Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

Re: [Icehouse] Xeno color mapping for Homeworlds

  • From"Rob Bryan" <2short2@xxxxxxxxx>
  • DateSun, 3 Jun 2007 23:31:41 -0600
It seems like there are two cases where this makes a difference:

1) Reading rules written about one color set, and mentally
translating.  I think any reasonable mapping is equivalent here;
you've just got to keep it in mind.

2) As a player who knows a game with one color set, looking at a
position in the other and just "seeing" it.  Here, I strongly prefer
Andy's mapping.  If I look at a Homeworlds position in Xeno colors and
tell my brain to find the Yellow peices (or Red or Green or Blue), it
finds the right ones.

I can put Cyan just as easily with blue or green.  It's in between,
both conceptually, and by my subjective judgment looking at the
pieces.  I can't see anything but orange making intuitive sense as
red, nor purple making sense as anything but blue.  Clear=Yellow is a
bit arbitrary in the abstract, but looking at the pieces it works
particularly well:  yellow is by far the weakest and clearest.

Obviously this is highly subjective.  My ability to see cyan as green
may be due to having thought of it more than most.  I developed a
fondness for the color at a young age when I discovered it was the
perfect explanation/justification for the unusual way my family
pronounces our last name.

- Rob "Rhymes with Cyan" Bryan