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Old 04-02-2015, 12:53 AM   #361
johndallman
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Default Re: [Speculation] GURPS 4.5e

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Originally Posted by scc View Post
I think the switching to bicolor was to make the books seem lass 'flat', now the B&W books we're getting now are actually in Greyscale so they don't look as bad, but the bicolor books seem to have more character or seem to be more alive.
To me, that's rather like saying that a music album with different ambient background noises on different songs, loud enough to be distracting, sounds more like real life. The coloured borders represent information that's very general, far more so than the text or tables, but is being asserted very strongly and to me, distractingly.

As a parallel, I never took up playing D&D 3e, and a significant reason for that was that the complex coloured background to the pages made reading them genuinely hard work.
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Or is you problem with the colors that get chosen? Because that can make a real difference, I can still remember how bad the lighting was in those toilets with glossy back tiles in Uni.
Several of the border colours aren't easy to distinguish from each other, as I said. Simplifying the colour key to only 4-5 categories of pages would make it far more usable to me. Yes, my colour vision is very poor.
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Old 04-02-2015, 03:47 AM   #362
scc
 
Join Date: Mar 2013
Default Re: [Speculation] GURPS 4.5e

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
To me, that's rather like saying that a music album with different ambient background noises on different songs, loud enough to be distracting, sounds more like real life. The coloured borders represent information that's very general, far more so than the text or tables, but is being asserted very strongly and to me, distractingly.

As a parallel, I never took up playing D&D 3e, and a significant reason for that was that the complex coloured background to the pages made reading them genuinely hard work.

Several of the border colours aren't easy to distinguish from each other, as I said. Simplifying the colour key to only 4-5 categories of pages would make it far more usable to me. Yes, my colour vision is very poor.
Where did you get the idea that the choice of color conveys ANY information? The color each chapter gets is it's highlight color, text being in color means something, but the color itself doesn't.
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Old 04-02-2015, 03:52 AM   #363
johndallman
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Default Re: [Speculation] GURPS 4.5e

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Where did you get the idea that the choice of color conveys ANY information? The color each chapter gets is it's highlight color, text being in color means something, but the color itself doesn't.
Oh, right. This does not make it seem like a better idea.
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Old 04-02-2015, 04:01 AM   #364
scc
 
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Default Re: [Speculation] GURPS 4.5e

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Oh, right. This does not make it seem like a better idea.
For people like you who have trouble telling certain colors apart NOT using certain colors for certain information is a VERY good idea. If I remember things from one of my uni course correctly blue-green color blindness effects something like 9% of males, this would make using Blue for one thing and Green for another a VERY bad idea
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Old 04-02-2015, 11:43 AM   #365
johndallman
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Default Re: [Speculation] GURPS 4.5e

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FIf I remember things from one of my uni course correctly blue-green color blindness effects something like 9% of males, this would make using Blue for one thing and Green for another a VERY bad idea
Red-green is the commonest, which also makes browns hard.
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Old 04-02-2015, 02:35 PM   #366
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Default Re: [Speculation] GURPS 4.5e

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Red-green is the commonest, which also makes browns hard.
Isn't this why shapes are sometimes used alongside colors? Not sure how it would work with the pages, but perhaps a both the flat and the edge of the page could involve a repeated shape.

I didn't read this entire, massive thread so forgive me if I am wrong, but sometimes I think there should be GURPS Lite, GURPS Basic Set and GURPS Advanced Set (filler name, if you can think of something better let me know). There is so much wonderful information in Basic and sometimes... I think its too much. Other times... not enough. The same reason some Advantage is in GURPS Powers or that some rules are in GURPS Martial Arts... I wonder if those should apply to more of the Basic Set or maybe GURPS Lite. Please note this is off the top of my head so I've spent less than five minutes contemplating it... I just have to go do something and was afraid I'd forget if I didn't post now. =P

GURPS is such a "Do it yourself or pay us to do it for you" tool kit system (which I love!) so imagine if more of the core design was about how to do that, with just a few worked examples. Since 4.5 is purely hypothetical anyway and not happening, it might even make sense as not a replacement but an alternative to what we actually have.
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Old 04-02-2015, 03:42 PM   #367
scc
 
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Default Re: [Speculation] GURPS 4.5e

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Isn't this why shapes are sometimes used alongside colors? Not sure how it would work with the pages, but perhaps a both the flat and the edge of the page could involve a repeated shape.
And this is why the color don't MEAN anything. Basically the colors are there because they SJG couldn't get away with printing the books in monochrome any more, the market wouldn't allow it. Now instead of going the direction of Wizards and CGL with a 'Look at all our cool artwork' approach, they went with a simple bi-color (OK, the second color changes every chapter, but most pages are still bi-color) that strives to look PROFESSIONAL
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