumbs up*

What about equalizing all of the skins somewhat? At least in Nexuiz I felt that some of them were very glaring and over-saturated to the extent where it looked like someone had taken to them with a can of fluorescent spray paint

I'm not sure what to vote for, since my wish is seeing a color picker for selecting the player colors. But one that only allows selecting full intensity colors, without changing brightness (a slider on a rainbow bar).

This would get rid of the grey color issue, and allow players to use any bright color for theirselves. I was planning to make another topic for this, but now that I posted it here, what do you think?

It's not a bad idea, but you clould leave in a gray/black/white pixel, however, this makes div's idea much more difficult

It's not a bad idea, but you clould leave in a gray/black/white pixel, however, this makes div's idea much more difficult

If you mean disallowing some player colors per map, I personally don't agree with that. Why should players change their color depending on which map is playing? Imo configuring your character is something you should be able to do unconstrained within certain bounds (eg. no dark colors). Colors are how a player wishes to look so they also represent the players... I'd want them to stay the same on all maps.

This can already be done per-server. The DCC minstagib server forces all players to green, which is a good possibility as a server choice, as you can just not play there (and afaik this cvar can also be settemp-ed by a map). But if maps had this ability your colors would be flickering each match on all servers. I support removing the gray color much more than this myself (all ideas are welcome, I just think this would be exaggerated imho).

We also have glowing colors against dark colors now. Most player skins are dark, but have the bright glow over their body (like this). That should make any player possible to spot everywhere. Nexuiz hardly had any glow on players, and no one had big a problem with that from what I remember.

Anyway, another idea until a color picker is implemented (if it will be) is replacing the gray color with white. A perfectly white color would be nice, and could fix this problem without people missing the gray one.

[EDIT] I posted about my color picker idea over here, given that it's related to this.

If you mean disallowing some player colors per map, I personally don't agree with that. Why should players change their color depending on which map is playing? Imo configuring your character is something you should be able to do unconstrained within certain bounds (eg. no dark colors). Colors are how a player wishes to look so they also represent the players... I'd want them to stay the same on all maps.

Then mappers will be forced to use a certain color palette... You can't do a bright green map while allowing green players.

Then mappers will be forced to use a certain color palette... You can't do a bright green map while allowing green players.

I don't see why not personally. I mean, how much can players get hidden by the color? It never even came to mind in the Nexuiz times that this could be an issue. Anyway my vote would be on coloring maps less rather than limiting how players can configure their selves, if there was such a choice. To me this is as good as the map changing my nickname or player model.

But again, what surprises me is how there can be a spot where players are too hard to see. Most players in Xonotic are dark, half of their surface colored by Shirt and the rest covered in Glow. In some cases this is about 3 different color nouns. Where could a player be impossible to spot? If they're sitting against a bright green wall, their green glow blends in but the rest is completely visible. If they're against a dark surface, their body may blend in but the glow gives them away instead. Especially if we only remove the gray color like this topic suggests.

Another thought: How will this be done in team games where the blue base is colored in blue and the red base in red? That would mean players blend with the walls at their home base, if the lights or textures are too bright and saturated. Also, can anyone post screenshots of where this is an issue? In the image posted below I can see the player as clear as daylight (his body is darker than the floor and his glow brighter, so he's given away by two factors at once, and even that is with the gray color which will probably be removed).

Camouflage skins have always been an issue in the minsta and dm scenes...
Hopefully glow can fix this, but that screenshot you show there is a close-up. If the player hides in a corner and hardly moves, he should still be visible.

Camouflage skins have always been an issue in the minsta and dm scenes...
Hopefully glow can fix this, but that screenshot you show there is a close-up. If the player hides in a corner and hardly moves, he should still be visible.

Yeah, glow is what I'm putting my hope on as well Nexuiz never used it in this way, but afaik players could have a fair fight in dark areas, except maybe in minstagib. Since the glow was introduced I can see everyone more easily, since one color compensates the other against any wall or color. This should further give away a standing player too I think.

If I am correct rule to plugins to not be saying that there is more than just a change of models of the players. That said, I can say that this plugin is very unapproved.

Haha, the 'color 15' console command was my favorite.

Anyway, I don't think the map should force you to change color. Just make sure the player models have dark and glow parts, that way on a bright map the dark parts show and on a dark map the glow parts show.