[TopAce]

I want to ask you guys about your preferences about colored text in briefings, and how you want FotG to use this feature.

#1 and #2 are self-explanatory.

For #3, this is what I have in mind:
Light red: enemy faction
Dark red: enemy ship/planet
Light green: friendly faction
Dark green: friendly ship/planet
Bark blue: general highlighting
Light blue: mission goal

And here is an example:



If you choose #4, please be specific.

[SkycladGuardian]

Hm, IMO coloured highlighting should be limited to mission goals and enemy/allied ships (and planets), without the factions. Otherwise a more lengthy briefing will become quite colourful, which might distract from the text itself.
Oh, and maybe include a colour for neutral/civil ships or temporarily allies (for instance a pirate faction siding with the rebels for one or two missions).

[Lorric]

If you're going to use it, I'd keep it simple. Bright red for anything enemy, light green for anything friendly, light blue for anything important. Though you might not even need that, since mission objectives are always listed at the end anyway.

[bobbtmann]

What you've got now is a bit colourful. I wouldn't mind if the text colour followed the colour of everything else on the screen.

On another note, that first sentence in the briefing is really hard to read. I think it's a run on sentence.

[swashmebuckle]

Definitely a run on--what kind of trained monkey do you guys have writing these things?

[CountBuggula]

I was an English Major and pretty good at proofreading - I'd be happy to review and help rewrite anything to improve readability and flow.  Feel free to PM me for contact info.

[Colonol Dekker]

TLDR- Coloured text same as the briefings in xwing or tie fighter kthnx xx

[Lorric]

What's a run on?

[zookeeper]

I think there's too much colours for the player to be able to intuit what they mean; it's not really obvious why there are two reds and what their differences are, for example.

Colour coding is a really handy way to draw attention to important names and words, but to work it must be limited to the ones which truly are important for the player to know. I'd dare to suggest that the most useful way to use colour coding would be to only colour things which have gameplay relevance in the current mission or are otherwise central to the campaign; names of ships and wings, basically, and of course also objectives. So, in this particular example, I'd colour only "disable one of the corvettes" and "Excoriator". I wouldn't really mind giving some subtle emphasis on other important words, but they should be as subtle as dark blue in the screenshot in order to clearly remain things of less importance.

[Lorric]

Colours or no colours... It might be safer just to ditch the Colours. It's up to you though. Why do you want them over just plain text? A clear briefing is quite sufficient.

[swashmebuckle]

I think limiting the colored text to the player's objectives is a good idea. The rest of the information is really all background, so making certain parts of it stand out would draw attention away from the objective stuff, relatively speaking. In this case, I think "disable one of the corvettes" is really all you need.

What's especially nice with doing it that way is that after the player has gone through the briefing, the summary screen is then reinforcing points that have already been highlighted, and having already recalled them once should increase the likelihood that the player will be able keep things straight during the mission.

[Hobbie]

Green for Rebel ships, Red for Imperial ships as well, so you know what you're looking for.

[Droid803]

Green for Rebels and Red for Imperial would get confusing quick since their lasers are the opposite color!
just noting!

[niffiwan]

  All the X-Wing series games followed the convention Hobbie mentioned, e.g. in TIE Fighter "red" is friendly/Imperial.

[swashmebuckle]

Don't think we can make that consistent with all the red/green hostile/friendly stuff found in the various HUD and briefing elements, so we should probably just stick with the more intuitive FS method of red=shoot this, green=don't shoot this.

[TopAce]

Don't think we can make that consistent with all the red/green hostile/friendly stuff found in the various HUD and briefing elements, so we should probably just stick with the more intuitive FS method of red=shoot this, green=don't shoot this.

Theoretically, this is not too hard. First, add Rebel and Imperial IFFs to the iff table, then change all IFFs in missions/tables/wherever necessary accordingly. Optionally, remove the Friendly and Hostile IFFs too.

Theoretically.

[FekLeyrTarg]

If my mind serves me well, this was also done in Imperial Alliance.

[swashmebuckle]

OK, so maybe we can but what was a cute touch in Tie Fighter could very well end in tragedy here. In FotG you go back and forth between Rebel and Imperial and can easily kill a friendly in a single salvo. So much easier and less confusing to have red=shoot.

[Lorric]

OK, so maybe we can but what was a cute touch in Tie Fighter could very well end in tragedy here. In FotG you go back and forth between Rebel and Imperial and can easily kill a friendly in a single salvo. So much easier and less confusing to have red=shoot.

I agree with this. Keep it simple. And also if you go with colours in the briefings, have red = enemy, so if you do get to fly imperial, rebel = red.

[TopAce]

One group prefers to shoot at "red" and defend "green," the other wants a color assigned to each IFF. Either way we go, it's simple, but from the POV of two different groups.  The first group is FS players, the second is X-W vets. I know there'll be a lot of people who played both and prefers one of them, but however we choose, there'll be dissatisfied costumers.

That's why I'm indecisive here. The question the staff must ask: Who's our target audience? Whose complaints hurt us more?