Periodic Devlog #5

The last devlog wrapped up the core design of Gearplexed, so now what? I haven’t updated for a while, and I’m told I need to provide some type of regular update so people know the developer wasn’t squished by a meteorite or something. (I wasn’t, by the way)

For this short devlog I’m going to talk a little about a design feature that, if I did my job right, nobody will notice, including the people the feature is for. Approximately 8% of males and 0.5% of females have some form of colorblindness. That’s nearly 1 in 12 of you guys, and I want to make sure you can enjoy Gearplexed the same way as anyone else.

The game looks different for different people.

Without going into too much detail, I have a decent amount of professional experience with writing publications and presentations. It only made sense to pull those standards into my game dev hobby. Typically, with any visually heavy medium, you don’t want to rely on color alone to convey differences between elements. You want to vary at least two things. Ideally, altering the element’s silhouette in addition to color, but if that is not possible (for example, when you’re building a gear and need feedback about whether you can place it there) using a color scale varies the value and especially avoids requiring distinction between red and green. Visual design elements are regularly checked by taking a screenshot and using a paint program (such as GIMP) to convert to greyscale and check if any information was lost, then make changes as needed. For my larger projects my debugging suite has a filter that converts the game to greyscale for more interactive Q/A, because the utility of examining the game in greyscale goes beyond simply accommodating perceptual differences and helps elevate the overall visual presentation for everyone.

If you have any form of colorblindness and didn’t give a second thought to anything in Gearplexed, that tells me I did my job right. If you do have trouble with anything though, certainly let me know in this game’s discussion forums. This will be my last devlog because the game is launching soon. I will continue supporting Gearplexed (and the demo) so stay tuned!