Reducing eye strain

[Kyle (OP)]

I'm having a really hard time dealing with the transitions between dark blue background -> white border -> dark blue -> bright yellow text in the UI.  If an option to revert all colors to completely default windows colors the way Aurora VB6 does it is out of the question, would it at least be possible to reduce the thickness of the borders on many of the controls?  After a fair amount of experimentation, I feel that this is the best outcome possible that doesn't require any code changes:



All that is required is to select all the relevant controls on a form, and change the FlatStyle from Standard to Flat.  I did do my research and found it is quite a pain to change the border color altogether, requiring a fair chunk of windows programming. 

It's possible you may have already tried this and noticed that this introduces an annoying flicker.  That can be eliminated by adding this to all your forms (it's just a copy paste, no thinking required)

Code: [Select]

        protected override CreateParams CreateParams
        {
            get
            {
                CreateParams cp = base.CreateParams;
                cp.ExStyle |= 0x02000000;  // Turn on WS_EX_COMPOSITED
                return cp;
            }
        }
I do know you've got 6 thousand other things on your plate, and appreciate the insane amount of work you're undertaking

[Zincat]

I would have to agree. The blue is hard on my eyes as well.

I hope that, someday in the future, we can have more than one color scheme.

[Malorn]

Honestly, yeah, it's tearing through my eyes a bit as well.  The game is glorious, but I'm having to take breaks to recover my eyes.

[Tyrell]

more than one color scheme.

+1

[Nori]

Here I thought I was the only one. Will add my +1 to this. Never had any issues with VB Aurora but this one does cause some strain.

[RougeNPS]

I think its better now.  I can actually play in the dark now w/out the screen being glaring.

[Lamandier]

Glad I'm not the only one having issues with the color scheme. The dark blue everything makes it really difficult to focus. Would *love* a return to the original Windows-default style interface colors, or at least an option for such.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I agree that the colour of the game is not ideal. You really need a more saturated colour or it will hurt your eyes and it is way harder to read the text and most importantly to find the thing you are looking for at a glance.

I'm fine with the tactical map having the blue background, but the menus really need a much better colour scheme, at least we should be able to choose between a few options as this actually is really important.

[Marski]

Yeah I have to squint my eyes quite a lot when playing this game, the color palette isn't easy on my eyes either.

[Disguy]

Love the game.  Have trouble reading.  End up using Black background and yellow text for event log reading.  Would love for a more friendlier color palette. 

[Lobben]

I came here to start the same thread.

I have astigmatism which makes light text on a dark background hard to read, I've had to quit the game every time due to headaches.  A pretty large portion of the population has this problem it seems like after some googling.

From what I've seen this game is shaping up to be amazing, and I want to be able to enjoy the game you have created Steve.  I 100% get that ironing out the bugs is priority number one at this stage, which you seem to be doing at an amazing pace.  However, I  hope that a lighter color theme closer to the original will be added in a not too distant future.

[GodEmperor]

I agree. Hopefully we can return to classic Win98 style soon.

[Varee]

I think this blue background should only be for the map. The rest of the UI should return to the white back ground with dark text
Normally i enjoy using program in dark mode but it something about the blue and yellow contrast to the white and back button that really cause the problem for me.

[5742k]

I concur.  The dark blue suits the tactical map, but being able to choose the color scheme for other menus would be great.

[TMaekler]

Yes, a change in color palette would be much appreciated.