Shattered Kingdoms

Simple question, when you have ANSI colour on in SK, what's the default text colour need to be? I think my client defaults to some greenish thing, but I have changed it to white, but what's the 'offical' default colour?

grey or $7 is the default.

SK is prettier in default grey.

Nope, it is not. It is just the defalult, and its code is $A. In some clients it may appear as gray, in others like green etc, but the truth is that this result depends on your client ENTIRELY, since the $A value is not a real color value.

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You can set the default text color in any respectable client. Zmud just defaults to green.

Similiar question, the default background color on most clients is black. Why do we have equipment/weapons descriptions in Black???? It is very disconcerting. Can this be changed? Reading purple on black is hard enough, black on black is impossible.

Originally I think the intended color scheme had gray as the default color. Because most clients default to green, everyone assumes it is the intended color. I have switched my default color to gray and it is much easier on the eyes. I also have abhorred the black on black thing, so I make my black all the way black, make my background a fairly dark gray, and make my dark gray just a little lighter. This way everything shows up. Most of my text is in light gray, as opposed to green. The gray really makes the color scheme fit better in most areas. If you do nothing with your colors, and you use a default client, yes, your letters will show up as green. That is just a MUD client thing. I remember a while ago someone had opened up a similar discussion and some IMM had said that gray was actually supposed to be the default color. I tried it and haven't gone back. In my Zmud color settings, I have all my color syntax enabled, so I C & P into the command line with codes already added. Of I have to be careful when going between lightgray and green, because all that shows up on my default window would be lightgray, unless I actually used the $2 color code. This is why I still keep putty around. Helps me to double check all my color stuff.

A

MUDs are based on the TELNET protocol, which is default gray-on-black on most OS's worth their salt.

A quick fix for ZMUD users who want to see $0-colored text: View -> Preferences -> Colors -> Foreground Mapping. Change 8 to a lighter shade of gray (but darker than 7) and change 0 from black to dark gray. You'll have 3 different grays: 0 (black) - dark gray; 8 (bright black) - medium gray; 7 (default/gray) - light gray.

There shouldn't be many descriptions/items that are black ($0) in color. It is a very longstanding, general builders' rule on SK that anything meant to be "black" in color should use the $0$I (dark gray) color code and never the $0 (black). Some telnet clients I've found do not distinguish between the 'standard' colors and the 'intense' colors, except to simply BOLD the color. Only on those few, very basic telnet clients should the $0$I show up as the exact same pure black color of the $0, and therefore be unreadable against a black background. If that's the case with your client, I suggest you find a different one to use, as the color scheme in SK looks MUCH better when you can view the whole gamut of color. Honestly, the telnet clients that use the bold technique are just gaudy and ugly. Any MUD client worth using will allow you to adjust your color settings like soultoast recommends, including allowing you to adjust the RGB balance of the colors to where they are more pleasing to look at. My client's default has the brown ($6) as an ugly dark yellow color- I was able to go in and adjust it to be an actual brown as SK uses it. Similarly, instead of a fugly dark pink, I adjusted my $5 to be an actual purple like SK intends.

I got out of SK, read the post, adjusted my client's color scheme accordingly, and got back in to try it out. Unfortunately, the item in my possession that I was having trouble seeing was stolen by thieves in the meantime. Therefore, I will have to wait until another similiar item comes into my possession to see if the adjustments are working correctly.

Personally, I am not color blind, but everyone perceives colors differently, so what looks fine to one person may be unreadable to someone else. I am however nominally night blind, I have problems seeing variations of grey and black, so this is probably part of the problem I have been having.

I was using ZMUD initially but have changed to SimpleMU and among other things prefer the color scheme, it is much easier on my eyes for most things.