Developer Diaries 4
December 8 by John for Red Conquest
What's in a color? Is it just red, green and blue, or can one mix in "threatening", "royal", or "intense"?
Today, I explore an early mistake in updating the color palette for Red Conquest.
The original Blue Defense had a very intense red color, almost by accident. I set it to RGB(255,127,127), and over-drew the enemies twice - so in places, the color accumulated closer to white, and faded out to a darker red at 2-1-1 relative rgb saturation. Somewhere along the line, a bug was introduced that drew the enemies a little darker than full white, so the over-bright areas were thinner, and the fade out areas looked redder.
Fast forward to Red Conquest: I had come up with a color-cycling implementation to cycle through red, yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple - ostensibly so that colorblind people could tweak the faction colors to be as distinct as possible in online matches - but that introduced a further bug in the red coloring. The algorithm mistakenly set red's natural base color to RGB(255,176,176), instead of (255,127,127), and the whole color ended up being much lighter. Add to that the fact that Red Conquest was a new code base, and didn't have the same darker-color bug that Blue Defense had, and the red faction was no longer a menacing red...
It was a light, airy, almost feminine...
Salmon pink.
And not Pacific salmon pink, I'm talking fat-laden Atlantic salmon pink. Pacific salmon would have been acceptable.
So yeah, in the end, quite by accident, Red Conquest: Episode 1 was released with a light salmon red faction color. Thanks to my fans in the Touch Arcade forums, it was noticed pretty quickly - and I rectified it in an update. :)
Honestly, with over half a years' worth of development on the title, I guess I just got used to it. :( I'm glad I have the support of you rabid fans out there. :) If I ever screw up in the future, don't hesitate to contact us. :) We listen pretty quickly.
Today, I explore an early mistake in updating the color palette for Red Conquest.
The original Blue Defense had a very intense red color, almost by accident. I set it to RGB(255,127,127), and over-drew the enemies twice - so in places, the color accumulated closer to white, and faded out to a darker red at 2-1-1 relative rgb saturation. Somewhere along the line, a bug was introduced that drew the enemies a little darker than full white, so the over-bright areas were thinner, and the fade out areas looked redder.
Fast forward to Red Conquest: I had come up with a color-cycling implementation to cycle through red, yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple - ostensibly so that colorblind people could tweak the faction colors to be as distinct as possible in online matches - but that introduced a further bug in the red coloring. The algorithm mistakenly set red's natural base color to RGB(255,176,176), instead of (255,127,127), and the whole color ended up being much lighter. Add to that the fact that Red Conquest was a new code base, and didn't have the same darker-color bug that Blue Defense had, and the red faction was no longer a menacing red...
It was a light, airy, almost feminine...
Salmon pink.
And not Pacific salmon pink, I'm talking fat-laden Atlantic salmon pink. Pacific salmon would have been acceptable.
So yeah, in the end, quite by accident, Red Conquest: Episode 1 was released with a light salmon red faction color. Thanks to my fans in the Touch Arcade forums, it was noticed pretty quickly - and I rectified it in an update. :)
Honestly, with over half a years' worth of development on the title, I guess I just got used to it. :( I'm glad I have the support of you rabid fans out there. :) If I ever screw up in the future, don't hesitate to contact us. :) We listen pretty quickly.
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