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Author Topic: Preferences: Colors  (Read 8008 times)

Broken Stylus

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Preferences: Colors
« on: September 19, 2018, 12:51:33 PM »
Hi,

I'm still on 1.8.8 but I noticed that when I moved to this version of Playmaker, all the color hues got darker.
They are shown to be quite bright in the Preferences, but once applied to states, they're very dark.

I use several color schemes related to specific types of states and it's very useful, especially when zooming out or even on the minimal. Or simply because certain colors are absolutely useless on the graph since the text's color cannot be changed or doesn't auto-switch to white if the state's color is too bright or stuff...

So is this hue darkening a bug and has it been solved in 1.9, or was it an under the hood decision?

P.S.: since this is related to efficiency in Playmaker, I put it here but maybe it should be in bugs? I don't know if it's a bug or a rather bad UX decision taken between the update from 1.7 to 1.8.

jeanfabre

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Re: Preferences: Colors
« Reply #1 on: September 21, 2018, 02:40:54 AM »
Hi,

 can you make a screenshot of what you want, I'll compare.

 Bye,

 Jean

Broken Stylus

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Re: Preferences: Colors
« Reply #2 on: September 21, 2018, 03:40:47 PM »
I remember that the default colors were more vivid.
Now, the color is only true when applied to the link, not the state (transitions are always lighter, no problem here).

For example, I had a home made orange that was very intense and when applied to a state, said state was of this exact color.
The same hex now produces a dimmer and darker orange on the state.
See Orange Custom.

Thinking of it, I think that I encountered this when precisely moving from an older 1.8.x to 1.8.8. I'd have to check an old project but I don't have access to the computer.

jeanfabre

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Re: Preferences: Colors
« Reply #3 on: October 01, 2018, 03:17:51 AM »
Hi,

 do you mean that the color you input do not match when you compare it with photoshop or else?

 Bye,

 Jean

Broken Stylus

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Re: Preferences: Colors
« Reply #4 on: October 03, 2018, 12:27:31 PM »
For example, a very flamboyant orange in Prefs, when applied to a state, should make this state be of the same color and also show up on the minimap as the same color, but its hue is actually darker on both.
I wonder if this is a modification quickly introduced to make the background of the transitions attached to this state, and the links departing from this state, be darker too and thus more visible.

A current project I work on doesn't have this problem, even if I'm on 1.8.8f2 now, perhaps because I upgraded from older versions up to 1.8.8 and the Preferences weren't replaced.
But when I make tests by directly installing 1.8.8, the darker hue bug is present.

I haven't moved to 1.9 yet so I cannot tell if this is still there.

Broken Stylus

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Re: Preferences: Colors
« Reply #5 on: October 03, 2018, 12:30:41 PM »
In fact, only the links are of the proper color.

DanielThomas

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Re: Preferences: Colors
« Reply #6 on: October 04, 2018, 09:28:41 AM »
Look at attachment, you can see the colors doesn't match and there is a break between the colors. I think this is what OP means.

Broken Stylus

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Re: Preferences: Colors
« Reply #7 on: October 10, 2018, 04:15:06 AM »
Look at attachment, you can see the colors doesn't match and there is a break between the colors. I think this is what OP means.

Woot! That's some high CIA-level photoshopping you've got there!  ;D ;D ;D
But that's it. One can see that only the link are of the right color.
Before the change/bug, the states were on the right color and the transitions were simply a whitened hue/variant of said colors.

jeanfabre

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Re: Preferences: Colors
« Reply #8 on: October 10, 2018, 06:19:10 AM »
Hi,

 Cool, Let me forward this as a bug report so that it can be looked at. I agree colors should be reflecting the developer choice.

 Bye,

 Jean

Broken Stylus

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Re: Preferences: Colors
« Reply #9 on: March 10, 2021, 09:37:19 AM »
I moved up to 1.9.1 and got that issue again.
In Prefs, the colors are vivid, but in the Graph View nearly all of them are much darker.
Legacy doesn't even display a shadow gradient, it just casts a translucent dark veil over the state. Flat makes things a little bit clearer because the veil is not rendered at all but the colors are clearly not reflecting the values set in Prefs.

That's a code scheme I'm carrying from older versions of Playmaker so it's possible the nomenclature inside the Prefs file is different and something is contributing to this disharmony between the hexadecimal values and the expected result.

Broken Stylus

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Re: Preferences: Colors
« Reply #10 on: October 18, 2022, 12:38:38 PM »
Me again.
In a fresh project, at Playmaker 1.9.5f3, the color palette still remains hurt by a non-fidelity bug of some kind; the "Legacy" theme type that had an old school gradient shadow to give some kind of roundness to the states now simply applies a slightly darker shade over a state's title, whereas the "Flat" is slightly less darker. One can compare with 1.8 and see the big difference. There is in fact nothing really "legacy" about it really against the flat (design) that just darkens things too, but just a little bit less.

Now why this is being done is simple to guess: with one single color set, a state can have three of them depending on what needs to be colored: the parent color as defined in the color palette, which will be used for links if the user wants them to be related to the state color; plus two variants, one darker for the state name written in a white font, and one paler for the exit transition event written in a dark font.

This avoids the state name to be impossible to read no matter what color is selected. But this means it is impossible to use vivid and bright colors. Thus the default orange, no how matter how bright and peppy in the settings, will always be a dull brown in the Graph View, while the applied default yellow will look like a foul puddle of piss more than anything else.

This "autotuning" of the colors, introduced around the first versions of 1.9, is just a sad thing really.
Why can't the states be of the color as seen in the color palette?
Why can't the Legacy style simply cast a gradient shadow over the lower part of the state?
And why not make that an option, this darker veil, to automatically darken the state name zone if users are worried that some colors would make the white text impossible to read? That would be the users' faults anyway for setting colors that would be too bright and pale but at least they would remain in control of how things are going to look like in the Graph View.

The transitions' paler variant of the color palette isn't causing any trouble, so this one can probably stay the way it is, although perhaps some users would want the whitening of the transition zones to be tickable off too?

Edit: Soon 5000 views for this?
« Last Edit: October 18, 2022, 12:53:00 PM by Broken Stylus »