Deuteranopia and/or Deuteranomaly

Deuteranopia (1% of males): Lacking the medium-wavelength cones, those affected are again unable to distinguish between colors in the green-yellow-red section of the spectrum. Their neutral point is at a slightly longer wavelength, 498 nm.

The deuteranope suffers the same hue discrimination problems as the protanope, but without the abnormal dimming. (Those with this condition are unable to distinguish between colors in the green-yellow-red section of the spectrum. They have a neutral point at a greenish wavelength – that is, they cannot discriminate light of this wavelength from white.)

Similarly, violet, lavender, purple, and blue, seem to be too many names to use logically for hues that all look alike to him. This is one of the rarer forms of colorblindness making up about 1% of the male population, also known as Daltonism after John Dalton. (Dalton’s diagnosis was confirmed as deuteranopia in 1995, some 150 years after his death, by DNA analysis of his preserved eyeball.)

Great Moments in My Deuteranopic (or deuteranomalous) History

1st grade – Once on the way to school, when quizzed about the colors of the traffic light, I said “red, yellow, white”.

2nd grade – 5 minute shouting match with my coloring partner over which crayon was blue

4th grade – 5 minute loud whispering match with my art teacher over which crayon was brown

9th grade – Won an art competition for my depiction of a ravaged Planet Earth after World War Three.  The judge said my use of unnatural purple/blue-violet for what little remained of the oceans was…bla bla bla… artsy-fartsy mumbo jumbo. I thought I was using a blue marker the whole time.

2003 – Lengthy discussion with my cousin over what shade of blue, blue-violet, violet, red-violet, pink, purple etc my key-chain was.

2004 – Realized I can’t see light pink at night.

2006 – Discovered that when adjusting photos I incorrectly prefer caucasians to have a little big of green in their skin.

2008 – Due to some strange weather anomaly I finally saw the proper green color in a traffic light. Specifically, a golden sun ray managed to break through a very thick, gray cloud cover that hid most of the blue sky, thus allowing me to see the green. I guess all the sky-blue interferes with my perception of some greens.

2009 – All attempts at art were intentionally limited to a gray palette.

2010 – Completely gave up on being a graphic designer.

Update

I’ve updated the post to include the term Deuteranomaly since I’ve gone back to being undecided about exactly which term accurately describes me. I seem to fall into both categories sort of. Some aspects of overall Dichromacy (which Deuteranopia falls under) don’t seem to apply to me while some aspects of Anomalous trichromacy sound like a good reason why I saw the green traffic light that one time.

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What css3 transitions can’t do

Can’t blend between an old background image and a new background image.


#topnav li { background-image:url(img/navigation.png); }

#topnav li:hover { background-image:url(img/navigation-hover.png); }

I was expecting it to either:
* fade-in the new image on top
* fade-out the old image revealing the new image underneath
* simultaneously fade-in/fade-out both images

Can’t animate moving from one background position to another when both x and y axis values change.

(thanks Zoe)

Speaking of css3 drawbacks, what if I have a style involving 3 background images on 1 element then on hover I only want 1 of the 3 images to have either its url or position changed. In my :hover rule I’ll have to repeat the properties for all 3 instead of just 1.

What really annoyse me is that I can’t even use JS to simplify things. The multiple backgrounds of a style are not represented as any kind of array object in JS, it’s just a string value. So all I can do is use the same verbose css I would have used in a style-sheet.

Why can’t we just:

// change image of 3rd background on content div
element.style.backgrounds[2].imageUrl = 'images/tree.jpg'

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Re: Do’s and Dont’s (rockpapershotgun)

These were my comments on 2 recent do/don’t articles at rockpapershotgun

re: do’s and don’ts on rock paper shotgun
These should be numbered and anchored to make it easier to refer to specific ones when we send our hate-mail to developers.

The games that inspired each do/don’t should be mentioned so developers can go re-experience what you’re talking about.

Should also list games that are exceptions.

Each one should have a forum topic started so the RPS community can further elaborate on it.

After a time, a massive poll should be created and word of it spread to every gaming community in the world. Then we can give developers some truly useful feedback.

My do/don’t list:

DO acknowledge that most homes have multiple gamers but only 1 PC or Console.
Therefore, you should allow people to keep their save states and settings in separate “accounts”.

See the early battlefield series, Unreal Tournament 3, and Mass Effect 2.

I have at least 4 RPGs on my system that I haven’t started playing because my brother got the them first and used up half the save slots. When I do play them I’ll probably use even more save slots because I like to go back and replay the most fun 10 minute long parts games over and over (ie: HL2 Hovercraft boss fight, Crysis alien spaceship, etc).

But for use to try to play a game at the same time is a clusterfuck because we can’t remember which save belongs to who.

DO incorporate a toned-down version of Brink’s S.M.A.R.T. system in all future games. I’m so tired of watching thousands of zombies scale 30ft walls, fences, and buildings while my LFD2 characters can barely <strike>climb</strike> hop onto the roof of a car. I don’t expect Coach to be a gymnast! But I do expect him to climb over a chainlink fence if his life depended on it.

DON’T let me kill an enemy by shooting him 4 times in his big toe or pinky finger (HL2)

DO offer optional tutorials to teach us exactly when and how to perform the cool stuff we see in a cutscene. (ie: crysis warhead’s super-speed-jump onto a moving vehicle.)

DO give me the ability to climb trees if there are lot of trees in your game (crysis)

DO let me use an X-box controller (or other). ESPECIALLY IF it’s a console port!

DO let me use a controller and keyboard at the same time.
I like the analog stick for fighting games but a game like Killer Instinct (snes emulator – yes I own the cartridge) is best with 2 rows of 3 buttons. Having to work with 4 buttons and 2 triggers feels awkward. Analog stick + keyboard keys is great.

For less strange example: Wings of prey with an xbox controller is hard. So many attributes need to be controlled. If I could assign some of them to the keyboard (left ctrl, space bar, arrow keys, numpad enter) I’d be able to do most of the work on the controller and do the rest with my feet on the keyboard on the ground.
Possibly a keyboard & trackball on the ground with controller in hand. Don’t judge me.

DO have 2 sets of menus if your game is a console port. For up close pc on desk players have a pc-centric menu. For people with their PC in their entertainment room or bedroom with wireless controls you should include the console menu since we’re probably sitting on a a couch or bed.

FLASH GAME DEVELOPERS!
DO allow me to customize my controls. My 5 and 8 year old neices played dozens of single player pc games for years with WASD(left hand direction) YUIHJK(right hand action) before their mom let them go online unsupervised.

They hate arrow keys (RIGHT hand DIRECTION) spacebar/ZXC (LEFT hand ACTION) as much as any hard core pc gamer.

DO offer 2 player split screen play on PC. The average gamer PC destroys the hardware in a xbox yet console ports never retain their splitscreen co-op/multiplayer. (exception: split/second)

DO give playback controls to cutscenes (pause, play, rewind, fastforward, restart, stop)

DON’T use windows live for anything other than allowing the player to show up as being online to their friends. In Dirt2 they use a part of the LIVE interface to let you save car balance setups. The length of the filename is severly limited and you can’t use spaces!!! WTF! Sucks. That’s something that should have been a part of the native game interface!

DO remake quake 3 with higher polygon counts, higher texture resolutions, a better menu, ragdoll physics, same lighting, same color scheme, same characters, same sound effects, double tap dodge, not double jump, and flesh out the back story I read in a text file somewhere.

500% more people need to write Game Reviews FOR GAME DEVELOPERS.

crysis 2 seems to solve the mounted gun problem by unmounting and carrying it.

I think we can all agree that the water droplets in the new F1 game are totally OK

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2010-f1-2010/700509

@FLASH GAME DEVELOPERS:
DO: Allow me to rebind keys.

“PC gamers have more buttons. Let them use them!”
While we have lots of buttons we sometimes don’t have enough fingers and/or hand/eye coordination. So, please let us plug in a 2nd keyboard and mouse or trackball that we can use with our feet. Or let a 2nd person use the 2nd keyboard as a player 2 input for fighting games (STREET FIGHTER 4!) if we don’t have controllers.

Re: Ladders
In real life I can look around, turn around, lean back and use both hands to hammer a nail and all sorts of other stuff. In crysis I couldn’t shoot or look around much when on a ladder. Still, the crysis approach to ladders is the best I’ve seen so far. It helps to be able to see your feet.

DO: include the ability to lay flat on the ground and crawl in an FPS. (STUPID SINGULARITY CRATES AND HALF OPEN GARAGE DOORS. I can’t recall moving a crate around that much since Tomb Raider)

DO: include the option of a sihlouette or fully rendered 3d character in the hud that can indicate my curent body position, crouch, prone, standing, sprinting, limping etc (maybe even adjust the lighting to indicate how hidden I am or that I’m taking cover with my back flat against a wall)

DO: let us switch between first person and third person whenever we want. Sometimes you just want to enjoy the scenery the art team spent years building! I can’t count the hours I spend looking at beyond good and evil, quake 1 and quake 3 textures, models & animated shaders up close.

DO: add an option to tweak the severity of head bob, depth of field, and so-called HDRI (bloom) (man I miss quake’s console commands)

Speaking of BLOOM: Do they have NO PHOTOGRAPHERS working at these game companies???

http://thinsoldier.com/_users/thinsoldier/forums/bloom.jpg

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Open World Game of My Dreams

Dream Open World Game

I want a game like Just Cause 2 but with some improvements:
Continue reading

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Random – June 4, 2010

Over capacity Twitter is Over Capacity.

[REC] > Quarantine

[REC]2 > Cloverfield (in regards to the “realistic” camera technique)

[REC]2 > Anything I’ve seen so far this year

Seeing how they chickened out on some of the religious bits at the end of Quarantine I doubt there’ll be a Quarantine sequel.

Splinter is still the King.

Racing wheel is on it’s way!

Bulletstorm looks interesting.

I’m definitely going to bootleg CoD: Black Ops to make up for the cash I wasted on Modern Warfare 2.

I really hope they realize the benefits of selling single player separate from multiplayer soon.

Apologies to the 2 real people who’ve commented recently. I’ve got SOOOO much comment spam that I just deleted everything in a fit of rage.

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Steam and Refunds

All games going forward should be able to track how much time a player actually spends in-game vs. in-menu and how many times the game has crashed.

Someone who’s had zero gameplay time, 4 minutes menu time, launched the game 70 times and had it crash 66 times MUST BE ABLE TO GET A REFUND.

The gameplay/crash statistics should be accurately recorded for that purpose.

Also someone who’s launched TF2 only 3 times in 2 years with only 45 minutes of gameplay should also be allowed to get a refund since they obviously don’t like the game.

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Random Thoughts – June 19 2010

Random Thoughts – June 19 2010

I think I’m going to buy a used mitsubishi mirage. That car feels nice.

A 2d side scroller of God Of War would be great.

How about a sky diving or cave jumping game like Das Uberleben but with the Just Cause 2 engine.

Asterix & the Vikings!!!

I was going to buy Rocket Knight but Legend of Princess looks like a lot more fun.

Other Games worth checking out in the full post.

Continue reading

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HTML5 layers in Photoshop?

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/06/feedback_please_html5_layers_in_photoshop.html

I like it.

Reasons I like this:

Have you ever had a client get stuck on the fact that the text in your design just didn’t look “right” and the only way to satisfy them was to take a 2 screenshots of text in a browser (white on black and black on white for a mask) and use that instead of native photoshop text?

Have you ever needed 3, 4 or 5 evenly sized and evenly spaced rounded rectangles to fit in an area and found it easiest to just visit one of your recently built sites with a similar design element, open Firebug and tweak the css then take a screenshot rather than build it in photoshop or illustrator? (Illustrator probably has a faster way of doing it but in the time it takes illustrator to launch I could be 75% done in Firebug.

Have you ever tried recreated an intricate gradient in css? Did it take much longer than expected? Did is STILL not look “exactly” the way it should look compared to the same gradient you created in photoshop/illustrator?

I personally don’t think the css spec for gradients is actually capable of all the gradient features you have in photoshop or any vector program. Hopefully the photoshop team can convince them to make the spec complete. I’ve already seen comparisons of what webkit can do with its gradient syntax vs Mozilla’s new gradient proposals. While I like Mozilla’s syntax better it sucks if it doesn’t have all the features.

These ideas would be wonderful for those companies offering software that does the crazy idea of converting a series of .psd files into a “complete website”. If they make the user start off with a .psd template full of html layers they might actually be able to generate decent markup!

If you want to work on a slight redesign of an existing site you could save a page via your browser, strip out any unnecessary code and import it into photoshop to have a pretty good starting point. You’d want to replace all the header graphics with their original .psd of course. You’d have real life content to work around, influencing you to do what’s best for the content you have.

I’ve been waiting forever for live shapes. And if those shapes can be exported as .svg or canvas code, even better! OH, if the code that makes say a star shape editable is javascript based then maybe I could export Adobe’s star shape .js code and use it as a part of my own .js to generate randomized stars of varying shapes, sizes, points and angles.

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Stupid OS X Folder Sorting

OS X has an annoying un-customizable default way of sorting files (files mixed with folders).

This lead me to hating folders (when using OS X). That lead to just not using folders. I chose instead to use an underscore and file name prefixes so that important files would be grouped together in a sane manner (Like folders would be) and quickly available at the top of any file list.

I’ve been working on my own framework at home lately on my windows box. I’ve been using folders the way I always should have. My site folder structures are so much nicer now. I’m currently working on a site I built around 2006 (before I discovered Path Finder)… such crappy organization :(

How do people put up with the way Finder handles folders? It amazes me. How could the “super-user-friendly” OS X fail to have an easy option for changing this.?

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Universal Comment Backup

I notice more and more people posting a weekly roundup of every tweet they twat  and (like myself) every lengthy comment they left on someone else’s blog.

It would be nice if every popular blogging/tweeting platform implemented some kind of feature that lets me simulaneously post a comment/tweet to the site in question and to my own blog in case I want to display it there as well.

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