[Mod] Map Color Clarity UI

Age of Empires II: DE II - Modding
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I have had a lot of positive feedback on my first mod for this great game so far, so I thought I’d make a thread for it to make more people aware of it’s existence.

Map Color Clarity UI

1280×720 147 KB

All map colors and the player colors have been carefully re-balanced against each other to improve readability of units and resources on the mini-map.

Could you never tell the difference between player gray and stone resources in vanilla? Ever felt like Orange had an advantage being camouflaged on dirt or had trouble seeing rocks on grass or sheep and boar on it? Then this mod is for you.

Link: 0xDB Map Color Clarity UI

You might also like my other mods “Extended Unit Info”(standalone) and “Compact UI”.

Extended Unit Info

1280×720 77.9 KB

This mod provides additional info about units in the commandpanel, namely armor classes, base speed, attack boni, strengths and weaknesses(aka counter units), which is helpful to new players like me as it saves a trip to the tech-tree in-game to look things up mid-game.

Link: 0xDB Extended Unit Info

Compact UI(already includes Extended Unit Info, do not use together)

1280×720 96.8 KB

A compact rearrangement of in-game panels to decrease eye movement needed for gathering info.

The map size is also slightly increased and the chat is nearly centered to hopefully not miss important messages anymore.

Bottom- and top deco-bordures are removed to improve sight on the action.

Food and wood are exchanged in the resource-panel to be in the same order as the spectator resources tab and so that it is easier to recall the /N commands for requesting resources in team games, where starting with /3 for “food please” the resource icons sequence now corresponds to /3 (food) /4 (wood) /5 (gold) /6 (stone).

If you use this, do not also use the standalone Extended Unit Info, because this one further modifies the commandpanel.

Link: 0xDB Compact UI

Thank you for your attention. All thoughts and feedback are welcome. I hope you have a great time with any of these mods.

6 Likes
2

Good job, I will test the Colour-Mod later. I hope minimap is better structured then :slight_smile:

1 Like
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How do you like it so far?

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OMG, I came to this forum to post this: How can I mod the mini-map colors/design?

Then I stumbled onto your post about this mod, which does pretty much exactly what I wanted! GG!

It looks like I was editing the wrong files - as your mod shows, the widgetui/palette.json is the real source of the mini-map colors.

My planned color changes were a bit different - I had imagined making the terrain colors much lighter and less saturated, like the colors on a real-world paper map. But making them darker, as you have done, also seems valid - it distinguishes the terrain from the units and resources.

I’m going to play around with the colors myself - but until then I’m using your mod. Very nice.

1 Like
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I just noticed you’re also redefining UIColors.json with a file that looks like:

{
  "PresetColors": {9EFA9E
    "GaiaHealthBar": [ 85, 119, 52, 255 ],
    "ScoreInfoText": [ 213, 213, 213, 255 ]
  },
  ...

I’m wondering what the 9EFA9E is - doesn’t look like valid JSON. Does it mean something / refer to something? (I’ve never done any AoE modding!)

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Well spotted, thank you. That must be a temporary leftover hex-code I pasted and then forgot to clean it up later: will fix.

1 Like
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Version 2.0 further improves the readability of wood-lines and tweaked gray, stone, food and gold. (edit: Version 2.0b, small extra tweak for food)

thumb20b
thumb20b1280×720 80.9 KB

Link: Map Color Clarity UI 2.0b

1 Like
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Hi
great job budy !
I have a suggestion
could you please choose a different color for stone mine as it is black and could be mistaken with fog.
may be grey could be better ? as you have a dark map

9

Stone is about 25% gray as it is and well distinguishable against black for me. Could be a monitor configuration issue if you can not see it well enough on your screen.

10

Hi, gj on the mod.

Is there a way you can remove the green spots on grass maps? They don’t seem to indicate anything.

Mini map mod green spots

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That green is just one of the different types of grass in the game. Some other maps use that type exclusively. There is no way to change individual terrain type colors on a map-to-map basis.

1 Like
12

Seems unneeded to indicate similar terraintypes by different colors. I made a topic about it;

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Could you not just change the color of all build-able terrain to almost the same color?

For example no matter if its desert or grass or what ever, if it is build-able its yellowish (To distinct woodlines well) or what ever color you think would be best for that purpose.

I don’t know if cracked terrain has its own mini map color, which I would chose to be distinct from the normal build-able terrain.

1 Like
14

I might look into it in the future. Currently I have no plans to make changes because I like different colors for different terrain and for me the trees are well distinguishable from everything else.

I am getting quite swamped with requests like “Could you change this or that color.” lately and I am a bit weary of it. Can not make everybody happy. Currently marinating the idea in my head to make an editor, so people could easily create their own color schemes but don’t hold your breath for it.